May 20, 2018 (Day of Pentecost) – Acts 2:1-21
Acts 2:1-21
The Spirit Honours Difference
Day of Pentecost – May 20, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We live in increasingly divided times – which is not news to anyone.
What is in the news is how much language is exposing how much we are divided.
Recently several people have been caught on video ranting at those who
are not speaking English where they think English alone should be spoken.
A year ago December in Louisville, Kentucky a woman yelled at a Hispanic woman to
“Speak English! You’re in America!”
And it’s not just in the United States, right?
In Toronto last June a woman in a Chinese supermarket berated employees for speaking Chinese.
“Go back to China! This is Canada!” she said.
And then, most recently, in Lethbridge, some Afghanis speaking in their own language in
a Denny’s restaurant were berated by a woman who yelled at them,
“Speak English or don’t speak at all!”
Well – how different a picture we get in the early church on the Day of Pentecost!
It’s 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection.
He told his followers to stay in Jerusalem and then they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,
the same spirit that was at work in him.
The same spirit that energized him and enabled him to do his work of
healing and forgiving and feeding and including.
As promised, the gift comes as they are gathered together.
And the very first thing it enables them to do is . . . speak in the languages other than
their native languages!
It enables them to communicate with all the people gathered in Jerusalem for
the Jewish religious festival of Weeks in their own languages!
They don’t tell the people to go back where they came from.
They don’t tell them to speak Aramaic or go home.
Rather, the Spirit empowers them and enables them to communicate with
those who are different from themselves.
The Holy Spirit helps them communicate with those who are different because above all
the spirit that Jesus gives them is a spirit of Love.
Isn’t it amazing that this is the very first thing the Spirit enables the disciples to do?
Of all the things that the disciples could have first done,
the very first thing they are compelled to do is speak in another’s language?
I think the Spirit here honours all languages and all peoples as sacred and holy.
Language carries so much of a people’s culture and values and identity.
By honouring all languages on that day, the Holy Spirit honoured all people’s
experiences and culture.
And I am sure that the Holy Spirit’s great hope was that the church would always do that.
It was the Holy Spirit’s way of saying:
All are welcome here. All are honoured here.
Your language and your experiences are honoured here.
Diversity and inclusiveness are tremendous values in the church.
Not because it is fashionable, but because God’s stories are so wondrous and varied that
they can’t be contained by one language or one people’s experience.
God is at work in your life and God is at work in the lives of those different from you.
Let us all tell our stories in our own languages – and let us seek to understand each other.
Let us honour difference.
Let us learn to speak each other’s languages.
Let us work to try and figure out where we each are coming from.
Let’s enter into each other’s experiences in a spirit of friendship.
I think the Holy Spirit was saying a lot to the church on that day long ago!
And how timely is it, right?
In a culture that seems to be actively promoting racism and hatred of those who are different,
here we have the Holy Spirit 2000 years ago promoting engagement, love,
understanding – and inclusion.
These were not popular values back in the day.
The church was in fact very very counter-cultural when it lived the way it did.
The church embraced people of all different ethnicities and nationalities,
as well as people from all socio-economic backgrounds and ages.
It embraced those of both genders as well as – as we saw a few weeks ago in the story of
The Ethiopian eunuch – those of uncertain gender.
Luke quotes Joel on just whom the Spirit will be poured out for the sake of God’s mission:
women, children, men, the young, the old, and slaves – both male and female.
Everyone has a place.
Everyone’s experiences are honoured.
Everyone has God at work in their lives.
Everyone has a ministry.
And everyone is welcome at the table.
While being “different” is often considered bad in our culture,
Pentecost names it good – and invites us to consider difference, well, differently.
As good, as enriching.
“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,” says God in Joel.
Not some – but all.
Not in order to make everyone the same, write Isaac Villegas this week,
“but to affirm all flesh, to affirm where they came from, to bless who they are,
to announce that what makes them different is good and holy.”
(https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/sundays-coming/unconverted-difference-acts-21-21)
Today, Anne Jennifer Carolyn is having the Spirit poured out on her infant self too.
Because God pours out God’s Spirit on all flesh – including hers.
Even as an infant and as a young child, she is not without gifts.
She is not without a place.
She will be different from all others.
And today she is being baptized into a community that has come to honour and
prize how we are all different from one another.
She will bring us many gifts.
And those gifts, we pray, will be received with thanksgiving.
God will be at work in her life, and we will seek to understand how that is so.
I think at First Lutheran we are getting very good at honouring God’s work and
presence in all our very different lives.
I’ve said many times I am only the sixth pastor here in a hundred and forty years.
But those six – how very very different they have been from one another!
And yet, the congregation has learned to honour all the very different gifts
these very different pastors have brought.
But that is also true with the members here, who are far from being all the same.
We are learning to discover just how much richer we are when we
accept and honour one another’s very different gifts.
And how enriching it is when we seek to enter into one’s another’s experiences in
a spirit of friendship and welcome –
when we seek to understand one another.
Because the spirit we are given is ultimately a spirit of love.
And we cannot love one another truly and deeply if we do not understand one another.
And we cannot work together effectively in mission unless we understand one another.
That first Day of Pentecost ended with all these different people eating together a
common meal, a radical practice back in the day.
And maybe it is still radical – to eat with those who are very different from ourselves.
We will end this day’s worship, too, by eating a meal together –
the meal of Holy Communion, where for 2000 years the spirit of
fellowship and love has been nurtured.
A meal where all are welcome, no matter what, even young Anne here on her
baptismal birthday.
So let us gives thanks for this meal we will share.
For the one who makes us one.
For the differences that enrich us.
For the diversity of people that have found a home here.
And for Jesus who gives us his Spirit of welcome, inclusion, and love.
So together, let say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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