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It wasn’t planned this way, it
just happened….but if you look at Jeff’s sermon title for
tonight and mine for this morning, they make a fascinating
mix or menu:
“Tongues, Ears, or Too Much
to Drink—Everybody’s Hungry for Something”
1.
The story begins with “tongues.”
And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the
Spirit gave them utterance.
In the context, it is obvious
this has nothing to do with “speaking in tongues”—that is,
unknown prayer languages, mystical speaking in spiritual
syllables and sounds. The context makes it clear that the
day of Pentecost had to do with the proclamation of the Word
to all those who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish
festival of Pentecost. Penta, meaning fifty, indicated fifty
days after Passover, the festival of the giving of the
Torah, the festival of the grain harvest, the “First Fruits”
when the city was packed with pilgrims, it says, from
“every nation under heaven.”
And on that day, the power of
God’s Spirit enabled the disciples to speak their languages,
to proclaim the message in words people could understand, to
share the good news of Jesus in ways which would cut across
culture, tradition and nationality. It was literally the
festival of “First Fruits” for the Gospel of Christ.
Pentecost is all about the ability to relate to others, to
cross racial barriers, to bridge the ethnic divide, to make
the Word of Christ known in the words of the world’s
people.
And we are still about
that business today…trying to speak the tongues of
technology, to communicate the timeless Word in real time,
to speak so people can understand.
Someone passed to me an
excellent article by Tom Ehrich from the Reader’s Digest.
He says he was in Houston, where bigger is better and
mega-churches abound…where the largest church in America,
Lakewood Church, hosts thousands of worshipers and pastor
Joel Osteen is seen by millions on television every week.
Ehrich was meeting with a group of pastors from small
Episcopal and Methodist churches who were lamenting their
modest size and the demise of their denominations. He says
he asked, “Do you know what happened in 1964?”
They responded: the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan, Vietnam, Martin Luther King, the Ford
Mustang—all actual events. But then he told them that the
most important event of that year for the church was that
postwar baby boomers began to graduate from high school, and
many of their parents lost their main reason for going to
church.
He says we went a decade without
even realizing what had happened, then two decades blaming
ourselves.
Meanwhile (he says), we clung to
facilities and methods which worked in the ’50s but
increasingly became outmoded and burdensome. Think corner
drugstore, corner hardware, neighborhood movie theater.
Now think CVS, Home Depot and
NetFlix. Think mega-church, the religious equivalent of
Wal-Mart.
He says we can criticize the
mega-church, but one of the things they do well is analyze
their market, they focus their message, they go where the
people are. He concludes:
We need to be as responsive to
market preferences as any business. The world is largely
unchurched. There is no shortage of people seeking God. The
question is, “Are they getting the message?”
(Tom Ehrich, www.onajourney.org)
If we are going to reach others
with the Gospel today, we need to speak in tongues, the
language of technology, the tongues of the world, sharing
the Word in ways people can understand. We need to speak in
tongues.
And when
they did, Luke says:
… a great multitude came
together, and they were bewildered because they heard them
speaking in their own languages.
2.
Now I wonder, was it a miracle of tongues or of ears…
…of speaking, or of hearing and
experiencing the Gospel in their own lives, their own
culture, their own tradition, their own language?
One of my first trips to Eastern
Europe after the fall of communism was a gathering of United
Methodist leaders in Austria. The event happens every five
years, but this was the first time in fifty years that
Methodists from Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia,
Czechoslovakia, Russia, Bulgaria and the Baltics had been
able to attend. It was a wonderful reunion of the people
called Methodist. (By the way, do you realize the Bishop of
Central Europe conducts annual conference sessions in
nineteen different languages?) At this event, we had no
technology for simultaneous translation, so all the
translating had to be done orally. People would gather in
small clusters with translators interpreting the speakers
from the platform—with Russians translating for Bulgarians,
Germans translating into Czech, Finns translating for
Hungarians. There was a constant rumble and mumble around
the room, and I thought, “This must be what Pentecost was
like…everyone hearing in their own language.”
One Word, shared in the
diversity of the world.
One Lord, worshiped in the blend of languages.
One Spirit, breaking down barriers and creating a new
community.
And when it
happened, Luke reports the multitude around them:
…were amazed and wondering,
saying, “Are not all of these who are speaking Galileans?
And how is that we hear, each in his own native language?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea, Cappadocia, Pontas and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and Libya, visitors from Rome, Cretans, Arabians, we
hear them telling in our own languages the mighty works of
God.”
What a
vision, what a promise for the people of God.
Tragically, brothers and sisters, we know we aren’t there
yet.
Race and language still divide
us. Mistrust and distrust and demonizing of those who differ
from us can be heard from every corner of the globe. It
seems we are becoming more divided over religion, ethnicity,
nationality. And in this day, the world desperately needs to
hear a word from a church which honors diversity and tries
to create a new community where all can hear in their own
experience.
Tongues to speak.
Ears to hear.
3. Tongues, ears…or too
much to drink?
Well, that was the assumption of
the folks on the street—“These guys have had too much to
drink”—to the point that Peter had to address it directly in
his sermon, “These are not drunk as you suppose, since it’s
only 9:00 a.m.”
Now I am obviously not
advocating public drunkenness or rowdy worship, but let me
ask: what if the world, looking in on our life together, was
simply befuddled and the only way they could explain it was
to say, “They must be out of their minds!” What if the
world, hearing our word of witness and our song of joy, was
simply dumbfounded, saying, “What’s gotten into them?” What
if our openness to others, our commitment to inclusivity,
our respect for those who differ from us, was such that
there was just no other way to understand it? What if our
love for our enemies, our compassion for the world, was just
too much to explain any other way than to say, “They must be
filled with new wine.”
Unfortunately, in a day and
world like ours which is so polarized, anyone who hopes for
brotherhood among Christians, Jews and Muslims must have had
too much to drink. Anyone who advocates for peace in the
face of raging violence is at best unrealistic or at worst
unpatriotic. Anyone who thinks we can bridge the racial
divide in this country must be out of their mind.
But that is exactly what
happens when we get a taste of the new wine of the Spirit.
Last week I attended a gathering
of religious leaders from across the metropolitan region.
The purpose was to gather leaders opposing Proposition 2 and
in support of affirmative action, but the wonderful thing
about it was the participants themselves. There was a host
of Christians, black and white, Catholic and Protestant,
Baptist and Methodist, urban and suburban, plus
representatives of the Jewish community, five Muslim Imams,
laity from across the area, all gathered in one place for
one common cause. In a day when so many issues seem to
divide our three communities, just to know we could all be
together in one accord, in one place, was a gift. Dare I say
it was even a bit like Pentecost?
When the world around saw and
heard what was happening, they just couldn’t explain it.
“They must be filled with new wine,” and of course, in a
sense, they were…the new wine of God’s Spirit.
Tongues, ears or too much to drink…
So, Luke says, it was when they
were “….all together in one accord, in one place. And
suddenly a sound came from heaven, like the rush of a mighty
wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting.”
John Ortberg tells the story of
a friend who made his first trip south of the Mason-Dixon
Line from Chicago to Georgia. On his first morning in the
South he went into a restaurant to order breakfast, and it
seemed that every dish included something called
grits…which, as my Tennessee friends tell me, is exactly the
way God intended it. Not being familiar with this southern
delicacy, he asked the waitress, “Could you tell me, exactly
what is a grit?” Looking down on him with a mixture of
compassion and condescension, she said, “Sugar, you can’t
get just one grit. They always come together.”
John Wesley knew there was no
personal holiness without social holiness, and Pulitzer
Prize winner Annie Dillard says, “You can no more go to God
alone than you can go to the North Pole alone.” We’re
just like grits…you can’t get just one. They come together.
4.
And the Spirit comes when we are all in one accord, in one
place.
I don’t want to minimize the
importance of personal prayer and devotion, the need for
time alone with God. It is central to our spiritual journey.
And for sure, we each need to find our own personal
relationship with Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and
Savior. But that can never take the place of the family of
God, the Body of Christ. And for most of us, most of the
time, we experience the Spirit of Christ most often when two
or three are gathered together in his name, in community.
My brother tells a story of a
man in his church who had been through personal
trauma—alcohol abuse had led to the breakup of his family,
loss of his job, and the struggle to rebuild his life. He
became involved in one of the small groups at Hyde Park
Church, and through that small group, found strength for
recovery and the journey toward wholeness. He said:
The most powerful thing that has
happened for me has happened in this group. Yes, community
happens, and it happened for me in a big way. I had been
through such a struggle, then the final straw for me,
emotionally, was the attack on the World Trade Center. I
just couldn’t hold it together. In my companions I found the
courage to get through.
Then he
speaks of his friends:
When we pass each other on the
church campus, we smile knowing smiles. We have a kinship, a
sense of holy family. When things pile on for me, this
community is essential. I’ve tried it out there. I am not
equipped to go it alone. Like the bumper sticker says,
“Stuff happens.” It’s also nice to know that in the midst of
the stuff, community happens, too.
(James A. Harnish, “No One Gets
to Heaven Alone,” Oct. 26, 2003, Hyde Park UMC, Tampa, FL)
Bruce Larson says, “The ultimate
gift of the Spirit is the church itself, when the Spirit
gave us to each other.” (Bruce Larson, Wind and Fire,
page 39)
Like grits, you can’t get just
one. Pentecost happens together.
It wasn’t planned this
way, but there it is, this strange juxtaposition of sermon
titles: “Tongues, Ears, or Too Much to Drink—Everybody’s
Hungry For Something.”
But so it is. The Spirit comes
with the gift of tongues, speaking the Word of God so others
will understand; the Spirit comes with the gift of ears, all
hearing in their own experience. And we find it…together.
May it be
so. Even here. Even now. Amen.
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