Sermon for Pentecost – Acts 2:1-21

FYI – I recommend listening to the recording because I improvised the opening paragraph below….

What’s your secret power? What’s something that you know or can do that no one would ever expect? SHOW CROSS STITCH. EXPLAIN WHY I ENJOY THAT HOBBY. Folks are always surprised when they find out about my hobby. Isn’t it weird how folks pigeonhole us? Why do they do that? Make all sorts of assumptions about what we can or can’t do. Folks thought I was an art major in undergrad. Folks thought I was a restaurant server in the pride band. On the one hand, it can be fun to surprise people. But other times being pigeonholed is hard. You get left out of things, or dismissed.

Jesus’ disciples knew all about being pigeonholed. A lot of them were from the region of Galilee. Which wasn’t a spectacular place. A few cities, but mainly a bunch of little country towns. Kind of like Indiana outside of Indianapolis. But it’s diverse. You can find Jews, Samaritans, and even Gentiles. They’ve got plenty of synagogues. They’ve even got Pharisees. So Galilee isn’t some backwater place with full of rednecks. They know a thing or two about religion and culture. But down south in the big city of Jerusalem, folks don’t care for their Galilean cousins from up north. They think Galileans are backwards. They don’t know Torah. They’re superstitious. They’re bad Jews. Basically, they’re trash because they’re not from Jerusalem. Folks from Galilee are all pigeonholed like this. Like someone said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Because you know how they are.

Now, last week we celebrated Jesus’ ascension. He’s gone to his Father in heaven, and left the disciples behind. But they haven’t gone back to Galilee yet. They’re all still in Jerusalem, because Jesus commanded them to stay and wait for the Holy Spirit to come to them. The day of Pentecost arrives. That’s the holiday 50 days after Passover, when they celebrate the first-fruits of the wheat harvest as a gift from God, and everything comes from God. So these Galileans are gathered together in the house where they’re staying, when suddenly there’s a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and then tongues like fire appear on them. The Holy Spirit has come and driven them to start praising and thanking God. Except what comes out of their mouths are all these different languages that they’ve never heard before. So imagine their shock when they hear each other. They’re confused.

And what if they’re remembering the last time God did anything like this? The Tower of Babel. What did God do then? Punish a bunch of sinners with different languages to confuse them, and then destroy the city. So maybe now they’re terrified that this is a really bad sign. Maybe they run out of the house thinking God’s about to bring Jerusalem crashing down. They’re yelling in all these different languages, and wouldn’t you know, a crowd gathers. Immigrants from all manner of nations and languages. Trying to make a new start. To worship freely. Maybe to escape persecution for being Jewish, because it wasn’t easy back home. But this is just as hard. Assimilation. Learning a new language. Ask refugees what that’s like. So you’d think they’d feel relieved to finally hear their home languages. To understand and feel understood. But they’re not relieved. They’re perplexed. Why?

Well, maybe because they want to fit into Jerusalem society so much that they pick up on the anti-Galilean vibe. Prejudice is contagious. So they’re confused that a bunch of backwards Galileans could possibly be speaking these languages. They’re so confused, that they don’t really hear what’s actually being said. All this testimony about God’s deeds of power, in their own language so that there’s no way they could miss it, but it just doesn’t register. And then there are the folks in the crowd who aren’t confused at all. The ones who sneer that these ridiculous Galileans are just filled with new wine. Maybe these are the Jerusalem natives who never knew or cared about other languages, because this is Jerusalem. We only speak Aramaic here! They just hear gibberish. What do you expect from a bunch of Galileans?

So there’s a whole lot of misunderstanding and pigeonholing going on. The Holy Spirit took care of the language issue, but it’s not enough. The apostle Peter knows what’s happening. So he raises his voice and says “No, they’re not drunk. This is exactly what Joel prophesied. In the last days I’ll pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and old men dream dreams. Even my slaves will prophesy.” Peter calls out the prejudice and pigeonholing. He says these are prophets raised by God. The folks you all ridicule and dismiss. The folks you don’t believe God would ever choose to speak the most important word you’ll ever hear.

How often do we do that? Folks speak the truth, but we dismiss it for all kinds of reasons. Because of the color of their skin, their gender, their ethnicity. They tell us the system is broken but we refuse to believe them. We accuse them of identity politics. They show us their wounds and we call them self-inflicted. Because we don’t have problems like them, so clearly it’s all their own fault. God’s still raising prophets but we’re not listening. They reveal injustice and privilege. They show us the writing on the wall. But we’re so used to the way things are that we stop reacting. We become cynical. So Peter keeps preaching. God says, “I will show signs on the earth. Blood, fire, and smoky mist. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.” That doesn’t sound great. It sounds like judgment. So what judgment do we expect to hear?

Well, the good news is that it’s not WHAT judgment, but WHOSE judgment we expect to hear. Because it’s Jesus who has the last word. The one who we didn’t understand and didn’t want to hear. He told the truth when he said, “Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” So they crucified him to silence him forever. But after three days he rose in the glory of his resurrection. The Lord’s great and glorious day come as promised. Because Jesus wasn’t done speaking, and not even death could shut him up. He knows how bound we are by our prejudices, how we close our eyes and plug our ears. Yet he speaks his word to us anyway. He says, “I forgive you all your sins,” and the Holy Spirit plants this seed in our hearts.

This is why Peter preaches, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” He’s not being divisive here. He’s not saying if you DON’T call on the Lord you WON’T be saved. It’s the opposite. Peter preaches a gospel of radical inclusion. God for ALL of us. Regardless of our gender, our skin color, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our age. God will do whatever it takes to get to us. To assure us that nothing in heaven or earth will ever separate us from God’s love. Or God’s help. Too many folks think that God only listens to the righteous or the chosen few. They say “God only helps those who help themselves.” Now, I’m not sure what Bible they’re reading, but I guarantee my Bible doesn’t say that anywhere. And do you ever get the feeling that folks who say these things have a pretty strong opinion about whether they’re chosen? Or how righteous they are?

So God doesn’t operate that way. God doesn’t want to confirm our biases. So God does the most opposite thing that God could possibly do. God raises a bunch of sinners and makes them preachers. The folks we dismiss. The folks we pigeonhole. Because they show us that nothing is too much for God. I mean, look at what God did to us. That’s how you know it’s the power of the Spirit at work. This is why Jesus says, “When the Advocate comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Spirit lets us trust that God really is reconciling all things to God’s own self. Even if the sun is turned to darkness and the moon to blood. And by the way, in case you haven’t heard, early this Wednesday morning there’s going to be a total lunar eclipse. Astronomers say that as the earth moves between the sun and moon, in the dark morning sky, we’ll be able to see the moon turn red. May this remind us that the Lord’s great and glorious day is surely coming. Thanks be to God.