Pentecost Sermon
Ich habe gute Nachrichten!
Tolle Neuigkeiten!
Hast du von Jesus gehört?
Der Messias ist gekommen!
Die, auf die wir gewartet haben!
Gott hat unseren Retter gesandt!
Gott liebt uns und schickte uns seinen Sohn!
Hmm ... du siehst verwirrt aus.
Spreche ich die falsche Sprache?
¿Qué tal esto?
¡Tengo buenas noticias!
¡Buenas noticias en realidad!
¿Has oído hablar de Jesús?
¡El Mesías ha venido!
¡El que hemos estado esperando!
Dios ha enviado a nuestro salvador!
Dios nos ama y nos envió a su hijo!
Oh, oh, English...
I have good news!
Great news actually!
Have you heard about Jesus?
The Messiah has come!
The one we have been waiting for!
God has sent our savior!
God loves us and sent us his son!
The good news of Jesus
really makes much more sense
when you hear it in a language you know!
That was the amazing thing about the story from Acts.
All sorts of different people with different languages
heard the disciples talking in their language.
Heard the Good News of Jesus in their own tongue.
Usually such skill requires lots of time studying and practicing.
Time practicing, especially the different verb tenses,
time forgetting all the nouns you've ever known in search of the name of the thing in front of you... which is definitely something you know... but can't think of at the moment...
oh el gato! Die Katze! a cat!
And I don't know about you,
but I have never experienced the ability to speak different languages
when I have had wine, new or otherwise.
Usually on Pentecost Sunday,
we hear read this Acts passage,
but the passage paired with it is from Romans.
Which is good and Spirit-filled,
but I am especially intrigued by the juxtaposition
of the Genesis passage and the Acts passage today.
We have the story from Genesis about the tower of Babel
and God giving the gift of languages as a means to confuse humanity,
and then we have the gift of languages in the coming of the Holy Spirit
in the passage from Acts, so that more people can understand.
Both actually are gifts of diversity,
they just happen in very different circumstances and look like very different things.
The story from creation is part of the early myths of the Israelite people
It explains how the people of the earth, starting from one couple,
could end up with multiple languages.
It also probably is a story to explain nearby ruins that people could see, but didn't know the full story about.
In the story, God seems almost worried about humanity getting too strong,
and decides to confuse humanity.
But as the Lord gives what could be seen as a problem, a challenge
people speaking in different languages in different parts of the world,
God also helps the disciples reach all the different people in different parts of the world.
In the passage from Acts,
The Holy Spirit gives them the ability to speak in different languages.
In the one story, diversity is seen as a punishment.
In the other, diversity is a blessing.
Both of these stories are about being inclusive of other people who are different than us.
In the first, the recognition of diversity ruins the whole endeavor,
the people involved cannot deal with the change in diversity and they do not practice inclusion.
In some ways, the story writer blames God for that change.
Everything was going well until God put a wrench in the works
by giving them different languages.
In the second story,
God blesses the apostles with different languages and it allows them to share the story of Jesus
with so many more people.
I have always wondered about the story of the Tower of Babel,
why the humans didn't continue
despite the different languages.
As a kid, I don't think I totally understood the story,
but I knew that we overcome language diversity all the time in the world.
I mean, they must have had some blueprint or drawing for the Tower, right?
Point and grunt works so well in the construction business anyway... right?
They could have finished that tower if they had wanted to work together and find a way around the language snafu.
But I think that has been part of the problem,
part of the point God tries to make throughout the Bible,
throughout the centuries,
we need to learn to see beyond those differences.
We need to learn to work together with people who are different with us.
They couldn't have built a tower to heaven anyway,
physics doesn't work that way.
Unfortunately,
Diversity is only one step of the puzzle.
Inclusion is actually completing the puzzle.
The quote I heard recently by Verna Myers is,
"Diversity is being invited to the party;
Inclusion is being asked to dance."
I know plenty of parties
where people have been invited
but are still not welcomed when they show up.
It happens all the time in the church sadly.
We say we want other people to join our community.
We want newcomers, new people to join.
We want young families.
Yet, when new people do show up,
church members are not all that open to doing things in new or different ways,
they are not willing to allow others to help out or lead,
they are not willing to change anything in order for other people to feel included.
Inviting different people to the table is not enough.
We can't invite them to the party and then make them stand on the sidelines the whole time,
We have to ask them to dance.
It takes courage.
Courage to be open to new and different ideas.
New and different languages.
Courage to be willing to do something in a new way,
or have someone else lead.
Thankfully, throughout the world,
The church is made up of all sorts of different people.
Americans, Mexicans, Chileans,
Australians, Vietnamese, Chinese,
Japanese, Russians,
Uzbekistanis, Turkish, Israelis, Egyptians,
Nigerians, South Africans,
German, Spanish, English.
There is so much diversity!
And the Holy Spirit brings us all together,
in ways we don't always realize,
to do the work of God we can't always see.
(Living as a Christian requires a lot of trust and faith.)
The coming of the Holy Spirit
signals both a movement of diversity and inclusion,
of difference and unity.
Our God is a god of paradox,
we are all different and we are all the same,
together as the Body of Christ.
We are called to welcome all into the church,
old, young, rich, poor, liberal or conservative,
we are united in God,
through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.
No matter where we do this work,
here in the church building,
at the grocery store, at school,
at camp, in the office,
the Holy Spirit is there with us.
Giving us the gifts we need to reach out to others,
working in them to receive the Good News.
So that when we say,
Jesus loves you,
or Jesus liebt dich or Jesus te ama
or Yoshke lib ir,
they know what we know.
That God loves us
and the Holy Spirit has come among us.
Amen.
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