Acts 2:1-21
Today’s scripture talks about the rush of a violent wind. This year we have had some violent winds in Ohio. There have already been 54 confirmed tornadoes in Ohio this year, the state normally averages 21 a year.
In a time when there are more tornadoes than normal, how do you react when you hear a tornado siren?
How many of you immediately take cover, how many of you run outside looking for a funnel cloud, how many of you shrug your shoulders and continue on?
I am more on the shrug my shoulders kind of variety.
I have been desensitized by so many sirens in my life I probably don’t pay it enough attention.
A couple of months ago a tornado touched down in West Columbus and Hilliard, only a couple of miles from my apartment. To be honest, I don’t really have much space to take cover. I don’t have a basement. My phone buzzed and chirped with the warning, but I didn’t think about it so much.
Not long after my son Noah called, asking if I was okay. I didn’t realize how close the funnel clouds were.
It is easy to get desensitized to the news.
Like the story of the boy who cried wolf, we have heard the same news so many times that we pay it no mind.
The tragedies in the Ukraine and Palestine are beyond our comprehension, but when the news gets routine we don’t hear it the same.
The same thing can happen with our faith.
When our faith first becomes our own we are filled with excitement and we pray fervently and listen to spiritual songs and share with others this gift we have found in our lives.
But what happens a few years later? “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.”
God’s love can become old news. We can take grace for granted.
Our scripture today begins with people celebrating old news.
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Before today became known as Pentecost, it was the Jewish holiday of Shavout, the Festival of Weeks.
Shavout goes way back to the book of Leviticus and in it God outlines that this festival would be 7 weeks, 50 days, after Passover. 50 is where we get the word Pentecost from.
At Shavout, people gave offerings in thanks to God for the harvest provided. It is also a day that celebrated God giving the 10 commandments.
So everyone is together in one place for this holiday that was based on something that happened almost 1,500 years before they lived.
An important and sacred day, but also old news. They had experienced this festival every year of their lives.
But God takes this ancient festival and uses it to do a new thing.
To start a new movement.
As they are gathered together for Shavout, suddenly a rush of wind fills the house, tongues of fire rest on them, and people can speak and hear the Good News of Jesus Christ in their own language. Everyone speaking is Galilean, but they can talk in a way that is heard by “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.”
And what is the news they hear? Not the old news of how God provided for Moses and friends way back when, but they heard about God’s power in Jesus Christ. In all of these languages, they heard that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Everyone
Not the few, not the select, not the connected or the powerful, not the righteous or holy–but “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
God is doing a new thing.
God’s Holy Spirit is poured out in a powerful way.
And the church of the followers of Jesus Christ is born.
It is a new day.
A new day when everyone can hear in their own language.
On Pentecost, we often focus on people speaking in different languages, but it also says that everyone heard.
Everyone heard in a way that they could understand.
This is a type of undoing of the Tower of Babel as people are united instead of divided.
And they can hear in their own way.
Even when we all speak the same language, we can speak in ways that are unique to our affinity groups.
Pastors talk of ecclesia and koininia and debate about constubstation vs transubstantiation in ways that normal people shake their heads about. Musicians talk about coming in on the 1, scientists and pharmacists use terms I can’t even quote because I don’t know them well enough.
I don’t even know what text abbreviations like TLDR mean.
We all do it.
We can speak our own languages. Whether it is the language of the streets, the language of our communities or our people. We can speak in ways that exclude other people.
While the Holy Spirit is poured out so the good news can be proclaimed to all people… While Peter preaches that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved… the institution of the Church has spent a lot of the last 2,000 years being gatekeepers, saying who is in and who is out.
But over the last month I have continually heard people around me say “this is a new church”.
At our General Conference as we intentionally worked to deconstruct colonialization and listen to people who speak different languages, “this is a new church”
When we voted to be in full communion with the Episcopal Church, “this is a new church”
When we removed the hateful language about gay people, “this is a new church.”
This week, we had a pastor from Slovakia visit our church, seeking to learn more about community organizing. He leads an inclusive church in Slovakia that the government does not recognize but is working to create brave spaces where the good news of Jesus Christ can be shared with all people, “this is a new church.”
On Wednesday, 500 pastors from the West Ohio Conference gathered for clergy session. The body voted to recommend Angie Cox as a provisional elder on the path toward ordination—having previously been denied six times because she is a lesbian. The room not only voted yes but stood and gave a standing ovation.
A few minutes later we voted to approve the ordination of six people who all are women.
For most of Christian history the church has silenced the voice of women. We celebrate Pentecost every year and that God can speak through all people and then hushed the voice of 51 percent of the world.
The United Methodist Church did not ordain women until 1956 and to this day only a third of clergy are women, so it is remarkable that this year every ordinand is a woman–“this is a new church.”
God is ever at work doing new things, to push us to draw the circle of God’s love wider, to challenge us to speak and listen in new ways so that everyone hears the good news, a rushing wind working to blow down anything that divides and separates us.
This leads us in a moment of great opportunity as the Church for All People.
How can we speak in a way that would lead other people to look at us and say “how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”
Historic South Siders, International immigrants, people who live off the land, people who own the land, Buckeyes, Bobcats, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Vegans, Atheists, Anglicans, Appalachians, African-Americans, Asians…
Let us not only celebrate Pentecost by wearing red, but let us go speaking in a way that everyone can understand. Let us go from here sharing the good news.
God is doing a new thing, this is a new church, a mighty wind is blowing, let us share the news.
Looked with Compassion 