Polyglot Cowlicks: Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all
together in one place.
2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the
rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire,
appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the
Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them
ability.
5Now there were devout Jews from every
nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered,
because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they
asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each
of us, in our own native language?
9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and
Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from
Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs--in our own
languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to
one another, "What does this mean?"
13But others sneered and said, "They
are filled with new wine."
14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
17'In the last days it will be, God
declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old
men shall dream dreams. 18Even
upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy. 19And
I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood,
and fire, and smoky mist. 20The
sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the
Lord's great and glorious day. 21Then
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” (NRSV)
There are a
lot of moving parts in planning the two services of this church, which means
that I need to have my text and title for sermons set well before I actually
sit down to write them. I felt so very
clever with this one—I’m always pleased to be able to use “polyglot” in any
sentence, fun word that it is, and I was going to anchor the illustration in
the reality of the several cowlicks I discovered when I cut two feet of hair
off in graduate school. Isn’t this so
like the Spirit, I thought, those hidden surprises that one can’t control, that
live outside of the normal rules. You
may have noticed that the cowlick in my bangs, for instance, won’t lie flat for
love nor money.
It’s a fine
illustration, a good point—the Spirit is surprising, this moment of Pentecost
is uncontrollable. It is clever; cute,
even. But the longer this text swam
around in my mind and the more times I read it, the stronger my realization
that it is an absolute injustice to this moment of our faith to make it clever
or cute. Professor Frank Crouch of
Moravian Theological Seminary writes that, “If familiarity does not exactly
breed contempt, it does tend toward the domestication of scripture’s most
unruly, norm-busting stories. Incarnation, resurrection, and the outpouring of
God’s Holy Spirit upon all flesh find themselves toned down into quiet images
of a baby in a manger, a bunny with a basket, and a burning breeze that swept
through some distant place in a distant age, leaving perhaps only a trace of
its passage among our own people in our own time.
“…English translations also underplay
the fear-inducing, adrenalin-pumping, wind-tossed, fire-singed, smoke-filled
turmoil of that experience. Those who observed this Pentecost visitation from
outside the room are described in the NRSV as ‘bewildered’ (v. 6), ‘amazed and
astonished’ (v. 7), and ‘amazed and perplexed’ (v. 12). The Greek terms
describing their reactions could be appropriately rendered (following the lead
of various lexicons) as confused, in an uproar, beside themselves, undone,
blown away, thoroughly disoriented, completely uncomprehending.”[1]
“When the day of Pentecost had come…there
was a violent wind,” there were flames singing the tops of James’s
cowlick, there was a cacophony of people speaking the good word of a God
powerful enough to defeat death and loving enough to teach us the wonder of a
life lived in grace. This isn’t a polite
moment of a well-ordered church service but a hurricane upending all the ideas
of what the fledgling faith would be.
All genders, all ages, all races were welcome, were empowered, were made
majestic and weird and beautiful in the glory of the Spirit. The languages here were from everywhere
around the Roman Empire; the Spirit did not make a difference between citizen
and noncitizen, between country visitor and city slicker, between the poor and
the rich. Everyone, everyone who
listened could hear of a God Who said, “Come and see.”
I don’t know about you, Church, but I’m
living in a time where I need a faith like that. I need a faith that focuses less on being
clever and more on being countercultural, less on being comfortable and more on
being deliberately connected to a world that looks at us as Christians and says
we are drunk at nine—at ten—in the morning.
This story that we tell each other every year about the miracle of bringing
people together is so easy to fold into a one-day celebration of global
Christianity instead of burning us out of our familiar cocoons and into the
crowded marketplace to shout about the idea that this religion is one we choose,
that this God is One that chooses us, that we are forever changed by the
wind that scoured us clean and shoved us onto a different path.
Here's the thing: it’s Pentecost, the
holy day that was fifty days after Passover and already built into the Jewish
calendar—hence why it’s noted that there are all the devout Jews in town in the
first place. It’s Pentecost, the holy
day that almost always gets eaten by our American Memorial Day with the
mattress sales and the Indy 500 and everyone, everyone’s graduation. It’s Pentecost, and we wear red to say that
this day is the birth of the Church and that’s worth noting like we’ve done
anything to grow up beyond that birth.
It's Pentecost, and 2,000 years after
Peter himself had to defend the sobriety of his fellow believers, we make it
cute and clever—and people ask why the Church hasn’t died yet.
I don’t need to cite to you the sheer
amount of articles talking about how Americans are less religious than we used
to be, or how the UMC is fighting with itself not only about sexuality but about
membership levels, or about how many millennials and gen Z-ers and gen Alpha
kids look at the Christian Church with distrust. I can, if you’re interested; I have a whole
list of such articles, because it is my job to be in the know about that. But I do, from this pulpit and this official
status as a preacher, need to remind you that every year we get this chance to
be bowled over by the reality of the Spirit and what the Church could be,
occasionally is trying to be, most certainly is being invited to
be. I do need to remind you that
Pentecost yanked the Church sideways and introduced God’s presence in a way
that no one was prepared for. There was
a violent wind and tongues of fire and the world changed and we are absolute
fools if we think that being the Church is about showing up a few weeks a month
but refusing to let the fire burn through every single day we have, remaking the
landscape of who we are and what we value.
It takes work, this being-the-Church
thing, because humans are humans no matter the time period. Even the story in Acts isn’t perfect; no part
of Acts is, no matter how much Luke idealized it. We as humans are very good at looking at what
God can do and asking for it to be different, easier, better scheduled on a
Monday night or in the building that is familiar or with people who look like us. Dr. John Holbert writes that, “surely [there
was] excitement and conviction and joy in coming to the early communities of
Jesus. And just as surely, many of these converts did in fact devote themselves
to ‘teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (Acts
2:42). But the scoffers and the unconvinced were many, we can be certain. After
all the next stories will speak of Ananias and Sapphira, who join but hardly
change their stingy ways (Acts 5). And later we will hear Paul preach on the
Areopagus, and the result of his sermon will be two converts and many skeptics
(Acts 17).” Christianity may be the
world’s largest faith system, but we “are so diverse and often so distrusting
of one another that we remain a first century church after all, with some
joyfully announcing the good news of the love of Jesus for all while others
announce hatred and anger toward those who do not experience the faith as they
do.”[2] Being the Church takes focus and action and
hope and fire burning within, and we all have different ideas of how that
works.
So, First UMC, who are we? It’s Pentecost, and we’re heading into a
summer where you’ll be hearing several different voices from the pulpit—perhaps
not different languages, but certainly different ways of preaching, different approaches
to the Scripture that binds us together.
You may not like some of them, and that’s fine. Learn from them, anyway.
It’s Pentecost, and we wear red to tell
others we’re on fire with the good work of doing good and we have spilled into
the streets to talk about how we are working on being anti-racist, how
we are LGBTQ inclusive, how we are friendly and growing and willing to be the
hands and feet of Christ in Ann Arbor and beyond.
But are we drunk on new wine, unable
to put action behind our words as we slur our way through the values we state? Ann Arbor, as of last summer, was 70% white[3] and, in a study done last
month, was becoming so expensive that 77% of renters were priced out of buying any
property here.[4] Twenty-two percent of Ann Arborites live
below the poverty level,[5] many of them people of
color. Organizations like Alpha House and
Habitat for Humanity are doing good work; are we supporting them with our calendars
and our pocketbooks as well as with our space at the lectern? Ann Arbor reflects the national statistics
for LGBTQ folks; 28% of LBGTQ youth nationwide report homelessness or housing
instability, and the numbers only get higher when you narrow the scope to focus
on race or transgender identities.[6] Are we standing with them to be voices for
equity and possibility, dreaming new dreams and putting the power of the Church
behind the change they are making?
“In our own languages, we hear them
speaking about God’s deeds of power,” said the amazed people gathered
for one ceremony and witnessing a shocking other. First UMC, what if we were to dream, to
vision, to take Pentecost like a fire lit in our souls to witness to the truth
that we have been changed to bring change?
What if we were to get serious about anti-racism such that we created
deliberate space in our Weaving Beloved Community work to listen to the voices
of people of color and stop talking if we are white folk who cannot know racism
from the inside; for we who are white to do our own education and stop assuming
that our surprise at how deep racism goes is a surprise to those who experience
every shade of it? What if we were to
get serious about being queer-inclusive so that our flags weren’t decorations
but commitments to learning new pronouns so as not to misgender people or
recognizing that not every queer person needs to have a spouse and kids to be
valid in the world? What if we were to
take this summer—and all summers, but this one of new voices and uproarious
wind—and this holy day of Pentecost to listen to the young and the old who are
dreaming dreams and seeing visions beyond the church we have now, to the people
of every gender thinking about how we can be a deliberate force for safety and
hope in this town, to recognize that neither our name nor our history will save
us but our God will most certainly sustain us through all the unknowns yet to
come?
What if we were Christians in such a way
that the Spirit shone through us like a beacon on a hill, moved like a wind
that knocks whole systems down, transformed the world like we keep saying we
want Her to?
It is Pentecost, Church, and I still
cannot get my cowlicks to lie flat for love or money. But it is so incredibly far beyond time for
me to stop trying to make the Spirit be as predictable as a metaphor, as
contained as a cowlick, as docile as a story confined to a Sunday morning when
God roars in the fire of every language needed to say there is more; come
with Me, come and see.
Let me know if you want to get
started, Church. I most certainly can’t
do the work alone, and once I catch my breath from being knocked over, I will
need a hand up to start walking the journey.
May we walk it together. Amen.[7]
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