Sermon for Pentecost Sunday (Year A) May 11, 2008 St

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday (Year A) May 11, 2008 St. Luke’s Rev. Susan Lee

O God, you have filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works, that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you in gladness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” (Acts 2:7-8).

The spirit of God is an inclusive spirit. All are included, regardless of race, language, or gender.

Today we remember the first Pentecost in the church. Pentecost originally was a

Jewish holiday that took place 50 days after Passover. It was connected with the harvest:

People brought an offering to God as thanksgiving for the harvest, and they had a big feast! Jesus’ early disciples were celebrating the holiday, all together in one place, when they were suddenly overwhelmed with God’s spirit. The Acts tells us that it sounded like a violent rushing wind. We might think of a strong wind along the coast as a storm is blowing up – the sound is so loud you can’t think of anything else. It’s as if your thoughts are “blown away” and the wind fills your mind. Acts tells us that divided tongues, as if of fire, appeared on each of the disciples. And they suddenly had the ability to speak in other languages. Probably the author is giving us a play on words here, since the word “tongues” can be used to describe both fire and languages.

With this newfound language ability, the disciples can proclaim the Gospel in many different languages, to many different peoples. The lesson describes the public display of this language diversity, with the many people gathered in Jerusalem for the holiday able to hear the Gospel in their own native language.

Some of the places listed in the lesson were unfamiliar to me, and so I looked then up to see where they were. They include many of the areas around about Judea, starting from east to west. The Parthians were a powerful empire on a par with Rome. They were centered in the area that today is Iran. The Medes and Elamites also were from the same area, both representing ancient empires that at the time were dominated by the Parthians.

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, present-day Iraq.

Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia and Pamphylia were all areas of Turkey, different regions from the Black Sea in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. The country called

“Asia” was on the western coast of Turkey, near Greece. Egypt and Libya are in northern

Africa, and Rome of course was the dominant political power at the time. The writer also includes the residents of Crete, an island in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Arabs, from today’s Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The meaning of this list of peoples and regions is clearly inclusive. The writer,

Luke, clearly means to convey that everyone was included. No language or people was outside the scope of the new faith. All peoples were given the Good News of Jesus, the news of God’s love and compassion for all people. It wasn’t only different nations that were included, but also different groups within each society. Peter explains this outbreak of languages by quoting the prophet Joel: “Your sons and you daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit” (Acts 2:17-18). Men and women, young and old, even slaves are included in the new faith. All are acceptable to God.

This assertion may seem unremarkable to us today, because we are used to thinking about humanity as a whole, about the equality of all people, and about human rights.

These ideas are very much a part of our modern way of thinking. But in the first century, this was a bombshell! This was explosive! It overturned all the conventional thinking. People in those days identified strongly with their own people, their own nation, their own group. The difference between a slave and a free person was immense. Women were clearly subordinate to men. The social hierarchies were firmly established. Each nation had its own god or gods who cared for them alone. So the idea that the one God of the universe loved every person, regardless of language or place in society, was really earth- shaking. We can say that it was a universalizing message, a message that all humanity was included in God’s love, every person was worthy and could serve God, regardless of sex or class or ethnic origin.

An intriguing part of the Christian story is that the Gospels portray Jesus himself as having to learn this lesson. Jesus grew up in Israel and like his compatriots, believed that the Israelite people were specially chosen by God. The God of Israel loved the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were “God’s people.” Jesus conceived of his mission originally as a preacher to the Hebrew people. We see this dramatically in the story of the

Canaanite women (Matthew 15). At one point in his journeys, Jesus traveled into southern

Lebanon, north of his home in Galilee. The people there were called Canaanites, a group that had often been hostile to the Israelites. A Canaanite woman started following Jesus around trying to get his attention to heal her daughter. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of

David!” she kept shouting (Matthew 15:22). But Jesus just ignored her. His disciples urged him to do something, to stop her shouting! Jesus wouldn’t, telling them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15: 24). The woman won’t go away, though, and finally she throws herself in front of Jesus, pleading with him to help her.

Jesus then says something that seems really cruel to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Matthew 15: 26). Basically, he calls her an animal and says she isn’t worthy of God’s mercy! The woman hangs in there, though, and responds with both humility and great strategy. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Mt. 15:27). Jesus finally sees the light, and realizes that you don’t have to be an Israelite to be worthy of God’s love. And he answers her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed.

It’s so interesting that this passage is included in the Bible, because it shows Jesus himself learning a lesson, and a lesson taught by a foreign woman at that! The Bible could have shown Jesus as all-knowing, as God-like in his compassion throughout. Yet instead, it portrays Jesus in all his humanity, reluctant to extend his compassion to those outside his own group, his own people. It’s in his interaction with others that he learns himself of the breadth of God’s love. This lesson really comes home to the disciples in the Pentecost experience and in their own interaction with people from different nations. St. Paul, especially, becomes the apostle to the Gentiles, to those outside the Jewish faith, affirming that God’s love is for every person, not just those in the right group.

This lesson of inclusivity needs to be taught again to every generation. Today we also tend to favor those of our own group. We feel comfortable with our own people, with those who speak our language, with those who share our customs and general outlook. It’s a very natural and human thing. But it can have devastating consequences. No doubt some of you remember the old ethnic divisions in Fall River, when the French and the

English and the Portuguese were all seen as foreign to one another. It was very hard to cross those language barriers and share common concerns. Before the civil rights movement, blacks were excluded from much of mainstream American life. The South had the most blatant racist practices, but there was a lot of discrimination here in the North as well. We Americans still struggle with racism. We have come a long way, but there still are few interracial marriages, for instance. We can look at other parts of the world to see the difficult consequences of excessive group loyalty, in the battle between the Shi’ites and the Sunnis, for instance. Their identification with their own group is much more important than their citizenship as Iraqis. It’s hard for the warring groups to see one another as humans like themselves, with common interests and concerns and a right to a peaceful life.

We have tried hard here at St. Luke’s to overcome the barriers of language and culture. It hasn’t always been easy to cross those barriers. I think we can learn from

Jesus, that we can get across them through experience, through getting to know one another as human beings with similar feelings and concerns. When we can see through the superficial differences to the real common humanity, we can see others as God sees them.

The work of inclusion is a crucial part of the Christian message. Like a good mother, God does not play favorites. God loves us all, every one, without exception. We are all God’s children! God speaks every language. That’s the message of Pentecost. No group is beyond the love of God. The spirit of God is an inclusive spirit. All are included, regardless of race, language, or gender.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, you created us all, and we are all precious in your sight. Help us to overcome our human divisions, to reach out to all groups, and to see all people as your children. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.