Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn
Outside the Box
Text: Acts 2: 1-21
NRS Acts 2
1When 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.4 All 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.7 Amazed 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? 9Parthians, 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.
19 And 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.
21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
May the Spirit of God lead you in words of truth and acts of love; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
Roger Signater and I both worked at WBRZ Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, and one fall night in 1972 Roger asked me if I wanted to go with him to pick up the food. On Friday nights the guys in the control room would order in food, and Roger, the night janitor, would collect the money and go pick it up. Herman “the German” Melancon said he would cover the switchboard for me, so I told Roger, “Yeah, sure, let’s go.” We got in the station truck and he turned on to Highland Road. A right, two lefts, and then another right and pretty soon we were in a part of town I didn’t know very well. Roger pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant off Washington Avenue, and I followed him in to help carry out the order. As the screen door slammed behind me, I was immediately struck with two very powerful sensations:
the first was the mouth-watering aroma of chicken and fish frying in vintage deep fat,
And the second was that mine was the only white face in a very crowded room of black men.
To say the least, I felt a little out of place, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was not just a little scared. Earlier that year, Baton Rouge had suffered a bloody race riot that had left five dead and 31 injured, including one of our newsmen, Bob Johnson, who just died in early 2011. He survived for 29 years with brain injuries that had left him unable either to walk or speak. This town has never been known for its great race relations, but that fall of 1972 was an especially tense and anxious time.
Nothing happened that night, of course. When I walked in, I thought for a second that maybe the room got a little quieter, but that was just my imagination. We took our chicken and fish boxes back to the station and spent the next hour tempting atherosclerosis and adult onset diabetes with mounds of hush puppies, piles of French fries, and a cold case of RC cola. But besides the damage to my cardiovascular health, that night changed me. For the first time in a really self-conscious way, I experienced what it felt like to be the minority person, to be on somebody else’s turf where I was not in control, where I was not a member of the dominant group, and where I did not know all the rules. And though it would take me a few years to wrap my head around what happened that night, I began to realize what a small, fragile world I inhabited.
Up to that point I thought I was kind of a cool dude. I had wire rim glasses and really long hair and I listened to edgy, experimental music, and really loud, too. After three semesters at LSU, I was the perfect sophomore, wise beyond my years, eager to share my extensive knowledge and experience, and of course, broad-minded and progressive. Or so I thought, until I felt that sharp stick of fear dig a whole in my gut the night I went out with Roger Signater to pick up the food.
How very easy it is to fear the other! How very natural it is to project our suspicions and insecurities on to people we perceive as different or strange! That also explains why we so quickly seek out people who speak our language, share our features, and know our ways. This sounds funny, but I didn’t really become Southern until I moved to Minnesota. Only there and then did I discover the true joy of meeting someone from back home who thought my English sounded just fine and who actually knew what real barbeque tasted like. Sometimes, though, the comfort we discover among people like us is accompanied by a contempt for the people unlike us, that is, for the people who make us feel self-conscious, whose ways label us the outsider, and whose very speech reminds us that we’re on foreign ground and that maybe we don’t quite belong. And that’s the moment when family so easily turns into fortress, and group becomes clan, and the other comes to be seen as the enemy.
As the story of Pentecost opens for us in Acts 2, we shouldn’t be surprised to find the apostles “all together in one place” (v. 1). Over the preceding fifty days they had experienced something that had changed them forever. Their encounter with the Risen Lord had set them apart from their friends and families who had not seen or heard that great, Good News. So naturally they clung to their little community of faith. Naturally, they sought out and held dear their fellow believers in whose hearts the living words of the living Lord burned so brightly. The Resurrection had made them different, and different, they were now strangers in their own land, foreigners among their own people. They were now the minority, and so of course they were fearful of threats, both real and imagined, from a very powerful majority that perceived them as certainly other and potentially dangerous. Scared, anxious, turned in on themselves, they really were “all together in one place,” until the coming of the promised Holy Spirit.
As Luke tells the story in Acts, signs of power and might attended the Spirit’s descent. First came the “rush of a violent wind,” and then came the fire, dividing into individual tongues of flame resting on each of the apostles. But the real demonstration of the Spirit’s power came when the apostles began to speak. Acts reports that as the Twelve were filled with the Holy Spirit, they “began to speak in other languages,” which we should not mistake for the speaking in tongues so important to Pentecostal and charismatic worship. Rather, the Spirit empowered them to speak in the languages of the many different nationalities then present in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast that celebrated the giving of the Law. As graced by the Spirit, Galileans told the mighty deeds of God in such a way that Parthians heard them in Parthian, Medes in Medean, Arabians in Arabic, and in all the dozen other languages and dialects then represented in the streets of Jerusalem. And still more miraculously, the Holy Spirit transformed the apostolic community from an insular, isolated sect, “all together in one place,” into a band of culture-hopping, world-traveling nomads who would cross continents, sail seas, and go to the ends of the earth to include all humanity in the one Body of Christ.
The late New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl must have had this story in mind when he remarked that the true evidence of the Spirit’s presence is the ability not only to tolerate but to embrace difference. The Spirit enabled those original apostles to reach beyond the comfortable confines of their own kind to embrace a world of mind-boggling diversity. By the power of the Holy Spirit, these disciples were freed to see beyond their own tight circle of faith in order to recognize in others the same humanity for which the Savior of the world died and rose again.
Pentecost is not so much the birthday of the church, as it is the emancipation of the church. Pentecost is the church’s declaration of independence from anything and everything that binds and blinds and keeps us from seeing all creation through the eyes of our Risen Lord. By the power of the Spirit we rise with Christ above race, above nation, above our own narrowed visions of what’s right, proper, and true to embrace this whole world with the love that not even death can stop. Baptized in water and sealed by the Spirit, we are the new humanity sent forth to serve, to comfort, to heal, and to be the Body of Christ. Where once we were closed in on ourselves, we are now released for ministry in, with, and for the world. Where once we were too frightened to get outside our tight circles of kith and kin, we are now dispersed to be agents of God’s redeeming love. Where once we saw the world as us versus them, we are now free to reach out to a whole world of brothers and sisters we have yet to meet. Thanks be to God!
