Pentecost Sunday

Today's text is Acts 2:1-21, read by Shannon Smith. This morning's sermon was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Phil Snider.

Lead Pastor: Rev. Dr. Phil Snider (he/him)

Associate Pastor: Rev. Emily Bowen-Marler (she/her)

Youth Director: Paije Luth (she/her)

Children’s Church Coordinator: Valerie Bush (she/her)

Executive Assistant: Wacey Rivale (she/her)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Today's scripture reading is Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 21. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place, 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. Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 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, in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine. But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. 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. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show portance in the heaven above and s above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist, the sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So this Bible story from Acts talks a lot about speaking in tongues. Now I experienced watching other people speak in tongues before I had ever even heard of the phrase speaking in tongues. Have you ever gone to a worship service and it was like completely different than what you anticipated? So I grew up Baptist, and so like you know, it was pretty, pretty mellow. There wasn't a whole lot of speaking. Usually the the folks up front did most of the of the talking. Like if there was a sermon, you might hear amens from the congregation. But during prayer time, you know, you would you would have the leaders at front, you know, one person would be praying, and everyone else would be, you know, just very silent, uh very kind of a reverent time in the worship service. Well, so some friends invited me to go to an assemblies of God youth group when I was in high school. So I was like, sure, why not? And so I went and and uh there we were, and the pastor said it was time to pray, and and the pastor started to pray, and I started noticing everybody is is talking out loud. I'm like, how disrespectful! What in the world? Do these do these folks not not have any respect for what's going on here or any respect for God? Well, of course, I I learned that in the assemblies of God, which is known as a Pentecostal tradition, so today's the day of Pentecost, we hear about speaking in tongues of the book of Acts. In a Pentecostal tradition, there's this idea of speaking in tongues in which folks use a language that in the context that I experienced it in that youth group, it was a language that's kind of unknown to people, uh kind of like an unearthly language, but but people speak it as the Holy Spirit prompts them, as the Holy Spirit gives them utterance. And then a lot of times there's supposed to be like an interpretation of what that means that that goes with it. But I I was like thrown for a loop. I remember the first time I went to a Catholic service, and like um I thought it was so cool. I was like, wow, they've got foot rest on the pews. That's great. Later realized those were kneeling benches. Um sometimes you learn the hard way. Um and and so you know the idea of speaking in tongues uh is is expressed in in some religious circles today. Uh in in the disciples, uh, we talk a lot about um Pentecost on the day of Pentecost. We don't tend to talk a whole lot about it uh the rest of the year, but we do talk a lot about the Holy Spirit and and things along that line. Uh a friend of mine who uh is Assemblies of God came by Brentwood this week. Uh we went and grabbed lunch together and and we met uh in in the office. Uh he's an evangel grad, and our um executive assistant, she's an evangel grad. I wanted them to meet. I wondered if if they you know knew any of the same folks. And and so as we were uh talking in the office, I don't know if any of you have ever noticed, there's that really lovely chalk drawing uh that is representative of the day of Pentecost. Uh if you've not noticed it in the office before, and if you don't know where the offices are, it's just right across the the hall from the sanctuary, and you'll see it hanging if you just peek in there. Um, I love that piece of art. It's one of my favorite pieces of art here at Brentwood. Uh it was uh it was created during a worship service on Pentecost Sunday. Uh I think it was around 2009, and Andy Webb, who is a local artist, we had a blank canvas toward the front of the sanctuary. And as the Pentecost service unfolded, Andy was just creating uh with chalk this drawing. Um and that was uh something that my friend and I uh started talking about. Um, and whenever I told him that it was Pentecost Sunday, we were kind of getting everything changed over to red and such, he's like, Oh, I didn't know you all talked about speaking in tongues. Uh because he really, you know, viewed it just as a like Pentecostal, you know, or charismatic kind of uh approach to things. And and and so I said, well, you know, on the Pentecost Sunday, we do tend to talk a lot about the idea of the Holy Spirit being given, you know, to the people, but it's kind of different from a lot of the ways it's talked about, uh, like maybe in other places in the New Testament. So like in the book of Acts, like we just heard today, uh, it's the idea where human beings are not speaking like different languages, like unearth earthly languages, they're speaking languages that just are not, it's not their own. Um, and and and people are understanding languages that they don't even speak. So it's different languages that already existed, but the miracle is is that people were able to understand. So the kinds of things that that divided people, um, you know, whether it whether it be you know uh culture, tribe, nation, whatever it might be, the things that divided, those things were broken down. So the piece of art in Brentwood's office, it's a depiction of uh Pentecost uh Sunday in which the walls that divide are breaking down. So you notice the first song we sang in our worship service today, uh, you know, about how people build walls, uh, the walls that divide us. But God, you know, and you know, comes and the Holy Spirit breaks down those walls that divide. Uh and so there are parts in the New Testament and like Paul's writings where there are times in which people will speak in tongues more like in their private prayer life, and there's like an interpretation that comes with that for the community. And that's a different kind of approach, and that's the more similar approach that you might find in the Pentecostal churches of like the assemblies of God. Um, so that's that's part of the New Testament, kind of the uh Paul and Paul's writings, the kind of the things that he talked about. But like in the Acts story, it's very it's very different. It's not about in like a private interior kind of experience, it's rather about a total social transformation. Walls that divide, breaking down, the hierarchies that people set into place, those things coming crashing down. So there's the uh prophet Joel who is mentioned in this book of Acts. And Joel talks about how men and women are gonna prophesy, are gonna have visions. Uh, those who are enslaved are going to have visions. They're going to prophesy. In other words, it's a complete undoing of the social structures. It's a breaking things down so that those hierarchies no longer exist. It's a different way of being community, a community not defined by hierarchy, but a community defined by mutuality, in which people come together and they understand one another. Okay, I'm on like page four of notes, but I haven't gone forward yet, so I'm gonna move forward here. Um I don't know if you've seen the Hunger Games or read, you know. I'm I'm I'm high culture, I just see the movie, I don't read the books. I mean, you have some folks that, you know, yeah, you know, okay. Um and and so in the Hunger Games, you have like the arena. Uh and and it's a play, you don't want to go to the arena because it's you have to fight for survival. Uh and it's a kind of game where where if you get eliminated, that's that's it. And there's one person who's who's going to survive. And so you have to endure all of the challenges of the arena, and at the same time, you have the responsibility of eliminating your opponents. One person survives. Okay, it's probably fair to say if that was like an allegory for the way that society is set up, it might be problematic. And we might say, you know, well, maybe we'll just reform the arena a little bit, make it a little bit nicer. Maybe, maybe the folks can get together in the morning and and have coffee before they they and they'll share in civil discourse before they they go off and then have to like try to eliminate one another. Maybe we'll have a few less challenges for them to endure so they'll be able to overcome. But ultimately, like the problem is like the arena itself, right? And so my favorite part of the Hunger Games is whenever the arena comes crashing down. You know, a lot of times in our society, it's kind of like, well, let's just make this a little bit better, but we'll preserve a lot of the hierarchy. Um, what needs to happen is the whole arena needs to come crashing down. There needs to be like a fundamental reordering of society. And and New Testament scholars they talk about this this day of Pentecost as being something that gives expression to a fundamental reordering of society, in which things are not defined around hierarchy and exclusion, but are defined around mutuality and understanding. It's a very different way of being society. So last week I talked about John Prime, and I'm not gonna like talk about a musical artist every single week, but I was thinking about this story from Pentecost where you have folks from all props to Shannon Smith for reading that scripture. That's a hard scripture. I never envy the person who's reading scripture on Pentecost Sunday. Um, you've got folks from all different nations uh who are showing up, who are together, and they're you they don't usually understand one another, and and in this place, in this space, they understand one another. People come together. It's beautiful. Uh it made me think about John Baptiste. And you may know of John Baptiste from his work with Stephen Colbert. He he's a Grammy Award-winning artist, and I love what he talks about. He has this phrase called love riots. Love riots. No, he doesn't mean like a violent kind of riot at all. It's the way he approaches his music. He views his role as an artist, it's his vocation, to bring human beings together and help them experience collective joy and collective liberation. And so if you're gonna go see John Batiste perform, uh if you're gonna go down to New Orleans where he's from, uh he picked up on a lot of this there, it's not uncommon for the musicians to begin breaking out with the crowd and inviting for the for the inviting the crowd to participate, to engage, to be part of things. And sometimes there'll be a parade, there'll be a march, and it's people coming together to share in the music together, to experience collective joy and collective liberation in community. Now, the world is out there and the world will be as the world is. There's some things we love to change, and maybe we have the power to change it, maybe we don't. We give it our best effort, no doubt about it. There's some things we love to change we can't change. We wish we could change. The world is as it is, and the world will be as it will be, and we, you know, it doesn't mean there's a resolve from trying to change things. You know, one of my favorite quotes talks about how our faith is shaped by trying to, you know, make the world not as it is, but as it should be, as God wants it to be. So it's important to work toward those kinds of things. But also in the midst of that, sometimes like there's just stuff that we like to change and we can, or we wish we could, and it doesn't change, or sometimes things in our lives we wish were different, but they they they they don't change the way we want them to change, or they change in ways we wish they hadn't changed. Sometimes there's stuff we can't control. But what we can do in the spirit of Pentecost, and kind of in the spirit of like what John Baptiste calls the love rites, we can come together in the midst of community, support one another, find collective liberation, find joy together. The world tries to define things as the world wants to define things who's in, who's out. How power works. The book of Acts comes along and says, you want to order a world based on slavery and patriarchy? No, that's not how God's order works. We're gonna break that down. Something new is being born into this world, and we're invited to participate in that newness that is being born into the world. It doesn't mean the whole world's gonna change, but it also doesn't mean that we can't participate in that beautiful gift that is unfolding, inviting us to experience love and joy and justice and belonging together as a community. Uh we talked about a lot of uh different uh topics, and and one of the things that that we came back to was the way in which uh sometimes it's it's hard to get through in our world. And we can have a lot of frustrations. Uh we have people write out uh a lot of the questions they want to ask, and then we go through those and and we kind of like randomly take a look at them. And it seems like every month someone writes, How do we have conversations with our MAGA friends who view the world completely different than we do? You know, or sometimes there can be frustrations about things uh in our world that we wish could be different. What can we do to make things different? And and and sometimes there's conversation around that. But something I really loved this past Thursday was the way in which we talked about how we can kind of experience the kingdom of God together. How this world is as the world is, but we can find love and belonging, care and mutuality together, collective joy, collective liberation. One person mentioned that beautiful passage from Paul's letter in Galatians that in communities that are marked by Christ's love, there's no longer slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female, for all are one in that spirit of love. As a community, we can come together. Like in the Pentecost story, the Roman Empire, it didn't fall. You know, Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, but the Roman Empire still stood. You know, they they had hoped that would change. Even in some of that, kind of feels like over-the-top language from the prophet Joel, where like everything's gonna be darkened, and it reminds me of like uh the rapture stories I heard like as a kid, you know, about when the Lord's gonna come back. It's talking about like the end of the age. It's talking about an end of the hierarchy, an end of the way of the world setting itself up along orders of exclusion, where some benefit at the expense of others. And the story of Pentecost invites us to build community rooted in mutuality and love and belonging. Even if that world, even if the Roman Empire doesn't fall, that doesn't mean we can't cultivate that deep sense of community together here and now. And sometimes um, you know, sometimes things are rough. There are things that we go through that are hard. Sometimes things don't turn out as we wish they would, but we can still be in it together. Um really popular story I want to share. It's it's definitely been an overused story. Uh it's been shared in lots of sermons over the years, uh, all different kinds of avenues for nearly a century. It's a story about two best friends who were in World War I together. Uh, whether it be a Memorial Day weekend, I'll go ahead and share it. Um you've likely heard it already. Two friends who are like inseparable. It reminds me a little bit of like Forrest and Bubba in Vietnam. Like these two friends, they grew up together, they enlist together, they train together, they're shipped off to fight on the front lines in World War I together. They experience trench warfare together. On one particular day when the fighting was gruesome, these friends were out kind of like in no man's land, out of their trenches. And they were going back for cover, trying to get back to the trench. Um, and when they get back to their trench, one of the friends recognizes that his best friend, his lifelong best friend, is no longer with him. And his best friend is stuck in no man's land. Likely dead. And so his instinct is to go out and get his friend. And so he starts to climb, you know, uh out of out of the trench to go and to try to rescue his friend, and his commanding officer grabs him, stops and says, What are you doing? He's dead, it's not worth it. Don't go back out there. And the soldier said, I I I've got to! My friend's there, I can't leave him. Well, the commanding officer turned his back, and the friend went out into no man's land. Some time passes by and the two friends come back. He's carrying his friend who has died. And he brings his friend back in too. I told you not to go out there, I told you it wasn't worth it. And the soldier replied, No, it wasn't worth it. Because when I got out there, he looked at me and said, Jim, I knew you'd come. Sometimes um salvation is maybe less about being rescued from the hard things we go through. And more about knowing that we are not alone. Thanks to the love that holds us in the Spirit of Christ. Amen.