Pentecost Sunday------- May 31, 2020
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 2: 1 - 21
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues* as the spirit enabled them. Acts 2:4
You might have heard someone joke, "King James English was good enough Jesus and it's good enough for me." Today we tell the story about the first day this small ragtag group of followers of Jesus became a church, the church we still are today.
It is our story. do you notice that this is not a story about everyone suddenly speaking the same language? It is a story about everyone speaking, all of them, all at once, the languages of each other. This is not a story about understanding each other. It's a story about understanding that each of us speak to God in our own way, and God speaks to us each in our own way.
You might have had such a Pentecost moment. It happens whenever you sit down to a meal with a youngster whose music you don't understand, but who you love just the same. It happens when you sit with a loved one, whose words have been lost to disease, but you love just the same. It happens when you pay attention to the voices of "the other side" in a political debate.
These are scary times. And in scary times, it's tempting to circle the wagons, protect ourselves,, all try to do the same thing at the same time in the same way. But maybe the story of Pentecost, which is both the past of the church and the future of the church, rests in listening, just to listen, not to understand. Maybe we are not meant to understand one another, really. Maybe we are here to walk together in the same direction, knowing that God is still speaking in God's inviting, loving, challenging language to each of us, in the words that each of us, individually, can understand.
That we don't all speak the same language doesn't make us less of a community, it makes us more of one. Whether you came to this place today speaking the language of health or of illness, the language of joy or of sorrow, the language of despair or hope, the language of raking the grass or giving out warm hugs, let our prayers this Pentecost day be that your community be a place where all those languages are spoken and all are heard, even if all are not fully understood by all.
Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV* Copyright© 1973, 1978,1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.*
Text Copyright© 2020 United Church of Christ.
