Come, Holy Spirit. Open our hearts to hear your word, and our minds to understand your guidance for our lives. Bless us as we seek to follow where you lead. Amen.
In today’s first reading, from Acts, chapter two, we heard the story of the first Pentecost.
Pentecost takes place 50 days after Easter. On Pentecost, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, which God sends to be with them once Jesus has ascended into heaven and is no longer with them on earth.
For any church nerds out there, Pentecost is the third most important holiday in the church year, after Easter and Christmas.
But to me, Pentecost is really where it all begins.
Without the story of Pentecost, I probably wouldn’t be a Christian. I definitely wouldn’t be a pastor.
I love the story of Pentecost.
It has made a difference in my life and in my faith.
I love this story because it says…
Whether you’re an immigrant or foreigner, an American citizen or an undocumented worker – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Whether your personal ad would say woman seeking woman, or woman seeking man, or man seeking woman, or only looking for fun, or seeking a serious relationship – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Whether your skin color is brown or peach or olive, red or yellow, black or white – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Whether your preferred flatbread is tortillas or naan or ciabatta or injera or lefse – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Lutherans in this part of the world sometimes have a hard time figuring out that Norwegians have no monopoly on right faith.
One of the most offensive things I’ve been told by well-meaning Norwegian-American Lutherans is that I’m an honorary Scandinavian.
They are entirely missing the point.
I don’t want to be an honorary Scandinavian. I want to be a Russian-Puerto Rican-American woman from Wisconsin. I want you to acknowledge and appreciate who I am. And I still want to be in community with you.
The story of Pentecost tells us that national heritage, culture, language and race are important. People are different from one another. The disciples did end up speaking in a number of different languages, after all.
But Pentecost tells us that the community of faith is not complete until all of those cultures and languages and nations can peacefully coexist in one community of faith.
I love the story of Pentecost because it says…
Whether you are fat or skinny, whether you are living with an eating disorder or thyroid disease, whether you are in shape or a couch potato or somewhere in between – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Whether you are living below the poverty line or are part of the richest 1%, whether you are on food stamps or a millionaire, unable to find meaningful employment or loving the career that you’ve been in for decades – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
Whether you are a second grader or a PhD, a high school dropout or a professional degree holder – the spirit of God is poured out on you.
This last one is hard for us sometimes, especially in our highly educated community. It is easy to blame problems on people who don’t know any better, who haven’t been taught any differently. Education is highly valued here.
But in the kingdom of God, educated and uneducated alike receive a portion of the spirit – the same portion of the spirit.
I love the story of Pentecost because it tells me that the spirit of God can be poured out even on me, and I can be a pastor.
I love it because it tells me that the spirit of God is poured out on each one of you, so I don’t have to be the only minister in this congregation.You all know people who believe that women can’t be pastors.
When you are a woman, and a pastor, these people seem to come out of the woodwork.
I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve heard… “What makes you think you can be a pastor? Isn’t this whole women in ministry thing still too new and untested? Anyway, Jesus didn’t have women disciples. Why should we have women pastors? What’s wrong with the way we’ve always done it?”
The best answer to those naysayers is the story of Pentecost. On this day, after Jesus had died and been raised from the dead, and had ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit came to the faithful people in Jerusalem.
And women were included in that group of faithful.
And women were included in that group of faithful.
Of course, I’ve got about a hundred other answers to people who think that women shouldn’t be pastors, and if you’re interested, we can talk about them sometime. But Pentecost is at the root of all the rest of those answers.
On that day, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh – not just the men, not just the people in power, not just those who have enough life experience to seem credible, not just the wealthy folks or the white folks or the government officials – God’s spirit will come to all people, and they will prophesy.
My undergraduate degree is in psychology.
I learned a lot about people in college.
One of the most interesting projects I was involved with was a study on attractiveness – what kinds of faces do we humans find to be attractive?
For example, facial symmetry is one of the primary things that makes human beings attractive to one another.
Denzel Washington has a very symmetrical face, which can explain why so many people find him attractive.
But here’s what’s even more interesting, in my opinion.
Composite faces tend to be perceived as more attractive than any single person’s face.
If you take the average of my face, and [name]’s face, and [name]’s face, you will end up with someone more attractive than any of us are on our own.
If you were to average together the faces of everyone in this congregation, everyone in Madison, everyone in Wisconsin, we would get an unbelievably attractive composite face.
The more characteristics you combine together – the more colors of skin and shapes of eyes and noses and mouths – the more appealing the face becomes to people of all ages, races, and cultural backgrounds.
The more we are united together – the more we act as a singly body – the more attractive we become. And the more attractive we become, the more we live out the reality of being created in the image of God.
If you were here last week, you heard Kyle Rader tell us that we are the body of Christ – and that’s not a metaphor.
Now that Jesus is no longer physically with us in the world, it is up to us to be his hands and his feet and his heart here on earth.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us.
The Spirit has anointed us to proclaim good news to the poor.
The Spirit has sent us to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
(Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2)
The spirit of God is here.
That’s what the Pentecost story tells us.
I think I’ve made that point by now.
But so what? Why should we care?
Let me tell you.
If the spirit of God is with you, it is good news.
The spirit of God gives you power to change the world.
The spirit of God is what created the world.
The spirit resurrected Jesus from the dead.
The spirit is the one who inspired the prophets, from Isaiah and Jeremiah to Martin Luther and Martin Luther King.
The spirit of God is here, is on you, and on the person sitting next to you.
When we see that Spirit in others, we get to see them as they really are, as beloved children of God, who have the power to change the world.
Do me a favor.
Turn to the person next to you and say, the Spirit of God is upon you.
Turn to the other side and tell them too.
Now tell the people on either side of you, You have the power to change the world.
That must be what it sounded like on the first Pentecost, with so many people talking all at the same time!
The promise of Pentecost – the good news today – is that no one is excluded from God’s kingdom. Today’s story puts men and women, slave and free, and people from all different countries around the world on the same playing field.
The spirit of God is on each one of you, which means that you are able to hear the voice of God. You can share the good news with others. You can work together with other people to embody the mission of Christ.
Sure, the Pentecost story helps me know that I can be a pastor.
But this story also gives encouragement to everyone who might want to follow Jesus. Because of Pentecost, we know that Jesus’ promise “I will be with you always” has already come true. Jesus isn’t here with us, but he sent the Spirit to be reflected in every one of us… and he gave us the ability to see glimpses of that Spirit in each other.
So I know that women can be ordained because of the Pentecost story.
What else do we know because of this story?
At the very least, I think we know that all people are created equal. Culture, ethnicity, race, gender, age – those things that tend to divide us are not actually supposed to be divisive. God comes to all of us regardless of what labels we would use to describe ourselves.
God’s spirit is on every single one of us.
And the more we work together, we closer we get to truly being the body of Christ in this world.
So let’s work together, let’s live out God’s promise for humanity.
Let’s go out, and change the world.
Amen.
Pentecost Sunday
5/24/15
Acts 2:1-21
5/24/15
Acts 2:1-21