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| 106 North Bench Street, Galena, IL 61036 Phone: (815) 777-0229 (voice & fax) |
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Pentecost
by Jim McCrea Acts 2:1-21 A man and his daughter got on a hotel elevator and headed up. A few floors later, the elevator stopped and an absolutely gorgeous woman stepped in. She pushed the button for her floor, the doors closed and the elevator started up again. As is the custom, everyone faced the doors, watching the lights indicating where they were and no one said anything. All of a sudden, the woman turned around quickly and slapped the father as hard as she could. Just then the elevator reached her floor, and she stormed off. The little girl turned to her father and said, "She didn't like you, did she?" The father rubbed his bright red cheek and replied, "I guess not. She certainly did slap me hard." Then the little girl said, "Don't feel bad, dad. I didn't like her either. She stepped on my toe, so I pinched her." At its heart, Pentecost is all about overcoming the barriers of misunderstanding that so regularly crop up between people. I'll never forget a couple of years ago when we hosted Elias Mukindia and Frances Kahiko, a couple of representatives of the Presbyterian Church in Kenya. We picked them up at the Stronghold Conference Center and began the process of trying to get to know one another on the trip back to Galena. During that trip, they told us of early American missionaries who wanted to baptize new converts in the local rivers, only to run into huge resistance by the local people who clearly didn't want to join the church. And it took quite a bit of time before the missionaries clued into the fact that the resistance they were encountering how nothing to do with the Christian message. Instead, it was based on the fact that the local people were well aware that the rivers were filled alligators, which could lead to new converts meeting their Savior a bit earlier than they had anticipated. Of course, the missionaries were totally oblivious to the alligators, while the local people were unaware that baptisms could be performed in ways other than dunking someone in a river. And so their conflicting assumptions went unchecked for some time and interfered with something both groups wanted. Unfortunately, the western church has had a long history of confusing our culture with the basic message of Christian church, leading people in foreign countries to believe that they had to give up certain aspects of their culture in order to accept Christianity. Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible is essentially a satire about that phenomenon. It is the story of Nathan Price, a stubborn evangelical missionary who takes his long-suffering wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo in 1959, where he proceeds to trample all over the local culture with both humorous and tragic results, ultimately failing utterly because he never bothers to try to understand what the people he thinks of as "heathens" might actually need instead of working out of his own assumptions of their needs. Symbolic of that tendency were the vegetable seeds Reverend Price brings over from the US and lovingly plants behind his family's mud and straw house to demonstrate the wonders of modern agricultural techniques. However, he is unaware that those seeds are unsuited to the climate of his African village and so, even they grow like gangbusters and send out lots of flowers, they never produce any vegetables because the bees that pollinate the vegetables in Reverend Price's native Georgia simply aren't there in Africa and so, much like his ministry, those vegetables aren't able to produce anything. On another occasion, he attempts to speak directly to the people in their own language without the use of a translator, but he accidentally mixes up two similar-sounding words. He wants to say, "Jesus is bangala!" meaning something precious, but he instead says "Jesus is bängala!" which is the name of a local plant with horribly irritating qualities known as poisonwood. That may be an interesting image, but that's not what he really meant. The Pentecost experience of the first disciples was intended to break down the kind of barriers people and cultures - like those that stood between Rev. Price and the people he theoretically came to serve. Although Pentecost clearly didn't solve that problem for all time since you don't have to go very much deeper into the book of Acts before you run across another controversy that revolves around cultural differences - that is, whether people had to convert to Judaism in order to become Christians - which was a disagreement that had both religious and cultural dimensions to it. And it took a council of the whole to come back to the idea God first presented at Pentecost. That's because - more than being a more of people speaking foreign languages - the first Christian Pentecost was an event which enabled the diverse peoples of the earth to fully hear one another. The Pentecost event itself is described in terms that are very reminiscent of the terms used to describe the presence of God in the Old Testament. Just as the Spirit of God moved across the face of the waters of chaos in the beginning, so the Holy Spirit comes to the assembled disciples with the sounds of a rushing wind. And just as God appeared to Moses in the form of a bush that was on fire but wasn't burned, so Holy Spirit appeared on the heads of the disciples in the form of a fire that didn't harm them. The point was that just as God had chosen to call Moses out of the desert to lead his people, so God was calling the disciples out of the wilderness of their waiting and sending them to help make a new creation. For the fact is that when people truly hear and act upon the Christian message, it can have quite an impact on the world. In the year 125 AD, a man named Aristides noticed that difference even though he was not a Christian himself. Writing about the Christians of his day, he said [updated to modern language]: "They walk in all humility and kindness; falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They don't forget the widow and they don't add to the orphan's woes. The one who has the world's goods gives generously to the one who doesn't. "If they see a stranger, they invite him to stay with them in their house and rejoice over him as if he were their own brother. In fact, they call each other 'brother' and 'sister,' not in human terms, but in terms of the Spirit of God. "When a poor member of their group dies, they pay for that person's funeral and if they hear about one of their number being imprisoned or oppressed because of their faith, the entire group provides for that person's needs and, if it is possible to win that person's freedom, they do everything in their power to see that that happens. Even those Christians who are poor themselves will fast two or three days in order that they too may have some food to contribute to the needs of the poor." Those kinds of qualities are rare even today although, as you heard in our Minute for Mission video, they certainly exist right here in our own church community. But they aren't limited to just Christian groups. Any community that truly worships God will show similar signs of love and community. For example, there's a story of a Jewish man from the sixteenth century, who moved to Israel when all Jews were expelled from his native Spain. Jacobi was a shoemaker, who was kind and very devout. So even after he moved to the Holy Land, he would go to the synagogue every Sabbath and listen intently to what the rabbi was saying, even though Jacobi only spoke Spanish and the rabbi would preach in Hebrew. Nevertheless, Jacobi would always scrunch up his face and try to understand whatever words he could. One Sabbath, the rabbi was talking about twelve loaves of bread were offered to God when the Temple was still in Jerusalem. Jacobi understood the word "bread" and he understood "God," although he didn't catch the rest of it. But that didn't matter since he always did his best to fill in the blanks. That day, Jacobi became very excited and ran home to talk to his wife Esperanza about the rabbi's sermon. "Guess what I found out?" he said. "God eats bread! Everyone knows you are the best baker in the whole country. So why don't you bake some bread for God and I'll take it to the synagogue?" Esperanza agreed, so she baked her finest bread that week using the very best of ingredients and braided the bread with love. The next Sabbath Jacobi proudly carried her loaves to the synagogue. When he entered, he said, "Senor Dios, I've got your bread. You'll see, you'll love it. My wife Esperanza is a wonderful baker. You'll eat every loaf, every crumb!" And with that, he took the bread and put it into the tabernacle next to the holy scrolls. No sooner did he leave than the synagogue's custodian came in. He moved slowly to the front of the sanctuary and began to pray. "Lord, you know I love to be here in this holy place. That's all I want. But seven weeks now I've been working and I haven't been paid. I need you to do something - a miracle! You should make for me a miracle. I believe you're going to. Maybe you've even done it already. Maybe I'll open the holy tabernacle, and there will be a miracle there." So the custodian opened the tabernacle and he found the very miracle he was looking for - twelve loaves of bread, which worked out to two for the first Sabbath meal, two for the second, two for the third, and one loaf for every day of the week. The next day, Jacobi and Esperanza came to the synagogue together to see if God had accepted their offering. When opened the tabernacle and saw that there was no bread there, you should have seen the look of love that passed between them. The next week it was the same, and the week after that and the week after that. Eventually, the custodian learned to have faith in God. But he also discovered that if he hung around the synagogue too much or came to work too early, there would be no miracle. And so thirty years went by. One day, Jacobi came to the synagogue with his gift of bread and prayed, "Senor Dios, I know your bread's been lumpy lately. Esperanza has arthritis. Maybe you could do something? You'd eat better." Jacobi put the bread in the tabernacle, and started to leave, when suddenly the rabbi grabbed him. "What are you doing?" the rabbi demanded. Jacobi answered, "I'm bringing God his bread," to which the rabbi replied, "God doesn't eat bread." But Jacobi knew better than that. "He's been eating Esperanza's bread for 30 years." The rabbi didn't understand what was going on, so he made Jacobi hide with him while they watched the tabernacle. front and began to pray, "I hate to bring it up, God, but you know your bread's been lumpy lately. Maybe you could talk with an angel." As he reached in to grab the bread, the rabbi jumped out and grabbed him. Then the rabbi began to yell at the two men, telling them how sinful they were to think that God was like a human being. He ranted on and on until all three men began to cry. Jacobi began to cry because he only wanted to do something good for God. The rabbi began to cry because all of this had happened as a result of his sermon. And the custodian began to cry because he suddenly realized there was not going to be any more bread. While they were still crying, the three men suddenly heard the sound of laughter from the corner of the room. They turned to look and saw the great prophet Elijah, who was laughing so hard, he was doubled over, holding his stomach. Finally, Elijah composed himself and said to them, "Oh rabbi, these men are not sinful. They are devout. You should know that God has never had more fun than watching what goes on in your synagogue on the Sabbath. He sits with his angels and they laugh. I mean, this man brings the bread and that man takes the bread, and God gets all the credit." At that point Elijah was laughing so hard, he had to stop and wipe the tears out of his eyes. Then he added, "You must beg forgiveness from these men, Rabbi." Turning to Jacobi, he said, "Jacobi, now you must do something even more difficult. From now on, you must bring your bread directly to the custodian. And you must believe with perfect faith that God will be just as pleased and have just as much fun." And so it was. God is pleased when we serve each other. God is pleased when we welcome the stranger into authentic community. God is pleased when we pray, when we confess our sin and when we lift up each other's needs. All of these things are like the bread in the tabernacle at the synagogue, except that we do them directly for each other, and God gets the credit. I hope that God has fun watching us at here at First Presbyterian. Amen. Portions of this sermon have been adapted from work by Kathy Donley.
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