May 24 ~ Day of Pentecost / Confirmation Sunday

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_1f4c0a37ad244d43b3eb6d13acf9265d/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Pentecost is a story about the good and bad that faith can do in the world. It represents the challenge for us to know the difference. For this reason, it is an important idea on this, our confirmation Sunday.

For the last two years, today’s confirmands have explored this idea of faith and what it means to see the world through the eyes of the gospel. They have handed out supplies to people living on our streets, and, I hope, learned of the good they can do with their individual and collective actions. During one class, a person, dressed in shabby clothes slept in the pews, and all our youth walked by, not noticing or inquiring about them. I tell this story, without judgement – for judging is not part of our gospel mandate, and we all walk on by, at one time or another, when someone is calling for our attention. This was intended as a lesson in what we can fail to see in the world around us – and, I hope, it was another reminder of the power we have in each of us to see the world for what it is and to act within it.

On Pentecost, as our first lesson says, people of many different languages could, for a moment, understand one another – and they were amazed. What clarity that brought - to know the thoughts and intentions of a stranger from a different background.

Pentecost is a dream, an ideal goal – aspiring to a day when people of faith will be able to speak the same language. In the time in which our first lesson happened, the idea was that everyone would become a follower of Jesus – and indeed, the story of Jesus did spread, so that Christians began to appear in many places in the world. But as time went on, those Christians lost the ability to speak peacefully even with one another, let alone with other faiths. And throughout history, we see the destruction and death that is caused when we compete to be right about our interpretation of God, rather than to learn from one another to expand that understanding.

But the Pentecost story has a flaw in the telling. For it suggests that if we just stand around, God will take care of it for us. The gospel has never been about God’s taking care of us – it is about God’s giving us the tools to take care of ourselves and the world around us.

And what is the first way that God gives us those tools? God tells us we are worthy, and capable, and valuable. Each one of us. I speak directly to the confirmands, but this is a promise we all forget. The human world has a way of telling each of us, over and over again, that we are not worthy. The world will call us names and make assumptions about us. The world will say, “You aren’t capable, you don’t have value.”

Do not believe it. You do not need everyone to like you – in truth, following the gospel means getting under someone’s skin, eventually. People have all kinds of their own reasons for being critical of others that have nothing to do with you. Do not believe them.

Believe God. Believe the people who love you. Believe your friends who support you. Believe in yourself. I hope that each morning, when you look in the mirror, you see someone valuable, someone resilient, someone with the power to change the world for the better. I hope that for all us, young and old.

Ultimately, Pentecost is not simply about understanding spoken words. It is about hearing one another, listening to one another. This is the example that Jesus set: to listen, and to be wise, and not to be quick to fall prey to rumour and spin. To resist our own tendencies to wear judgment like a cloak of righteousness, for, I guarantee, we will quickly find that it is itchy, and heavy, and suffocating. We are to try to hear, underneath a person’s less-than-perfect or even destructive actions, a desire to be understood, to be treated as an equal. There is only one side worth taking – the side that seeks out a loving compromise, that keeps presenting love where hate appears to be winning.

Make sure you do this for yourselves as well – insist on being treated like an equal by those who say they love you. In your relationships, establish a standard of compromise and respect. Know your own worth, as God knows your worth.

Our calling is this: Go out into the world and speak the language of the gospel, as Jesus would have us hear it. Love and value one another as you want to be loved and valued. And love and value yourself so that all this can be possible.

In the end, every human speaks the same language – the desire to be connected and cared for, to be welcomed, to be free. That is our common vocabulary. That is the true sought-after goal of Pentecost – that in speaking the language of the gospel, we may all soar. We may all spread hope. We may all be heard.

Amen