Scripture text: Acts 2:1-21
Earlier this week, I stumbled onto an article on the Internet about why people like me (i.e. nerds) are so keen on tearing into each other. Star Wars fans are better than Star Trek. Call of Duty player are better than Battlefield. And don’t get us started on women in gaming. It’s often an ugly little world I live in and like the author of this article, I sometimes wonder why.
But I do know why and so did the author.
He told a story of when he transferred into a new school in 4th Grade, which is an awkward experience for anyone at that age. It was made more awkward in that the first person who befriended him was the class nerd, a kid named Scott. Scott went out of his way to be a good friend this new kid, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a nerd of the highest calibre. The author, named Drew, was terrified that this would ruin his social chances, so one day he put together a sign-up sheet for the “Scott Haters Club” and passed it around to all the popular kids. Many signed up. Many agreed to step up their torment of Scott. And suddenly Drew was part of the “in-crowd.” And then Scott found out who was behind it all, and how it was his friend who’d thrown him under the bus for the sake of a 4th grade popularity contest.
Reading that hurt. It hurt because I’ve been Scott and I’ve had people do that sort of thing to me. But it also hurt because, if I’d been given the chance, I’d have been Drew in a heartbeat, ready, willing, and even eager to throw just about anybody under the bus for the chance that someone might like me.
Not quite visible here: The sense of utter social desperation.
But the saddest part of the story is that all this isn’t some anomaly of behavior that we can laugh off as part of the immaturity of growing up. We still do it as adults, a lot.
For some strange reason, no matter how much success or popularity one has in life, it seems we humans all have a raging inferiority complex, one that we can only deal with by finding someone else to tear down. I talk a lot in my sermon about “those people;” I use those exact words precisely because you really can fill in the blank there with a myriad of possibilities. What’s the latest group? Oh, yeah, transgendered people wanting to use the toilet in peace in the bathroom that corresponds to their self-understood gender. But to hear their detractors, the end of the world is nigh if we allow this.
But if it’s not them, it’s someone else. If it’s not them, it’s the gays wanting to get married. If it’s not them, it’s the Muslims wanting to worship in peace. Or the immigrants who want a better life for themselves and their families. Or black people. Or rednecks. Or limousine liberals. Or the old. Or the young. The poor, the rich. Hipsters. Fans of the Eagles (band or sports team). Players of this video game or that TV show. And so on and so forth. It gets exhausting to try to list them all because we keep making up new ones. New people we can tear down just to feel better about ourselves.
Our whole society is rampant with this plague. It almost goes without saying that there numerous political candidates and proposals out there who’s popularity is based entirely on how much we can hurt “those people.” To hear our leaders talk, it seems that every problem in our society can simply be solved by finding the right people to pin the metaphorical “kick me” sign on.
And this is a country that claims openly and loudly to be a nation based on Christian principles. Our law is from Judeo-Christian tradition. Our Founding Fathers were Bible-believing Church-going men of highest character. None of that is true historically, but it is a tale we tell ourselves that we want to believe is true. But if that’s the story we want to say about who we are, then maybe we should, at least, try to act like that IS who we are. And a society that is Christian does not look like Trump’s “yuge” wall. It looks like Pentecost.
From Patheos.org. Nerds might notice a certain addition to the scene.
The Holy Spirit comes down upon the Apostles gathered in Jerusalem and what does it do? Immediately, everyone is speaking in different languages so that the news of the Gospel can be understood by as wide a variety of people possible, a small sample of which you just heard in the reading of the story. The Spirit comes and it doesn’t strengthen divisions between people, it breaks them down. Peter makes this very clear when he gets up to preach from the prophet Joel. The prophet says rightly that God will pour out his spirit upon ALL flesh, not just the ones like us.
And this story in Acts is just the beginning. God doesn’t stop there. It goes from this crowd of Diaspora Jews to Ethiopian eunuch. And from there to the Roman Cornelius. And from their to Paul’s journeys across the known world. Take a map of the ancient world and look at all the cities to where Paul wrote his letters: Corinth, Rome, Ephesus, Thessalonika, and so forth. There’s one here, here, here, and here. They’re all over the place.
From thebiblejourney.org
The Gospel goes out to everyone and everywhere.
We talk a lot in church about how God loves everyone. It’s a nice sentiment, but do we really understand what that means? What it looks like? Pentecost is what it looks like. God putting proof that what he did in Christ’s earthly ministry was not merely for a select few, but for everyone. And this was the plan all along. As I’ve often said, God’s promise to Abraham was to make of him a “blessing for all the families of the world.”
All means all. But probably the most radical part of this isn’t that “those people” are intended to be part of God’s all-encompassing kingdom. It’s that we are too. I began this sermon talking about how it seems each of us has this horrible inferiority complex and it is out of it that we continually seek to tear down those who are different from us. We don’t believe in ourselves. We don’t see our own worthiness, so we constantly feel we have to prove ourselves over and against someone else. “I may be terrible, but at least I’m not THEM” is the secret we all tell ourselves.
But the truth is we’re not terrible. We are loved. We are precious to the one who created all things, so much so that he set in motion this entire millennia spanning plan to see us saved. God does love everybody and that includes YOU. You don’t have to prove anything to him. You don’t have to do anything to earn his love. It’s there. It always has been and it always will be. Nothing will change it. Nothing will stop it. It’s yours and it always will be.
The choice is before us. We can keep on doing as our human nature asks, tearing down others so we can lie to ourselves about how great we are. Or we go with God’s plan, recognizing that we and others are precious in his sight. And in doing that, we can spend our energies in building each other up and erasing the lines between us. Pentecost is both our calling and our goal. A world...no, a kingdom...without divisions where all are welcome, all are valued, and all are loved. Amen.
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