University Christian Church

Of the people I have a lot of respect for in day to day life, it has be to immigrants - those among us who leave one culture and society behind and make their way successfully into a new one.

Especially many of you right here in this church.

Of the many challenges one faces when moving to a new country, language is the hardest. And not just language - but the little pieces of specific cultural context that can’t be taught. For example, my wife, Yunkyong, shared with me that two of the hardest places to figure out in America were the bank and the Department of Motor Vehicles. (And I know some of us born and raised here in America have difficulty in those places too!) Both have their own specific language and terminology. They are scary places if you don’t understand what is being asked or what different terms mean.

So, it makes a difference when Yunkyong can go to a Korean style bank, even here in America. It just fits. It makes sense. It works the way she expects it to work. It feels safe.

Banks and DMVs are just one so many hurdles people who are new experience here in the States, that they have to figure out on their own, sometimes making mistakes. And sometimes dealing with neighbors that aren’t always that helpful.

Right now, in our cultural, there is a lot of fear about what it means to be multicultural. There is fear around difference. The internet has given voice to people with messages of hate. They each can have their own corner of the internet to ridicule and plan and organize and attack people who make them afraid - whether that’s Jewish people or members of the LGBTQ community or people of color or women. And that can make this world hard to live in for those affected and surrounded by that negativity and those threats of violence. It requires energy to get out of bed when you feel like someone is going out of their way to mess up your day. It requires mental and spiritual and physical energy to navigate spaces where we don’t feel fully welcomed. It requires extra work to walk into the banks and hospitals and DMVs and understand what is being thrown at you, hoping you are saying the right thing and showing up in the right place. And if banks and DMVs are difficult, imagine how hard church is.

We as churches, as Christians, as human beings have work to do. How might God be calling us to live? What should church look like?

And I think Pentecost gives us an image of how God calls us as church to take that step too.

The name Pentecost comes from a Jewish festival that took place 50 days after their celebration of Passover. It was a harvest festival and it commemorated God’s promise to renew and replenish the earth. It was a time of celebration for Jews across the Roman Empire, some of whom traveled out of their safe home bases into Jerusalem to celebrate God’s renewal and care and provision for them.

During this festival, the disciples had gathered, still piecing together what life after Jesus would look like. Their beloved teacher had been executed publicly and shamefully, but after being laid in a tomb with the stone sealing and silencing his voice, Easter morning brought exciting news - Jesus lived. God had raised Jesus to continue his ministry and continue to guide his followers into a new season of transformation. Jesus promised, before he ascended to be next to God and be available to them at all times, to send them some support - an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

So, there they were in Jerusalem, as the city teemed with crowds from around the cities - immigrants who had roots in other countries and visitors who had come into town speaking other languages to celebrate this festival. The disciples were praying together and sorting things out and waiting, as Jesus had instructed them. It was safe in that room. They were united. They felt secure and out of sight. They didn’t know what to expect next, but whatever was to happen was to happen on God’s time.

And maybe they would have been just fine staying up in the room forever, but then something unusual happened.

Acts 2 says that suddenly a violent wind interrupted their comfortable community.

Artists through the centuries have tried to figure out how to paint or imagine the grand entrance of the Holy Spirit into this safe space. Some picture the wind like a cool and refreshing breeze on a spring day, but theologian Margaret Aymer writes that “the Holy Spirit proves not to be a quiet, heavenly dove, but rather a violent force that blows the church into being.” I like to imagine the disciples were knocked out of their chairs, tumbling around the room, toupees flying off their head, cellphones clattering and shattering in one fell swoop of chaos and confusion.

This violent wind does more than rustle the hair of the disciples - tongues of fire alight on each disciple. The disciples sense a mission, a compelling force, urging them to leave the safety of that room and emerge in the flowing throngs of immigrants and curious onlookers in the streets of Jerusalem. A crowd, hearing this violent wind, have gathered to find out just what the heck is going. The disciples, like a well-coordinated flash mob, begin to preach to those curious onlookers, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, of death conquered, of new life available, aided by the Holy Spirit to not just preach in their own comfortable language but in the language of the multicultural, international assembly of people of Jerusalem. No matter where the hearer was from, the preaching was translated instantly and perfectly by these unremarkable Galileean fishermen, tax collectors, and rabble rousers.

Already, the disciples have left the safety of that room where it was just them and their thoughts and their dreams about what God was prepared to do - and suddenly, they had permission to be brave, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, to do something they never thought possible.

There is power when we hear good news in our own language, and that day, those crowds heard God speak to them in their own language. God through the power of the Holy Spirit and bravery of those disciples met the people right where they are - in their confusion, their wonder, and their curiosity.

God could have chosen to whisper this good news to those disciples in that room and then let them piece it out bit by bit for a fee or over the course of a series of Sunday morning sermons or through an academic course. No, God chose to use those disciples to affirm the diversity and multicultural beauty of Creation, speaking every language under the sun, so that a new community shaped in the love of Jesus Christ might break forth on the earth.

In the words of Rev. Mindi Weldon-Mitchell, “God speaks in plural.”

When some of the crowds began to pushback, wondering if the disciples had been partying up in that room all night long, Peter explains that today was a day of the Lord, a day that the prophet Joel had spoken about, when men and women, young and old, free and slave would have the audacity to prophesy, to dream and vision. This new community would live up to that billing, daring to imagine a community that was more than safe but dared to live into God’s expansion dream for humanity where “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

A community of welcome for all.
A community of justice for all.
A community full of brave disciples who go beyond their comfort in extending God’s love to even those who are told they are unlovable.

In this series, You Deserve a Break, this is the foundation for how I imagine church should be - a restful community, a community of human beings living in the way of Jesus’ love so that everyone who is a part knows they are loved fully and completely and everyone is invited to live courageously for God.

How can church / community give us rest?

Restful community might look like this:

A community where we can be authentic about our struggles and pain and loss and discomfort. No fairness. No illusions. No hiding. And where God meets us in our language and our own context - right where we are. Where we do our best to welcome that violent rushing wind and tongues of fire.

A community that invites us to move from safety to bravery. God does not call a church into being that asks the minimum of us - God calls us to risk and dare and dream and vision. That’s freeing. I am not talking about a church that keeps us busy in pointless meetings or tiny, safe decisions - but a community that says go for it, living your call and mission compelled by the power of the Holy Spirit.

A community where the love of God moves us from exclusivity to inclusivity. From the upper room into the community. From afraid to open. Growing churches care less about their own needs than their neighbor’s needs. That’s a hard shift! A restful community is one that constantly challenges us to move from a love that is exclusive to a love that is ever more and more inclusive for those who are hurting.

And that is the kind of community that our world needs - that immigrants need as they face so many barriers, as those in the midst of grief as they feel encouraged to push down their pain and hide, as those who are cast out of their homes or experience the fear of violence against their bodies, as those who are going through doubts and struggles in their faith…. That is the kind of community that our society needs in the midst of fear and division - a place of profound welcome and love - the kind of community that God brought into being on Pentecost.

Several years ago, a pastor in North Texas was launching a new church.

He was very intentional about this process with prayer and discernment, learning about the target community to launch this new faith community, dreaming and building and visioning of what this church was going to be like. One of the questions he was asked early on was about the makeup of this congregation to be. Would they be a multicultural church? And I think he sat down with his team and wrestled with this question but realized how difficult it would be. He told the gathered number of people, “We don’t plan to be a multicultural church, because it is too much work.”

That answer sat with me for a long time, because as we have done church, he was right. Being a church full of people who don’t look the same, talk the same, love the same, serve the same, and even believe the same is really, really, really hard work. There is tension. There is difficulty. How do we gather people with different stories and ways of life and understandings of scripture and cultural gifts and make them one? How do we do that when as a society, considering the history of division around race and ethnicity and gender, don’t always do a very decent job? His answer was a safe answer - and while sometimes, we need safe spaces, especially in this present moment in our culture, more than safety we need bravery.

Is this who we are called to be? Yes, it’s hard work - but I am proud after 60 years we are working out our bravery. May we feel that violent wind moving us out of this room and into a beautiful, diverse, changing world so that all who call upon the name of the Lord might be saved! Amen!