Grace Lutheran Church Day of Pentecost, June 4, 2006

The Rev. Evan Gaertner
Day of Pentecost “Together”
June 4, 2006 Acts 2:1-21

Learning a second language, or at least attempting to, is a regular part of going to school. Most students nowadays will study Spanish and others might chose French. When I went to High School I studied German. My class as a whole did not do to well and at the end of the year our teacher quit and became a carpenter. Some people pick up other languages like its nothing and for others it is a painful chore.

The whole idea of different languages scatters and separates us from others. You might get frustrated when making a phone call trying to get technical assistance and the person on the other end has an accent that is difficult to understand. If you do not know how to speak the same language as someone else it is difficult to work together.

There was a time when the whole world had one language and common speech. In the book of Genesis we can learn about the people that gathered together in a wide open space called Shinar. They said to themselves, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly. Let’s build a tower out of these bricks held together by tar. Come let’s build a city and tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered.”

They started to build their tower. They were all working together and making use of the latest technology. But the reason they were working together was the very reason they would become scattered. They had gathered themselves around their pride and arrogance. So the Lord God came down and scattered them and confused their language so they could not understand each other.

The people were scattered on account of their inability to order their lives under God. God would not allow them to become one people, understanding each other, because they did not desire to understand God’s purposes for themselves.

God in his grace gathers us. From being a scattered people with different languages and cultures we are gathered together by the Holy Spirit into Christ.

You have been baptized into Christ. The language of God’s love was spoken at your baptism. Baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, you were given a new language to speak. It is the language of undeserved love.

In a certain way learning a language is how I have understood confirmation. Confirmation is a close look at the language of your baptism, the language of God’s grace. There are words and ideas that sound foreign. But the words of faith sound foreign not only because we may need to look certain words up in a dictionary but because the very idea that we have a God that loves us and cares for us is foreign to a world of me, me, me.

The best way to learn a foreign language is through immersion. My wife in college spent a semester studying in Mexico. Her Spanish speaking abilities grew remarkably during that semester. And I know that before I went to visit her for two weeks I was a worried that I would be so dependent on her to get around because I did not know any Spanish. In those two weeks of language and culture immersion I was able to order my own food at restaurants and figure out how to get back to the airport.

But not surprisingly after being separated from the language and culture of Mexico my Spanish is now better represented by the menu board at Taco Bell.

God desires that you trust in him completely. He has given the gift of eternal life through the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ. He wants you to hold onto that gift completely. Immerse yourself in God’s love through the Word and the Sacraments and you will discover daily the beauty of God’s language of grace. His undeserved love shown to you upon the cross speaks volumes louder than this world of selfishness and ignorance of need. But if you separate yourself from God’s Word and his Sacraments you are pulling away from where God’s speaks to you.

When the day of Pentecost came the disciples were all in one place. What sounded like a great wind came rushing into the house where they were sitting and what appeared like tongues of fire came to rest on each of them. The Holy Spirit worked through them that day bringing the good news of God’s loves to all the people that were gathered in Jerusalem.

People divided by language and culture each heard the truth of God’s language of undeserved love. It sounded foreign and strange to some. So they said that the disciples must be drunk, but it was only nine in the morning. Through the power of the Holy Spirit people heard in their hearts the wonderful good news that God’s love is real. A real love made known through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It was through the words of the spirit spoken by the disciples that the people scattered around the world, divided by language and rivalry came together. God brings people that are scattered, lonely and lost by their sinfulness together by his grace and mercy.

The gathering of believers in the book of Acts describes the community of believers that is formed when we speak the words of God’s love. Congregations and families break down when we no longer know how to speak the language of God’s love to one another. Look at the end of Acts chapter two and find that God brought the people together. When they came together they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

I know that we can look around and recognize that church attendance is not as common as it used to be. A professor at a Christian college noted that he had over the years heard one variation or another of the question, “Do I have to go to church to be a good person?” Many of them wanted to hear the answer, “No” in order to justify themselves. It was common for the students to try to make a distinction between being religious with doing all the religious functions of society compared to being spiritual and having a spiritual relationship with God. Spirituality was seen as a matter of personal freedom and a way to be a good person without the institutionalization of religion that hey were finding at church.

But here is the challenge in the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost. The idea of religion and church and spirituality are inseparable from one another. Religion and spirituality in the book of Acts are community activities and events. It is as the disciples were all together that the spirit came. It was to the crowds that they spoke. It was the divided and scattered people that were brought together that stayed together to devote themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. The Day of Pentecost was a stop to the scattering that began at the Tower of Babel. The Day of Pentecost was a witness that God desires to bring us together back into a relationship with him.

Coming to church is not a requirement to be a believer in Jesus Christ. But I consider how foundational developing a community is to what Jesus does.

The language of the church is not English, Latin, or Spanish. The language of the church is the harsh truth that we are sinners and deserve God’s judgment but instead of speaking words of condemnation against us we hear God proclaiming his love. That is the language that brings us together. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Grace Lutheran Church

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