Full Title: Our Pentecost Moment: Embracing God’s Beautiful Diversity
Scriptures: Acts 2:1-12; Romans 12:4–6
Theme:
Pentecost reminds us that God’s Spirit moves across boundaries and celebrates the beauty of diversity. In this sermon, based on Romans 12:4–6 and Acts 2:1–12, we are invited to embrace the many languages, cultures, and gifts within the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit calls us to reject conformity, open our hearts, and live as one united body—beautifully different, yet bound together in love.

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And there I was, sitting on the porch steps. A warm breeze whispered past, rustling my notes and gently massaging my thoughts. There was certainly no rushing, violent wind… or fire. As I looked out, through the Japanese maples, past the street to the hills that rise up beyond the far side of the Widewaters—in that quiet center—I saw several different pictures of creation.

I saw the blue heron making its late afternoon flight, mallards and black-tipped seagulls bobbing in the shallows, and a brigade of starlings marching their way across the fresh-cut lawn. I saw a nuthatch and goldfinches feasting on seed, seemingly without a care in the world. I saw the staunch oak trees standing tall in the blessed assurance that nothing would shake their foundation, the shag-bark maple still releasing spring blossoms and the dead weight of winter, the lilac now splashed in regal purple and splendid perfume, the sycamore still waiting for spring leaves to unfurl, and distant poplars waving at me with leaves performing a constant dance with sunlight in the wind—all of these created with the artistic hand of God’s grace.

I saw grass that needs mowing, soil that needs tilling, mulch that needs spreading, and ferns and peonies that need weeding. There is raking, pruning, and planting to be done… and a host of inside chores. Yet I am lost in this centering place, listening as the unique fizz of the beetle’s flight keeps harmony with the bumblebee’s low hum and the green bottle fly’s buzz—all of it mingling with the tender melody of a mother’s call to the newly hatched brood in the sparrow’s house, and the persistent pok-pok percussion of the hairy woodpecker, and the whisper of this refreshing breeze.

And the fire here takes on different kinds of light—skipping across the canal in burning brilliance, sliding down the roof to the west, creating shadows that stretch across the drive… some like statues of Ozymandias, tall and mighty… others as thin and fragile as violets… and some flames caught in a dance of sunsplash against the darkness.

What I saw on this canvas of creation, in this quiet center, was diversity. Surely, this must be true: no creation of God’s is exactly the same. All is different. Even each finger on our hand is different—one from the others. In God’s divine plan, diversity is evident everywhere.

I liken it to the stained glass windows of this beautiful sanctuary. Piece by piece, it is nothing more than a great mound of varied colored glass—many-hued reds and blues, greens and golds, peaches and browns—a host of diversity that comes together in unimaginable beauty to reveal to us the story of God.

As I sat on the steps, centering on today’s Scripture, I thought how Pentecost must always be with us, because the Spirit at Pentecost affirms diversity and multiplicity. Hear again the words:

“How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia; Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia; Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and Proselytes); Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s glory and power.”

The Spirit did not come to make all hear the same thing—no! Embracing diversity, the Spirit spoke in every native tongue. What a celebration of God’s way! This is our God—the Creator who wove diversity into every part of life. From the very beginning, diversity was in the plan. God created heaven and earth, evening and morning, water and sky, dry ground and seas, plants of every kind, birds and sea creatures, livestock and wild animals, male and female.

In God’s great plan, diversity comes together to complete the whole. Even God’s Word—the Bible—embodies diversity. It is a collection made up of multiple books from multiple sources, from multiple cultures, with multiple authors writing in multiple genres, in multiple languages, across multiple historical settings.

As I sat in that centering place, I tried to balance all of this—the unarguable evidence of God’s celebration of diversity—against the tensions and angst of our culture and times. I am ever conscious of the rift: the divide among our sisters and brothers, the building of intangible—yet palpable—walls that call us to gather in our like-mindedness—a kind of “If you’re not with us, you are against us” creed.

Do you witness, or at least sense, this gap that separates “us” from “them”? Do you find that we have shored up sides, pulled up the drawbridge, and hunkered down in our thinking—that we have confused unity with a call for uniformity? In these days of great divide, I find myself so often holding my tongue, fearing too much that I might offend, fearing too much that I am ripe for an argument, and sitting idly in the mediocre world of “agreeing to disagree”—a mindset that only serves to stifle deeper conversation.

There is a significant undertow just below the surface these days—a threatening quagmire that makes us unsure of our footing, off-center, and on guard with one another. Why is there such a call for like-mindedness, and such intolerance for diverse thinking?

As I revisited this chapter of Acts that records the amazement of Pentecost, I kept returning to God’s declaration: “I am creating a new thing.” Remember, the disciples were confronted with doing a new thing. They had gathered again to go fishing. Their spirits were low and their nets remained empty. From the shoreline, Jesus called out to them to put their nets down on a different side of the boat. Soon their nets were bursting with an abundance of fish.

Being open to change, being willing to try something new, opened them to a way forward. I wonder if, through the Spirit of Pentecost, we can’t find a way forward so that this divide no longer becomes a kind of anathema—a subject we can’t even talk about—but rather becomes the core from which we grow into splendid community.

What would it take for us to hear the divine in one another when we don’t speak the same language? Certainly, as a starting point, we would need a deep contemplative process—something that would give us the courage and the confidence to journey into areas of potential conflict, and the willingness to work beyond “agreeing to disagree.” Something that would encourage us to keep our drawbridges down, a process that would slow our thinking, keep us centered, and open us to the Holy Spirit at work in our differences.

What would it take for us to truly honor one another? Wouldn’t we need to be willing to touch the pain of the world and name it as real? Can we affirm that there is valid pain behind the movement of Black Lives Matter? Can we affirm that there is pain that continues to be endured by the LGBTQ community? Can we affirm that there is pain suffered by those facing physical, mental, and emotional challenges? Can we affirm that there are wounds for Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, and the host of “others” who are met with less than compassionate hospitality? Can we affirm that there is pain for the aging generation that questions the direction we traverse—and that there is pain in this generation that challenges old ways? Can we affirm that there is woundedness in the politics that separate us? Can we affirm that there is pain in the vulnerability of poverty?

Can we recognize the pain of others as legitimate? Can we suspend our judgment on another’s experience—judgment that cripples understanding? Brené Brown squarely hits the nail on the head when she states: “To empathize with someone’s experience, we must be willing to believe them as they see it—not how we imagine their experience to be.”

This is what Jesus taught us. Jesus accepted people where they were—he walked toward the leper, the blind, and those who needed healing. He also walked toward the Pharisees and Sadducees, willing to engage them in disputation because he recognized they were oppressing his people—thus, he spoke truth to power. Do we have the strength and courage to do that?

What would it take for us to listen to one another? Wouldn’t we need holy curiosity? Wouldn’t this cause us to embrace listening more and speaking less? So often, we enter into conversation anxious to have our say. And don’t we also find ourselves crafting our arguments rather than listening intently?

What would happen if—rather than seeking like-mindedness—we sought to understand what lies beneath the words of one’s story? What drives their way of seeing the world? What if we listened with a willingness to change our thinking? What if the way forward is to come with curiosity and a thirst for understanding others with compassion? Surely, we can learn to have effective discourse across generations and cultures, across a multitude of differing traditions—recognizing that each generation and culture has something to give and something to learn.

This kind of discourse can be likened to fishing in a different way—can’t it?—in a way that calls us to listen deeply to the Spirit, to one another, and to the community. And so, we need a contemplative process that keeps our hearts open to all kinds of ideas, however diverse. We must be willing to touch the pain of the world and claim it as real, and we must also have an active experience of hope. We need to foster a communal reality. We must believe that, by the design of the Great Creator and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we together can make a difference.

In order to work toward this new thing, we must have hope—hope that our hearts will open to the joy of diversity, and that each of us will be stirred to seek a way that is truly inclusive. It is inclusion that will make us flourish. In this way, we live fully into Paul’s understanding of the Church, as revealed in the book of Romans:

“In this way,” he says, “we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of His body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe, we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be—without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.”

Rather than seeking conformity and uniformity—rather than trying to make “others” bend and blend into us—what if our drive became to be more like what God has created us to be: beautifully diverse? That would be a worthy focus, wouldn’t it? Not that people are like me, but that we all—like those multitudes at Pentecost—speak of God’s glory and power in our own language.

This is our Pentecost moment. The wind of the Spirit will not be stopped—it stretches boundaries, crosses borders, and burns across the globe with a surplus of grace powered by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit never runs out of power, never erects walls of exclusion, never chooses only some—it pours out over all creation: the hills and the Widewaters, the maples and the oaks, the heron and the mallards, and even the sassy wren.

It washes over all—pours over, in, and through the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia; Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia; Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and all the visitors from Rome (both Jews and Proselytes), Cretans and Arabs—and all from the east, west, north, and south; all from every nation, every language, every gender, every sexual orientation, every class, every ethnicity, every political persuasion, every family history, every educational background, and every generation.

Even to us, on this very day, the Holy Spirit of Pentecost is blowing through—calling us to a new thing.