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Welcome to Hillsboro United Methodist Church! If you are searching for deeper meaning in your life that includes lasting relationships, spiritual growth and service to the world you have come to the right place. We offer a safe place in which to ponder important life questions within an atmosphere of support. Our hearts, our minds and our doors are open. We hope that as you visit with us that you will find a place to call home.
Sermon - May 23rd, 2010
Challenging Our Assumptions
Rev. Gwen Drake
Acts 2:1-21
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
What is Pentecost? What do you believe about Pentecost? You have sung some songs, heard the Scripture, heard countless sermons on the subject, and now I ask you, what do you believe about it…I mean really believe, not just, what do you know about it, what do you believe about it. Take a minute to think about as I grab a microphone because I am going ask you to share out loud, those who are brave, with all of us briefly what Pentecost is for you. There is no right or wrong answers here. As they told me in my coaching classes, there is one rule, here, and that is “no one gets to be wrong.”
(Sharing and discussion.)
Through this video we saw that our culture defines how we see the world through something as simple as asking directions and finding an address. We operate on certain assumptions. The video showed that for every assumption, there is an opposite assumption, a different assumption. I have an assumption that right here in this place are people operating on different assumptions. Or, another way to say it, is we have our own way of looking at the world. We have our own filters and they are not all the same. Like on the video, are streets the unnamed spaces between the blocks or the blocks the unnamed spaces between the streets? We can look at our filters right here, right now? What assumptions did you bring with you today? Those of you who were brave enough to share your belief about Pentecost or you who didn't share, what assumptions do you have?
(Sharing and discussion)
Okay, by now I’m sure some of you are wondering why? What are we doing this for, in worship (because you also came with your assumptions about worship)? And my answer to that is because these differences we have in world views, perspectives, assumptions is what Pentecost is all about. “Devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem” had gathered together that day-- a melting pot of diversity! Different languages, world views, perspectives, assumptions—possibly even more diversity than we have here today. Did you hear the list from the reading in Acts? Residents from Mesopotamia and Egypt and Cyrene, visitors from Rome, Cretans, Arabs. They were all speaking, inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were all being understand—the work of the Holy Spirit. It was amazing and perplexing. So much so, observers thought they were drunk at 9 o’clock in the morning!
We get comfortable with our own views, our own ways, our own ideas. We get so comfortable we begin to think our perception is “natural” while others are not. Or, we are right; they are wrong. Or, we are the “in” group and they are “out.” It was the same struggle two thousand years ago. We forget the journey it took for us to come to what we assume. We have cultural expectations engrained in us we are not even aware of until we meet someone different. Everything we experience we experience through filters: cultural filters, intepersonal filters, avoidance filters, filters of personal experience. . It is not an easy task to shake these loose, or open a window through our filters, a window of understanding.
It took a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, filling the entire house to burst open people’s hearts—and out came words. Tongues as of fire rested on them—I don’t even have a good picture in my mind of what that is! They acted like they were filled with new wine! That was the assumption of some people!
Then Peter stood up amongst them, raised his voice with ferocious courage and clarity, “We are not drunk, we are filled with the Spirit, just as God declared through the prophet Joel.”
Jesus saw those filters in his day. Jesus didn’t say they were good or bad, right or wrong. He just pointed them out, he stepped over filter boundaries, he ate with sinners, touched the untouchable, challenged the assumptions of his day.
Jesus also said, “Before you take out the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, remove the log in your own.” And he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He even said, “Love your enemies.” In other words, he said, I want you to look at the world through a different filter--the filter of love. It is the only filter that will break down the barriers between us.
Roger Nicole, professor emeritus of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, wrote, "what we owe that person who differs from us, whoever that may be, is what we owe every human being--we owe them love. And we owe it to them to deal with them as we ourselves would like to be dealt with or treated. (Matthew 7:12)”
Nicole helpfully reminds us that, "we owe it to our opponents to deal with them in such a way that they may sense that we have a real interest in them as persons, that we are not simply trying to win an argument or show how smart we are, but that we are deeply interested in them--and are eager to learn from them...”
We owe each other a spirit of love in the midst of all our different assumptions. We honor Christ and each other when we learn to discuss our world view with love and grace and patience.
Pentecost is about God doing a new thing again. It es not about the Holy Spirit swooping in a fixing all the problems of diversity and differences. It is not about the Holy Spirit making everyone believe the same thing. Pentecost didn’t fix any problems at all. I think it caused more problems! People were acting drunk. Peter rose up and spoke a radical message about visions and dreams that included slaves and women, oh my gosh! God was taking the lid off and opening a whole can of worms! This was so much more than a linguistic event! This was the creation of a whole new community from scratch, and those in the United Methodist Church who are dreaming about new church starts, or those of you who have been part of a new church start know what a mess that can be.
The disciples and those gathered received the gift of the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus. This set in motion what had been at a standstill since the death and resurrection—the start of a new community that would go out into the world with a story and proclaim it boldly. This new community started with these devout Jews from all the nations, it moved into the Gentile communities—even more diversity with all of its problems. And what followed was 2,000 years, of communities being transformed, coming together and splitting, transformation, coming together, and splitting off, transformation, coming together and splitting off.
First, the split of church and synagogue, then the east and west, then Catholic and Protestant, and then all the protestant denominations and on and on, and here we are at Hillsboro United Methodist Church, with our own set of values and assumptions and beliefs, coming together because of nothing less than the miracles of experience and timing and the love of Christ. Here we are, together, because that Pentecost experience was an experience of understanding. A multitude of world views were shared, the barriers came down, and the experience was transforming and set in motion a story that has lasted 2,000 years and is still continuing. It is not a perfect story. It is very human and nothing less than miraculous.
The story begins when we hear the message in our own language, knowing how language and culture frames our experience of the world, and then allowing the love of Christ through the Holy Spirit break open that frame so that we can connect with honor and respect to each other who have their own language and cultural frames. Every time this happens, Pentecost happens.
Pentecost is about taking away our cultural filters and putting on the filter of love and understanding. Pentecost happens when in the midst of our different world views and common assumptions. Pentecost happens when our assumptions are challenged! Pentecost happens when we begin to see each other through the filter of love and marvel at understanding each other. Yes, we can be amazed today.
May the Holy Spirit blow through us, challenging our assumptions, and opening us up to the experience of understanding, breaking open our filters, so we can see each other with the eyes and love of Christ.
Amen.