May 31, 1998

During the month of May, our sermons have focused on practical, down-to-earth ways you and I can touch others with the power of the resurrection of Jesus. We've taken a look at the arts of Christian friendship, Christian nurture, Christian forgiveness, and Christian memory. Today, we conclude the series with a message on the art of Christian communication.

And how appropriate that we take up this topic on Pentecost Sunday.

If there are defining moments in the life of a community, I think it would be fair to say that the day of Pentecost is the single-most important defining moment of the Christian Church. Although the disciples didn't know it yet, that first Pentecost observance following the death and resurrection of Jesus, would turn out to be the birth-moment of the Church, and the springboard from which the Good News would be propelled into the whole world.

Before the day of Pentecost, the followers of Jesus numbered about 120 people. By the end of that day, three thousand more people had been baptized into the Faith. Before Pentecost, this small gaggle of believers spent most of their time hiding from the authorities in a secret room in Jerusalem. After Pentecost, they were everywhere that people went, publicly and personally witnessing to the love and power of Jesus.

So what was it that happened? What caused this tiny band of very human, very timid people to be almost instantly transformed into the most powerful and outgoing Christian Love Machine that ever existed?

Why, the Spirit came!

Jesus had said it would, you know. Don't you remember how, just before Jesus ascended, he told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of his Father? The promise was that the Holy Spirit would be given them.

This is such a revolutionary claim, you know! You see, throughout the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit - the unseen Presence and Power of God - was placed upon the individual called to be the leader of God's people. So Moses was able to lead the exodus by a power greater than himself. Joshua was given a divine strength and wisdom to overcome the city of Jericho, and to bring the Hebrews into the Promised Land. David, despite his youth, was empowered to serve as the King of Israel.

But when the leader died, or became faithless (as some did), or passed on the torch to another, the Spirit was taken away and placed upon the life of the new leader. It was to the leader of the people that the Spirit was given. But not to the people themselves.

But the death and resurrection of Jesus changed all that! Throughout his ministry, Jesus told the disciples that, one day, the Spirit would come - not just to their leaders - but to every believer.

And on Pentecost - fifty days after the Passover - it happened.

Luke tells us that the believers - just 120 or so remained - were gathered in prayer in the upper room. Suddenly, there was the sound of rushing wind, like a great tornado. The whole room was filled with the roar. Something like fire appeared around, above and among them, and upon each of their heads there rested what seemed to be an individual tongue of the flame. And as they chanted their traditional Jewish prayers for Pentecost, something very strange began to happen! Little by little, the Hebrew language of their prayers began to change, and to take the shape of other languages.

And as all this took place, it just so happened that a bunch of foreign travelers - Jewish pilgrims who lived in other countries - came driving by in one of those big Holy Land Tour Buses. And with the air conditioning on the fritz, all the windows were open, and they heard something they could hardly believe! Coming from the house, they heard their own native languages being spoken! And what was being said was that God loves us, and that God sent his Son to save us, and that Jesus was raised from the dead, and that the Kingdom of God - with its justice, its healing, and its freedom from all oppressors - is coming!

The Holy Spirit had arrived. And from that day on, followers of Jesus have gone into the world, relying upon the power of the Spirit, to care for the sick, reach the lost, heal the broken, set people free, lift up the poor and embrace the stranger, and proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

If ever there was a defining moment in the life of the Christian Church, Pentecost is it!

Its funny how we celebrate Pentecost today, nearly two thousand years after the event. Some churches have birthday cakes and the children sing "Happy Birthday" to the Christian Church. Other churches launch balloons - usually big bright red ones. Here, we invite people to wear something red, and we sing some Holy Spirit hymns, and take note of the Pentecost colors and symbols of our changed altar cloths.

In the medieval church, Pentecost was observed much more dramatically. Harvard scholar Diana Eck has found that one of the neat cathedral traditions in 10^th century Rome had something to do with the reason the domed ceilings of the sanctuaries were often painted with pictures of clouds and heavenly scenes. These paintings, you see, also concealed trap-doors leading to the roof of the cathedral. And on Pentecost Sunday, some hapless church members were assigned the task of climbing up onto the roof and, at just the right moment in the Pentecost service, would release live doves through the holes in the ceiling. The dove, of course, is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. And so, out of the painted skies and clouds on the cathedral ceiling, the doves would descend - swooping, diving symbols of a vitally present Holy Spirit!

But that's not all. At about just the same moment, the choirboys would break into the whooshing and drumming sound of a holy windstorm. And then, as the doves were flying and the winds were rushing, the ceiling holes would once again be utilized -- as bushel upon bushel of rose petals were showered down upon the congregation. These were symbols of the flames of fire resting upon the heads of all.

Oh, there have been, and are, many ways of celebrating the coming of the Spirit. But today, I want to invite you to discover a new one. A sort of ordinary, less-dramatic one. Today, come and learn the art of Christian communication.

Because that's what the coming of the Spirit calls us to. The love and power of God offered in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not to be kept quietly to ourselves in a secret upper room. Rather, it is to be shared with everyone, everywhere! And if I may be so bold as to point out what I think is the most important part of the Spirit's work on Pentecost, I would first aim you toward verse 6.

And then to the end of verse 11.

This is the art of Christian communication. One of the greatest gifts you can ever give another person is to learn to share Jesus - to learn to share God's love - in the language of that person.

This is not easy to do. In fact, one of the great difficulties in the world in general is to be able to transcend cultural and other differences to be able to truly communicate ideas. Susan Resneck Pierce, President of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, points out the difficulties American corporations have faced when bringing their products overseas. For instance, when Coca Cola first went into China, they used a Chinese symbol that phonetically represented the name Coca Cola. But the marketing campaign, featuring the symbol, was an utter failure. Upon further investigation, they learned that the new symbol, that phonetically represented Coca Cola, translated into Chinese as, "Bite the wax, tadpole." So they changed it to a symbol that means, "May the mouth rejoice," and the Chinese have been coke-aholics ever since.

Same sort of thing happened with one of my heroes - Frank Perdue. You know Frank's famous slogan, don't you? "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." Well, when the company tried to open up the Spanish-speaking market to their product, they learned that the Spanish translation of "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" turned out to be, "It takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate."

To be an effective communicator of anything, you have to learn to speak the language of the people you're trying to reach. And on Pentecost Sunday, we learn that, from the earliest days of the Christian Church, the Spirit has been working to help us do this. Yet, I think the truth of the matter is that most Christians and churches in our day, are not very good at speaking the language of the people we're trying to reach with the love of Christ.

One day, I received a telephone call from a young girl - about 16-years old - asking me if I'd christen her baby. I told her I'd be happy to speak with her about it, and so I went over to the house for a visit. She pretty honestly shared with me the fact that she now knew how stupid it was to become sexually active at her young age. When she first learned she was pregnant, she said, she felt terribly ashamed. But then, after thinking it through, decided that the time had come for her to begin to take life seriously and to start making responsible decisions. The first such decision she made was to not have an abortion. With a supportive mother and father, she chose to give birth to the baby. The second decision she made was to not drop out of school. She sensed that the only way she could make a life for her baby and herself was to get an education. So she committed herself to the terribly difficult task of going to school and raising the baby. The third decision the girl made was to not marry the 16-year-old father. He was a drug user and not at all prepared to be a responsible parent. Although she felt she loved him, and arranged to let him visit the child as often as he wanted, she decided that he needed to do a lot of growing up. The fourth decision she made was that she would raise her baby to know the love of Christ, by nurturing it in a church family. And so she called her home church and asked her pastor to baptize the baby.

He said "no".

Oh, he felt bad about saying "no", but church rules are church rules, after all. The church would not allow him to baptize an illegitimate child - as he called her baby. But, if she were to marry the sniveling, irresponsible, sixteen-year-old stud - my words, not his - then the church would be happy to help.

When I met this remarkable young girl in whose life the Holy Spirit was clearly at work, she sat in a chair across from me, cuddling her beautiful baby girl, weeping profusely as she related to me the despair she felt from having her baby rejected by her own church. Then, she screwed up her face with a look of great determination and blurted, "I am NOT going to give up on this! I want my baby to be raised as a Christian! I'll baptize her MYSELF if I have to!!"

As an amusing sidelight to this, one of the people I once shared this story with responded that, while he didn't agree with the church's insensitive reaction to the girl, he would have told her that it is unbiblical to Baptize babies in the first place. And then he went on for an hour or so explaining why.

But, you see, your or my brand of Baptismal theology is not the point. The point is that we in the church know very well how to speak the language of the church, and of our denominational orientation, and of our theology, and of our sense of ecclesiastical propriety.

But, dear friends, unless we learn to speak the language of sixteen-year old unwed mothers and others like them, we will never be able to touch the world with the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Right now, in our own church, we're making a concerted and genuine effort to learn to speak the language of new residents in our community and visitors to our church. Did you know that the language of newcomers is very different than the language of people who already belong? May the Spirit teach us to speak in the language of those we seek to serve.

And all around us, there are communication challenges that we need to rise up to.

In our families, spouses need to learn the language of the other.

In our society, we so desperately need to learn to understand the language of children caught in the escalating web of violence and self-destruction.

And as representatives of Christ, you and I must learn to speak the language of the poor...and of people who hurt so deeply they are angry with God...and of those who are searching, but haven't found yet.

Dear friends, the promise of Pentecost is that - when the Spirit comes - disciples of Jesus will be given power to be his witnesses in all the world. This is the art of Christian communication.

It involves not preaching, but listening. Not projecting our understandings, but understanding others. Not watering down our faith, but asking the Spirit to make our faith more creative and able to reach others with the power of the resurrection of Jesus.

Today, may you be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and receive power to effectively and faithfully communicate the love of Jesus Christ.