Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It’s 2 o’clock in the morning; do you know where your pastor is?

At 2am Wednesday morning I was lying down on the couch, unable to sleep. It was a frustrating experience, not only because of being so exhausted, but more so because of the thoughts and ideas that were keeping me awake, which I couldn’t shake out of my head.

Something rather insignificant happened earlier that day that made me think of myself as a failure in one particular area of my life. Once that thought pried its way into my mind, it infected my thoughts about parenting, marriage, work, friendship, and many more. My mind was like that scene from Ghostbusters, where the ghosts escaped their containment and terrorized the streets of New York City. You know, like this:

Lying awake at 2am, having listened to the same mental message playing on repeat for three hours, being exhausted and furious at my inability to stop the voice in my mind, I finally decided to pray.

You might like to think that your pastor wouldn’t wade through three hours of emotional frustration before turning to prayer. You might like to think that your pastor wouldn’t engage in prayer only as a last resort. However, in that particular situation, that’s exactly how I handled it.

The prayer was a simple one –something like, “Lord, help me realize I am more than my failures.” And it was in this act of prayer that I was finally able to hear and believe a different mental message – the message that I was a beloved creation of the Holy God and that God had promised to be with me.

It is not always easy to believe or even remember God’s promise to be a part of us, particularly when there are so many voices in our world both “out there” in the world and “in here” in our own minds. It sounds unbelievable to claim that the God who created the heavens and the earth would ever choose to make a home in our bodies.

And yet, the creation stories in Genesis tell of a God who formed human beings in God’s own image and filled them with the divine breath. Scripture begins with a claim on our bodies – that it is God’s own presence that brings each one to life.

Scripture is also filled with story upon story of people choosing to look outside of themselves to feel God. For instance, when the Hebrew people built a temple. “On the day of the dedication of "Solomon's Temple," the glory of Yahweh (as fire and cloud from heaven) descended and filled the Temple (1 Kings 8:10-13)....[The temple became the residence and visible reminder of God’s presence] for the Jewish people. This naturally made Solomon's Temple both the center and centering place of the whole world, in Jewish thinking.

But in 587 BC, the Babylonians tore down the Temple and took the Jews into exile. As Father Richard Rohr writes, “[This destruction] prompted a crisis of faith. The Temple was where God lived! So Ezra, Nehemiah, and Jeremiah convinced the people that they must go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple so God can be with them again. There is no account of the fire and glory of God ever descending on this rebuilt temple.”

He continues, “The absence of visible glory [of Yahweh] must have been a bit of an embarrassment and worry for the Jewish people. This could explain the growth of Pharisaism, a belief strong in Jesus' time that if they obeyed laws more perfectly--absolute ritual, priesthood, and Sabbath purity--then the Glory of God would return to the Temple. This is the common pattern in moralistic religion: our impurity supposedly keeps Yahweh away. They tried so hard, but the fire never descended. They must have wondered, "Are we really God's favorite and chosen people?”

At 2am earlier this week, I felt a lot like those believers who couldn’t sense God’s presence in their new temple. My hours of frustration and desperation and only being able to think of myself as a failure left no room for God’s presence. I felt alone.

At yet, in my experience of anxiety, something prompted me to pray and connect with the truth that I had been taught so long ago: that God’s love for me overcomes all my mistakes and feelings of failure. God hadn’t abandoned me, and God never would.

And so I prayed, just as Jesus’ followers prayed when they gathered following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension; just as Jesus’ followers prayed when all of the sudden there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and “the fire from heaven descended, not on a building, but on people! And all peoples, not just Jews, were baptized and received the Spirit (Acts 2:38-41).”

The story of the disciples being filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost tells us that the new temple of God is the human person – just as it was in the beginning, when God breathed into the first man.

Gathering on this Day of Pentecost, we hear the stories of fire and prayer and amazement and are challenged to claim these stories as our own. We hear Jesus’ promise to send the Advocate to bear his presence in a world so concerned about labeling people as right and wrong, sinner and righteous, just and unjust.

God is present in this world, actively working in all people, especially those who are consumed with fear and feelings of failure. God’s presence and promises are ultimately the only thing to which we can ever hope to cling And that is enough.

quotes from Richard Rohr, "The Evolution of the Temple" from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation email dated April 20, 2015.

John 15:9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

I have previously mentioned several of issues that make the car I drive unique. One of the quirks I haven’t mentioned is that only one of the four speakers works; which means when I listen to the radio or the one CD that’s been stuck in there for seven years, I only hear what comes out of the right channel.

For anyone who isn’t sure what that means: an audio recording typically has two separate channels of sound: the right and left; when you listen to both channels it’s called “stereo.” Often these channels contain the same information, so you can listen to the right or left by itself and hear the entire song. But some songs have distinct right and left channels (which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve listened to headphones and heard a sound that was entering from one ear but not the other).

Any sound that comes out of my lonely car speaker carries only the right channel information. It makes for an interesting experience because even songs I know well sound completely different in my car...particularly anything by the Beatles, who loved to record different channels. Here’s an example:

The first time I heard this song in my car I thought I had accidentally stumbled a previously-unreleased acoustic version of the Beatles performing “Hey Bulldog.” It sounded incomplete; and it wasn’t until the song progressed that I actually realized what song it was. When the right and left channels are played together, it sounds like this:

You may not be a fan of the Beatles, but I think we can agree that it is much more interesting to hear this song in stereo. That distinctive guitar track certainly adds a necessary element to the song.

I see many similarities between the state of my car stereo system and the state of our world. Too often we go through life engaging only with one side of the story, one half of the picture, one ear full of sound.

Just ten years ago it was thought that we were entering an age of the flattening of the world, which had the power for free us from our isolated existences, break down cultural and economic walls of separation, and expose all people to diversity that would positively influence our behavior. But then came along social media platforms and political-leaning 24-hour “news” channels that allowed us to narrow and customize the news and opinions with which we actually wanted to engage.

In a recent study that examined how news passes through social media, “[Researchers] confirmed that as a bit of ‘news’… was passed from person to person, [the message became shorter and] the facts became distorted in large part due to biases of the people passing along the information"
(http://phys.org/news/2015-04-social-networks-exaggerating-news-events.html)

Anyone who has ever played the telephone game as a child already recognizes the truth of that statement.

And now that we find ourselves saturated with news sources on radio, 24-hour cable news, and social media feeds tailored to our biases, our understanding of the facts is as distorted as ever.

We create micro-cultures around ourselves; insulating our particular understanding of the world by choosing to only pay attention to the voices that reinforce our understanding of the world. Our opinions and biases go unchecked and we pass along filtered news and opinion that bears little actual resemblance to the complex issues of our world.

For example, if you get all your news from Fox News you heard the 2013 government shutdown described casually as a necessary “government slim-down;” whereas MSNBC was using language such as “needless and destructive” to describe the same event. Similarly, depending on how you’ve customized your news consumption, the recent events in Baltimore have either been reported to you as “riots” or a “revolution”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/business/media/when-our-news-is-gerrymandered-too.html?_r=0)

The task before us is to admit our own biases and prejudice and listen to the voices we would otherwise ignore; which will allow for a more nuanced, more complete, and more beautiful understanding of our world.

The point of my message today is not to get Fox News fans to tune into MSNBC for an hour a day (or vice-versa). For many of us, the most important voice that is missing from our newsfeed isn’t the voice of the political right or political left; rather, what’s missing from our newsfeed is the truth of God’s love for us and for all of God’s good creation.

Prior to his betrayal and execution, Jesus gathered his disciples together one last time and gave them commands that they were to follow to ensure that they would love one another. These commands, as listed in the 15th chapter of John include:

have joy
love as Christ loved
lay down one’s life for one’s friends
see the “other” as an “equal”
go and bear fruit

Each of these commands is impossible to live out without the understanding that we are first and foremost loved by God with a love that makes all these commands possible. Jesus prefaces all these commands with the primary plea to “abide in my love.” Recognizing that God loves us is the truth that makes it possible for us to have joy, love as Christ loved, lay down our lives for our friends, see the “other” as an “equal” and to go and bear fruit.

So many people simply can’t hear this truth coming out of the speakers in their lives. Maybe they’ve had damaging experiences in church, or maybe they feel as though God has abandoned them in a time of personal need, or maybe they’ve been erroneously taught that faith cannot co-exist with science.

Others have deliberately eliminated any trace of the truth of God’s love from their newsfeed, perhaps by blindly following the talking points of political parties, unfriending those who challenge their prejudices, or filling their lives with commercial pursuits designed to make consumers feel like they are inadequate and unloveable unless they buy the next best thing.

The most powerful force on earth or in heaven is for you to believe that God loves you just as you are and to let that love propel you into a world full of people who either can’t hear or choose not to listen to this truth.

My prayer for you is that you listen to the voices in the world that challenge you; that you take time to immerse yourself in scripture and prayer and acts of selfless generosity, where God’s truth is revealed; and that you fall in love with the God who loves you more than life itself. That’s a song the world needs to hear from the right and the left.

Amen.