65 // Pentecost // Jacqui Lewis

This week, for your preaching prep and your spiritual edification, if you will, we are going to talk a little bit about Acts:2.

Now, it’s Pentecost this Sunday, June 4 and every Pentecost I preach this text. I could preach others. We could think about Joel, we could think about the Spirit coming. We can think about Romans and the gifts of the Spirit. But no. I preach this text from Acts: 2 because it's an amazing text for people who are thinking about a multiracial, multicultural future. Which of course we are.

You know the story. All of those Jewish people from the known world have gone to Jerusalem for holiday. I think it should Shavu’ot, but I think I always mispronounce it. They're going to celebrate the giving of the law when Moses goes up on the mountain and gets the glory of God all over him gets the commandments given to him on a tablet.

Every time I say that I think about Cecil B. DeMille’s movie Exodus. Well all the special effects right? The music and Moses has the light all over him. There’s a kind of lightning rod fingers writing things on the tablet. Psst....You know it didn’t happen that way...

Anyway, everybody's in Jerusalem celebrating this “Giving of the Law” and what happens? The disciples are there and they are still excited about Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus and the sense that God is present everywhere.

They go to preach to these people in the city. and all the people that are gathered hear the good news of God's love and power in their own language. In their own language. The disciples are speaking Aramaic. How do they know how to speak in such a way that people from Libya and Syrian and all those name we can’t pronounce, can hear? But some how, there is a translation miracle and they hear it, in their own language.

What if the church today felt it was her job to preach the good news of Gods love in the language that people need in order to hear it and receive it.

Wow We would be speaking in such a way that four year olds could get it. We would be speaking in such a way that millennials would get it. And they’d get it that we get it that their friends... their Muslim friends, and their Jewish friends, their Buddhist friends, their Atheist friends also beloved by God and they wouldn’t have to pick. Church friends they'd get it.

If we were speaking in the language of all the people who need to know it, we’d be more trans friendly. Because those trans women who are being persecuted need to know that God loves them.

If we were speaking in the language that people need to know it, we’d be speaking so that Muslims are having conversations with Christians, and Christians are having conversations with Jews, and Jews are having conversations with Buddhist. And none of us would would act like we have God in our own pocket and that we know all about what God desires. 

I am talking about a translation miracle.

In these hot mess times, we need to do Gospel. We need to do good news, by any means necessary. If it's got good news in it for the poor, for the marginalized. If it's got good news in it, for gay and trans and lesbian people. If it's got good news for people who have been hurt, wounded, disrespected, dispossessed by the church, then it is good news. And if it's not good news for them, then it is not gospel.

This Pentecost, think about the people on the margins who need to hear God's love, in a way they can take it in.

I think that's sermon we should preach. On our own devotional, help, support, reflection, imagine what you need to hear from God that lets you know how special, how amazing, how beautiful you are.

God loves you. Period.