October 6, 2013 Sermon "Don't Want to be Average, Want to be Different!!"

Acts 2: 1-23

It used to be that being different was a problem to be overcome.  Consider the history of the African American.  In 1776, all men were created equal, unless you were black, then you could be property.  Four score and seven years later a war was fought, a Civil War, north and south, slave states versus free states, and there came the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery.  Five score years later, a jump from the 1860’s to the 1960’s, came the Civil Rights movement, African Americans not slaves but certainly not equal, nor free.  I wonder what people will say when we hit the 200^th anniversary of Gettysburg when they reflect on race relations in our country. 

And the vision of the solution was made so eloquently by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have A Dream” speech.  He said, “I have a dream that one day…little black bolys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.  I have a dream today!”

The solution, equality that rises above racial and cultural lines, equality that rises above the color of one’s skin, it finds a Christian foundation in the words of our Scripture this morning.  The Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples and they went forth to speak to the gathered Jews of the Roman Empire.  They were there from all over the empire that day and Peter gathered them all into one solution, an equality that was found in Jesus Christ.  See what Peter says, ““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.  ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

This pattern has been repeated again and again, from the Civil Rights movement, through every immigrant wave through into our country.  At different times, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, all were oppressed to some degree or other by “whiter” Americans.  We’ve fought against oppression of people of Latino origin, of South Asian origin, of Chinese origin, you can almost pick your minority.  There was and continues to be a struggle for the equal rights of women.  The glass ceiling is still very much a part of the American culture.  Religious rights are another issue.  Jews, Muslims, people of other faiths.  Or people of our own faith!  How much suspicion existed when JFK was running as the first openly Catholic President?  We are fighting that battle now in the American culture over issues of sexuality. 

But the solution always comes back to that one phrase, “In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”  This is not to say that the church has had a uniquely wonderful place in the American culture wars.  The Presbyterian church split north and south before the Civil War, and took another twenty years after the Civil Rights movement to rejoin.  There were plenty of Presbyterians in the Ku Klux Klan.  We have fought these battles over difference as much as anyone else in our nation.

But God continues to use us to bring forth the equality of all as the Children of the Living God.     

But somewhere in the dawn of the Information Age, the effects of being “different” have changed.  No longer is “different” something of oppression to be overcome.  It is now something to be celebrated, and stressed, and pressed as far as it can go.

Now, “different” leads to being “special”, as though we are seeking personal significance and meaning in being different and, by extension, better, than everyone else. 

The Internet has given us a platform to celebrate our “special-ness” as never before.  We can post pictures and videos in real time of anything and everything that we are doing.  And once on Facebook or Youtube or Instagram, let me say unequivocally ALWAYS on Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram.

There are some people who take it to extremes, I am sure you have watched some of those reality shows where parents put their kids on the beauty pageant circuit, or the dance circuit, or some other such.  It’s like watching a train crash peering into the lives of these people.

Once it was ‘only’ the stars of film, TV, sports, or music that made it onto the screens of America. Now anybody can do it.  And so many of them who put themselves out there really, really shouldn’t. 

In the interest of full disclosure, there are photos of your pastor on his Facebook page.  Every one of them comes from somebody else willing to risk breaking their lens.  And, taken as a group, they tend to support the argument that some things should just not be posted on the internet.  The only redemption is when I am in a couples shot with my wife.

As a parent, what I have observed the most is other parents posting stuff about their kids.  Again, so much of the stuff that gets put out there really shouldn’t.  And it makes me wonder why.  Does the world need to see every dance the child was ever in?  Every song that they sung?  Every goofy or funny or nice moment caught on camera?  Are people so desperate for attention?  So desperate to be considered ‘better’ in the eyes of their peers, or in the eyes of total strangers?

Are people so desperate to be considered “special”, to find meaning in their lives by what they look like?  And how does the church begin to respond to that?  Now, the idea of God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh makes me like everybody else. 

At first glance, there are two highly contrasting ideas here.  Trying to find meaning in our lives by our own differences, our own specialness, our own uniqueness.  This runs counter to what God offers to us, finding meaning in being His child, living out all that He can put into our lives.  That leads to the further problem that ALL Christians are together in Jesus.  They are all equal in the eyes of the Lord.  How could any of them be extra special?

Unlike the differences we sought to resolve in the Civil Rights movement, where different meant somehow less than whoever was making the judgment call, now being different means being somehow more than those people you are different from.

And the response of the church has to change.  When being different causes you to be made less than you are, that is a justice issue.  Jesus’ death on the cross is the ultimate leveling of the playing field.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  All need the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, the Christian response to people trying to find meaning in their own differences, when it rises to the level of displacing the church, we need to call it what it is, idol worship.  Christ has been displaced.  And in the end that will only bring disappointment and betrayal.  Because we are sinful, we are fallible, we are fallen. 

But now we have a dilemma.  If someone is convinced their meaning is to be found in their own differences, how can we hope to appeal to them with the message of Jesus?  The answer is that we, by ourselves, cannot.  But we, in the power of the Holy Spirit, can. 

That is the power of our passage this morning.  The disciples are breaking into the world with the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection not because they have somehow found the courage to jump out there, but because the Spirit is driving them out.  It is not a question of how they might talk about Jesus, it is a question of how they might STOP talking about Jesus. 

The Spirit is the most difficult to understand of the Trinity.  God the all-powerful creator father, I can get that.  It is too big to wrap my mind around, but we can get the concept.  Jesus, the Son, God become human, living with us, dying for us, coming again for us, we have the gospel accounts.  He’s one of us, also God, but one of us.  But now, what about the Spirit? 

Well, let me tell you this.  When you are gathered in a room with a bunch of Christian young people, and someone in the room makes a leap of faith, and the love of Jesus becomes real, the Spirit of the Lord is evident on their face.  When people are singing in church and their souls phase with the music, the Spirit is oh so present.  When you are present with somebody in need and the right words, the right story, or maybe the right thing is that your tongue is arrested from speaking, there is the Spirit.

There is the quandary.  The bible is clear that in the Spirit, we are uniquely gifted, specially recognized, different and diverse children of the living God, living out true change and joy and wonder in the world that surrounds us.  And we don’t do that by what defines us in and of ourselves, but how we use those gifts and wonders to help other people.  That is the ultimate message of Calvary, that Jesus helps all to eternal life by his death and resurrection, for us.

But he culture around us wants us to believe that we have it in ourselves to be unique and special in the world.  The ‘need’ for church is diluted, pushed away.  Who has to go to that place to find happiness when I can find it in my own differences from the world around me?   

Do you see that interfering with what we hope to build here?  Can you see that getting in the way of our neighborhood in God’s kingdom?  Can we trust in the Spirit’s presence enough in our own lives to do what we can to overcome it and truly allow God’s kingdom, not our own, to reign in our lives?  I believe we can.

Amen.