Living Out God's Values, a Pentecost sermon

In 1912 a brand new passenger ship, the RMS Titanic, sailed from Southampton, England. On the fourth day of its voyage to New York, the Titanic hit an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean. In just 2 hours and 40 minutes, the Titanic sank, killing more than 1500 people.

The iceberg it hit didn’t look that big, especially compared to the size of the Titanic. But as with most icebergs, up to 80% of its true size was under the water and that is where the real danger was – hidden from the crew and passengers.

Edward Hall who is a cross-cultural researcher, uses the idea of an iceberg to illustrate what culture is like. Culture is the way of life of a group of people at a particular time, especially customs, language, food, beliefs, values and assumptions. The visible part of the iceberg of Culture includes the readily observable aspects of culture – behaviors (always saying hello to elders), customs (having tamales on Christmas eve, symbols like food (tacos, enchiladas, menudo) and clothing (an huipil or for men a guayabera , language (Spanish/English), music (mariachi), and holidays (Day of the Dead). The invisible part of the iceberg of culture includes the powerful elements of often unseen and unspoken and even unconscious elements like beliefs (principles, views, opinions) and values  (morals, ethics, ideals) and attitudes and assumptions (unspoken expectations) about how things should be done. Both parts, what is visible and invisible make up the culture of a given group of people, and both parts shape our way of life and distinguish one group from another. But when the invisible part of culture – our beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions are unexamined, they can be as dangerous as the large underwater portion of the iceberg was to the Titanic.

Jesus was always helping people around him, especially religious folk like us, to look at what was hidden beneath the surface – the invisible icebergs of culture that drive our behavior.

When a group of men gathered to stone a woman who they thought had been caught in adultery, Jesus’ helped them look not just at her, but beneath the surface at their attitudes and beliefs. Which one of you, he asked, is perfect? He made them look at their underlying assumption that sinners should be killed. If you are going to kill her for having sinned, then shouldn’t everyone here to be killed? Having to look at themselves, they all dropped their stones.

When some religious folk got mad because Jesus and his disciples picked and ate from field of grain on the sabbath, Jesus asked them to look at their beliefs – what, he asked, was more important - the ritual of observing the sabbath or the actual people who the sabbath had been created by God for?

When religious folks asked Jesus to tell them whether the sins of his mother or father had made their son blind, Jesus helped them look at their assumption that illness was always caused by someone’s sin. Neither one he said – which was a very radical idea!

When Martha was irritated by her sister Mary’s desire to listen and learn from Jesus instead of helping in the kitchen, she asked Jesus to get Mary in line. But Jesus challenged Mary’s assumption that women were supposed to be uneducated and hidden away in the kitchen - serving the men – he told her that Mary had chosen the better thing – to come out of the kitchen and her serving role to sit at Jesus feet and learn from him.

And Jesus greatest challenge to his Jewish followers’ expectations was what the Messiah

would be like.  They had a firm expectation that the coming Messiah would rule over the earth in the same way that they experienced their Roman rulers ruling over them. They wanted to be at the top of the hierarchy – they wanted to own the largest army – they wanted to make the rules. But Jesus was constantly helping them to see that he was the Son of God, the Messiah, sent not to overthrow the Roman rulers, but sent by God to break the power of death and to establish a kingdom of love, mercy, and forgiveness where, despite our sin, all could experience an eternity with God.

Pentecost, which we just heard about in our scripture reading, is another example of how God challenged the followers of Jesus and us, today, to look at our beliefs, values, and our conscious and unconscious assumptions and expectations and align them with God’s values and expectations.

On that day so long ago, Jesus’ followers were gathered in Jerusalem. Who was there is important – the first chapter of Acts, vs. 13  tells us that  those present were, “Peter, John, James, Andrew, Phillip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James (son of Alphaeus), Simon, Judas (son of James) AND the women (who unfortunately do not get named) and Mary the mother of Jesus and Jesus’ brothers - a large group of men and women. Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he told them that God was going to send the Holy Spirit to them. But they had no idea just how that would happen or when.

The Jewish celebration of Pentecost – a harvest celebration - was occurring at the same time and Jerusalem was jammed with Jewish families.  Our scripture lists over 13 different people groups who were there, each with their own language and culture. They were from an area that stretched from modern day Italy, to Turkey, parts of Asia, all of the middle east through Iraq and Iran and all the way over to Egypt and Libya. It's understandable why God decided to send the Holy Spirit to Jesus' followers at that time.

Our scripture says that the Spirit arrived like a strong wind that blew through the room where they were gathered.  What looked like tongues of fire separated from one another and came to rest on them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other languages! The sound of the wind drew a crowd, and Jesus’ followers must have left the room where they were gathered and gone out to meet them because our passage says that these visitors to Jerusalem were amazed that they were suddenly hearing their own languages spoken by people who were from Galilee and spoke Hebrew.

Suddenly, everyone’s expectations and assumptions were challenged – the part of culture that usually lies hidden beneath the surface - and they began to get a look at God’s plan for the world, God’s values, and God’s assumptions! Today, our study of what happened on that Pentecost celebration challenges us also to look at our beliefs and values and assumptions and see if they are aligned with God’s values and assumptions.

First, God values equality.  We see this immediately in who the Holy Spirit comes to – not just the men (who were the favored gender in that time) but also to all of the women followers of Jesus. They all went out and began to share their experiences with Jesus.  The

crowd did not understand how they could be hearing about Jesus in their own language and from both men and women, and so Peter steps up and begins to preach powerfully about Jesus. He quotes the prophet, Joel, from the Old Testament – “God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons AND your daughters will prophesy. . .and later again, “Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy – or preach!” The Greek word used for prophesy means “a discourse emanating from divine inspiration and declaring the purposes of God”, While the culture these folks were living in did not value women and men equally, God did and does! God did not discriminate between Jesus’ men and women followers – all were called and gifted to preach the good news of Jesus. And God’s Holy Spirit gives gifts to all followers of Jesus, regardless of their gender.

God also values diversity. The incredible diversity of creation is one way that we can understand God’s value of differences and we see it again in how God arranges for all of these visitors from all over the world to hear about Jesus in their own language! God came to them and to us in ways that we can understand.  God loved everyone who had come to that Jewish celebration and wanted them to each have the very best chance of hearing and understanding who Jesus was and why Jesus came to this earth, lived, taught, preached, was crucified, died and was resurrected. God arranged for there to be no one left out, no one left on the margin. Now on this day, at this celebration and throughout the following days, Jesus’ Jewish followers were crossing language and culture barriers – these visitors to Jerusalem, though Jewish, had a very different culture from the Galilean followers of Jesus. But they realized that no matter their differences, they had been provided by God’s spirit the gifts of language so that they could directly share their experience with Jesus with others. As a result of Peter’s preaching and their testimonies, scripture tells us that over 3000 people became followers of Jesus!

And quite soon, Jesus’ followers, were confronted with the opportunity to cross yet another cultural barrier – that of religion. Peter has a dream where he is confronted with his beliefs about what is clean and unclean.  As a Jew he was certain that Gentiles – everyone who was not Jewish, was unclean – never to be part of God’s covenant with Abraham. But God makes him look at that part of his personal cultural iceberg – his unspoken belief, attitude and even unconscious assumption that the good news of Jesus Christ was only for those who were Jewish. God helps Peter to understand that one of God’s greatest values is and was inclusion. Everyone is and was to be included in God’s plan for the world – the good news of salvation through Christ is for everyone from every religion and those of no religion at all.

Now God’s values of diversity and equality and inclusion are getting a pretty bad rap in our world today.  I imagine that somewhere in those God-given values is a threat. When we don’t want to include someone or provide equal treatment or we want to surround ourselves with people just like us – who look like us, talk like us and value what we value – it is usually because we are afraid that we won’t get our piece of the pie.

We Christians and non-Christians alike, tend to forget another of God’s values - abundance.

From the very beginning of Creation, God created a world of tremendous abundance – a world where scripture says, all of creation could continue to reproduce itself.  When we act as good stewards of all that God has given us, there is no shortage of blessings in this world – spiritual or material. Jesus said that he came to given us abundant life. 

It is the sin of greed that causes us to think that there is not enough to go around.

Today, we continue the celebration of Pentecost – but now we add to it the celebration of

the plentiful harvest not just of crops, but of the souls of God’s people who are loved for their diversity, are equally valued in the eyes of God, and always included in God’s plan to provide loving mercy, forgiveness, and salvation – through God’s abundant and steadfast love for us all. As Christians, these must be our values too – we have to examine our own personal icebergs and see what values, beliefs and attitudes we really hold and ask the Holy Spirit to help us align our values with those of God.

And we extend that Pentecost offer to everyone here – no matter who you are, what you’ve been about in your life, no matter whether you have some doubts, if you want to become a follower of Jesus, we invite you to join us in God’s good work. Everyone is a follower of something – we think becoming a follower of Christ is the most life-giving thing you can do.

So let’s sing together while we pray and consider what God wants each of us to do on this Pentecost Sunday.