Acts 2: 1-13 1-4When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale forceno one could tell where it came from. It lled the whole building. en, like a wild re, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of dierent languages as the Spirit prompted them. 5-11ere were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. en when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. ey couldn't for the life of them gure out what was going on, and kept saying, "Aren't these all Galileans? How come we're hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes; Even Cretans and Arabs! "ey're speaking our languages, describing God's mighty works!" 12eir heads were spinning; they couldn't make head or tail of any of it. ey talked back and forth, confused: "What's going on here?" 13Others joked, "ey're drunk on cheap wine."

ey were all together in one place. e Greek spells it out as: Homothumadon: On one accord. ey had come together ey were waiting.

A ragtag group of people had just met the resurrected Jesus, he departed again, up into heaven, but not without giving them nal instructions. You know those nal instructions: Go and make disciples of all the nations. And his followers were wondering how they were going to do that. So far Jesus had carried the ball, had done all the explaining, all the convincing, and his followers were often clueless as to the precise meaning of Jesus teachings. He was gone now. And the last thing he told them to do was to go to Jerusalem and wait. Just wait. is was the man who had come to bring them good news. Do you think that waiting sounded like good news to them? Wait! And the waited. As they waited they prayed, because waiting is not a passive sitting back in a lounge chair, waiting till someone else is going to x things. ey were praying, all of them together on one accord. e book of Acts, from which we read these 13 verses is one of the most inclusive books in the Bible. It mentions explicitly that women and men were

together in the Upper Room. People from all parts of the world were gathered together. is story was written around the last quarter of the rst century. e Temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans, oppression was more severe than ever and Judaism needed to nd a new footing, again. e emerging church was struggling with its own identity and its allegiance to its Judac roots and this whole book of Acts aims to keep that connection alive. e author was most likely not Jewish by birth, but what is known in this text as a proselyte, a Gentile converted to Judaism before he became Christian. I hope you will read the entire book one day, if you havent. e author, Luke, is fully aware of the great diculty of keeping a diverse community together. e book is a very honest account of those diculties and doesnt try to pretend that everything was hunky dory. But it was critical that the community nd a way to stay together. Something else had changed for Luke, something that was not true for Paul, who wrote his letters several decades earlier. About the time that this book was written, the belief that Jesus would come back to herald in the Kingdom of God on earth, that belief was in need of some adjustment. e Gospel of Mark had been written with the second coming in mind. Luke however began to see that Jesus might not come back in his lifetime.
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at means that the work of Jesus must now be continued by us. Oops. at must have given Luke and his community pause. ink about it. It is up to us apparently. We have got to actually go out into the world and continue Jesus ministry, be a witness of Jesus to the rest of the world. Fortunately, they were not required to ful ll this mission without any help. Jesus had promised them that the Holy Spirit would come and give them the power that they needed. at is what they were waiting on in the Upper Room All together, homothumadon, on one accord. Now you can understand why they were praying so fervently. I imagine that they would have understood the Buddhist instruction about meditation, to sit as if your hair is on re. Sitting is not idleness, waiting on God is not idleness. ey were waiting, together, on one accord. Without warning some thing was happening, something was changing and it was dramatic. e texts states that the Holy Spirit descended as Tongues of Fire, one tongue for each one gathered. ey landed on them and they began to speak, loudly and in all dierent languages.
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You may know that my home church is City of Refuge. Pastor Ann, as I call her, is one of the pastors there. On the bulletin, where the service order is printed, we always include one line: Service order is subject to the move of the Holy Spirit. And hardly a week goes by that the Spirit doesnt mix things up really good. Now, I understand that not everybody is comfortable giving up control over the service quite the same way. You do want to go home on time, I know. e forum this afternoon will start at one sharp, I know. e thing is, that this passage I am speaking of today, is not the passage that explains the spiritual gift of speaking tongues as we know it today. You have to read Corinthians for that. Here the gift of the Holy Spirit is very speci c. It gives those gathered, those chosen to proclaim the good news of Jesus in the world precisely those tools they need to carry out this mission. It gives them power, insight, understanding, and it gives them the possibility to speak in the languages of those people they need to speak to. Make disciples of all the nations. Proclaim the good news to the ends of the earth. e world is a big place. If you have traveled abroad, you may have been in the situation that the people you needed didnt speak the same language as you. at can be quite a shock.
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I remember one time taking the train from Zagreb in the north of what was then Yugoslavia to Skopje in the south. What I hadnt realized is that in the south, the write in the Cyrillic alphabet. It was very disorienting to wake up in the morning and not know where the nearest Starbuck was. at was hard. e Spirit gave those who waited exactly what they needed. When they spoke, people who had come from all over the world to Jerusalem to celebrate the harvest festthat is what Pentecost really is, the celebration of the harvestall those people understood what the disciples were saying. ey were speaking all their languages, albeit with a Galilean accent. at is alright. Bishop Flunder once told the church that I speak in tongues with a Dutch accent. e gift of the Spirit was very speci c and it came from a surprising place, from heaven. We hear the story of Pentecost once a year typically. On Pentecost Sunday. But we need to hear it more often, I am convinced, because the Spirit is always ready to give her gifts to those who wait. And she is moving in the world today. As if from nowhere, people are taking to the street all over the country. Wall Street is the heart of it, it is where it started, but people are occupying street and public place in hundreds of cities around the country. And many are nding expression online, on sites like we are the 99%. And as this was starting, the media were completely ignoring this movement. ey were trying to cover up even the arrest of more than 700 people
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on Brooklyn bridge. But the movement grew too big, too strong in such a short time, and voices are up speaking truths that we all know but that somehow just didnt get the necessary attention. Every evening on the news we could know what the Dow Jones was doing today, but what was happening with us, that was never part of the story. e media are still trying to muddy the waters, asking silly questions like: What are they really for? What do they want? What do they stand for? Well, lets see. A family with two incomes is one car repair away from defaulting on their mortgage and they pay more taxes than General Electric. What could they be for? A 38 year old woman with a history of cancer cannot get health insurance. What could she be for? A 25 year old woman paralyzed after a car accident faces life long debt, because she has to pay for the life saving ambulance ride, even though she had medical coverage. What could she be for? A 27 year old combat vet has only one concern now. Will he be able to buy food tonight? What could he be for?

A 13 year old boy has two parents who work full-time, are always tired and full of stress because of the economic uncertainty they face. He is scared to grow up. What could he be for? None of these aim for riches. All of them feel trapped by debt, lack of health insurance, unemployment, long hours, fear of being laid o, fear for tomorrow. e Spirit of Liberation is moving through the country now. And as in the days of Luke, the Spirit moves in mysterious ways. ey occupation of Wall Street was the brainchild of a Canadian group called Adbusters. ey were inspired by the events on Tahrir Square in Egypt this Spring. I want you to get this. Ten years after 9/11, when most of the hijackers were from Egypt, the Spirit of Liberation sparks, ignites in the Middle East and now sets us on re, here in the United States. Ten years after 9/11 we are learning to ght for our freedom from Muslims countries. Arent these Muslims? How come we are hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? ey are speaking our language, describing, with their actions Gods mighty works.

Gil just met some people from Egypt. He told some amazing stories. For 30 years no one was allowed to hold gatherings in Cairo, on Tahrir Square or anywhere else for that matter. Egypt, a country supported by the US, lifted that ban when too many people wanted to come out in protest of the invasion in Iraq, by the US. And because the US backed regime of Hosni Mubarak allowed then for protest against the US, they created a space in which a liberation movement could emerge that is now sweeping through the Middle East and reached America also. In Egypt, the demands were simply put and very clear: Bread, Dignity, Freedom. What could they be for on Wall Street and all those other parts of the country? Bread, Dignity, Freedom. ey are speaking our language. ey are together on one accord. And I know that the work has only just begun. ere are many dierences that are just beginning to be recognized in the liberation movement that is called occupy. Many in this country traces their ancestry to the slaves whose graves can be found underneath the foundations of Wall Street. Slaves kept there by the Dutch, my ancestors, even before New Amsterdam became New York. For so many of African descent, the country never truly made a promise of fair play, and

they dont feel the same level of betrayal that the so-called 99% are feeling. Can their voices be included. e choice of the movements name is interesting too. Occupy Wall Street. It is not the rst time that that piece of earth has been occupied. Occupy Berkeley? You know that Berkeley was occupied before and that the original inhabitants were massacred. e movement is only at the beginning and we will have to make a point of including the Native American voices too. Yet, there is clearly a New Spirit moving through the country. A New Spirit. New Spirit. Someone asked me why I wanted to be here for my internship and I said that I loved the experiment that New Spirit is, that I think that New Spirit will always remain an experiment. ere is nothing we can take for granted in building spiritual community, genuine spiritual community. And I believe that we are guided by the Holy Spirit here together. e beginning of this sermon may have sounded overly Christian to some of you. I realize that and I am not apologizing. I spoke like that because I decided to trust in your inner ear, your spiritual ear. You know what I am talking about, that recognition you can have in your spirit, knowing what someone is saying, even when he is speaking another mother tongue, in another spiritual language.

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at is the experiment as I see it. I dont mean to tell you what you are doing. You tell me. I am saying, this is what has me excited to be here. Learning to listen to each other with our inner ear is what enables us to experience the depth of each others spiritual lives, without having to come to some kind of lowest common denominator. We dont have to stay one inch deep in order to go one mile wide. at is how I can be deeply moved when an non-Christian woman celebrates communion on the day a Jewish man speaks in the Chapel of the Great Commission. It doesnt make sense, at the face of it. What is going on here? e bystanders may be asked when the people in the Upper Room where speaking in dozens of languages not their own. ey are drunk with cheap wine some sneered. I wonder what New Spirit is truly for? ey were together On One Accord. I have heard many of you say that you love your community. How many more around us are crying out to have intentional community? How much more we will need to depend on each other in an increasingly uncertain future?

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How much more can share the love of the Holy Spirit than by embodying the radically inclusive love you see represented in this book of Acts, when the Spirit empowered Jesus followers to speak in all the languages. My question to you is: How many more languages will you speak? How many more voices will you hear? is I know. e Holy Spirit has already empowered you, provided you with all you need. She is now waiting for you All you have to do is say Yes!

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