ACTS 2. 1-11, JN 20. 19-23

"And they were amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language . . . telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." (Acts 2. 7-8, 11b). In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church. Pentecost is a festival more ancient than Christianity. It was a Jewish harvest festival that also recalled the covenant God made with Moses and His people who were gathered before the mountain of Sinai, a covenant marked by the wind and fire of a volcanic eruption. At Passover the people celebrated their deliverance from Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea; fifty days later Pentecost celebrated the covenant given in the desert at Sinai. This was so important a festival that by the time of Jesus people came from all over the country to the temple in Jerusalem to recall the covenant--indeed Jews traveled there from all over the Mediterranean world, speaking languages other than Hebrew or Aramaic, coming home to the temple. This made that day of the year the most cosmopolitan, the most culturally and linguistically diverse gathering in Palestine. Only in Rome might more diversity be found, anywhere in the Roman Empire.

As the book of Acts tells the story, the followers of Jesus had come back from Galilee to the temple at Jerusalem to join in the celebration of the covenant given at Sinai. They had entered into a new awareness that what Jesus had taught was actually true, that a new convenant with God had begun with Jesus and with them. Fifty days earlier, at the time of their leader's death, they had been demoralized and scattered. Now by the power of the Holy Spirit they were given the courage and ability to tell of the new covenant in words everyone could understand. They had become the Church of Jesus Christ for the whole world. How had this happened?

The birth of the Church didn't happen all at once, but in six stages or turning points, like the series of stages through which a caterpiller becomes a butterfly and like those through which a human baby is born.

The first stage happened after the Resurrection, as the followers of Jesus met Him again. Their despair at His death turned to wondering joy--how could He be with them still?--and yet He really was. He continued to teach them and they finally began to understand the Hebrew scriptures in new ways, beginning a process of new understanding that would grow for the rest of their lives and in the lives of their followers.

The second stage came when Jesus left them again, at what we call "The Ascension." The point is not whether He went up or out from them; it is that He went away so that they could grow up. Had He stayed with them forever they would always have been His subordinates, and there would have been only one generation of Christians. His purpose for them was adulthood and responsibility--that they would grow into being Him for the next generations--they couldn't do that until He got out of the way and left them to themselves. But not just by themselves--He would send them the Holy Spirit, to give them new life and to continue to teach them.

The third stage in the birth of the Church came after the Ascension, as the eleven remaining disciples chose one to replace Judas. The book of Acts tells that story in the passage just before today's reading. Why did they need twelve? Because this was the sign of the completeness of themselves as a new Israel in microcosm--people of a new covenant. There were twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve apostles as icons of the new Israel.

The fourth stage is where today's story begins. "When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place." (Acts 2. 1) The Greek here means more than "all together"--it says they were "together, together." They had a special unity. This is remarkable because the closest followers of Jesus were so different as individuals. They were women as well as men--shocking at that time. One of the Twelve was a zealot--advocating violent overthrow of the Roman government by the Jewish people--and another was a tax collector, a contractor with the Roman government--many would say a stooge or traitor to the Jewish people. Yet in their following of Jesus during His life and in the period after the Resurrection the disciples had become "together, together." This was not the unity of uniformity and identity--they were not clones; a troop of "Hitler Jugend," all male, six foot tall, blond and blue eyed, marching in lockstep. No, their unity consisted in the articulations made among their differences. It required their differences as a first condition, out of which true unity could be formed.

And now the fifth stage--as they were gathered together together "suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2. 2-4a) Notice that even the tongues of fire were distributed from a central source so that it was one fire, yet resting on each person's head individually. The distinctiveness of each person was not obliterated by the fire.

In the final stage of the birth of the Church it is as if the walls of the house had burst apart. Immediately the disciples were out on the streets of Jerusalem, telling about God and Jesus and the New Covenant in ways that everyone could understand, regardless of their native language. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia--the list goes on and on. And in the response of their hearts the Church was finally, completely born. Here is what a priest friend of mine, Grant Gallup, said in a sermon on Pentecost in 1974--I have never forgotten it-- "[This Day] is the undoing of Babel. For the history of the human race until Pentecost has fully run its course is the story of the tower of Babel; the confusion of voices, misunderstanding, war, bloodshed, racial and social and class strife. Babel means the effort of men to reach heaven without God, to build cities without temples, to act as if men were self-sufficient and need no God to guide them . . . the meaning of Pentecost is that Babel had had it -- it is all over: it is that God, knowing we can never build a tower to Him, has come to us: that His Spirit is now given to all who ask, that man has a way to a future of unity and wholeness."

You can see that in the very moment of its birth as a New Covenant the Church was multilingual and multicultural. It was not enough for God that this was a sect of some backwoods Galileans. It was not even enough for God that they had twelve apostles as icons of the completeness of the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel itself was not enough. In order for the Church to be an icon of Jesus Himself--an icon of God who has come to dwell in humanity in order to save it--nothing less than the fulness of humanity was necessary to represent this--a unity formed in and through the diversity of all languages, cultures, and histories, Medes, Parthians, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia--Ghanaians, Liberians, Nigerians, Koreans, Fijians, Indians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, French, Croatians, Germans, English.

I think you see my point--the Church born in Jerusalem at Pentecost, and then carried by the apostles all over the then known world, to Antioch, Athens, Rome, and beyond--is the very Church gathered in microcosm here this morning. To be Christian is to be multicultural and multiracial. This is not some trendy contemporary invention. It is of the essence of what it is to be catholic--the Church universal. Hear what so orthodox a voice of St. Catherine of Siena says, writing in the late middle ages: "The perfect soul rejoices more in the differences among people than it would in seeing them all walk in the same way, saying "Thanks be to Thee, eternal Father, that Thou hast many mansions in Thy house." (Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, conflation by Vida Scudder.) Our new parish website now contains these words of St. Catherine.

Let me press the point. Jerusalem each year on the Day of Pentecost was the most diverse place the first disciples of Jesus could have gotten to, in their world and in their time. That was where the Church was born, to be the continuing presence of the Body of Christ in the world, a flesh and blood icon of the fulness of the Incarnation. Do you think that was a coincidence? This year, as we begin the third millenium of the Church's life, the most linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse city in the world is right here--the city of Los Angeles. Do you think that is a coincidence? And in that city, one of the cells in today's Body of Christ is this parish, within which all the races of humanity are represented, and as we heard in the reading of the Gospel, a wide span of human languages--Indo-European and non Indo-European languages. Do you think that is a coincidence? I think not. I think that by our being together, by our simply showing up in the same place, we as today's Galileans, Medes, Parthians, and Elamites are being called to be an icon of the Incarnation and messengers of God's love and justice. We can't do it one by one--each of our individual faces has only one color. But we can be together an icon of the Incarnation. Specifically how we are to do this I don't know; I would not presume to try to say that. But I am certain that this is the direction of our calling.

To conclude, let me suggest two spiritual exercises. First, look around you right now at the faces of your fellow Galileans, Medes, Parthians, and Elamites and then in your mind's eye picture the faces of the crowds on the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. It is the same Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world, first born then and reborn in the power of the Holy Spirit each time we gather here. As a second exercise, after the Eucharist, when you come to the parish hall for coffee walk up the steps to the second floor and look at the pictures on the walls, which show the life and stories of Jesus in the bodies and faces of East African herders. For newcomers these pictures will be a new sight. For old timers you may have started to take them for granted. The pictures are not great art but they are wonderful icons theologically, wonderful icons of the Incarnation, as you and I are icons when we stand side by side, empowered and taught by the Spirit of God which first came at Pentecost.

And so Happy Birthday, Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world! Happy Birthday, Church of Jesus Christ at St. Mary's in Palms! And "Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen." (Eph 3: 20-21)