May 23, 2010
God or Cheap Liquor - Acts 2:1-13
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI’d like to start today’s sermon with two tales of two different people, both of whom I know, but neither of whom is me (which is very important to establish). The first story is about a man we will call “Person A.” Person A was in a fraternity in college and at a fraternity party on a Friday night. He did what people often do at Fraternity parties, and that is he put one end of a bottle of cheap liquor in his mouth and turned the other end up. He did that a whole lot that night, and he decided that there’s no better place to drink cheap liquor in the world than on the roof of his fraternity house with his friends. He also decided while he was up there that he was superman. He may have even been dressed like superman (I’m unclear about that part of this story). He, like superman, jumped off that roof, but unlike superman he did not fly. He simply fell off that roof on the ground and broke his arm. That is the story of Person A.
The second story is about a man who we will call “Person B.” Person B went to college himself and got married sometime thereafter. He and his wife decided after being married for awhile that they wanted children, so they conceived and gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby girl. Person B did not believe in love at first sight until he looked into the eyes of his beautiful baby girl. (I actually made that part up, but I can tell you for a fact that it’s true.) He and his wife loved their baby so much that they wanted another one. They were perfectly fertile, and so they could have done what they had done before. But instead, they went to Church and they heard at Church in a sermon that there are something like 145 million orphans in the world, many of whom are concentrated in the poverty stricken countries of Africa. He and his wife wanted a baby anyway and they were Christian and all, and called to love those who everybody else had forgotten, including those 145 million orphans. So instead of having their second child the way they normally would, they adopted one from Africa. That is the story of Person B.
Odd as this may sound, both of those stories are very similar. Both Person A and Person B end up making completely irrational decisions with long lasting effects. It was completely irrational for Person A to think that he could fly like superman. Furthermore, the consequences of that decision were significant. He had to tell his parents how he broke his arm. He had to go to the doctor, and pay medical bills. He had to abstain from athletics for at least six weeks.
Person B’s decision was completely irrational, too. If you are married and can conceive children, I highly recommend it. The pregnancy can be challenging, but it’s a great time for the couple, and even a fun time. The ultrasound is fun, the anticipation is fun. As painful as giving birth is, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s fun to see who the baby looks like. It’s fun to see that there really is a little bit of each person in that baby. And, if you have good insurance, it’s fairly inexpensive (at least having the baby itself is). And, the whole community backs you up. Person B forfeited all of that. No ultrasound, no feeling the baby move, no resemblance to either parent. Person B’s child isn’t even the same color as he is. And, it’s far more expensive to go through all the red tape and to fly all the way around the world to pick him up. And then you have to get him acclimated to America. You have to arrange for special education for him. You have to deal with a mixed-race family, which is not easy. Some people thought that couple was horrible for adopting a black child in their family. They even got death threats.
Here is another important similarity. Both Person A and Person B were under the influence of something external. Neither of them just cooked up those ideas on their own. You don’t just sit around one day and decide to go jump off a perfectly good roof. It takes some kind of external influence, like cheap liquor. Adopting a baby from Africa – especially when you can conceive your own – also takes an external force, much stronger even that alcohol. I can see how if you’ve had enough cheap liquor you might convince yourself to jump off a ten-foot roof. But not all the cheap liquor in the world could convince me to adopt when I could conceive. The only way to explain that, I think, would be the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit came and rested upon the disciples, as Jesus had promised them that he would…, when the disciples became under the influence of the Holy Spirit, some people thought that they were under the influence of alcohol. “These people have to be drinking new wine, which is another word for cheap liquor,” they said. Unlike some commentators, I believe that was valid. How else do you explain their behavior, their talking with complete strangers, enemies even, and understanding one another for the first time? How else do you explain the things they said that they would never have said before? “You must be drunk,” they said, and Peter even responded sincerely. It’s just 9:00 in the morning, he said, and too early for that. Besides, alcohol makes you do stupid and destructive stuff. Talking and listening to former enemies is something that alcohol cannot help you do. In fact, it often does the opposite. No, this has to be God.
We are all under the influence of something. Not one us lives completely independently of everything else. Maybe you are under the influence of alcohol, and if you are, I hope you’ll get some help. Or maybe you are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. For most us, most of the time, we’re not under the influence of either one of those. Many of us are under the influence of work. If we could just work more, and get a promotion, then everything will be okay, we think. So we work all the time and ignore other important things that deserve our attention, like God and our families. Maybe we’re under the influence of money. If we could just make more of it, or spend more of it, then we’ll be alright, we think. So our lives become dictated by the endless lure of things. Maybe we’re under the influence of a wistful past, of how things used to be, and so we cannot embrace a new and exciting even if different future. We become slaves to the past.
I, for one, have never experienced anything as tangible as the disciples did on the Day of Pentecost. If I drink a bottle of cheap liquor (or expensive liquor for that matter), then I’m going to know it. It will affect everything about me: how I talk, how I walk, how I think, how I relate to people. This experience of the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples was obviously just as tangible for them, and it’s not as tangible for us, so it’s hard to imagine and even hard to believe that the Holy Spirit of God does anything at all today. But when we really seek to discern together what the Spirit is doing and where the Spirit is leading, then it’s more real than we might think. And, by the way, the disciples were together here, not alone in their studies. The Holy Spirit coming was a very public matter then, and I believe it still is.
Scripture talks about all these people being able to speak for the first time. One of the ironies of this text is most of these people spoke the same language. The miracle then is not so much that they speak or hear different languages, but the miracle is that they were able to actually hear one another. Imagine that, people actually hearing one another. Imagine all the people just within a five mile radius of our Church. Our lives are vastly different lives than many of the people who live right literally at our back door. But imagine if we could really hear one another. Imagine what it would be like if we could really listen to and hear God. Maybe the Holy Spirit is all around us, but we’re just too busy responding to all our other influences. When we wait together and pray together and really submit ourselves to God’s Holy Spirit, and when we speak and listen, both with one another and with God, then our lives take drastically different, and ultimately better, and anything but boring turns.
People would often accuse Jesus of being a drunk, because many of his ideas sounded like he was completely inebriated. Or maybe they were completely inebriated, not on alcohol, but on everything else, kind of like we are. Whatever the Holy Spirit is, it’s totally different from any other influence, so it makes sense that people would think we’re out of our minds if we were under that influence. I wish that people would accuse us of being a bunch of drunks because what we’re doing can’t possibly come from just us. I really believe that if the Church has any hope at all, we will have to get under the influence of the Holy Spirit. We’re going to have to submit our selves fully to what God is doing, even if we are not comfortable with it, even if we don’t like it at first, even it calls a few things into question that we’d rather leave alone. It would probably mean radical hospitality to those around us, like we’ve never done before. It would mean making decisions that seem completely irrational. And it may even cost us a few things. In fact for Peter, the wind of the Spirit blew him right on up a cross, like Jesus. But that’s what we need. We need to get under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Next week is Memorial Day when, instead of remembering fallen soldiers, most Americans erase half of their memories by drinking too much beer. I hope that we can get under the influence, too. I hope the Holy Spirit lands on us and makes us into people that we are not now, that we could never be on our own. So may the Spirit come, and erase all of our other influences. May we learn to follow, and live our lives as if they are not ours at all, as if we are completely possessed by God.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
