Acts of the Apostles 2: 1-21

In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the author, Luke tells the story of Pentecost, the beginning of the Christian Church. Indeed, the day of Pentecost is often referred to as the Church’s Birthday … hence the balloons carried by our children in the processional and, after church in Fellowship Hour, a birthday cake.

Why is it then that Luke pauses in the telling of this significant moment – this moment of inception, of birth – to provide a list of the bystanders … people who, not by choice or invitation, but only by happenstance, chanced to be there? Conversely, why is it that Luke fails to inform us of who was there by choice: of the actual followers of Jesus who had earlier gathered in a room in Jerusalem? In other words, why does Luke provide an exhaustive accounting of the outsiders, and virtually no identification of the insiders?

I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of other details I would like to know about the occasion besides the identity of the onlookers. Like, where did this event occur? Were they in someone’s house, a rented room, a courtyard, an inn, or even a public square? Why were all the followers of Jesus together in the first place? Was this a business meeting? A retreat or prayer meeting? A worship service?

Imagine all the doctrinal feuds Luke could have spared the church if he had just bothered to tell us whether the people who were baptized later that morning were immersed or sprinkled; whether they prayed the Lord’s prayer saying “debts” or “trespasses;” whether women took part in the service; and what words they used when the broke bread.

We get none of this. Instead, Luke concentrates on identifying the bystanders … people walking by on the street, who were drawn to all the goings on: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cappadocians, Mesopotamians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Libyans, Egyptians, Cretans and at least a half dozen other nationalities. It reads like a United Nations guest list.

But, of course, it is precisely this diverse and exotic gathering of unlikely companions that Luke is at pains to point out. As Hubert Locke said in a sermon at one of our United Church of Christ seminaries, what Luke is trying to say, as clearly and as emphatically as possible, is that “the very first experience of the Christian church, its organizing moment, the inauguration of this grand venture … it all begins in an experience of diversity!”

The peoples and nations so carefully recorded by Luke, represent virtually every conceivable national and geographic identity known to Luke and to his contemporaries.

Those who criticize or even oppose today’s emphasis on diversity often try to dismiss it as a fad, a passing phase, something we’ll get over. When they are at their most dismissive, they will label such efforts as “pc” (politically correct).

In reality, the church has wrestled with diversity throughout its 2000-year-old history,  although, admittedly, not always with a lot of success. All you need to do is to turn a few pages in the Acts of the Apostles to find the two greatest leaders of the early church – Peter and Paul – battling it out over diversity … over who is allowed in and who is not.

They argue over whether to accept Gentiles into the church or whether to reserve entrance to Jews. They argue about whether people with certain traditional and cultural food preferences can bring those preferences with them when they come into the church. They argue over whether men with foreskins should be allowed in.
Over and over again, however, the early church leaders invariably decide to err on the side of inclusion, rather than exclusion, expansiveness over narrowness.

As Hubert Locke insists, this thing we call diversity has stood since the earliest days of the church as a kind of litmus test of our seriousness about the Christian message. Down through the ages, the key question with which the church has been confronted is not how we define the doctrine of the atonement, or redemption or salvation ….

Rather, the key question has been the difficult, painful, exasperating, absolutely fundamental issue, as Locke puts it, “of whether the church will be strong enough and faithful enough to transcend the artificial boundaries that we humans create and erect in every other realm of our existence – boundaries of nation, and blood, and race, and ethnicity, and gender, and geography, and history, and class, and sexual orientation,” and ability. The question has been and remains, whether the church can soar above these social artifices and act like what we are: one family, God’s family.

Some months ago, a church consultant came to Massachusetts and met with a gathering of clergy and church leaders. He came from a mega-church – a seekers church – in the Mid-west. He was presented as an expert on how to make people feel comfortable and welcome – how to create a hospitable atmosphere. He recommended this strategy:

At his church, they station friendly parking attendants in the entrance to, and throughout, their spacious, landscaped parking lots. These attendants are trained to direct owners of luxury cars to park near each other; owners of SUV’s to park near each other; owners of economy cars are similarly directed to their corner of the parking lot. And, owners of beaters – of cars tattooed with dents and scrapes and rust – these, too, have a corner of the lot reserved for them. Using this strategy, he assured us, everyone can feel most at home among their own kind.

His sincere words of advice to us – his well-considered strategy – sent a chill down my spine. As he and his mega-church give witness, diversity is difficult, and painful, and exasperating. Conversely, it is so much easier, less complicated and more relaxing to be allowed simply to gravitate to our own kind.

The United Church of Christ, on the other hand, has worked intentionally, over decades and decades, to practice and reach for, the grand venture of diversity and inclusiveness toward which God called us in the church’s moment of birth. In the United Church of Christ we strive to become, and to be, multi-racial, multi-cultural, open and affirming and accessible to all.

For us, it began in 1957 when two denominations, formerly four, joined together and the UCC was born. It was a Pentecost moment. Never before had Christian churches voluntarily merged that represented such differences: national, linguistic, ecclesiastical, liturgical, and cultural. Today the UCC remains a living laboratory, a grand venture, in diversity.

For us, this is not about being politically correct. For these words and phrases – multiracial, multicultural, open and affirming and accessible to all – each of these are symbols of real, flesh and blood human beings. For us these are not merely social issues or questions of the moment … they are about real lives, unique individuals, who daily experience the pain of discrimination, bigotry, exclusion, misunderstanding, and ignorant stereotypes.

God knows we do not always succeed in living out this vision of inclusiveness and diversity. Not by half. We do, however, measure ourselves by that plumb-line … not because it is our plumb-line, but because it is God’s. It is a vocation to which we were destined by God from that first Pentecost.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church. We celebrate with balloons, with a riot of red flowers, with the sound of many languages, with flaming banners and a birthday cake. Let us also celebrate this day, you and me, by renewing our commitment to live the grand venture that is the Christian Church.

This is a venture that experiences human differences, not as a burden to be borne, not as a problem to be overcome … but as a precious and exotic gift from the God of all creation.
 

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