Scripture reading: Genesis 11:1-9.

Sermon text: Acts 2:1-21.

Last week, as we gathered to celebrate the last Sunday of Easter in our worship, families in Tuscaloosa gathered to grieve the death of a 17-year-old victim of a shooting at a graduation party. At least 9 other victims were also shot; at least 2 remain hospitalized today, a week after the incident.

The news gets worse. The Tuscaloosa News reported that just before the shooting, many of the more than 100 in attendance began flashing gang signs and shouting gang names. From the news reports, apparently several gangs were represented at the party. Someone said the incident began when the shooter danced with the wrong girl.

Many of the attendees at the party may have joined a gang for a sense of identity, belonging, and security. Regardless of the reason they joined, the gangs they joined couldn’t protect them when the shooter began unloading his semi-automatic pistol.

This tragedy reminds us again of a basic fact of humanity: Sin divides. In the Garden of Eden, sin divided Adam and Eve from God and, in through the pride that resulted from the Fall, from one another. At the Tower of Babel, sin divided humanity into different language groups and nations. Think about most of what constitutes our identities today. Most of us think of ourselves in terms of our nationality, our region, our race, our denominational affiliation. Here in Alabama, we even divide ourselves by our loyalties to our favorite football teams! At every opportunity, identity markers the world recognizes as the most important divide humanity from one another. We’ve taken the identities the world foists upon us and elevated their importance, dividing ourselves in the process. As Jesus reminded His disciples and detractors, “No city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matthew 12:25). In almost every area of our lives, the consequences of the Tower of Babel keep appearing.

Fortunately for us, today is Pentecost Sunday. Around the world, believers of all denominations, races, and nationalities will celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit into the believers in Jerusalem in A.D. 33. Jesus had promised the Holy Spirit would come (Acts 1) and told the disciples to await His coming in Jerusalem. Once He came, Jesus told His followers, the Holy Spirit would empower them to “be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The sermon passage today recounts the story of the Holy Spirit’s appearance in the Church. St. Luke the Evangelists recorded that as Jesus’ followers prayed on the day of Pentecost, “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit...” (Acts 2:2-4). With this tremendous beginning, God the Holy Spirit began working to undo the power of sin in the world.

Before we go any further, we must remind ourselves of a basic fact: The Holy Spirit is not an emotion; The Holy Spirit is God.

As God, the Holy Spirit has always worked in the world, leaving His imprint on fallen humanity in all ages and in many ways. The Spirit worked through the Jews to testify to God’s existence and insistence on repentance of sin. The Spirit also worked in the Virgin Mary; St. Matthew recorded that at her betrothal to Joseph, Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove at His baptism (Matthew 3:16) and remained with Him throughout His ministry. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus promised His disciples that He would give “another Helper... the Spirit  of truth” (John 14:16-17). The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

The Holy Spirit began fulfilling His roles on Pentecost Sunday. The Holy Spirit also began working in another crucial way on that day by empowering the disciples to overcome key barriers in Jerusalem on Pentecost.

Over the course of time, Jews had spread throughout the Middle East and the Greco-Roman world. Many had remained behind in Babylon and Persia when Cyrus the Great allowed all conquered peoples to return home following his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C. Other Jews had spread throughout the Greek empires that succeeded the empire of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. When Rome conquered the Greek world, Jews also settled in Rome itself and spread throughout the Mediterranean area. Thousands of the immigrants’ descendants had returned to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and Pentecost. These Jews didn’t speak Aramaic, and many of them didn’t speak Greek, either; according to St. Luke, these Jews spoke at least 15 different languages.

When He filled the believers, the Holy Spirit gave them the ability “to speak in other tongues.” The Jews present at the Temple questioned the gift: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” All the Jews there said, “we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

In typical fashion, some in the crowd tried to downplay and belittle the Spirit’s work: “They are filled with new wine.” In my life, I’ve seen a lot of drunk people; I’ve never seen one of them suddenly speak a new language fluently. (Come to think of it, most of the drunks I’ve known would eventually lose fluency in their native language, much less demonstrate a sudden fluency in a foreign language.)

St. Peter discounted this idea immediately: “These men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.” Implied was the idea that no self-respecting Jew would start drinking before 9 a.m., much less get drunk by then. Instead, St. Peter explained, “This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.”

Everyone who heard St. Peter’s message had to realize something had happened. St. Peter explained that “Jesus of Nazareth,” the one crucified by Pilate and the Jewish leaders, had fulfilled David’s prophecies in the Psalms. David, St. Peter said, “foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ” (Acts 2:31). Furthermore, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” In other words, the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples with the ability to declare the resurrection of Jesus to everyone present, regardless of language or nationality. So, St. Peter concluded, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36).

How did the Jews respond? Many of them cried out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” St. Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). St. Luke recorded that 3,000 Jews responded to St. Peter’s invitation that day, calling on the name of Jesus, receiving Christian baptism and the Holy Spirit.

The story of Pentecost speaks to us today because, deep down, we realize we need unification. We all find ourselves divided: Divided from loved ones, divided from spouses and family members, divided from other Christians, divided from those we want desperately to love and yet unable to overcome our own pride to humble ourselves enough to do what’s necessary to express our desire to unify with them. Only God, through the Holy Spirit, can unite us.

First, we must unite ourselves to God. We must overcome our own pride and admit we need a relationship with our Creator. As St. Augustine wrote, “Man, being a part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that Thou ‘resistest the proud,” —yet man, this part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee” (St. Augustine, Confessions, I.i).

St. Paul told the Romans that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). St. Paul also told the Romans that those who confess Jesus as Lord receive “the Spirit of adoption as sons” and that “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16). In other words, the Holy Spirit Himself assures us of our salvation when we confess Jesus as Lord.

Next, we must unite ourselves to the Church, the Body of Christ on earth. When you read Acts 2, you see that those who believed in Jesus “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). In other words, the believers joined together for corporate worship: To the preaching of the Apostles, to the observance of Holy Communion, and to corporate prayers.

I’ve heard people tell me, “I can be a Christian without corporate worship or without a church.” No! The early Christians would never have understood how anyone could believe such a lie! When the the first believers traveled throughout the Roman Empire, they always found a congregation to join for corporate worship when they settled in a new city. Only in America, the land of so much rampant individualism, would such a horrible idea hold such sway. You cannot grow as a believer without the congregation. The congregation guides us through Bible study to keep us from biblical error; the congregation also supports us in our spiritual lives and encourages us in our walk with Christ.

I’ll then say this to the Church as a whole: We must unite with one another.

Again, Babel divided us in ways that we fail to understand. The Church, the Body of Christ, extends beyond all boundaries: Nationality, language, race, or any other division that Satan tries to use to separate us from one another. Sin divides; the Holy Spirit unites. I’m reminded of the Christmas Truce in 1914,  in World War I, where British, French, and German troops stopped trying to kill one another for Christmas and instead observed impromptu joint Christmas services and exchanged gifts and Christmas wishes.

This brings a question to my mind. If opposing soldiers can join together for a few moments in the middle of a war, why can’t Christians here join together across denominational and racial lines for joint worship? Some people here have wondered why we commemorate Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. I have 2 reasons for you. First, Jesus instituted Holy Communion on Thursday and was crucified on Good Friday of Holy Week. Secondly, I see these observances as another opportunity to join with our family at the Methodist church for joint worship. If we can worship together on Thanksgiving, a secular American holiday, we can certainly worship together on days that Christians throughout the world worship together.

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t worship with other congregations and traditions, as long as they believe in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten divine Son of God, crucified, risen, and coming again. Jesus told His disciples on the night of His betrayal, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34). Later that night, Jesus prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:22-23). Hear this: The world will know that God loves them and sent Jesus for their salvation when we become perfectly one. The world must see us worshiping together, working together, and supporting each other to believe Jesus came for them as well.

I challenge you today: Allow the Holy Spirit of God to work in you as He worked in the believers at Pentecost. Allow the Holy Spirit to call you to Jesus and to unite you to a congregation to show His love to a dying world needing redemption from sin. Then, as a congregation, let us join with believers across all lines to show the world that Jesus is Lord through our love for one another.

Divided, we’ll accomplish little in this world. Unified, we’ll show the world that God lives, that Jesus is Lord, and that the Holy Spirit still moves in the Church to draw all humanity to the cross of Jesus Christ, our risen Lord.