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God of the Beloved, you show us meaning where our words fall
short; you bathe the incomprehensible with wisdom. You make space for us where we don’t see
ourselves fitting in. Breathe your peace
over our fear. Bless us with the unity of
your love. Amen.
Language is such an interesting thing. I’ve always been sort of captivated by the description of the people of the United States and the people of the United Kingdom as being two people separated by a common language. But really, the English language is even more diverse than that.
Michael’s not here today so I can talk about him all I want. (To be fair – even when he is here, he’s fair game.) But when we were first getting to know each other – and sometimes still, but especially when we were just starting out – we were two people separated by a common language. Him from Brooklyn and me from Louisiana – we speak the same language, but really, just sort of technically. We were always confusing each other with different names for things and different ways of pronouncing things. It was sort like “you say tomato, I say tomato” but even more extreme. It was, “I say fire hydrant, he says johnny pump.”
And instances of lingering confusion still come up. The fastest way for me to make Michael laugh is for him to say something that makes perfect sense to him, but I’ll go quiet and cock my head to the side and just say, “Huh?” As if to say, were those even words? Half the time we don’t even get to whatever the translation is because he thinks it’s so funny. It happens more often than you’d think. And Michael gets confused, too. Have him do his impression of a Southern accent for you sometime. It sounds sort of like the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes universe.
But even that is sort of a misunderstanding. There’s no such thing as “a Southern accent”. In my home state of Louisiana there are at least three, if not four distinct regional accents, and within each of those there are variations based on ethnicity and socio-economic status and between towns and more rural areas. Then, when we venture into other states around the South, the pool gets even wider.
I remember one time we were vacationing in Memphis. We’d been out and were taking a late Uber back to our hotel. The driver was very friendly and trying to engage us in conversation, and I was utterly lost. You’d think I was in Eastern Europe. I had no idea what this woman was saying. But somehow, everything she said made sense to Michael and there he was, translating for me, to help me understand this Southern accent I didn’t recognize.
And all of these stories – all of these experiences of wildly diverse language – are all simply within the English language. When we take this and extrapolate it around the languages of the world, the range of difference just grows and grows. There is more difference in this world than we can begin to imagine. And through that difference, God has painted a vision for humanity that uses and needs more colors than we can comprehend.
Part of the gift of Pentecost is that God blessed this diversity in the world and brought unity to that diversity – not through uniformity; not through compliance, but by allowing God’s-self to be seen in so many ways; by allowing truth to be revealed in so many different ways. The gift of this Holy Spirit-driven moment is that the world was brought together in the space of Christ by making space for all the ways that Christ can reach us.
God gave us unity through the Spirit – but uniformity wasn’t the cost. God saw unity in our diversity; and God challenges us to see it, too.
The counterpoint to the story of Pentecost is the story we read today from Genesis. It’s interesting to me that this story seems to see God as responding to their conformity with defensiveness – as if God was threatened by their unity and came down to earth to tear them apart and confuse them from one another.
It reminds me of a former parish administrator that I used to have. Very often, in her weekly emails to the congregation she’d say things like, “As Fr. Jon said in his sermon on Sunday…” and then she’d go on to offer some reflection that had no discernible tie to anything that I’d said a few days before. More than once, the point she was making was in direct opposition to the point that I’d been trying to make on Sunday.
It served as an important lesson for me in the truth that while we can control what we say, we can’t control what someone else hears.
So, what if these ancient people had misunderstood their situation. What if the diversity of expression among the people that the writer of Genesis sees, wasn’t because God had torn us apart to make us weaker. What if it was actually an allegory about the differences we see between each other as being a gift from God – a God-ordained reality; a God-blessed existence that helps us to better see that the God in whose image we were made is bigger than our own limited image of ourselves.
The diversity of creation shows us that it is not that I am made in the image of God, but that it is always that we are made in the image of God. The image of God needs us – never just me. The image of God lives most clearly in the diversity of God’s people.
And maybe that’s what Jesus was trying to convey in the Gospel when he said to the disciples that they would also do the works that he had done, and not only that, but that they would do “greater works than these” after he’d gone. What could be greater than the work of Christ?
It could only be the work of the Body of Christ, embodying the image of God, through the strength and grace of all of God’s people – working through all of our many and varied gifts, to reveal God’s spirit in a way that none of us alone could dare to dream.
On Friday night I was at a Celebration of New Ministry and a colleague from another part of the diocese heard some of us talking about Trinity’s presence at Pride in Toledo. This colleague asked, “When do you all do Pride?” With a bit of a smirk I replied, “Well, at Trinity we do Pride all year. But Toledo Pride is in August.” But, of course, for the month of June, a lot of the wider culture tries to catch up with us for a few weeks. It’s always funny for me seeing how a lot of companies try to use Pride as a marketing ploy.
One of the digital creators that I follow on social media is a guy named Conor Clary. His content amuses me throughout the year, but in June, when the corporations do their annual Pride thing, Conor will review the various brands who put out Pride merchandise. He’ll go through their creations and sarcastically rate them for his audience.
The crazy thing this year though, is that a lot of the companies that are trying to cash in on Pride are doing it in a way that only barely resembles anything like Pride. As an extreme example, one of the brands has a line that’s all denim. The only indicator that it’s related to Pride at all is a sort of pastel rainbow wash across the labels inside the clothes. It’s like Pride, but on the inside, hidden from sight – which is sort of the opposite of Pride. But on the outside it all looks the same. If you didn’t know better, this collection could almost pass for a prison uniform.
One of the big points of the rainbow theme in our community is that it can’t be hidden. It’s bright. It’s colorful. It attracts attention. And we wear it, and we display it inside the church and out on the street and in our online presence not just because of our own identity, but because our rainbows are a statement of resistance. Resistance against the strong forces in this culture that want to whitewash diversity; that want all of the pretty colors that God painted us with to settle down and get in line.
The colors we wear and share are saying, I am proud. I am not ashamed of the way God has created me; I am not ashamed of the way God has created members of this community; I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed to reflect a piece of the vastness of God’s creation and God’s love. I am not ashamed to stand beside those who won’t and can’t and should never just fall in line. Our rainbows say we are not ashamed. We are proud.
The colors of the rainbow as a symbol for Pride were initially meant to represent the diversity of the Queer and allied community. They were meant to declare that we don’t see division in our diversity – we see strength; we see beauty. And for those of us who see queer acceptance and pride as an expression of our faith in God, we don’t see division in our diversity, either – in that diversity we see the gifts of the Holy Spirit; we see wider embodiments of God’s love; we see the grace and the welcome that God extends to us being extended to everyone.
The voices of Pentecost, in their cacophonous array, are God’s rainbow of invitation. In the voices of Pentecost, God declares that there is no division in diversity. There is strength and beauty. There is breadth and inclusion and room enough for all. Through all of our perspectives and experiences; through all of our pain and growth; through every stumble and through every time we rise to meet the demands of our lives – through everything, the voices of Pentecost proclaim that God holds us together – not apart.
In the voices of Pentecost, God declares that we are seen – right where we are. We are found, even in the midst of feeling lost. We are God’s own beloved creation. Not foreign. Not outside. But home. Wrapped in the embrace of God’s love. Wrapped in a rainbow so complete that some of it even looks like us. Wrapped in voices so sweet that some of them even speak directly to us.
Pentecost reminds us that God is not saying, “Get in line.” God is saying, I have found you, and I am delighted with where you are. Now shine. Shimmer. Don’t hide, but show the whole world this bit of me that I’ve created you to be – that I’ve created you to highlight for me.
Let the Holy Spirit help you bring that fire into the world. Fire that purifies. Fire that spreads wisdom and understanding. Fire that burns down divisions and shines bright light on God’s unnumbered, and too often unseen blessings. Be that tongue of flame that confounds the world – that flame that can only be held for God by you.
That flame of truth that is given by God to be held
by one, may seem like complete nonsense to another. But as all of our flames shine together, they
shine a light on a love from God that reaches everywhere. Even into the nonsense. Even into the shadows. Our many different flames shine together to
form one light, to show one Love – a Love that has room enough for all the languages
of the world and all the colors of the rainbow. Amen.
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