I gave a brief meditation at our Pentecost Service on Wednesday. It went something like this:

This Sunday is Pentecost – the word means different things to many different people. For me an Egyptian-American born to Presbyterians parents who was raised in a non-denominational church in the Northeast but attended a Baptist college in the South, well, the term has taken me some time to get used to. Frankly, there was a time where I would have wondered what I would be doing at a service with the adjective “Pentecost.”

Now to a dear friend of mine whose grandmother found Christ in a charismatic setting, well that has made quite the difference for 3 generations, the idea of Pentecost holds special meaning for him. Pentecost. It means different things to different people all across the world.

What some might not realize is that it’s a very Biblical word, so for all who take the Scriptures seriously, we should reexamine its use and perhaps reclaim its Biblical meaning.

Pentecost was the fiftieth day after Passover. It was also an agricultural festival, the Feast of Weeks, when the wheat harvest was celebrated with a one-day celebration (Ex. 23:16, Lev. 23:15-21, Deut. 16:9-12). But for the Jews in the Old Testament, neither Passover nor Pentecost was simply an agricultural festival. These festivals, of course, celebrated the identity-forming legacy in the young nation of Israel with the stories of the Exodus and the Passover.

You may remember it would be 50 days after Passover until they would come to Mount Sinai and Moses would receive the law. Pentecost is about God giving to his redeemed people the way of life by which they must now carry out His purposes. His message and empowering them.

How appropriate then for God to send the Holy Spirit to this young church to proclaim He was with them.

In Acts 2, we think of the disciples gathered. Having seen the resurrected Jesus, having seen Jesus ascended and having been told to wait in Jerusalem. The disciples, still, in shock, still grieving (in some way), but still hopeful and still together. Suddenly a loud, rushing, violent wind fills the room and the Holy Spirit descends upon them like tongues of fire. They start preaching to the masses who had gathered from various cultures in Jerusalem for the Passover feast and people started hearing them in their own languages!

It’s a crazy scene – People start hearing the words in their own language and are amazed, some speculated that they disciples had been drinking.

Sometimes to us the miracle feels arbitrary or interchangeable. Jesus walking on water, or healing somebody but to change the miracle of tongues to something else would have changed an important part of the story.

Here’s what I mean. Had the Holy Spirit given the disciples say, the gift of flight and they starting flying around Jerusalem (even if they were singing – imagine singing flying apostles!), people would have gathered, they certainly would have been astonished and they would have asked themselves two questions: One, what does this mean? And two, have we been drinking? “Just what do they put in the orange juice here in Jerusalem?”

But back to the first question, what would this have meant?

To change the miracle would have been changed the meaning of Pentecost profoundly. The miracle of tongues at Pentecost is God saying, “I’ve made the message of salvation available to everyone, I’ve even put in your own language.”

One of the major points of Pentecost is that the message of the risen Jesus is for everybody. Regardless of ethnicity, background, tradition, tribe or language.

Here at Grace Chapel, we get to enjoy the blessing of being a multi-cultural church. Being an American Middle-Easterner, it’s one of the first things that I would notice. Like many here, I love our diversity. I for one, like the sound of broken English – it’s the language of home.

And so may we never take this multi-culturalism for granted. As we celebrate this, we should be challenged as well.
As we reflect on Pentecost Sunday, let us ask ourselves:

1. Are we being faithful with the gift of the Spirit that God has empowered us with?
2. Are we being faithful with the gift of each other?
3. Are we being faithful with the gospel message of the Risen Savior that is to be shared to all people?

May we as a Church reclaim the Biblical nature of Pentecost and may we be a Spirit-led people and Spirit-led church.

I know the more sensitive title would have been like, “You may find the Christian life difficult at times if you do not adequately understand or can deal with the never-ending controversies of life.” While it’s all true, it’s a lame blog title.

So here we go – The Christian life is riddled with controversy. I suppose it starts with the audacious claim of the resurrection. I mean we are talking about a dead man who claimed to be God and came back to life and promised all His followers this same resurrected life. Even worse, true Christ followers actually believe this is true.

In fairness, most people in the West today don’t consider this to be controversial anymore but in the first century, believing that the resurrected Jesus was the son of God could get you killed. Today, you can believe in just about anything so long as it does not infringe on another’s rights. Of course, we cannot say the same for other parts of the world.

Today, in the West, we have different controversies, separation of church and state, religious freedom, gay versus traditional marriage, abortion, and the list goes on. My argument is that because the nature of Christian belief and conviction is always tied into the public square, the Christian will never be able to avoid controversy.

In thinking about this, the following questions naturally surface, “Where is the balance of being bold and being controversial?” “Where is the line between being prophetic and unfairly using “shock value?” “Where is the line of not fighting every battle and not engaging in those that are necessary?”

And that’s the real motivation behind this little series. I find that too many of us go out of our way to avoid the entanglements of controversy. Worse, if controversies are always personal (to someone), this becomes the near equivalent of the priest and the Levite crossing the road to not touch the beaten man in the story of the Good Samaritan.

Most of us prefer the path of least resistance and generally if we are a part of a controversy, we tend to choose to be the instigators of it as opposed to being confronted by it. I suspect this is due to our desire to be in control. But the Christian life contains a moral expectation, communal accountability and is rooted in the followership and imitation of its central figure. Thus, controversy becomes part of the deal.

That does not mean that we should instigate controversy, fuel it or foolishly create it. Bad examples would include Pat Robertson (who believes any news is good news), Fred Phelps (who I do not identify as a faithful Christian; nor do I consider his mob to be a church), and that old guy who kept predicting the end of the world (I only wish I could forget the name Harold Camping) or some blogs that bluntly ask, “What do you think of gay marriage?” Regarding the latter, it’s good that we’re having this conversation online, the problem is that some are only having the conversation online. It’s a different conversation when we you are actually looking someone in the eye versus typing at your screen.

Finally, while we cannot be involved in every controversy, it does mean that we should do our part to confront the controversies that come into our paths. If we cannot, it seems to point at a lack of faith on our part and that should create alarm.

The type of controversy that I support is when we sincerely and lovingly try to stand for the common good for God and others. It’s been my experience that the better of these moments happen in conversation and community. I hope we as Christ-followers can defuse some of the cultural tension, clarity to confront the hype, peace to overcome the anger and wisdom to move us toward redemption.

In posting about the nature of controversy, it seemed necessary to discuss on what happens when we find ourselves in some type of “controversy.” To avoid being over-dramatic here, I’m using the term as the idea that there are going to be times when you discover that people are intensely debating a subject for some period of time and the subject is you.

Most of us have no idea what it feels like to be under critical scrutiny like Tim Tebow or other celebrity types. But in our corner of life, many of us have felt watched, judged, and gossiped about. (We should also remember that we have all been guilty of doing this to others.)

In my first post I shared about an awkward moment about a decision I made that some deemed as “controversial”. Though initially it didn’t feel like it deserved the term, I do remember there was a good bit of unexpected discussion. I remember feeling a bit exposed and vulnerable. I also felt judged in some weird sense. I remember how I felt toward these “detractors.” And I remember feeling that it felt more personal than it ought to. Initially, I thought it was so odd that it became something so dramatic and that’s when it dawned on me, “it’s not the decision they don’t like, it’s me.”  While this was certainly not true for all who were conversing, it was true for some and this part of the nature of controversy, criticism and leadership.

I recall another time where I was sharing my heart on something I was willing to take the heat for. It’s like that big wave that you see coming and after it hits, you have two thoughts, “Yeah that’s what I thought it was going to be” and “My shorts are still on right? Thank God.”

In some ways, it was a similar feeling of vulnerability. This time, I had direct conversations in phone calls, emails and some in person. Some parts of it sucked as I thought, “I can’t believe this person doesn’t get it!” I learned a little more about spending more time listening than defending which is not just something that you need to only say but actually do. I learned more about compromise and a little more about clarifying. Some of it still hurt but looking back on it, it felt like I actually added to a larger conversation that needed to be had.

The important thing for me to remember was to keep perspective, keep conversing, try to keep growing in character. For the Christian, prayer, Scripture-reading, fasting and other disciplines are essential in creating and keeping your perspective. Conversing is necessary because we need to be in community, not just to avoid self-isolation, not just so others can understand what we are trying to say but for also encouragement and accountability. And lastly, we ought to never be spiteful but to respond to our critics with mercy and grace, even if they are unfair. I find this to be very difficult. It’s easy to respond in anger, in spite, even sarcasm (well, maybe a little sarcasm is ok) but it depends on what you are seeking.

If we are seeking reconciliation, reacting in anger for the hurt generally only reinforces the statement/action/reaction initially made against you. However, responding with charity, respect and a spirit willing to engage in dialogue can not only be disarming to your critic(s) but may actually lead to good things.

As I said in my second post, controversy can lead to conversation. And though we should not instigate controversy, we should be not afraid of it. It’s not the end of the world, it’s not the end of your career (scandals not withstanding) and we may actually find it to be the beginning of something better.

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I’m a little off schedule with our move and excited to be preaching this Sunday night so pardon the inconsistent postings but thanks for reading.