Pentecost + God's Dream + 6.5.22

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M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos Oxnard


( Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27))

 

“Dear child of God, what do you dream about in your loveliest of dreams? Do you dream about flying high or rainbows reaching across the sky?” These are the first words of God’s Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton. Later in the book, it shares that God dreams that we will love each other in all of our diversity.[1]

Today is a celebration of diversity! Because the Spirit reminds us that diversity is not a mess to be tidied away, but instead is something glorious that reflects God’s Dream for us.

Father Greg Kimura shared in the AAPI Devotionals last week about his first time visiting Hawaii while reflecting on the term “Ohana”:
“I still remember the first time I set foot in Hawaii. The warm, moist air fresh off the airplane from Anchorage was the most pleasant, foreign shock I had had in my 14 years of life. Yet walking through the streets of Honolulu, away from Waikiki, for the first time I saw a community who looked like me. I wasn’t an outsider. Asian, indigenous, Pacific Islander, mixed. Multilingual, but with its insider’s pidgin-speak. 

Family? Well, at least a community of solidarity. Glimpse of the future U.S.

I see Hawaii, more so than California, as the true bellwether of a multicultural America. Not caught up in the usual exclusive polarities of white and black, but in the variegated browns, in- between. Not a melting pot, but the best of everything constitutive, combined. 

Queen Emma, Hawaiian and Anglican, would be its patron saint.”[2]
I loved this idea because it celebrates the diversity found not just in Hawaii but in California and other parts, where cultures are intermixed. Not to create uniformity but to celebrate diversity.

Often times we skip the alternative first reading for today from Genesis. It is well, awkward. Because a lot of times we read that scripture in this way: Humans got together with all their language and culture and it threatened God. So, God created all sorts of different languages to split them up so they wouldn’t be too powerful. Then, on Pentecost day, God solved all that by helping those from different cultures and languages access the good news of Jesus Christ. That is the very flawed way we have understood these scriptures speaking to each other. For one thing, this vision of God shows God to be very small, not the powerfully loving God I know.
But actually, the truth is more complex. We have been playing the game of Telephone with scripture, and we got the wrong end of the stick. God was not against human solidarity, or threatened by our collective power. What I have come to believe here is that God was against uniformity. As one commentator put it, “God seems concerned about the oneness of the people and their language. It is this uniformity that is the problem. Sameness is not God’s will for God’s people. Monologue, monolingual, monophony—these are not the dreams of God!”[3]

God’s dream is a people unified but diverse and joyously so. Many times, we have a bilingual service on this day of Pentecost, something we are skipping today because we just had a bilingual service for our bishop’s visit a few weeks back. Sometimes I hear praise when folks visit us for the smooth way in which we segue between English and Spanish in the bilingual services here at All Santos. But what I love about that service is the times when it is messy. When we are all saying the Lord’s Prayer in English or Spanish and it doesn’t always sound like language, as much as babble- but it shows we can be together, in solidarity, even when we literally aren’t speaking the same language. I find the Spirit is dancing through our community in those moments.

In a reflection on Diversity in another AAPI Alive Devotional this week, Erika Bertling says:

“Lift your head and look up [and around the room]. In that short moment, your eyes took in an incredibly diverse array of colors, shapes, textures, and light. Now close your eyes and listen. In that short moment, you again took in a wide variety of sounds: both sustained and fleeting, natural and human-made, invited and uninvited. And immediately, your brain started to make unified sense of this input, attaching value, emotion, story, and understanding.

We are hard-wired by our Creator to see diversity and to make unified meaning out of the world we inhabit, using the “software” of our culture, experiences, beliefs, and circumstances. But too often, our corrupted, imperfect world uses differences from a twisted, fear-based place for division. This is not the truth. This is not what will set us free.

And so, let us joyfully continue to strive for collective liberation as we claim the truth of our beautiful diversity in our unique and beloved communities. May we intentionally reclaim diversity through the Perfect Love in which there is no fear (I John 4:18) to its redemptive purpose of unified strength and deeper meaning.”[4] 

This, to me, is the story of Pentecost. We are in a world that too often feels threatened by diversity. Folks are worried about being replaced. But they never could be. Because we are all humans. Once we begin to lean into our common humanity and celebrate each other’s diversity without trying to make others like us, then we can live into the dream of God.

As we heard from Joel in the reading from Acts today,

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon 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 upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

We shall prophesy. God’s dream is our dream of unity without uniformity. A celebration of solidarity in diversity. This week, seek out someone who is entirely unlike you and listen to their story. The richness of God’s creation is bigger than we can imagine. We must learn to love one another and love ourselves enough to know there is space for all in God’s creation. Thanks be to God!

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