A Viral Moment Worthy of Sharing: A Pentecost Message

A sermon for the People of First Baptist Church of Austin

Pentecost Sunday

May 28, 2023

Acts 2: 1-21

"A Viral Moment Worthy of Sharing"

Photo by Tj Kolesnik on Unsplash

What does it mean when something “goes viral?” And no, im not talking about a contagiouscough.  I’m thinking of viral videos and memes. In the world of social media, videos and memes are shared over and over again, reaching a variety of people outside its original target audience. This is called “going viral.”

One of the earliest viral videos is one you’ve likely seen. Reminiscent of a 1980s home movie, a video of two young sons was uploaded to YouTube in 2007 so that the grandparents could watch home movies of their growing grandchildren. The video shakily zooms in on the two boys sitting together in a blue recliner chair.  The baby, named Charlie, is sitting on his brother’s lap while his dad films their adorable interactions.  There are giggles. There are laughs… and there are bites.  The older brother sticks his finger into his baby brother’s mouth, and of course he bites down.  “Charlie bit my finger!” The brother exclaims in the cutest British accent. But Charlie’s not letting go.  The worried look on the older brother’s face as he tries to get his baby brother to unlatch is part of this video’s charm.  Despite his pleas, Charlie won’t let go of his brother’s finger and is laughing about it the entire time. 

It’s adorable,  memorable, and shareable.  Known as “Charlie bit my finger,” this video has been viewed almost a billion times since it was published in 2007 to YouTube. 

So why does one video go viral over others? Did you know there are 3.7 million videos uploaded to YouTube every single day. Every. Single. Day. How do videos stand out in a sea of billions of other content? A video goes viral for its ability to elicit an emotion from its viewer.  In “Charlie bit my finger” we might feel a connectedness to the boys because we have young children and they behave very similar.  Or our kids are all grown and out of the house, and we remember the times when they were that young. We may share it with our friends because we want them to experience the joy of watching these adorable boys interact as siblings, or we might share it because we want to uplift someone’s day and make them laugh.   A video is likely to be shared when it elicits emotion, a call to action, informs or educates people of social issues or ills,  or simply entertain its viewers with laughs. What makes viral videos special are their power to spread like wildfire among the masses of diverse people. 

In our scripture text this morning, a diverse group of Jews have gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Weeks, known as Shavuot (Sha-voo-out).  Shavuot was a Jewish harvest festival where Jewish people would come from all over to bring the first fruits of their harvest to the temple to give thanks to God. They would carry baskets of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates on their shoulders and would process into the city with ox adorned with golden horns and olive branch crowns. A flute would lead the procession as they entered the city and they would be welcomed into the city gates with familiarity and camaraderie.  It was a joyous celebration, accompanied by music and song. I imagine it to feel like a Mar-di-gra  parade, people boasting with pride for the provisions of the Lord. 
Fifty days after passover, Jews from many different lands, with very different ethnic backgrounds, speaking many different languages convened in Jerusalem for this festival. The disciples are in Jerusalem, too, and had just experienced Jesus’ ascension into the heavens.  They are gathered in the upper room of a house together alongside other devoted followers of Jesus, including the women who loved Jesus the most. This small congregation of Christ followers are gathered with anticipation and expectation for the spirit to come, as Jesus promised. 
Then, something incredible happens…. A rush of wind fills the house where they are sitting. But this wind wasn’t like the wind you experience when you turn on a ceiling fan. It is described to be a violent wind, maybe something more hurricane level wind. Then the Bible describes individual flames of fire appearing among the group, and a fire lit tongue rested on each one them. It’s amazing the wind didn’t extinguish the fire, or the fire consume anything.
Suddenly they were able to speak languages they never knew before. And not just any random language, but, in the languages that the festival attending Jews would know and understand. The disciples were filled with the power to communicate with their fellow Jewish brothers and sisters from distant lands. 

If you’ve ever traveled oversees or to any unfamiliar place where the language and culture is very different than you know, you’ll understand the comfort in hearing your native tongue spoken. When I was in seminary, we traveled to the Czech Republic to help put on a Christian youth camp for American teenagers living on military bases in Eastern Europe.  Teens gathered in Ostrava to do service work, bible study, and worship.  

But our journey to Eastern Europe was rifled with canceled flights, long layovers, and confusion at train stations. Long before Google translate existed, we were forced to navigate city transit with no understanding of the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe.  Half the time we weren’t sure we were going in the right direction until two or three train stops later when were were finally able to locate our current location on a map. Again, all of this was before google maps and smart phones. In the frustration of the language barrier, the sound of someone speaking English was like a beacon of light, a hallelujah moment, like a chorus of angels singing over us. Oh, the familiar sound of our native tongue, something we hadn’t been able to rely on in the Czech countryside! We rushed over to seek their guidance, to help us understand what we didn’t know. 
A hallelujah moment happened that day of Pentecost too. 

People from different walks of life, different cultures, different ethnicities, different languages, were able to communicate with each other, when before, the barriers of understanding were steep. Now, they all can understand.  

I wonder what it was like to be able to speak a language you had never learned, words rolling off your tongue as if it was something you’ve done your entire life.  Sitting in Spanish class in 10th grade, I’d often think of this story and wish that would happen to me so I would stop having to study proper way to conjugate verbs.  If I would have suddenly been able to speak Spanish in a way that a native Spanish speaker would recognize, and not just in my broken spanglish, American accent, I would have be jumping up and down with excitement but also been totally freaked out at the same time.

So, I bet there was a lot of chaos happening in this moment for this group of Jews, when everyone is hearing and speaking of the mighty works of God in their own language.  Onlookers are questioning what is happening while others accuse them of being drunk. 

Peter has to step in to say something. He delivers his first sermon, refutes the accusation that they are all drunk and then preaches that the prophecy of Joel has come true, that “the spirit will be poured out on all people.” 

And it’s true…the spirit is for everyone of all tongues and overflows with abundance. There is more than enough to go around. They were brought together by a spirit that allowed them to get on the same level with each other and the spirit unified them in God’s purpose for the world. In this truth, we see God’s desire for redemption, desire for new creation, and salvation is for all people, despite any social, political, or economic barriers we may try to impose.
They all experienced something amazing, something supernatural, something worthy of sharing with others.  And share is exactly what they did- they went home to their native lands, bringing with them stories of what they experienced, of the good news of the inclusivity of the gospel to the ends of the earth.  This is the fulfillment of scripture spoken by Jesus just before he ascended: that they are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth.  This was a viral moment, and these people got to experience it in real time.

This viral moment transformed the landscape of the world and is the beginning story of the Christian church as we know it. We see the creation of the church as a community of people seeking to follow Jesus in a dynamic way.  The book of Acts is full of stories of the inner workings of the early church, their successes, and their failures, and their attempts to be true to God’s calling to take the gospel everywhere they go.  They wholeheartedly lived the Jesus Way, preaching the kingdom of God and the promise of new life in Jesus.  They dedicated themselves to each other, forming communities that went out of their way to care for each other. They shared everything and sold their belongings in order to provide for those who had basic needs.  They cared for the widows, the women who were left with nothing after their husbands died.  This ancient church took seriously their call to be witnesses to the ends of the earth and did their best to live it out. 

The church is where people gather together to be “empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out God’s creative mission of healing, and joy for the sake of the world.” It’s not done individually but communally, as we see in the early church model for us.  The church has a responsibility to come together and recognize where God has shown up and where God is moving.  We do this together. We discern the spirit’s leading together, not in a vacuum, but in response to the deep need in our community and in our world. 

When the church comes together to respond to the spirit’s leading, the church can do really incredible things. Take for example a church here in Austin, creating solutions to problems in our own community.  In 2016, leaders of Covenant Presbyterian Church saw an opportunity to expand their missional work.  Once they had paid off their $7.5 million building debt, they would immediately begin using the savings from the debt to fund mission initiatives.  They did just that, and in 2019, they used $100,000 to pay off the medical debt of many poor Austin residents.  The next year, they used $100,000 to fund four community organizations working to end homelessness. They then created the Love Letter Fund, a grant program which would combine the passions and gifts of the congregation with funds for projects that would improve the lives of Austinites.  

Through this program, church members would be able to submit grant applications to create programs that would provide tangible ways for them to use their gifts.  Their pastor says, “The best gift we can offer is our people, rather than a program.  What if we invested in our people to seek to live {the call of Jesus}? What if Covenant became an incubator for lots and lots and lots of individuals to explore these kind of callings themselves?”  

Three church members with backgrounds in finance and business development saw a need and applied for the grant. Together, they were the first recipients of the Love Letter Fund, receiving $100,000 to create a nonprofit dedicated to offering low-interest micro loans to refugees, recent immigrants and other underserved populations who might not qualify for traditional business loans.  They saw a need and turned outward to be part of the solution.  

The spirit plays a big part in mobilizing the church to be open to new ideas and to see new horizons for ministry. Covenant’s successful loan program is proof that the Spirit can lead a church to get creative with their resources and make a big impact for the people of God.  We have to be open to noticing what the spirit is doing among us and then doing something about it.  We have to take action and let the spirit create something new among us. 

How are we as a community going to take what we’ve seen God do and turn it into a sharable moment, telling everyone we know of the awe-inspiring works of God? Are we willing to let God lead us into the uncomfortable and respond in faith?

I know the last thing we all want is to be a group of people gathering in an old building, in a neighborhood we don’t live in, have a moment of nostalgia, and then leave to our homes 30 minutes away, never to be changed, never set on fire by the spirit who demands us to respond to her leading. 

The spirit is present and working among us.  Who are we going to tell about it?

Amen.