I. Wonder on Pentecost Sunday 00:00
Thank God he doesn’t rely on us to do it by our own strength. That’s what today is all about. Today is about the fact that Jesus told his disciples, “You’ve got this revelation. I’ve opened up the Scriptures to you. You have all these things. But don’t go until the Spirit which I shall send you comes down from on high and empowers you.” That should remind us that you could be the most theologically astute, the most skilled laborer, you can do everything right in the kingdom, and yet it’s all about his Spirit within you.
With that in mind, I’m going to embark on a little journey in this series we’ve been doing, Worship, Welcome and Wonder. And what a fortuitous coincidence that “Wonder” happens to fall on Pentecost Sunday, because if you listened to the lesson we just heard, how many times did it say, “And they marveled and were amazed” (Acts 2.7)? In other words, they wondered. They were in awe of what was happening. It’s the perfect picture of what I want to capture when we talk about wonder.
II. Visual Illusions 01:18
I wanted to start with a quick introduction, as I have the past couple of weeks. I’ve given these examples of cultural influence in our life, and the reason why we have to learn the kingdom culture is because the culture that surrounds us, the people, the ideas, the very air we breathe, is pulling us in different directions. I talked about the current in the ocean that could pull you, without you even knowing about it, 50 yards down the shore or further. I talked about the compass: when you bring a magnet into play, it might be a great compass looking for true north, but that magnet is going to pull it completely away.
And today I wanted to talk about visual illusions. You’ve all seen them as we go throughout the internet; people post them. I’m going to show you just a couple, and I’m going to explain what’s happening in them. So if we go to the first image: if you were to look at this (I’m not going to make you do it), if you look at it for about 30 to 45 seconds and then you close your eyes, what happens is you actually see the reverse image. So the maple leaf that’s in green becomes red, and the bars around the maple leaf become green. Now, this is a commonly studied phenomenon. What happens is you have these visual cones, these receptors that receive color, and if you look at this, you see how oversaturated these colors are. They’re not pleasant, really. They’re very intense. It actually exhausts your visual cones, and then you end up seeing the reverse of what you had just been looking at.
And then the next image: it’s hard to tell up on the screens from far away, but those two arrows, when you look at them, it looks like the one in the blue is a slightly different color than the one in the yellow. Like I said, the effect is mitigated on the screens, but what’s happening there is the exact same thing. What your eyes see is determined by what you’ve been looking at. What you perceive in the world is actually changed by what you see on what we called last week your glowing rectangles, your TV screens, your iPhones. And when the world is bombarding you with these hyper-oversaturated images and ideas, we end up actually having distorted perception without even knowing it.
There are stories I’ve read about gamers who have gamed for like three days straight, and their vision is so warped from just looking at that highly saturated screen that they actually have to rest for a day. They think that they’re losing their eyesight, because they look at the world and it’s so bland and colorless and drained, because they’ve completely exhausted themselves by plugging into this visual stimulation. And what do we do all day long? If we’re not looking at our phones, we’re looking at a TV screen, we’re looking at a car screen, a map. And I wanted to argue that this isn’t just a physical phenomenon. Being surrounded by these ideas (and it doesn’t have to be visual; it might be on the radio, it might be who you’re talking to, who you surround yourself with) is distorting our ability to see the world correctly.
III. Wired for Wonder 04:40
But we are wired for wonder. And yet this day and age I would call one of the most cynical in the history of the world. Last week I called it one of the loneliest. So if you’re lonely and you’re cynical, what do you have? Hardly anything. It’s bankrupt. And we see it reflected in our culture. We looked at some anxiety and depression statistics last week. There’s a cultural bankruptcy, where people are looking around and saying, “Where have the good days gone? What’s wrong, with all of these shootings and this mental health crisis in the schools?” And I want to argue it’s because we’re looking at the wrong things. We’re listening to the wrong things. We aren’t keeping our minds, our spirits, focused on the kingdom of God.
And that doesn’t mean becoming a hermit. I hope you know that you don’t have to go and hang out in the church 24 hours a day in order to see God. You should be seeing God every day, in whatever job, whatever capacity, and you should be wondering at the world, the beauty, the goodness, the wealth of God’s revelations. He says throughout Scripture that he makes himself known in the world he has created. If you don’t see him, it’s not because he’s not there.
Wonder: what does it mean? “A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” The surprise mingled with admiration is important, because there are so many things… I see this very often with my children. You give them a toy, and their first response is absolute wonder, because of the surprise, the new admiration: “This is so cool!” Within a week it might be in the garbage pail. We don’t know. Because there’s this unfamiliarity. But the thing is, with God there is no end to unfamiliarity. You don’t get to a point where you’ve exhausted the depths of God. In fact, later I’ll argue you don’t get to the point where you exhaust the depths of the people in this room. There’s always more to the people that God’s created in his image.
Now, the wonder I’m looking for is the wonder that comes, like I said, with the children, when they’re presented with something unexpected, unfamiliar, admirable. So let’s go to the tea party that Haley put together for Ruby yesterday. Complete and utter wonder in that moment. And for the next hour or so, I promise you, her mouth did not stop forming words for that entire hour: “Oh my gosh, this! And look at… oh, and the cream and the milk, and you need more tea.” And she was just so excited about these plastic cups filled with lukewarm tea, and there’s real milk, and her little stuffed animals and dolls are all around her. She was entering into wonder. Now, we grow up and we know, well, plastic cups are not that special. Or at least we think we know that. But, man, there’s something special about your mom setting up something beautifully for you and sitting down with just you for 40 minutes and sipping tea and talking and hanging out with your special things. I would argue that it wasn’t the tea or the cups that was making Ruby so excited. It was the moment of connection with her mom, doing something she loved.
IV. The Sound of Wonder 08:14
So God gives us things, and you can respond in one of two ways, the same way my kids can respond in one of two ways to us. “Daddy, what are we eating for dinner?” “Oh, chicken noodle soup.” “We had chicken noodle soup last week.” “Yeah, well, that’s something that we eat regularly.” Or we can respond like the psalmist, where everything in the world is a gift of God’s abundance to us. So I showed you what wonder looked like in Ruby’s face, but let’s listen to what wonder sounds like in our psalm that we read this morning, Psalm 104:
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2 covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. 3 He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; 4 he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. Ps 104.1–4
14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth 15 and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart. Ps 104.14–15
That is the sound of wonder. He’s looking at the same world you and I live in, and he’s seeing God in God’s provision: the very bread he eats, the wine he drinks, the oil to make his face shine, bread to strengthen man’s heart. And he continues:
24 O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. Ps 104.24–25
One of the disciplines I’ve tried to enforce in my life to maintain a sense of wonder is, when I drive home… I’m always looking at the road, like my wife wants me to. No, I’m looking at the ocean. Every once in a while you steal a couple of glances, just to remember the greatness, the vastness of that ocean that’s right there. Well, I guess I’m pointing the wrong direction, but when I drive home it’s on my right. The point is, we don’t look at the world the way that the psalmist does, and I want to invite you to open your eyes to see the world the way he does here. He continues:
26 There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. 27 These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. 30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. Ps 104.26–30
We’ll stop there. There’s so much more in this psalm, but I want you to just get a rhythm for how this person is viewing the world.
V. Hunger and Thirst 10:27
How have we become so cynical about the good things that God provides in our life? I would argue it’s not only a problem of modern man; this is something that we’ve been struggling with since the beginning. In fact, in the garden, God gives them the beautiful, luscious garden, and they have to have the one thing he told them not to eat (Gen 3.6). Do you think that any of their food in the garden was any less than exquisite? Do you think that their trees weren’t ripe with fruit, their vegetables weren’t as good as you could imagine? No. But they needed the one thing that God didn’t give them. This is how we look at the world.
And I would argue that this comes to us through a couple of major ways, especially in our current culture. First of all, I think that we have a responsibility to foster within us a hunger for God. We actually have to be looking for him in our world in order to see him. We’re promised, “If you seek, you will find” (Matt 7.7). If he’s everywhere, as the psalmist proclaims, as is proclaimed throughout all Scripture, then why aren’t you more amazed?
I heard this great comedy sketch. I couldn’t put it up, because there are always hints of nefarious ideas playing around in these comedians, but this particular one was really good. He was talking about how everyone on every plane everywhere should just be like, “Oh my God, I’m flying! Literally the most amazing thing!” If you read the ancients, all they talk about is, “Oh, to soar with the eagles.” It’s poetry. And yet we’re like, “Man, the service on this flight… I just can’t handle this.” And you’re hurtling through the air at 600 miles an hour in a steel tube. There’s something amazing about our world, and yet we’re so blinded and jaded to it. And I think it’s partially because we have a responsibility to foster wonder, to foster that hunger for the things of God, to seek him and then find him.
We see that in Jeremiah 15:16. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. He is the most dour person to read. It’s awful, everything that happens to him. And yet he has these glimpses, these moments, where you see how he lived through that awful life. Well, here’s one of his key moments:
16 Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. Jer 15.16
What’s going on here? In the verse before and the verse after, he’s talking about them peeling his flesh from his bones. He’s talking about them beating him so he has no more strength left. But the verse right here gives you the key to how he keeps going. He created a hunger for the one thing that mattered: God, God’s word, his life-giving word. So when you hunger for that, it doesn’t matter if you don’t get physical bread. Now, let me just be clear here: yes, God wants to give you an abundant life, physically and otherwise. But we have to have our priorities straight. We have to seek him first, and then all those things will be added unto you (Matt 6.33).
VI. Materialism 13:44
There are three major enemies of wonder in our present age, and I don’t have time to go deeply into them, but I just want to call them out so that you’re aware, and give you a couple of things to maybe stir up your thoughts. Number one is the materialism in our world that teaches that everything you need can be bought. Everything you need is just more money so you can buy the thing; that’s where true wonder lies. Entertainment, that teaches distraction is the antidote to suffering. You’re bored? Pull up a YouTube video. Are you hurting? Watch a film, watch a movie. Are you looking for some experience? Go listen to a concert; go be a part of that musical genre that you love. And lastly, the cynicism that erodes our expectation and blinds us to goodness.
Like I said, I’m not going to go deep into these, but I want to call out a couple of things for us to pay attention to. As far as materialism goes, I pulled up these statistics. They’re hard to read, but I’m going to read a few, and maybe they’ll strike a chord with us. There are 300,000 items in the average American home. The average size of the American home has tripled in the past 50 years. 3.1 percent of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40 percent of the toys consumed globally. The average American woman owns 30 outfits, one for every day of the month; in 1930, that figure was nine. The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually, while the average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year. The average woman will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping. Shopping malls outnumber high schools, and 93 percent of teenage girls rank shopping as their favorite pastime. There are more televisions than people in the average American home. Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on non-essential goods, in other words, items they don’t need.
Now, if you sat there and thought, “Well, that’s not me,” let me just say this: there’s a statistic there that will get to you, I promise. Let he who says he has no sin acknowledge it. There’s something here that is not normal. We are bent in a certain direction by our culture.
Now, I am not saying that you should go get rid of all of your stuff. If I was saying that, then I should have said it last week, before the rummage sale. We could have another rummage sale, though, if you feel convicted today. But I’m saying that you do need to treat your stuff with a degree of wisdom. There is something important about the fact that we are grasping these things to ourselves when they can often be the serpent that takes you out. Hold them at arm’s length. I heard one preacher say, “Treat it like the company car.” He used to get so mad when his things would break. But he goes, “If the world is God’s, then it’s not mine. It’s the company car. If God wants me to have another one, he’ll get me another one.” There’s a healthy perspective there. We’re always grasping and looking for the things that we need. One of our African bishops told us years ago, “I feel bad for you Americans, because when we pray to God to give us our daily bread, in Africa we actually mean it.”
There’s something dangerous about having more than you need. The things aren’t the problem, but our lack of hunger for God and his provision is the problem. Yesterday I took the kids shopping at Costco, as one does, and I had told them that by the end of it we could have samples. But we were too early, and so the samples weren’t out. So I was like, “I need to get them a treat.” So I got them a churro. Don’t worry: I got them one Costco churro. I am not crazy. And I split it into three pieces for our kids. That was around 11 a.m. Then I sat them down to eat lunch at 12 p.m. Let me tell you, they were not hungry for lunch. That’s us. We fill ourselves up with the things of this world, and we wonder why we don’t hunger and thirst for God.
Now, that doesn’t mean don’t buy the Costco churro. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s quite delicious. What it does mean is that we need to build into our lives rhythms of self-denial. You’ve got to figure out what that is for you. That’s why we have seasons like Lent. But trust me when I say Lent is not enough. We need some serious wisdom around our stuff: stuff we need to give up, stuff we need to limit ourselves from. Rhythms of self-denial. And we need to pursue God. We sing this song occasionally, and it says, “The more I seek you, the more I find you, the more I love you.” That’s the secret. If you’re going to seek God, he will meet you. And if you persist in seeking him and you persist in meeting God, then you will fall deeply in love with him. Not in some sentimental, heart-fluttery type of way, but in the type of love that says, “There is nothing in my life more important than my relationship with God.”
VII. Entertainment 19:40
Okay, entertainment. Two things about entertainment, and then we will move on. Number one, there’s a great line from the title of a book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. If you want the book, I have copies; I can give them to you. It is amazing. But the point of the book is obvious to us: we are amusing ourselves to death. Aldous Huxley once said, “In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” That goes right along with the stuff we were talking about with the iPhone last week, when it said we are the iPhone’s killer app. We’re not using it; it’s using us. The whole point here is to remember that we need to treat our entertainment, our technology, all of these things, with wisdom.
I was telling a couple of guys the other day, “I think I spend more time with Michael Scott from The Office and Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine than with any of my friends in real life.” That is a tragedy, and yet it is considered normal. From what I see from my friends, I would assume most of them would have to admit to something like that. This is not normal, and it’s going to squash your wonder: these hyper-saturated, hyper-punched-up TV shows that show these enigmatic characters, and then we don’t have any desire to spend time with the people that are our neighbors, our friends, our church fellows. It’s because you’re eating the churro, which is the TV show, instead of the sandwich with the meat and the lettuce and the tomato. You’re eating junk food.
The stuff of life is with your fellow man. And it’s a shallow description, these people on TV. You get this much of their life, their personality, whatever they show you, the punched-up version. But when you talk to somebody, when you really get to know somebody, they’re almost painfully interesting. When you really walk with somebody, when you really get to know them, you find that there are infinite depths to them. And if you find yourself getting annoyed at people, like, “Man, they’re so boring,” or, “Man, they’re so whatever,” get to know them better. I promise you there’s more going on. Psalm 139:14 gives us all the evidence we need for this. It says:
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. Ps 139.14
Every single person you encounter is fearfully and wonderfully made by God. We are wired for connection with one another, and we’re choking it out of ourselves by being concerned with the lesser goods, the lesser things.
VIII. Pentecost: Worship, Welcome and Wonder 23:28
We’re not going to talk about cynicism this week; we don’t have the time. But when you pursue these things to their logical end, and you find that the entertainment, the material goods you get in this world, are empty, that they leave you desperate and broken and unsatisfied, it leads directly to cynicism: “There’s no good in this world. Nothing’s ever going to be good.”
And that leads us to Pentecost, coming back full circle, because there is no greater picture of this sermon series than Pentecost, when God establishes his kingdom on earth among men. It’s so cool that Jesus thought we were worth leaving behind to run his kingdom. Now, he’s in charge, absolutely, but he trusted us to take it to every person in the world, and we’re all in this room because his plan worked and is still working. Pentecost is all about worshiping God. Pentecost is all about welcoming others: there were people from every tribe and language hearing the word of the Lord in their own tongue. And it’s all about wonder: finding out that he exists, that there is a pathway to get to know him, and that you owe him everything. That’s all throughout Peter’s sermon that we read today. Worship, welcome and wonder.
And the cynics go, “Oh, they’re drunk” (Acts 2.13). That sounds pretty familiar, with a lot of stuff going on in our culture today. But let’s remember that we live in a world suffused with the glory of God. Not only that, the Spirit of God lives within you. There’s a lot to wonder at. If you’re not feeling amazed… feelings are so ephemeral. I don’t even know how to pronounce that word; I probably shouldn’t use it. Feelings are shallow representations of reality. They can tell you things, but they don’t get to the heart of the matter. If you’re not feeling amazed, seek God. He will open your eyes. Amen.