HOLY DISORDER

+

Shortly after his resurrection Jesus appears to his disciples and proclaims "But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts:1-8).

So as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday it's not surprising to see the theme of "the ends of the earth" taking a prominent place in the story of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. After they were "filled with the Holy Spirit" they went outside and immediately began to preach to "all the nations:"

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.
At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd,
but they were confused
because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,
"Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?

We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene,
as well as travelers from Rome,
both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs,
yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues
of the mighty acts of God. (Acts 2:5:10)

The disciples are to be Christ's witnesses to the ends of the earth. That is still our job -- to be a powerful witness of what Jesus intends the church to be. We're meant to show the world what transformed lives look like. Not perfect lives, but lives testifying to what is possible when Jesus is at the center of our lives.

Acts 2:41 tells us that about three thousand were added to their number that day. The church went from zero to three thousand on Pentecost, the birthday of the church, and the throng included people from all over the map.

When you or I read the list of fifteen nations above, we naturally tend to think in terms of a map containing all of these territories and countries, each one a different color, each separated from the others by clear boundary lines. But this is exactly the opposite of what the passage is meant to convey: Now, all of these people can understand the preaching of the Galilean apostles, each hearing it in his or her own language. It's an image of unity, of the overcoming of divisions and separation through the unifying grace of the Spirit.

We should note that the "list of nations" mentioned poses lots of problems for scholars; there are lots of hypotheses about possible organizing principles behind the list, but none can be proven. For our purposes, why not celebrate the fact that the list is not neat and orderly, but is as random and varied as our church is today -- as our world is.

Some of us are uncomfortable with this sort of randomness, and feel that the world should be better organized, and its people separated by language groups or skin color. "If the people would just go back where they came from...."

On my recent trip to Rome, our international group of students was not as representative as it should have been because many could not get visas on such short notice. Imagine the visas and passports that it took to assemble that crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost morning!

Once again, the message comes through: Jesus' dream of the Kingdom is that the world will be united as one; the Dream has begun to be fulfilled in the Church, his body, his presence on earth. And it is our task to be living examples of that unity, to be his witnesses, to break down barriers and build up one another.

This is an impossibly tall order, until we allow the Holy Spirit to take over our lives, our churches, our families, our towns and so forth. Let us take up our task again on the Pentecost day, descendants as we are of that motley crowd who heard the gospel being proclaimed each in our own language.

Come, Holy Spirit!