When we celebrate Pentecost, we are adding our
“Amen” to God’s purpose of diversity.
Those Jews who gathered in Jerusalem for Shavout, fifty days after
Passover, were witnesses to a new demonstration of the Spirit’s transgressive
power. Particularity matters to God, as
the history of the Jewish people discloses; yet this particularity is never
meant to extract one group from the larger human tapestry.
This past weekend
the Metro Chicago Region of the American Baptist Churches gathered for their
annual meeting. I had the opportunity to
reflect with leaders there about the new church that is coming and ways in
which the Spirit is always bringing newness out of the chaotic mix of cultures. This region is diverse, and congregational
leaders understand that the “walls of separation” have been broken by God’s
work, and that they can enjoy being “made alive together with Christ”
(Ephesians 2:5).
I witnessed Joel’s
prophecy being embodied as women and men, younger and older, offered their
gifts for the purpose of a larger unified mission. Persons from India, Honduras, Colombia, and
Ghana, to mention only a sampling, added richly accented English to the African
American and European American linguistic conventions. It was Pentecost for me.
Yesterday churches enjoyed “seeing red” in
banners, vestments, clothing, and flower arrangements. We read the Acts account
of speaking in tongues in varied languages, and we glimpsed a sense of the
wonder of the translatability of the Gospel. I wish we would “see red,”
however, over the anti-Pentecost impulses gaining momentum in our world. It is very hard to be a minority, either
ethnically or religiously.
This past week Joshua M. Landis, a scholar of
Middle East issues, wrote a column for Christian
Century entitled “A Violent Sorting Out.”
He argued, “The entire Middle East is in the midst of a nation-building
process.” There are casualties in this
process, e.g., Jews, Christians, different Islamic traditions, and other
religious minorities, as nations become ever more homogeneous. Dominant and absolutist ideologies replace a
more inclusive approach to peaceful co-existence.
The Spirit-fueled experience of Pentecost made
visible God’s intention to create a new people, including both those near and
far off, as Paul writes (Ephesians 2:13). God’s own project of “sorting out”
requires that we welcome the stranger and call nothing unclean that has its
origin in God. Then we will begin to
discover how beautiful is the Body of Christ.
Molly T. Marshall
Central
prepares women and men for seeking God, shaping church, and serving humanity.
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