Day of Pentecost C June 5, 2022
Acts 2:1-21. Ps. 104: 25-32
Romans 8:14-17 John 14:8-17, 25-17
Unity and diversity are both good and bad. This is why we seek wisdom that might be called the golden mean, the balance between unity and diversity.
What is bad about diversity? It is bad when each being with free will expresses individual difference as the only value in life. This is the illusory state of thinking that one does not need anyone else. It often is accompanied with selfish hurtful behaviors against those who are not regarded as being needed.
What is good about diversity? Diversity is the full play of differences, statistical variations, and as the saying goes, "Variety is the spice of life." Any aesthetic notion of what is beautiful has to include an appreciation of differences. The beautiful experience occurs when one is able to observe the contrasts which occur because of differences.
What is bad about unity? When we observe the unity of what is called mob behavior, we can note that a large group of people united in truly evil behaviors can do all degrees of hurtful things. We have in history the dictators and their mobs as proof the evil outcomes of unity. We in our own country can note that large sectors in our society are influencing the lack of good wise behaviors in all manner of safety. Why is it we submit to safety in some areas of life but are forced to submit to unsafe practices in others? Unity as a substantial group of people who are organized around hurtful practices can be very dangerous.
What is good about unity? When people are joined in accord to practice love, justice, and promote the common good, then unity is indeed a most desirable and beautiful experience. Unity is the home-team effect when the united expression of favor often yields desired results.
The Day of Pentecost is about both unity and diversity within the church and in our world at large. The Person of the Trinity associated with the Day of Pentecost is the Holy Spirit. And though it seems as though the Holy Spirit had a "coming out party" on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was shown to be present in the beginning of all things. In the creation story, we read that the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep, the void, the chaos. Bringing creation out of chaos is what the Holy Spirit does. Bringing regulatory order out for the morass of experiential data is the creative work of the Spirit.
The Day of Pentecost as reported in the Acts of the Apostle was a language event. We tend to think that the Day of Pentecost was a day about Gentiles hearing the news of Christ in diverse languages. It was eventually, but if we listen carefully to the writing, the people gathered in Jerusalem were most likely Jews of the Diaspora, some who had come to reside in Jerusalem. They were Jews who had lived outside of Israel, and they spoke the native languages of the places in which they lived. They had gathered in Jerusalem on a feast day, and had lived in places all over the Empire. And on this day, they heard the message about Christ spoken to them in their native tongues.
How does the Pentecost account function within the preaching of the early churches?
A major question for the early churches was the chain of progression of the Gospel being for Jews and then being passed on to the Gentiles.
The Pentecost event is told as a story of how the confusion of tongues at the great tower of Babel was finally resolved. How so? God had given a way to redeem the validity of many languages by the speaking of the Gospel of Christ in many different languages.
This was the prologue to the Gentile mission. First Jews who spoke many different languages could come to understand how God was with them in Christ. The sacred language and the liturgical language of Hebrew was not required. God was shown to be interested in a polyglottic presentation of Christ, so that Christ could be made known in all cultures and languages.
The Holy Spirit is also related to language. In John's Gospel Christ is called the Word from the Beginning. And Jesus said, "My words are Spirit, and life."
The Words in different languages about Christ were an experience of the Holy Spirit and divine life by the people who came from many parts of the Roman Empire.
Can we appreciate how the writer of Act presented this as a precursor to the mission of Peter and Paul to Gentile peoples. It is a transitional phase in that it is first Jews from many parts of the world hearing about the significance of Christ in the language of their adopted locations.
The message of the Day of Pentecost is this: Christ, who is God with us, can be translated into any language and into any culture. How does it happen? By word and Spirit, Holy Spirit.
You and I are working to have the life of Christ fully translated into significance in our lives as we learn to prove the life of Christ within us with practice of love and justice. But we are also called to be those who are sent to translate the significance of the life of Christ to others.
And in our day, we are called to do this with the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to be translators the message of Christ into the life-experiences of the diverse people in our world. We need the Holy Spirit to help us to make the love of Christ relevant to as many people as we can.
The Holy Spirit is the gift of God's grace for us to discover the golden mean between unity and diversity. Our world and our country desperately need this grace of mediation.
And today, we say: Come Holy Spirit, make us graceful mediators and reconcilers in a world with people who often want to separate because of diversity and unite because of bigotry and hatred.
Come Holy Spirit, make us mediators of the Gospel of the Peace of Christ. Amen.
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