Preparation, mission & welcome
Readings: Acts 2. 1-21
In the lead up to, the day of, and the days that follow Pentecost we see the Holy Spirit at work, in the preparations, in the driving out of the disciples in mission, and in the welcoming of people from every tribe, language, people and nation.
I wonder how you picture the day of Pentecost? How that day began. I’ll be honest I’ve always tended to picture the disciples gathered together rather fearful. It’s often how I’ve heard it preached over the years, they were fearful and scared and then the Holy Spirit came and gave them boldness and courage. I’ve also tended to think of there being the 11 plus Matthias gathered in the house. But in reading Acts 1 again this week I was surprised to find a rather different picture emerging.
Because what we find in chapter 1 of Acts is the disciples meeting the risen Jesus, and then, right before he Ascends into heaven, he gives them a task, to share the Gospel of his saving death and resurrection to the whole world, and then they’ve been told to wait for the helper to come, to wait for the Holy Spirit. And what we find as the chapter goes on is that far from just waiting, they are getting ready. We read that ‘They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers’. They’re spending time in prayer and worship, spending time with God in preparation for their mission, the task they have been given.
And then we read that the believers, numbering around 120, on one of these occasions meet to decide who shall replace Judas, who by this point is dead. And so they discuss amongst themselves, come up with two potential men, and then pray that God would reveal to them who it should be. And the lot falls on Matthias.
In gathering together and in these preparations God is already at work. As these 120 believers devote themselves to prayer and worship and fellowship they are being built up in faith and hope. As they discern who should be added to the eleven to make it back up to twelve the Holy Spirit is at work.
As we seek to reach out, as we seek to fulfil in our day the mission that Jesus has given us, let us not neglect the work of gathering together and of preparation. We need to be spending time together in prayer and worship. And we need to do the work of addressing the practical or structural needs of what we are about to do. It is in the gathering of those 120 disciples that the Spirit falls, when they are gathered together. So let us ensure we continue to gather together, for the Spirit is at work in the gathering and the preparation, preparing us for what comes next.
And then the day of Pentecost comes. Preparation moves to mission.
Because what we find as the Spirit falls, is that this band of around 120 people all start speaking in the languages of the visitors to Jerusalem. As they have been praying and waiting God has brought to them faithful Jews from across the world, gathering for the festival, and as the day of the festival arrives, he drives out these 120 to share what God has been doing in Jesus, particularly in the last 50 days.
I say he drives them out but Luke rather skips over that part doesn’t he, at one moment they’re in the house, the next Peter is addressing the crowd, at some point they’ve gone out onto the streets, perhaps they didn’t even realise they were doing it.
The preparations matter, but at some point you have to leave the house, go out to where the people are. We can be very good as a church at staying in the house. Making sure everything is just so here, and that’s no bad thing in and of itself.
Here at St David’s we’ve been doing the preparations, we’ve been attentive to the first bit these past few years, getting our life together in order, being built up and strengthened as Christians together, as a community, spending time in prayer and worship, and also in fellowship together. We’ve been starting to spot some of the barriers that stop people coming here and we’ve begun addressing them, such as changing our worship time. And we’ve made efforts to reach out, we haven’t been lax in sharing the hope and love we have been given in Jesus. But at some point we need to go from being inside the house waiting for the crowds to come to us, to going out to where the people are. And that time is now.
Let us pray that the Holy Spirit would drive us out into the world, to where he has been gathering people who long to know God. Let us pray he would lead us out of this place to the places where the spiritually hungry and thirsty are that we may lead them to the one who truly satisfies. Our life together can’t simply be about this place, this place is only half of the equation.
The disciples are in the house, the Holy Spirit fills them with the presence and power of God. And then they go out to share the good news of Jesus. God adds 3000 to their number, and as the chapter continues we read that they devote themselves to prayer and worship together, and that they continue to go out to share the hope they have. That’s the pattern. We gather here to worship God, to encounter him by the Spirit in word and sacrament, we are strengthened for service. And then we go out to share the hope we have with the Spirit’s help, and then bring them back with us to this place of encounter, where they are strengthened by the Spirit and themselves go out to share the Gospel and bring more back with them. Let us be attentive to the leading of the Spirit, that we would see the community and people he has placed before us, and work in his strength to share Jesus with them.
But as we do lets not expect them all to end up like us, as mission turns into welcome.
Sometimes this passage gets preached as a reversal of Babel. If you’re familiar with that part of Genesis perhaps you can see why. In Genesis the people band together to build a city, and to build a tower that can reach up into heaven. But God foils their plans by confusing their languages, having each speak a different tongue, so they cannot collaborate to build this city, and so the project is abandoned. And so here at Pentecost God enables the disciples to speak the different languages of those around them. It’s a reversal right? Putting things back to how they were.
But that’s not entirely true. Instead as we often find in the New Testament, God isn’t so much concerned with getting things back to how they were, reversal, instead he is in the business of fulfilment, creating into something new, perhaps even better. For example humanity starts in a garden in Genesis, and yet we end in a city in Revelation, it’s not simply reversal, it’s growth and fulfilment.
And likewise here, God doesn’t reverse Babel, the crowds aren’t enabled to understand the language the disciples are speaking, instead the disciples are enabled to speak the languages that the crowds will understand. It’s not a return to uniformity with one language, but instead uniting the people in one community whilst retaining their different ethnic, social and cultural differences. As Revelation often talks of, God’s people are from ‘every tribe, language, people and nation’.
And so as we share faith, and as we welcome people into the fold here at St David’s, we’re not expecting everyone to end up like us, nor are we expecting them to fit into what we already have here. Instead as God grows this place through our work, empowered by the Spirit, what we will find is that they change, and we change, and this place begins to change. As we are united in Christ we move forwards together as a community that isn’t uniform but is instead united in Christ. The Anglican church has a bit of a habit of thinking that everyone who comes needs to become more middle class, let’s not fall into that trap, let us welcome each for who they are, and walk with them as together we seek to be ever more faithful to Jesus and his commands.
As the day of Pentecost comes, the disciples are driven out in mission. But the Spirit has already been at work in their gathering and preparation, and continues to be at work as daily more are added to their number. In our day the Spirit continues to be at work in our lives, all our mission is guided by and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Which is why the church calendar used to call the long stretch of green we are about to begin the ‘Sundays after Pentecost’ instead of ‘after Trinity’ it emphasises that we are in the age of the Spirit, emphasises his role in our life and witness, it’s one of my niche bugbears that they changed it.
But regardless of what the calendar calls it, let us live like it is true. In the long stretch of green that lies before us, leading us to Kingdom Season in November, let us dedicate ourselves to prayer, to worship, to being attentive to proper preparation. But let us also be led by the Spirit, out of the building and into the crowds, that we may faithfully and joyfully share the hope that we have, and see what the Lord will do, as we welcome new people into his Kingdom.
Amen.