“When the day of Pentecost arrived…”
It wasn’t BREAKING NEWS on the cable news channels, but on the church’s calendar Sunday was Pentecost. It was the day the Spirit of God invaded the lives of Jesus’ followers in such a radically reorienting way that they described it with Old Testament images of wind and fire.
When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:1-13)
This was not wind like gentle morning breeze, but wind like a hurricane shaking shingles from the roof. Not fire like a cozy campfire, but fire like the flames that swept across the California coast.
The story begins with a soul-shaking, heart-warming, Spirit-energizing experience in the life of each disciple. But it doesn’t stop there. It immediately expands beyond individual experience into an extravagantly larger, shockingly diverse, unexpectedly inclusive picture of the way God is relentlessly at work to heal brokenness of our destructively divided world.
“In Their Own Language”
Luke said people were there “from every nation under heaven.” He named the ones he could think of: “Medes, and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome, Cretans and Arabs.” Talk about diversity!
And here’s the miracle: “They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages.” No one language was given priority over the others. The Spirit spoke the same word through all of their unique languages, cultures, and traditions. We might call that equity.
Some folks didn’t like it. The critics “jeered at them, saying, ‘They’re full of new wine!’” Luke might snickered when he quoted Peter, “These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning!” (As if to say if that’s what they were looking for, they could come back in when the sun goes down!)
The disciples were drunk all right! They were intoxicated with the expansive love of God which became flesh in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Peter explained it by reclaimed the words of the Old Testament prophet, Joel:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young will see visions.
Your elders will dream dreams.
Even upon my servants, men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days. (Acts 2:17-18)
“All” Means “All”
Don’t miss the little word “all.” It appears eleven times in this one chapter. God’s extravagant love in Christ is for everybody, everywhere, of every age, race or culture. Nobody is left out. That’s inclusion.
From cover to cover — from Genesis when God tells Abraham that through his children “all the earth’s nations will be blessed” (Gen. 18:18) to the heavenly crowds “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” in Revelation (Rev. 7:9) — the Bible is the story of the God who is unalterably determined to do everything God can do to include the entire human family in the circle of his love, even if it meant the death of his Son on the cross. All really means all!
Based on the vision of those crowds in Revelation, the Bible study leader at our Annual Conference last week said, “If you don’t like diversity, you might not like Heaven.” Then he added, “In fact, you might not get there.”
There’s nothing new about Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, although that label has become a convenient scapegoat for political extremists in our culture today. But at its best, DEI is rooted God’s intention for the whole of this broken, bruised and infinity loved creation. (Romans 8:18-25).
(If you want to dig more deeply into scripture on this, I recommend The Widening Of God’s Mercy by Biblical scholars, Richard and Christopher Hays.)
It’s Never Easy!
Living into the Pentecostal vision isn’t easy. It never has been. We keep getting in God’s way. From cover to cover, the Bible tells the story of our sinful tendency to work against God’s vision. Immediately after the wind and fire of Pentecost, the apostles get caught up in conflict around who will be included and who will be excluded. A good part of the New Testament was written to deal with conflict and tension in the early Church.
But the divine work goes on. Sometimes with success and often with failure, we continue to wrestle with what it means for our Founders to declare the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” In spite of Abigail Adams urging her husband to “remember the ladies,” we continue to wrestle with whether “all” really includes all people. In spite of the clear message of scripture and the vision of our Founders, we continue to be confronted by forces sexism, white superiority, racial inequity, and the oxymoron called “Christian nationalism.”
God but never gives up! And neither should we!
Grace and peace,
Jim
Jim Harnish 
Jim, this is good. Thank you. I think the Christian Nationalist aversion to DEI is the paramount evidence that CN is not Christian. Jesus was surely one who lived DEI, and your writing carries it beyond him via the Holy Spirit.
Hello friends, as always, I’m glad to be included here. Interesting take on DEI as it relates to Pentecost. Much of what you say Jim is fair, but you remind me why after 16 years in higher ed I still love diversity, reject equity, and embrace parts of inclusion. Certainly I rejoice that the kingdom of God will be diverse :). But the equity you mention in regards to Acts is not what equity means in today’s DEI conversations. In fact, the link you provide to the Psych department at UVA details what equity in higher ed means today means. It isn’t that certain languages or people are treated equally, it is that all people are given the same results. This is why the image for equity shows all the people standing at the same level. For “equity” doesn’t mean helping people so all have an opportunity to excel, it means all get equal results, even if they can’t perform. Every doctor, lets say, would be paid the same, even ones who went to a mediocre medical school, barely passed, didn’t have the skill to brain surgery, and didn’t want to do the the extra work required to excel in that incredibly difficult field.This is why the biggest purveyors of DEI in academia are departments with little opportunity, such as psych at UVA. Fewer and fewer students are taking psych, even though it is a much simpler degree than say engineering, because the opportunities are few, the pay is low, and the departments are typically, along with English, among the most far left on a campus. Perhaps this is why the psych dept at uva still has its DEI statement. UVA, on the other hand, cancelled DEI earlier this year though it remains committed to diversity.
Well said!!Sent from my iPhone