Here’s my message from this weeks Lectionary reading. Sadly, there was a tech’ glitch this morning, so there’s no audio on Metro Christian Centre’s YouTube page. Sorry, but reading’s the only option. 😦
READING: ACTS 2:1-21
MARVELLOUS MEDICINE?
As a child, I was inspired by a book by Roald Dahl called George’s Marvellous Medicine.
For those who haven’t read the book, it’s about a boy called George who lives on a farm with his mum and dad, and his very scary, witch-like, grumpy Grandma. One day, whilst his parents are out, George comes up with a solution to his Grandma problem: he decides to create a medicine that will cure her of her grumpiness.
He’s no doctor, or chemist; he’s just a kid who has no clue what he’s doing. And so he makes his medicine by mixing together a load of common, household ingredients, like shampoo, shoe polish, engine oil, gin and brown paint (along with a number of other nasty surprises). He then spoon-feeds this concoction to his Grandma, and she swallows it believing that it’s her usual, daily-dose of medicine. But instead of curing her of her grumpiness—and instead of killing her or making her seriously ill (which is what would actually happen)—George’s Grandma begins to grow to ten-times her normal height. And that’s just the beginning of the story!
As I said, I was inspired by this story—I’ve never really been known for my height! And so, on a number of occasions, whilst my Mum and Dad where busy downstairs and my brothers were out of the house, our upstairs bathroom would become my laboratory. I’d plug up the sink, pour in some water, and then begin to add numerous, household ingredients: acrylic paint, shampoo, talcum powder, shaving cream, hair gel, vapour rub, my brother’s aftershave, my mother’s perfume, some crushed up chocolate digestive biscuits…
I didn’t use anything as drastic as engine oil; I purposely went for colourful, fragrant ingredients, and once I’d added all these wonderful ingredients, I’d take a spoon and mix them together until they became one solution. And then I’d lift the spoon to my mouth…
If you’ve ever wondered why I turned out the way I did, it’s not because of my ‘Marvellous Medicine’. I could never bring myself to take this medicine. It wasn’t marvellous: it stunk and it looked horrible.
I’d run this experiment a number of times, and the same thing would occur over and over again.
I could never get my head around this as a kid. I’d taken all these colourful, wonderful smelling ingredients that looked so beautiful sat together in the bottom of the sink, but when forced together—when I began to stir it up—they would all lose their beautiful distinctiveness and form a rotten-smelling, bowlful of murky-brown gloop. By taking away their distinction, I’d created something ugly.
Why I am telling you this and what’s it got to do with Acts 2? Well, I want to help us to see something both incredible and significant that’s happening in this story.
Over the past few weeks, whenever we’ve come around the scriptures, the theme of unity—being one, loving one another as Jesus loved us—has surfaced over and over again (It’s certainly been the theme of my own words: see my blogs; We’ll Come, too! and Love in the Flesh). It’s the same in this passage; it’s about unity and what that looks like, and that unity does not resemble the bland, murky gloop that I used to mix in my bathroom sink.
When the Kingdom of God is manifested among us it is not about ‘all colours bleeding into one’ (to disagree with the lyrics one of my favourite songs).[i] Unity is not about losing our distinctions and becoming the same. Real unity is full of different sounds, different colours, different aromas.
Often, people confuse uniformity for unity. We try and make people the same, thinking that we would have peace, or a better world, if everyone was exactly like everyone else. And when we realise that we can’t make people the same, then to achieve “unity” we try to help people focus on how similar we are.
Which may sound like a good thing to do—we do have many similarities. But by building on our similarities, we’re also wrongly playing-down and demonising how diversely different we are.
A writer called Amartya Sen, within his book Identity and Violence, suggests that when we ignore our differences, and when we try and encase people within a singular identity—when we try and connect individuals through ‘sameness’ (to use my term)—then we are actually doing violence upon those individuals. Not only that, but he also suggests that doing this—trying to reduce humanity to a single identity or image—actually intensifies and generates most of our global violence. At one point he even suggests something radical; he says that, ‘the real hope for harmony in our troubled world is [not in our shared characteristics, but] in the plurality of our identities’.[ii]
I find that a fascinating thing to say because I believe he’s touching on something of God’s vision, God’s Kingdom. You see, when we erase or ignore our differences, I don’t believe that we are only doing violence upon others, but that we are also doing violence upon God’s kaleidoscopic dream for the world.
People have often tried to make the world in their own image—they have tried uniformity, they have tried sameness—but it failed. And whenever it is attempted within human history, it always leads to death, oppression and chaos, and it always obscures the image of God within humanity. Actually, there’s a famous story within the scriptures—a story closely connected to the passage we read this morning—about the image of God becoming obscured and humanity becoming bland.
THE TOWER OF BLANDNESS
In Genesis 11, there’s a famous story known as the Tower of Babel. As the story goes, humanity gathers together in one place and chooses to build a tower that will reach to the skies as a monument to their greatness. God’s not impressed by this act, however, and so God descends and confuses their words; giving them the ability to speak different languages. In other words, God disrupts their sameness and makes them distinct. And because they can’t understand each other, they can’t continue to build this tower, and so they go their separate ways and scatter across the earth instead of gathering in one place.
The popular understanding of this story is that it’s about the time when different languages first appeared in humanity and that they only appeared as a form of punishment from God. But that’s not the case.
In the story Genesis gives us, humanity was called by God to multiply and fill the world. They were supposed to spread: they were supposed to fill the world with the knowledge of the glory of God. And one of the ways they would achieve that would be through their diversity.
The thing is, up until Genesis 11, that’s what was happening (with a few hiccups, of course)! People spread, people became distinct. In Genesis 10 we read about the descendants of Noah who ‘multiplied and filled the earth’ after the flood story, and in each of the three passages regarding Noah’s descendants (one for Japheth, Ham and Shem) we read concluding statements about the diverse, ethnic groups that arose; each had its own identity, their own lands and their own language (Genesis 10:4, 20 and 32). In other words, the world was still one family—Noah’s family—but it wasn’t uniform; it was full of difference.
But then we come to chapter 11 and something has gone wrong. Instead of going and spreading the glory of God, humanity has chosen to cluster in one place, and they’ve become bland—speaking the same language. By taking away the distinctions, they’d created something ugly. This chapter is a story of resistance to God’s command—resistance to what God had breathed, a resistance to the direction of God’s Spirit. This tower was a monumental reversal of God’s beautifying, kaleidoscopic dream for the world. And so in seeing this happen, God decides to get creative.
God’s disruption in Genesis 11 isn’t about new languages. God confusing their language is not an act of punishment. It’s an act of redemption: God is restoring the diversity that had existed before this. And by doing so, God is legitimising diversity as being true to our vocation as image bearers. It’s not true that one ethnicity is more sacred than any other, or that one language is more holy than any other. It’s diversity that is sacred, and so God undoes Babel’s attempt to make things uniform and monotone and monochromatic. God adds colour to a world that people had turned murky-brown.
REAFFIRMING, NOT REVERSING
I think it’s important that we look at the story of Babel in that light if we want to understand an important aspect of what the Spirit of God is doing within the story of Acts 2.
Because the Genesis 11 account of confusing the languages has often been seen as punishment (i.e., people won’t be able to understand each other), Acts 2 is then understood as a reversal of that punishment (i.e., people can now understand each other). Except, they can’t understand each other: The crowds understand the disciples, but the disciples are speaking in languages they personally don’t understand.
However, what if Acts 2 is not reversing Genesis 11, but reaffirming God’s restorative actions in Genesis 11?
In other words, like with Babel, God is saying that his glory is not restricted to one nation, or one language, or one place; the world in all its diversity (all tribes, all tongues, all people and all ages) is to display the glory of God in creation.[iii]
Like in the Babel story, this Spirit is going to scatter these gospel-carrying people all over the world so that the knowledge of the glory of God will multiply and fill the nations.
In Acts chapter 2, God’s Spirit descends and once again the gift of different languages happens—the disciples start speaking words they don’t understand, but that the people around them—people from other nations, people who are different from them—do understand; words that are announcing the wonderful things God has done (i.e., they’re glorifying God). And in response to the crowds amazement at what is happening, Peter gets up and explains (quoting the Prophet Joel’s) that God is only doing what he said he would: all people—male and female, young and old— will have the Spirit of God because of what has resulted from Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
At the end of Peter’s message, Luke writes that those who responded to what Peter had to say were joined with the others (Acts 2: 42); they become one.[iv]
That’s an important part of what this story is about. It’s not about the gift of tongues; it’s describing the work of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit both breeds difference and unites people in their difference. As we travel further into the book of Acts, this work keeps occurring; the Spirit keeps pushing the disciples beyond their borders of ethnicity, language and heritage, and they will find themselves being unified with those they would have previously refused to be unified with because they saw them as different.
They don’t become the same, however. They become one!
Within both stories—Babel and Pentecost—the Spirit of God moves and diversity blooms. The Spirit of God doesn’t erase our distinctions, it’s the exact opposite: She nurtures them, she generates them, she multiplies them, and yet the Spirit also draws all that difference together into one global family. The result is that the Kingdom of God shouldn’t resemble the murky-brown gloop that I used to mix in my bathroom sink; it looks like a beautiful mosaic—a fellowship of difference, held together by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Which reminds me of something Jim Henson said once about the role of Kermit the Frog on the Muppet Show. He said, ‘Kermit’s function on this show is very much like my own in that he’s trying to hold together this group of crazies.’[v]
You see, the Spirit is the only one who is able to hold this group of crazies together. And if we’re depending upon something else to do it—like our commonality, or our geography, or a specific time of the week—then maybe we’re not as spiritual, or as Spirit-filled, as we would like to believe we are?
BE DIFFERENT. BE ONE.
As I said earlier, humanity all too easily divides and segregates over all sorts of things, and we constantly play on differences as the reason why we cannot unite with others or why we should be against other or over others. And when that focus on difference starts to manifest in war, chaos and oppression, we then purposely attempt to emphasise how alike we are in order to bring these horrible expressions to an end. But whenever we do that we’re still sending out the same message: what we’re saying is that we can only be unified when we are the same. What we’re saying in both cases is that difference—whether that difference is to do with colour, language, or geography—is a problem.
But the Spirit of God, if we’re willing to listen, doesn’t agree with that. Difference is a God-ordained, Spirit-animated gift. It’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity.
God’s image is revealed in our differences, not in the absence of them. Without our differences, and our desire to be joined together in our differences and not by the absence of them, we cannot image God’s vision for the world.
As we follow the Spirit’s leading—as we love one another across the boundaries of distinction—we demonstrate to the world what real peace, real unity looks like. As we join in our difference, we show the world the beauty of God’s vision.
As one theologian puts it, ‘The unity of the Messiah’s people across traditional divisions is part of the vital way in which the followers of Jesus will be a sign of his worldwide rule, already inaugurated.’[vi]
Or as another theologian put it, ‘What characterises the community is the way in which the people of God love one another in their difference, not an overlooking or erasure of distinctions […] Rather it was precisely because these distinctions existed that the believers’ unity and love would be so remarkable.’[vii]
Or, as an early church theologian known as the Apostle Paul said it, ‘God’s purpose was to show his wisdom in all its rich variety to all the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. They will see this when Jews and Gentiles [when people who are distinct] are joined together in his church’ (Ephesians 3:10, NLT, Italics and square brackets mine).
Or, to put it as Jesus commanded in his farewell discourse, ‘Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.’ (John 13:35).
We’re often saying that we want more of God’s Spirit, and within Pentecostal communities, this day of Pentecost and this story in Acts is one that we highly celebrate.
I deeply desire God’s Spirit to move. I want the building to
shake with the presence of God. But we have to understand, that when that
happens, it’s not for the sake of manifesting gifts (although all that is good).
If the Spirit moves, then it’s because the Spirit wants to display the wisdom
of God, in all its varieties, to the world; the Spirit wants to birth diversity
and join it together.
VERSES FOR FURTHER REFLECTION:
‘What variety there is in your works, Adonai!
How many [of them there are]!
In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creations.
If you send out your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. ‘
Tehillim (Psa) 104:24,30 (CJB)
‘For just as in one body we have many members, and not all the members serve the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another. ‘
ENDNOTES:
[i] This lyric can be found in the song I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, by U2 (its occurs on their amazing album, The Joshua Tree). Despite my disagreement with this lyric, this song deeply resonates with me and I think of it like a sacred hymn; I sing it as an act of worship and its words often climb out of my mouth prayer.
[ii] Amartya Sen, Identity & Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Penguin Books, 2006), p.16.
[iii] See also Revelation 5:9-10, 7:9-10 and Ephesians 3:10 for further reflection.
[iv] I also feel it’s important to add that being one is not a matter of geography. Not only is it not a matter of us all being the same, but it’s not about us all being in the same place at the same time, either. These people who joined with the disciples didn’t all stay in Jerusalem—they went back home to the countries they came from. Yes, meeting together is important. But our meeting together for a church service is just a small part of the larger reality that we are a part of: we’re local, but we’re global.
[v] Jim Henson, It’s Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider (Hyperion, 2005), p.78.
[vi] Tom Wright, Paul: A Biography (SPCK, 2018), p.327 (Hardback Edition).
[vii] Michelle Lee-Barnewell, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate, Ministry Part 1 (Baker Academic, 2016), p.88, 90. [Italics original]
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
Leave a comment