Reflection by Frances Flatman on the Readings for Pentecost
We all think that we know these Readings for Pentecost so well that we do not need to focus on them. Actually, apart from the list of the nations receiving the Spirit, there is significant detail we pass over and which affects our understanding of the texts, and for us individualistic Westerners these details are very significant. I heard a radio broadcast this last week which had statistics claiming that only 50% of British people believe in God. Our faith can easily be shaken and made despondent by such figures, and yet information from Africa and Latin America shows us the vibrancy of Christianity and their Spirit led willingness to get involved whether or not they have clergy to lead them on a regular basis. I wondered too if this survey among the ‘British’ had looked at the beliefs and practice of ‘foreigners’ to this country. My experience over the Triduum this Easter certainly gave me a very different view of Christianity in Britain from the one I normally have each Sunday at a lovely but very small church in the Cotswolds.
Our Reading from Acts (2:1-11) illustrates what I have been talking about. The disciples, whom we left in Luke’s Gospel, had met the risen Lord and experienced his departure so that we might expect that they could have been a bit lack-lustre as we see that the tiny Jewish-Christian community had just come together to replace Judas. Here we find that our Jerusalem Bible translation lets us down. It speaks of ‘what sounded like a powerful wind…’, but the Greek describes something altogether more frightening, ‘a violent wind’, something in the nature of a tornado. Those of us who watch the News on the TV, seeing the destruction wrought in Bangladesh and elsewhere, therefore get a quite different picture of what was happening. Far from the incentivising ‘powerful wind’, the evidence from these communities is frankly one of chaos and confusion as homes and infrastructures are torn asunder. But this is not the picture we find in Acts. Far from it, for the community stays together and is united in the receiving of the Holy Spirit! Moreover, the disciples are empowered to communicate in the various languages Jews of the dispersion knew in their countries of origin, as they had travelled from far afield for the feast of Pentecost, one of the obligatory ones requiring Jews to travel to Jerusalem. Mostly, our list of foreign Jews recalls different parts of the now Roman Empire, since Luke was writing for his master the Governor Theophilus; yet here we also see ancient enemies of Rome included in this great call to unity in Christ; those from Parthia, Media, Elam and Mesopotamia. Moreover, the speakers are all Galileans, Jews from the suspect part of the Jewish homeland, significantly historically often infiltrated by foreigners during the ancient conquests of the Assyrians and Babylonians hundreds of years before. Theophilus would have been impressed at this promise of peace and harmony.
We continue this image of unity with part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor:12:3-7.12-13) Now most of us are familiar with Paul’s problems with Corinthian Christians – ‘I am for Peter, I am for Apollos, I am for Paul’ Indeed just prior to our Reading we have a horrified Paul expostulating at the way in which the Christians there profane the Eucharist, which took place in the mansions of the wealthier, as an opportunity not to display the solidarity of the community but who profaned it by exercising the class divisions which were so much a part of Greco-Roman society. ‘In the one Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.’ Paul, and the Christian leaders all over the Empire, had to work very hard to break down the existing divisive class structures and were often far from successful in the radical venture they sought to ensure was at the heart and centre of the faith. This was the reason for Paul's parable of the different parts of the body all working together. It’s a battle still to be won all too frequently.
In our Gospel from John (20:19-23), which apparently all took place on the Day of the Resurrection, we have had Mary’s visit to the tomb and her meeting with the ‘gardener’, and Peter and John’s running to see the empty tomb with John’s ‘belief’, then we have the appearance of Jesus. Significantly our text describes the disciples as behind closed doors ‘for fear of the Jews’; a living and clearly violent body. Yet when the Lord appears, they, far from being afraid at what we must think a seriously more troubling phenomena, ‘were filled with joy’ and are sent out to the world with his message and with their reception of the Spirit, given the power to forgive or retain sin, in effect to give structure and order to the Church. Yet his Gospel, with its magisterial Christ figure, is immediately brought down to earth by two small pictures of the disciples, the figure of ‘doubting Thomas’ and the scene of the rehabilitation of Peter in which we experience the Fall of Adam and Eve undone.
All our Readings then are about change and the promise of new communities, whether made up of foreign nations or classes, with the possibility of the restructuring of social situations, as slaves and masters not only share belief in the one God but practice their worship in solidarity. Our Gospel holds out the promise of peace; Christ’s peace for the nations – what we are all meant to live like in the image of our Redeemer, as the sent-out ones spreading his message of unity and common concern to the entire creation. Clearly, from the state of humanity and the near ruin of our planet, this is a journey our humanity is still engaged with, and a commission we should take with the utmost seriousness. Now more than ever our unity, our solidarity in his mission, is essential.
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