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When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. \u2026 When [the God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven] heard this sound, a crowd came together\u2026 (Acts 2:1-4, 6)

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They were all together when the Spirit gusted into the house with flame and rested on each one of them. In that moment, the barriers of language that separated them from the ends of the earth to whom they were to witness disappeared.

In that moment, the apostles could not but become witnesses. The violent noise. The flames. The crash of languages. Whether they wanted to or not, they had become a spectacle. A spectacle of unifying force. Those gathered in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven came together in an instant. The Spirit who had breathed life at creation into all humanity had once again gathered all humanity to hear the promise of life in Jesus through these witnesses.

That day it became clear that faith in Jesus and membership in His church translates into any and every culture and language\u2014belonging to all completely, but none exclusively. In Christ we are united across traditional divides in a church in which no one can lord it over another, because Jesus is Lord. Meaning we are not.

However, barriers of language, culture, and race remain in our world today. That fact has been displayed with vivid and visceral clarity to our South this past week, following the callous death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis. There are in the US deep structural fault lines of injustice that run along racial lines, bringing poverty, alienation, and violence to racialized communities. And it\u2019s a problem not unique to the US. You find these divides in Canada too. And in the church.

But that\u2019s not the way it\u2019s supposed to be. These divisions and injustices are examples of the sinful things Jesus came to heal and set right. And that\u2019s why the Spirit is still to this day moving to gather a single, unified Church from every nation under heaven where barriers that divide language, culture, politics, and race are toppled.

Is the Spirit blowing today through these violent noises and fires and crash of cultures we see on our screens? It\u2019s a strange juxtaposition to even contemplate, I know, and maybe it goes too far. Yet the violent wind, flames, and languages enabled by the Spirit were not benign and gentle\u2014this spectacle of a church reconciled together in unity across lines of class, race, and language would confront societal norms, rulers, and structures in deep places (indeed, the first conflict in this new church happens along racial/linguistic lines and is met with distribution of power, reconciliation, and equality).

And that\u2019s important to note: Jesus\u2019 Spirit-filled church does not obliterate the diversity of differences, but reconciles them. Through the Spirit, the languages of all the nations were not collapsed into one. No, each diverse language was spoken, and was spoken as those native to it would: without an accent. The stunning diversity of the humanity God created is kept with integrity and reconciled.

We haven\u2019t arrived there yet. Far from it. But that\u2019s where the kingdom leans and where the Spirit blows. Thanks be to God that He does, because left to our own, we find that the barriers are too high, the challenges too deep, the structures and relationships too broken. It takes an act of God to reconcile such diversity. Thankfully, our God acts.

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