By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
The story of the Acts of the Apostles is our story. It is the story of a community that has been unmade and is struggling to be put back together, a community that is unclear about what God is calling it to be and fretful about how it will even survive.
When Jesus died, his disciples were thrown into confusion. They scattered. They hid behind locked doors. And when he showed up again, alive in a new and formerly unimaginable way, they began to realize that the whole world had changed. Maybe things looked the same, but really they weren’t the same at all. People whose lives had been caught up in following Jesus couldn’t go back to the way things were before; they couldn’t simply return to fishing and tax collecting as if nothing had ever happened.
Well, I mean, actually they could, and in truth some of them did. Some decided they had tried this following Jesus thing and it didn’t really work out that well. They had lost status, lost relationships, and gained nothing but an association with a ragtag bunch of his followers who were as messed up and lost as they were. So, some of them did the sensible thing—they went back to business as usual.
It turns out, though, that the ones who did the sensible thing are the ones now lost to the dustbin of history. The ones we remember are those who would not, could not, go back to the old ways of doing things. Instead, they forged a new way, singing a new song even in the midst of their loss and uncertainty. But it didn’t happen all at once, or without mistakes and confusion.
After all, as the book of Acts makes clear, they were being led by the most human, most flawed of people. Peter had denied Jesus three times. Paul had persecuted the followers of Jesus. They both had a lot to learn and no clear blueprint of what was needed to make this new community work. Luckily, something else besides these oh-so-human leaders was tugging at the at them, pulling them forward along a new path.
Just before today’s short passage from Acts, Peter is trying to give a sermon. He has had a dream and an encounter that he needs to share with others. But, as the passage says, “while he was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” While he was still speaking! The Holy Spirit, it turns out, is no respecter of privilege or power or position. I imagine Peter there, trying to do a good job, trying to be a good leader, trying to just finish his sermon, for goodness’ sake, when the Holy Spirit chooses that moment to interrupt the proceedings.
And she didn’t reserve her powerful outpouring only for the good, devout Jews who were there, as had happened in the past. This time the Holy Spirit also inspired and empowered the Gentiles, those who were supposed to be entirely separate and apart, a different community altogether.
It is as if God were saying, “If you’re going to do something new, then do it already!” And to his credit, Peter understood the Spirit’s prompting and did in fact do something entirely new and potentially quite scandalous, baptizing Gentiles, these supposedly “other,” different people, claiming them as Christ’s own forever and joining in fellowship with them. And that, my friends, is how the early church went from being a loose affiliation of scared and confused people to becoming the Beloved Community. They listened to the Spirit’s prompting and did a new and yet still faithful thing in response.
The story of Acts is our story. We, too, are at a turning point in our history. We have survived something strange and terrible, and we’re not really sure what comes next. Many of us would like to return to business as usual. Others feel sure that those old models are no longer working, that the pandemic and its consequences have only hurried along something that was going to happen anyway. Death knells for the church have been tolling for decades. We have been in survival mode for so long, and we know we can’t go on like this forever.
Like those first Christians, our community has been unmade and we are not sure how to put it back together again. The Rev. Stephanie Spellers, Canon for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation Care in the Office of the Presiding Bishop, captures the feeling of this moment this way:
“God is breaking open this church and pouring us out—pouring out privilege, pouring out empire, pouring out racism and human arrogance—in order to remake us and use us to serve God’s dream for the whole world. We are the broken jar. It hurts and it sucks . . . and I think it’s a gift.”¹
It might be a surprise to think of this undoing, this time of uncertainty and loss, of being broken open and poured out, as a gift. But in fact uncertainty and doubt are fertile ground for growing faith and creative risk taking. Underneath the drumbeat of doubt in our minds and the fear in our hearts, if we listen carefully we can hear the murmuring of the Holy Spirit, humming along like an underground spring of living water. This very day, this very moment, the Holy Spirit is singing, singing a song that never grows old, a song of liberation and revolutionary love and new life. We, too, are called to sing that new song and to proclaim the good news: God has done marvelous things and God is not done with us yet.
We are not Humpty Dumpty. We will be put together again, but we won’t do it for ourselves. God will put us back together again, and chances are he will do it in ways we cannot even imagine. We know this because we know that God is still calling us to become Beloved Community. The road ahead is not clear and it likely will not be easy. But it can be life-giving and joyful and good, especially if we journey together. We can practice old skills like humility, and discernment, and deep listening, and trust that they will lead us to new places and new ways of being, swept along by the currents of the Spirit and held fast in the mercy and faithfulness of God. Amen.
¹Quoted from the introduction to The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for the Beloved Community (Church Publishing Inc, 2021).
