Holy and Glorious Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11; John 7:37-52; 8:12.
Unity in diversity is powerfully attractive but it requires ongoing work. We can experience enough of it in life to know how good it is and that we want more of it. When family, church, or community come together well, it touches us as being how life is meant to be. Yet it can be so challenging to maintain that sometimes we experience it more as a hope than a reality. Language is the most basic representation of that, whether we talk over or past each other incomprehensibly, or connect in conversations of understanding and discovery of each other and God.
The “they” that “were all together in one place,” is the eleven Apostles and the newly chosen twelfth, Matthias – the whole, complete apostolic leadership of the Church. They were literally unified – they were physically together “in one place.” They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They all told “the mighty works of God.” One apostlate, one Spirit, one message – unity.
Those who heard their message, “in his own native language,” were widely diverse. They were from modern day Iran, Iraq, Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Crete, Italy, Egypt, and North Africa. Three thousand among them were baptized and “held steadfastly to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.” (Acts 2:41-42)
The work of unity in diversity began when hearing in their own tongues stopped and speaking with each other in their common tongues began. They would have to begin speaking and listening to each other in Aramaic, Greek, or Latin. The unity of the apostolic message and liturgy is to be lived out by the laity in the life of a diverse world. If we work on that, we are continuing the work of Pentecost.