Christian Unity - Short Address on Acts 2.1-12

Acts 2.1-12 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2011

We usually read this passage at Pentecost and when it is read at a different time of year, there is an opportunity to notice different things.

During a united service celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, for example, you might be especially struck by the fact that the Holy Spirit came upon the Church WHEN THEY WERE ALL TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE. No doubt there were tensions and differences of opinion amongst the disciples, as there are between the Catholic and Anglican Churches today. But they didn’t let their differences stop them gathering together in one place, just as we are doing this evening.

Gathering together in one place sounds like a lovely idea, but in practice it is often uncomfortable and may be risky. It was certainly risky for the disciples, who were known associates of a criminal who had recently been executed for a crime against the state.

But for the disciples, their uncomfortable and risky togetherness was rewarded by an unprecedented outpouring of the presence of God, which reversed at a stroke the curse of the Tower of Babel. The Holy Spirit empowered these humble, scared and uneducated Galileans to communicate the mighty works of God in a way which made a nonsense of all the ways that human beings define and divide themselves.

Differences of race, tribe, territory and language all became nonsense when the Spirit of God was poured out. Since that day of course human beings have carefully rebuilt the dividing walls that God had torn down and have built lots of new ones too. In fact as human beings we spend a large percentage of our time building walls against others.

And yet Pentecost was not just a historical event but also a prophetic event, in preparation for the day when there will be one flock and one shepherd, one holy people gathered before the throne of the Lamb of God. The disciples did something amazing that day, in response to the Holy Spirit.

My prayer for us today is that our gathering together would not just be prophetic but also historical. That responding to the Holy Spirit we would begin to do something amazing together, making real here and now in Barcelona the Unity which is God’s gift through Jesus Christ.