Perspectives: Scarcity or Abundance?

These are the bread shelves in our grocery story - it's an older picture from one of the early weeks of the pandemic.  

A question for you to ponder.  How can you see abundance in this image?  I think you can, if you think about it.

Pentecost Unity

Last Sunday in Sunday school, we had a debate about the nature of Pentecost.  One person thought it was a time when everyone spoke in tongues, and understood each other.  Another disagreed.  

Let's look:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.  Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.   And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.  Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?   And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?  (Acts 2:1-8)

Have you ever noticed or compared this passage to one in Genesis?

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.   And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.  And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.   Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."  The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.  And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."  So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.  Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.  (Genesis 11:1-9)

I don't think the Pentecost passage is about speaking in tongues at all.  For one thing, speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift, given to a few.  it was not something that could be understood by anyone - it required (requires) interpretation.  In the Pentecost story, everyone can understand everyone else, and not only that, they are filled with the Holy Spirit - the spirit giving them this ability.  God heard and understood among them.

Think about the story of the Tower of Babel.  The people - scattered and unable to understand each other.  In this story, it seems the opposite has happened.  Everyone is understood, and there is a unity among them.

The church is born.

The Time of Disorder

In Sunday school yesterday, the teacher talked about times in our lives that are disorder.  We move through life, usually, with our lives in order.  I think we've come to talk about this time as normalcy.  One of the yearnings of the pandemic is / has been to return to normalcy.  Our lives are disrupted, and we enter a time of disorder.  Not routine.  Not normal.  We come through that time, hopefully, to a time of reorder.  It's what I hate to hear called "the new normal."

Jesus and his disciples had developed a time of order.  They traveled together.  Jesus preached; they learned.  Then came the crucifixion.  Disorder.  Nothing was the same, and truly, nothing would be the same again.

Pentecost is the time of reordering.  The Holy Spirit descended.  People understood each other.  The church was born.  The disciples gained the "sea legs" so to speak, and started lives lived in obedience to Jesus - following the call the master had made on their lives, empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit. Reorder.  

In the Acts 2 passage that was the lectionary reading yesterday, Peter receives a gift of leadership - maybe that had all started on the shore of when Jesus cooked fish and asked Peter to "feed my sheep" - but anyway, it is obvious now.  Peter quotes Joel, and it sounds like an end-times passage to me.  I wondered about that.  Pentecost wasn't the end of the world.  Or was it?

When we are in a time of disorder, it can feel like the end of the world, can't it?  Whatever it may be, it can feel as if the world - our world - is ending.  Maybe something new will start, but we may not want it.  We may want only to return to what was.  Pentecost is the time when we enter reorder.  Lives are changed; worlds are begun, whether we want them or not.  And we realize the the Holy Spirit is with us, no matter what.  Worlds ending, worlds starting - God is with us.