The Great Revealing

Whenever I read the Pentecost story in Acts, I am transported back to 2020 and what it was like to be church in those first months of the pandemic. A number of congregants had graciously said “yes” when we asked you to share in different languages for our Acts reading pre-recorded for online worship that Sunday. (You can see that recording again here). Then, just a few days before the Sunday’s service aired, George Floyd was murdered, and the world of South Minneapolis and beyond turned upside down. On that Sunday we were something between scattered and gathered, finding a new way to be community — all while the world was shifting all around us, day by day and even hour by hour. The Spirit was emerging in a way that felt necessary and inevitable, but also deeply unsettling. I wondered then, and wonder now, how much the first Pentecost felt like that to the disciples. Powerful, astonishing, revealing. Embracing something new, because it was their only option. Who would the disciples, and who would we, become on the other side of such a rapidly changing world?

This Pentecost, I wonder at the ways we have (and haven’t) changed. I marvel at the Holy Spirit who continues to blow in our midst, urging us to embrace the wideness of the world and lean into a new way of being disciples. That includes reckoning with racial injustice, and finding our identity as a community scattered. It means learning new languages, embracing new gifts, and proclaiming the heart of Jesus for a broken world. This Pentecost, may the Holy Spirit in this season continue to guide and shape us. Where do you see Her alight and ablaze today?

With you on the journey,
Liesl