In the middle of my middle year of seminary, I went with about
30 of my classmates on a trip to Cuba. It was a required cross-cultural
experience for all M.Div. students. Each year they take the second-year
students someplace guaranteed to pull them out of their comfort zones. It gives
students a greater perspective on how faith intersects with culture.
During our trip we visited quite a few churches of all kinds –
Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Pentecostal. One Sunday morning
when we were in a city called Ciego de Avila, we managed a double-header. Our
group split up and half of us attended worship at a Pentecostal church while
the other half went to a Baptist church. At the Pentecostal church, we were
greeted with kisses from perfect strangers – this happened in all Pentecostal
church we attended, by the way. During the service we experienced some,
hopefully, minor communication problems that we tried to fumble our way
through. Being a guest can be difficult when you don’t know for sure what is
expected of you, but our hosts were gracious.
The Pentecostal service started earlier than the Baptist service,
and so when our bus picked us up and returned to the Baptist church to collect
the rest of our group, they were still in the middle of worship. We were torn between wanting to join them in
worship and not wanting to disturb the worship.
This church was, like many Cuban churches, a small storefront.
The front windows were open, but covered with iron bars. This was often the
case in Cuban stores and homes as well – a remnant from a time when some few
people had things worth stealing, and many others would have been tempted to
steal them. The church was quite full, and to walk in and try to find a place
to sit would have caused a disturbance, we were quite sure. So we remained
outside. And it was behind iron bars that we stood on the sidewalk watching the
worship going on inside.
Well, our efforts to be unobtrusive actually caused us to be
somewhat obtrusive. Some of the Cubans began handing hymnals to us so we could
sing with them. For reasons I don’t think I could explain, we did not pull the
hymnals through the bars so we could hold them comfortably, but instead we reached
our arms through the bars to hold the hymnals on the inside.
It was a strange experience of feeling together and yet
separated. We were worshiping with our American and Cuban brothers and sisters
inside the church and yet we were very aware of the bars that separated us. I
suppose you could say those bars were symbolic of the barriers between our two
countries, our two languages, our two cultures. It was just another aspect of the
daily struggle we experienced during our time there.
We reached the point in the worship service where they began the
celebration of communion. At this point, the bars felt even more like an
unwanted obstruction. What would we do? Could we share communion with one
another through a set of iron bars?
+++
On the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ followers were still inhabiting
that upper room, where we left them last week devoting themselves to prayer. Pentecost
was a religious festival, a reason for Jews from all over the diaspora to
travel on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, bringing the first fruits of the harvest to
the temple. While the disciples were cloistered in their room, the streets
below them were crowded with a vibrant mix of people, cultures, languages.
There is no reason the men of Galilee should have been able to
speak the native languages of all who were together in Jerusalem that day. But
the Spirit gave them power to do so. God who knew their needs more completely
that any of them did, gave them the ability to speak in a way they could be
heard. And it really started something.
The good news began its travels across languages, across borders,
across mountains and seas; across nationalities, across races, across religions
and creeds. The word of the Lord, by the power of the Spirit had wings.
Jews and Christians, and Muslims, as well, are called the people
of the word. Our faith is founded on the word of God. Particularly for Jews and
Christians, who share a common testament, and understand the very creation of
the world as an act of divine speech. God said, “Let there be light;” then God
said, “It is good.”
Later, God spoke to a man named Abram, and guided him to a place
and a promise that would reach all the peoples of the world through all the generations
of the world. God brought life to barren men and women, God sustained life in
barren places, all for the sake of this promise.
Later still, God spoke through judges, priests, and prophets, mending
what had been broken, healing what had been wounded, all for the sake of this
promise.
And then God spoke through Jesus, whose words and actions; life,
death and resurrection from the dead, transformed people and brought them
together for a common purpose: to carry the good news of God’s redeeming love
to every corner of the world. The promise incarnate.
And yet – we continue to divide ourselves, to erect barriers
that separate us, to shut people out, away from the promise. In our efforts to
separate ourselves from others, we try to put limits on God’s redeeming love.
For God, of course, there are no language or cultural barriers. As
the creator of all that is, God understands us intimately, completely. God
speaks our language fluently, whatever language it might be. And it is only
through God, and the amazing power of the Spirit, that the promise truly lives,
moves and grows.
For us, it is a matter of letting God. The first followers didn’t
need to open the window to let the Spirit in, she burst in on her own. Yet it
is critical for us to understand that, in another way, they did let the Spirit in
– in the way they devoted themselves, together, to prayer.
What if the first followers of Jesus had failed to call upon the
Spirit, but had instead attempted to construct their own plan for salvation?
Do we invite the Spirit in and let the Spirit take hold? Or do
we erect barriers, like those bars across the windows of the Cuban Baptist
Church? How can we share together in the body of Christ when there are barriers
separating us?
On that day in Ciego de Avila, we didn’t. As we stood outside
those iron bars listening to the great thanksgiving prayer of communion, we
began to see the futility of barriers. The Cubans inside looked at us outside,
and we knew they weren’t going to pass the bread and the cup through a set of
bars. The time had come to be a disruption. We all began to pour through the
door, just as the Spirit blew through the walls of that upper room in Jerusalem.
We had no common language, but we shared an understanding that the presence of
Christ in the sacrament, the work of the Holy Spirit, eliminates barriers.
There is no barrier that can keep out the power of God’s Spirit.
There is no wall that can stop the power of God’s word in action, communicating
the good news of our salvation. There is no thing – no hate, no fear, no doubt
that can stop the power of God’s love. Let it in, let the Spirit move in us and
around us. Let the power that is God’s love fill the world.
Photo: the streets of Ciego de Avila, Cuba
Photo: the streets of Ciego de Avila, Cuba
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