In my middle year of
seminary, I participated in a required cross-cultural experience: a planned
three-week trip to another country, someplace that is guaranteed to pull you
out of your comfort zone; its primary purpose is to offer students a greater
perspective on how faith intersects with culture.
The cross-cultural trip
might be to India, South Africa, Israel, Guatemala – in my year it was Cuba. There
we were kept busy for three weeks traveling around the island meeting with local
government officials and church leaders, touring their big medical school and a
farming cooperative, and visiting lots of churches.
We visited churches of
all kinds – Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Pentecostal. From
impressive cathedrals to tiny storefronts. One Sunday morning when we were in a
city called Ciego de Avila, we managed a double-header.
Two congregations had
invited us to worship, so our group split up and half of us attended worship at
the Pentecostal church while the other half went to the Baptist church. At the
Pentecostal church, we were greeted with kisses from perfect strangers – which
seems to be the Pentecostal way, at least in Cuba. During the service we
experienced what we hoped were 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.
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 their
worship.
This Baptist church was
one of the tiny storefront churches. The front windows were open, but covered
with iron bars. This was often the case in Cuban stores and homes as well. 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 occupying that upper room, the place they had
gathered with Jesus before his arrest, the place they had huddled in fear after
the resurrection, the place they had returned to again and again during this
in-between period. After he ascended, leaving his followers behind, they
returned again to the upper room and devoted themselves to prayer. That is what
they were doing when the feast of Pentecost arrived.
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 these
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 that 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 our
understanding of 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.
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, looked at another way, they did let
the Spirit in – in the way they devoted themselves, together, to prayer.
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 Baptist Church in Ciego de Avila? How can we share
together in the body of Christ when we allow barriers to separate 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 how absurd it was. 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 Credit: Ciego De Avila. By Leon Petrosyan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25287658
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