Pentecost, 24 May 2026, Austwick, Clapham
The Holy Spirit Unites the Kingdom.
We know how Jesus’ disciples used to argue among themselves, often about which of them was the Lord’s favourite, or who was the most faithful. We can imagine how those disagreements would have been up-front and centre in the days after Jesus left them, and they were having to decide which of them should now be in charge. We can imagine John perhaps saying, “I’m the one He called His beloved one,” and Peter, “Well, I’m the one he told to feed his sheep.” Maybe others also made bids for leadership, whilst everyone else tried to decide in whose camp they wanted to belong – a messy business not unlike a political party leadership contest, of which, let us say no more.
But the Holy Spirit unites the Kingdom, and so when the day of Pentecost came, and the disciples were all together in one place, not just John or Peter or any other individual were singled out for special treatment by God, but ‘all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit’; to all of them the Spirit gave the ability to speak in other tongues. Prompting them to put aside their differences, the Holy Spirit united them in the mission to spread God’s word abroad.
And what a testing-ground for their missionary activity they found themselves in. For at that time Jerusalem was full of ‘devout Jews from every nation under heaven’, gathered for the festival of Shavuot, sometimes called the festival of ‘Weeks’, or in Greek, ‘Pentecost’, one of the Three Jewish Pilgrimage Festivals when, following the way of the Torah, all Israelites who were able made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to take part in festivities and ritual worship in the Temple. [1]
Now, when disparate peoples come together it’s likely to be awkward. As they gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot, it’s likely that the Parthians and Medes stuck to their own groups, not mixing together. It’s likely that the Egyptians and the Libyans would have visited the Temple to pray at different times and in their own distinctively different ways. It may have been there was rivalry between the urban Jews visiting from Rome and the native Jerusalemites each considering themselves more sophisticated than the other. When it came to eating, it’s likely that the Cretan islanders would have looked for somewhere which served them Dakos salad; whilst the desert-dwelling Arabs would have searched for a bowl of Baba ghanoush.
However peaceable and amiable these different peoples may have been, they would have struggled to relate to each other, for they spoke different languages. Jerusalem at Pentecost was a multi-racial place, where people of quite different cultures and world-views, habits and behaviours, rubbed up against each other. [2]
It’s likely that, just like us in our world today, they would have stuck to their tribes, speaking their mother tongues and keeping their distance from those who spoke, and acted, differently. It’s likely that, just like in our society, this dissociation would show itself in fear of the other, which, as we know, can grow into antagonism, persecution, and scapegoating, and onwards to spiralling violence between people of different tongues.
That the Holy Spirit united this wildly disparate gathering of strangers, that the Holy Spirit provoked such a release of understanding leading to reconciliation, is all the more remarkable for having occurred in a place of such tension and flux. [3]
How did the Holy Spirit unite the Kingdom? Through enabling conversation.
Within the sights and tastes and smells of Jerusalem’s streets at festival time, the Holy Spirit gave people the means to converse with others they’d previously never contemplated approaching, with the result that they found themselves being blessed by strangers they’d never expected to meet. We might imagine the joy in those streets, where, through this new gift of conversation, suddenly everyone knew and was known, everyone understood and was understood, accepted and was accepted, each by the other, each by all, as their tribal, racial, religious, differences melted away.
Imagine where these conversations might have led: the Cretans finding themselves enjoying eating at table with the Arabs; the Egyptians and the Libyans appreciating learning about each other’s ways of praying; the Parthians and Medes discovering they had more in common than what separated them; the Roman Jews and Jerusalemites relaxing and laughing together, hands and hearts open, defences down,.
The Holy Spirit Unites the Kingdom. For the deepest work of the Spirit is reconciling people ‘to God, to creation, to one another and to themselves’. Reconciliation is the work of all people who seek God: it is ‘the central work of the church in ministry and mission’. [4]
And the key to reconciliation is enabling conversation. Whilst the prevailing spirits of the kingdoms of our world persuade us that we are defined by our nationalities, our classes, our sexualities and genders, over and against those who are unlike us, God’s Spirit of reconciliation opens us up to new conversations across those boundaries, to discover wider horizons and develop wholesome relationships.
What joy there is in celebrating that it is the Holy Spirit who unites the Kingdom.
I’m minded of the community meals we used to host in one of my old parishes, a place which was home to people of many different nationalities. Families would bring their own favourite traditional meals to share with the others – everyone spent the evening going around tasting Irish stew and New Zealand chowder, Ukrainian Borscht and Pakistani Beef Karahi and naan, Somalian Cambuulo beans and Moroccan Couscous and Tajine… and whilst enjoying the food, also enjoying hearing the memories and stories that each family shared along with the food they served the others.
The food brought us together – and the ensuing conversations built understanding, appreciation, awareness of the common ground we shared. Miraculously, this celebration of our differences created harmony between us.
The time is right to re-discover that it is the Holy Spirit who unites the Kingdom. The Church of Pentecost is a church which loves and values all people equally and seeks to bring them together.
The gathered tribes in Jerusalem exclaimed, “In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” From that moment right through to this one, the most powerful deed of God is in healing broken relationships, between peoples of every background, every nation.
The time is right for us to celebrate the beauty we see in places where young people are working out this vision, where old people are living out this dream: opening their homes and churches and community rooms, sharing food around tables of fellowship, and most of all, sharing conversation with strangers to help to open hearts and minds to mutual appreciation, peace, and understanding.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Shavuot; Three Pilgrimage Festivals.
[2] John Davies, Pentecost: fellow-travellers reconciled, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden, Pentecost 2023.
[3] John Davies, Speaking in other tongues: a way to right wrongs, Austwick, Pentecost 2021.
[4] Samuel Wells, Catalysing Kingdom Communities. Address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, May 23, 2017. [PDF]. Quoted in my Pentecost: fellow-travellers reconciled, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden, Pentecost 2023.
