…Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia
and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs -- in our own languages
we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and
perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are
filled with new wine." (Acts
2:9-13)
Luke’s florid account of the Day
of Pentecost reads like a holiday cruise brochure. This bit about how people heard the preaching
each in their own native language is surely not there to generate what pentecostalists
call speaking in tongues – or any spiritual self-indulgence. It is a picture of the wideness of the
gospel, breaking particularly the bonds of Judaism, going out to the world despite
different languages, cultures, religions, histories. If you look at Luke’s list in detail, even
Arabs (later Moslems) are in there, Greek and Roman too, black and white,
friend and foreigner… I was interested in the phrase, the parts of Libya
belonging to Cyrene. Why was that
spelled out? Cyrene was a major Greek
and then Roman city on the coast of Libya.
Simon of Cyrene was the man the Romans ordered to help carry Jesus’s
cross. There is a tradition that Luke,
who wrote the Book of Acts, was the first Christian bishop of Cyrene – but then
the Greek Orthodox Church thinks that was St Mark.
Who knows…? the point is, the church
is born in a collapse of their familiar order and certainty, the wind of God blows
through the old systems... All were
amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are
filled with new wine." Well exactly,
it was new wine. Jesus had talked about that: No one puts new wine into old wineskins;
otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins
will be destroyed. But new wine must be
put into fresh wineskins. Just to
confuse us, Luke has this curious little addition: No one after drinking old
wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good”.[1] Luke, by the time he wrote what we are
reading, had encountered the resistance of pious folk for whom “new” will always
be suspect – the old is good, is what they say.
Well, new nevertheless is
happening… bursting the old wineskins as always. At age 86¾ I mainly sit back and watch
it. We are re-learning contemplative life
and prayer… no longer as any sort of spiritual élitism… but accessible now
whoever you are. The new wine is no
longer the preserve of the spiritual specialists and career mystics. It is bringing people together, and we are finding
truth and wisdom in silence and stillness, in learning anew to love and to
receive love. We are learning to follow
Jesus where he is, which is abiding within us and among us, and in the present
moment. In the process we are finding
new pathways, with worship, with people of other faiths or none. We are pulling down walls. We are keeping the faith in fresh ways, we
are experiencing God’s fidelity to us, we are losing fear and gaining gifts of wisdom. Filled with new wine is how it is.
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