Welcome friends to the Thursday, May 28, 2020 post from Peachtree Baptist Church, my name is Paul Capps, pastor. On Tuesday, I talked about adaptation and how early Christians had to adapt to living in a world not yet fully redeemed. Today, I want to challenge us as people of faith to remember that it is through the adaptive work of the Spirit that we are being transformed.

You have likely heard me say before how much I love this church for its representation of various cultures. It reminds me daily of the multicultural mission of the church. As we come up on Pentecost this Sunday, I’m also reminded of the connection we have with that movement of the Spirit and how important it continues to be for our world today. There’s a reason that the first thing the Spirit did was cause believers in Jesus to speak in a variety of languages. It was a way of honoring the beauty of culture and uniting humanity at the same time. It was a miracle. It doesn’t always help to think in hypotheticals, but it would be a fair question to wonder why God didn’t just use one language that everyone understood. Instead, it was a variety of languages. Though the speaker couldn’t normally speak it, the hearer heard their own language. It was a kind of divine empathy but also a celebration of diversity, equality and equity all being accomplished at the same time.

The goal of the gospel is not that we all end up in the same culture but that we are united by Christ. On Sunday we looked at 1 Peter 5 verses 6-10. But in the rest of 1 Peter we read about how early Christians were resisting the dominant culture of the day by representing the way of Jesus. Roman culture did not represent the way of Jesus in how people were treated. Slavery, for example, was not only accepted but was an unquestioned cultural norm. Class structures between rich and poor were enforced. Equality, much less equity, was a ridiculous notion that could even be considered criminal. Lives were less important than the growth of the Roman Empire. It was easy for most people to fall into the trap of thinking that this worldview was not only part of the proper order but the divine order. Much of the advice of Paul and Peter in the early church letters was written to help Christians from being locked up or killed for living out their understanding of the kingdom of God as described at the end of Acts 2.

In a tremendously sad and perverted twist, dominant cultures ended up co-opting Christianity and using it to maintain their dominance. Rome weaponized Christianity and for centuries other cultures were colonized under this style of power. In this country, slavery was defended by preachers using the very words of Peter. But that’s what rebellion does. It corrupts and perverts the truth. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people talk about their distrust of “the media” as if it is one singular force, or how often I hear people reject history just because it doesn’t line up with their biases. One of the ways we can combat the rebellion against the truth of the past is by studying it. And again, even in that study, rebellion takes root as distrust is so very rampant.

And so what are we to do? We are to put our trust in the Spirit of God. What if the Spirit of God gave you the language of a culture that has been misrepresented by the dominant culture and you were able to speak to them in such a way that they understood the gospel? To hear that they can have the voice of prophecy to speak of God’s justice for the poor? Or what if the Spirit of God gave you the language of the dominant culture so that they could hear the gospel? To hear that by giving up their pride they are being humble before a God who loves and rewards humility?

When those believers were filled with the Spirit, it wasn’t an easy thing. It was the beginning of the hardest thing they could ever do - they lost their language so that God could show the world the truth. They had to give up their language to celebrate and begin practicing with their lives a unity that goes beyond language and culture. Before they could do it, they couldn’t have known what it was like to hear the gospel in a language other than their own. We must be open to the Spirit to do things in us that will pull us out of our worldviews so that we can speak the language of Jesus to others. And that can be hard when we look at others and don’t see them as images of God. That can be hard when we are taught to believe that a human culture should be enforced with some kind of order. But I believe that if we submit ourselves to God, the one who practiced healing and restoration, who taught what true reconciliation looks like, who despite humanity’s failures laid down his life for all people, that submission will empower us to love God and love others by his Spirit. We will see others as God sees them. As images of God. Through Jesus, the reality of perfect well-being for all creation is made available. And when we see images in this world that distort that reality, it should not only hurt, it should call us to speak in the language that is needed for the gospel to be heard.

As we continue to see human power exercised all over this world, may we speak the language of true power, the power of the Spirit transforming us into true representatives of Jesus.