Recently, I was considering how the Holy Spirit brought unity on Pentecost Day and continues to impart unity as a gift. Luke’s writing of the Pentecost events in Acts 2 evokes a sense of community in waiting, and unity enhanced by the gift of the Spirit. The embryonic
Jesus community “were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). The “entire house” was filled with “the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2), indicating that no one in that place was untouched and making for a unified experience. Also, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4).
Yet, in Luke’s description, diversity and individuality are expressed. A tongue of fire “rested on each of them” in that building
(Acts 2:3). Rather than the Spirit being experienced as one blaze in the fire imagery, each person was touched by an individual flame. Then those gathered spoke in a variety of languages (Acts 2:4), yet they were all “speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11).
Pentecost evokes unity in diversity. Unity is very difficult to create; just try mending a conflict to know this. Unity is a gift of the Spirit. However,
unity requires work too. This creative tension of grace and ardour is communicated in Ephesians 4:3, “[Make] every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Unity is given by the Spirit, but it takes effort, too.
When I started out on the road to ordination in the Methodist Church at a Synod in 1985, there was a report at that gathering that formal unity (one united church) would be in place
within three years consisting of the churches in the Church Unity Commission: Anglican, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. That never happened.
In my experience, Christian unity has little to do with declarations and attempts at making formalised unions. I have experienced surprising unity when people with a variety of church labels, cultures and experiences participate together in what is
life-giving. Put another way, unity among Christians is experienced through the action of the Holy Spirit, characterised by love and humility.
I have lived in unity, not especially by trying to combine a group of Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics or Pentecostals, but by being with all sorts of people in which life in God is noticeable.
This is where the Jesuit Institute comes in, in my experience. The Jesuit Institute is distinctly Ignatian and Roman Catholic, yet it is stretched by its own relevance and willingness to expand beyond its traditional base. I do not feel that I have to agree with everything Roman Catholic by being drawn into the activities of the Institute. (By the way, I don’t agree with everything in my denomination.) Instead, I interact with people from Dominican nuns to charismatic leaders, from
Anglican priests to Dutch Reformed inquirers, from people fed up with the church to those enthused by the Christian community.
I am both unconcerned about the kind of labels I have mentioned, and inquisitive to know what is important and frustrating in the various experiences. This holds our traditions and histories in creative tension, on the one hand, with our common humanity marked by glimpses of love, on the
other.
Unity is hard to describe, intangibly impossible to pin down, but every now and then, I feel I am in the midst of unity. It is a gift of the Spirit, and so worth treasuring that it takes work to nurture this gift.
