That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Acts (Page 4 of 9)

The Jews of Asia, Watts, & Monoliths — From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 14, Year 1 (Pentecost 11, 2015)

Acts 21:27 ~ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, who had seen [Paul] in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd.

When I was a kid growing up in Las Vegas I knew there were some people called “the Jews.” That is about all I knew about that particular group of people. My family knew a couple of Jewish families; my dad was friends with Sammy Davis, Jr., who was a black Jew and I knew that that was somehow really different. But I didn’t know anything about different sorts of Jews; they were all one group in my childish understanding.

When I went away to boarding school, I met and befriended a young Jewish man who introduced me to the American varieties of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstruction. His family went to a Reform synagogue and, he told, were Sephardim by ancestry, thus introducing me to the difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. In my senior year, my English class read Leon Uris’ recently published novel “Exodus” and these differences took on more meaning, and the concept of the Sabra was introduced to my understanding.

In college, I read Martin Buber and learned of the Hasidim and the ultra-Orthodox; I also took a course about the founding of Israel and learned about the Mizrahim (Jews from eastern Arabic, Persian Gulf countries), the Maghrebim (Jews from North Africa), and the Falasha (black Jews from Ethiopia).

So when I read the words “the Jews from Asia” in today’s Acts reading, I wondered which of these modern divisions of Judaism and ethnic Jewry (if any) they might have represented. That I am currently reading a new text on the history of Israel probably encouraged that.

And then I wondered how many modern American Christian readers of the Acts lesson appreciated the existence of such divisions. We are so prone to monolithic thinking. I know from Bible study conversations over the past 30 years of ministry, that when we read the words “the Jews” in the Christian Scripture we Christians tend to create in our minds a united block of co-religionists who rejected and then opposed the teachings of Jesus and his disciples.

We do the same when someone says, “The early church ….” Again, in our minds we create this mythical monolithic united religion which even a short course in Christian history will demolish.

We do the same when someone says, “The Muslims ….” Monolithic thinking, even in the face of news reports reminding us that there are differences between Sunnis and Shi’ites, between Arab Muslims and Iranian Muslims, between radical Iraqi jidahists and moderate American imams.

We whites do it at the mention of “African Americans” and blacks do it at the mention of whites. We know better but, initially, as if it’s part of some human hard-wired programming that we must constantly over-write, we do it anyway.

“The Jews of Asia” stirred up a riot in the Temple precincts on flimsy and false premise that Paul had taken a Gentile, Trophimus the Ephesian, into the Temple. The police were called; Paul was arrested; the riot was put down. As I listened to the radio news this morning, I was informed that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Watts riots, a civil disturbance with perhaps more justification, and certainly more damage, than the Biblical riot.

I was not quite a high school freshman living in another part of the Los Angeles metroplex in August of 1965. That was back when I still thought of “the Jews” as a singular, monolithic group; I thought of black Americans the same way. I remember the riots. I remember “our” fear of “them.” God help us, not much seems to have changed in fifty years! In all honesty, not much has changed in two thousand years. That hard-wired pre-programmed initial response of monolithic thinking, both about “us” and about “them,” whoever the “us” is and whoever the “them” is, is still with us, still a part of us, still in control of us.

When I was in seminary, I had a dormitory neighbor named Elizabeth, a doctoral student from Australia. I had the privilege of hearing her preach a children’s sermon one day on the parable of the lost sheep. She gathered the community’s children around her and asked them if they knew how God counts people. They all said “No,” of course, and she proceeded to point directly at each child saying, “One … one … one … one …” Her point for the children was that each one of us can be a lost sheep and that in God’s eyes each one of us is “number one,” the most important, the one God will take all the time necessary to search for and find.

As I think about our reading today and “the Jews from Asia” and the Watts riots, I remember Elizabeth’s children’s sermon and draw another inference: for God there are no monolithic groups, there are only individuals gathered into a flock. It is one of Jesus’ many lessons for us to learn, remember, re-learn, and remember again as we constantly over-write that programming; there is no “us” and there is no “them.” There are no monoliths!

God’s Sense of Humor – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 13, Year 1 (Pentecost 10, 2015)

Acts 19:32 ~ Meanwhile, some were shouting one thing, some another; for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.

I will only say that if ever there was evidence of God’s sense of humor, it is the coincidence of a reading with this verse in it and the aftermath of last night’s event at Quicken Loans Arena (“the Q”) in Cleveland, Ohio. (My wife insists that there are no “coincidences,” only “God-incidences.” This morning I will agree with her and, again, suggest evidence of Divine humor.)

A Weed in Your Garden? – From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 13, Year 1 (Pentecost 10, 2015)

Acts 19:18-19 ~ Many of those who became believers confessed and disclosed their practices. A number of those who practiced magic collected their books and burned them publicly; when the value of these books was calculated, it was found to come to fifty thousand silver coins.

The author of Acts obviously approves of the burning of “fifty thousand silver coins” worth of books. I cringe. In this brief passage, I hear the precursor not only of the burning of banned books throughout European and North American Christian history, I hear the stirrings of the destruction of Buddhist antiquities by the Taliban and of ancient Assyrian sculptures by ISIS. I hear the early rumblings of the gathering storms of religious purity, suppression of differing viewpoints, and the murder of those who are different.

Some years ago, I was teaching an adult education class at a church in another diocese at the time of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church held in Phoenix, Arizona (July 1991). As part of the opening ceremonies of that convention, a group of Native American “smudgers” had blessed the worship space in a ritual that involves the burning of aromatic herbs and the offering of the smoke; the smudgers who participated were active members of the Episcopal Church. A participant in my adult ed class was outraged; she likened the event to one purposefully planting a noxious weed into a garden, condemning the Native American tradition as “pagan” and “satanic.” (I should note that the congregation where the course was offered was an Anglo-Catholic parish which made abundant use of incense, so I don’t think the herbal smoke, in and of itself, was the issue for this class member.)

I wondered then and I wonder now how she feels about Christmas trees, Advent wreaths, Easter eggs, and the various other pre-Christian and “pagan” practices the church has incorporated into its ritual and popular practices. (Smudging has become rather a common, though not widespread, practice in the Episcopal Church, by the way. It was incorporated into the investiture ceremony of the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006, and her successor as Bishop of Nevada, the Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards welcomed smudgers at his consecration; in both cases, the smudgers were active members of Nevada Native American congregations.)

We have much to learn from the rituals, ceremonies, and ritual practices of others. To the extent they are not diametrically opposed to the truths of our faith, they can enrich our spirituality. The Roman Catholic theologian Raimon Panikkar (who is of both Spanish and [east] Indian ancestry) once suggested that if Christ is the fulfillment of earlier scripture then, as the Hebrew Scriptures are read in churches in the west, perhaps the Vedas or other ancient texts should be read in the churches of India and the east. Of his own personal pilgrimage to India he wrote, “I left Europe as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be Christian.” For such sentiments, Panikkar was expelled from the Opus Dei community and disciplined by the Vatican. I, however, find them intriguing.

My student’s outrage and Panikkar’s ecclesiastical discipline are both direct descendants of the book burning recorded in Acts. I wonder what was lost when those “fifty thousand silver coins” worth of books were burned.

Non-Scriptural Influences — From the Daily Office Lectionary

August 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 12, Year 1 (Pentecost 9, 2015)

Acts 17:22-23 ~ Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

The altar window at my parish church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Medina, Ohio, unlike most such windows which depict Jesus Christ in some way, shows this scene of Paul preaching to the Athenians. Paul stands in front of an ancient, columned temple; he and his listeners are dressed in togas. Paul’s audience is youthful and attentive; his elderly visage is earnest; his left arm is raised as he points upward, index finger extended. A banner across the bottom third of the window reads, “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.”

A dozen or more years ago, when I first entered the church’s worship space and viewed that window, my first thought was, “Why do they have a window of Socrates?” Then realization struck, “Ah, St. Paul!” Still, every time I see that window (which is now several times a week) I cannot help but notice how much the “Paul” depicted there resembles the ancient busts of Socrates; surely the stained glass artisan chose Socrates’ statues as his model.

It was, I think, a poor choice. Most historical reconstructions of Paul’s life and missionary journeys suggest that he was born in 5 CE and made this trip to Athens in 49 CE. The portrait in our window of an elderly bald European with a fringe of silver grey hair and a flowing white beard is clearly not that of a world traveling First Century Palestinian fisherman in his mid-40s. And yet this is the picture of Paul firmly placed in the minds of six generations of Medina Episcopalians (the church and window were built in 1884).

As I read Luke’s description of Paul’s witness in the Book of Acts, this window leaps unbidden to mind. How much, I wonder, of our understanding of Scripture is based on non-scriptural influences like the altar window? (The altar window is a relatively harmless example, although its depiction of Paul could be argued to foster and support a Eurocentric hegemony.) How many layers of information and misinformation filter our appreciation? And to what extent can preachers and religious educators deconstruct those inputs before endangering our listener’s faith? It’s a fine line, nearly a tightrope, that we walk, frequently unawares. The window reminds of me that.

Police Brutality – From the Daily Office Lectionary

July 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 12, Year 1 (Pentecost 9, 2015)

Acts 16:35-37 ~ When morning came, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” And the jailer reported the message to Paul, saying, “The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.” But Paul replied, “They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.”

According to Wikipedia, “The term ‘police brutality’ was in use in the American press as early as 1872, when the Chicago Tribune reported on the beating of a civilian under arrest at the Harrison Street Police Station.” (Police Brutality article) The Book of Acts bears witness that harsh and cruel treatment of accused (or even un-accused) prisoners of law enforcement was not unknown in the First Century.

Just think about that for a moment.

R.I.P. Bishop David Bowman – From the Daily Office Lectionary

July 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 10, Yr 1 (Pentecost 7, 2015)

Acts 13:36 ~ For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, died, was laid beside his ancestors, and experienced corruption; . . . .

Paul’s words in the synagogue at Pisidia hit me with particular force as I read them this morning.

In a couple of hours I will be leaving to attend the funeral of my colleague and friend, the Rt. Rev. David C. Bowman, former Bishop of Western New York, who entered larger life in God’s Presence last week. David presided at my installation as rector of St. Paul’s Parish, Medina, Ohio, and instantly became a trusted friend; I shall miss him very much. Here is his obituary as published on the website of his former diocese:

The Rt. Rev. David C. Bowman, Ninth Bishop of Western New York and Assisting Bishop of Ohio, died on July 10, 2015 in Cleveland, Ohio, at age 82, shortly following a stroke.

Born on November 15, 1932 in Oil City, PA, Bishop Bowman was raised in Canton, OH where he attended Canton Lincoln High school, and graduated from Ohio University in 1955. After serving three years in the U.S. Army, he attended the Virginia Theological Seminary, where he earned a Masters of Divinity in 1960. He was ordained to the diaconate in June and to the priesthood in December of that year.

From 1960 to 1963 he served as Assistant Rector at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, OH, where he met his wife, Nancy. He was then Vicar of St. Andrew’s in North Grafton, MA from 1963 to 1966; Rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Canfield, OH from 1967 to 1973; Rector of St. James’ Church, Painesville, OH from 1973 to 1980; and Rector of Trinity Church in Toledo, OH from 1980 to 1986, from where he was elected Bishop of Western New York.

Early in Bishop Bowman’s Episcopacy, the Diocese began a “Forward in Faith” capital campaign which raised more than four million dollars for the support of the Church at the local level, as well as providing resources to enable the mission of the Church at the diocesan and national levels.

While Bishop of Western New York, Bishop Bowman served on the Board of the Episcopal Church Home, a retirement community and Compass house, a home for Runaway youth. He was an active leader of the Buffalo Area Metropolitan Ministries and helped lead this agency to a merger with the Buffalo Area Council of Churches. Nationally, Bishop Bowman served on the Episcopal Churches Program Budget and Finance Committee for nine years. He represented that Committee on the Churches Audit Committee. He served as the Vice Chair of the House of Bishop’s Planning Committee and in this capacity assisted in the planning of an historic joint meeting with the Lutheran Conference of Bishops and the Episcopal House of Bishops. He served a term as a member of the General Board of Examining Chaplains.

Upon his retirement in 1999, the Bowmans moved to Shaker Heights, OH where he served for a year as Interim Dean of Trinity Cathedral, followed by a year as Interim Bishop of Central New York, while that diocese moved through the process to elect a new bishop. In 2003 he served a year as Assisting Bishop of Ohio, after which he was the interim Dean and President of Seabury Western Seminary in Evanston, IL. For the last ten years he has served actively as one of the Assisting Bishops of the Diocese of Ohio.

Bishop Bowman spent summers in Rangeley, ME, at the family’s lakeside camp, where he loved to sail, play tennis, and play the banjo and string bass.

He is survived by his wife, Nancy Lou Betts Bowman, whom he married in 1962, and their three children, Ann of Cleveland, OH, William (Georgine) of Cincinnati, OH, and Sarah Bowman Workman (Jason) of Cleveland, OH, as well as two granddaughters, Abigail Bowman and Lucy Workman, and his brother, Richard of Boulder, CO.

Burial service and reception will be held on Saturday, July 18, at 1 p.m., at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave, Cleveland (parking lot on Prospect Ave).

Memorial contributions may be made to Episcopal Relief and Development, P.O. Box 7058, Merrifield, VA 22116-7058 (www.episcopalrelief.org), and the Church of the Good Shepherd, 2614 Main Street, Rangeley, ME 04970.

Irredeemable Name-Calling – From the Daily Office Lectionary

July 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of RCL Proper 10B (Pentecost 7, 2015)
Acts 11:26 – “…. and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’.”

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the power of naming or, more accurately, name-calling. ~ That is the origin of the term “Christian,” after all. The followers of Jesus did not use this term of themselves; they simply called themselves “followers of the Way.” It was their neighbors and detractors who first called them “Christian,” and there is some evidence that the word used was actually “Chrestian,” note the “e” rather than an “i” in the first syllable. This is not simply an orthographic error; this variant spelling has its own meaning, something like “Goody Two-Shoes”…. The early followers of Jesus held themselves to a high ethical code and so their neighbors believed they may have thought themselves better than others; they made fun of them as excessively virtuous do-gooders. The Christians, however, embraced the epithet, changed its spelling, and made it their own. ~ Name-calling has been on my mind because of the experience of a teenage girl in my parish who’s been the brunt of some particularly vicious bullying and obscene name-calling at school. When she made a complaint to a teacher, the response from the school authorities was to suggest to her and to her parents that she should dress “less provocatively” (she doesn’t dress any differently than others of her age and class, by the way). ~ Years ago it was pretty common to hurl the word “queer” at contemporaries who were suspected of being homosexual, but like the Christians of Antioch the LGBT community has embraced the epithet and made it their own. My young parishioner cannot do that; the name-calling being hurled in her direction is simply irredeemable. ~ This is not a case where the victim can take positive action of that sort. But it is a case where the church can take action; if nothing else, as her parish priest I can write a letter of protest to her school authorities, and stand by her and her parents as they wend their way through the bureaucratic nightmare of victim-blaming that is so often the response to bullying in our public schools. That’s one small step in combatting a very big problem. The church as an institution needs to do more. We need to live up to the Antiochene epithet; we need to be excessively virtuous do-gooders in opposition to irredeemable name-calling!

Signs and Wonders – From the Daily Office Lectionary

June 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the NT lessons for Monday in the week of Proper 7B (Pentecost 4, 2015)
Acts 5
12 Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles.

I will be spending most of this day on airplanes and in airports traveling from Cleveland, Ohio, to Salt Lake City, Ohio (via Atlanta, Georgia, for some reason) for the 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I am an elected alternate deputy of the Diocese of Ohio and have also been appointed a Legislative Aide to Legislative Committee No. 11, a committee of bishops, clergy, and lay deputies who will conduct hearings about, consider, possibly amend, and make recommendations to the two Houses with regard to the Prayer Book, Liturgy, and Church Music. ~ There are a number of things that will be done at this meeting of the General Convention: decisions will be made about the church’s response to marriage equality; about the commemoration of saints; about the structure of the church (whether to make the General Convention smaller, whether to do away with Provinces, how to constitute the Executive Council, what authority to give the Presiding Bishop, and so forth); a budget will be adopted; and a new Presiding Bishop will be elected. And a lot of other things will be dealt with, as well. ~ Will “many signs and wonders [be] done among the people”? I sort of doubt it. We like to believe that our General Conventions, our diocesan conventions, our deliberative assemblies and church synods continue the tradition of the apostles, but we seldom accomplish anything that has the impact the Book of Acts ascribes to their actions. Nonetheless, these decisions are and will be important to the Episcopal Church and its members, episcopal, presbyteral, diaconal, and lay. ~ So, all of us who will be there, bishops, deputies, staff, and volunteers, will very much appreciate the prayers of the people among whom, and on whose behalf, all of our “signs and wonders” will be done.

Restrict Gun Ownership – From the Daily Office Lectionary

June 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From the NT lesson for Friday in the week of Proper 6B (Pentecost 3, 2015)
Acts 2
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Yesterday morning I was cut to the heart, as were many people, by news of the killing of nine persons at a church in Charleston, SC, by a 21-year-old gunman. “What should we do? What can we do?” many people asked. Even our president asked and then admitted helplessness because of the apparent impossibility of change in our national legislature. Throughout the day politicians, pundits, and everyday people pondered that question. Even comedians got serious.

Late in the evening, I wrote the following, which I have titled Severe & Radical Gun Ownership Restriction: A Manifesto.

======================

I was ordained into the Sacred Order of Priests 24 years ago on the evening of June 21, 1991. That is the eve of the Feast of St. Alban, First Martyr of Britain. The gospel lesson for Alban’s commemoration begins:

“Jesus said, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.'” (Mat 10:34-39)

Today the United States is once again in mourning because of a mass killing. Nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, including the church’s pastor, were gunned down during a prayer meeting last night. The victims were black; the shooter was white.

Pundits on the Right (to be more explicit Fox News anchors) have tried to portray this as part of a “war on Christianity.” It’s not. This killing was motivated not by religion but by racism and hatred.

Pundits on the Right (a Fox News commentator and a member of the National Rifle Associations board) have tried to suggest that this killing would not have happened if the pastor had been armed. In fact, the NRA board member posted a comment on a Texas gun-rights bulletin board essentially blaming the pastor for these deaths because he voted, as a state senator, against an open-carry law. The failure of logic, the sheer madness of these comments boggles the mind.

In an earlier Facebook conversation, a colleague said that we in the US have a dysfunctional government. I replied that we have a dysfunctional society. As political comedians have been saying for years, we have the government we deserve.

Our government is merely a reflection of the country that elected it. We kid ourselves when we complain about Citizens Unite and corporate money in politics; those corporations wouldn’t have that money and be that powerful if we hadn’t allowed them to grow that way.

We complain about the NRA and the power it wields, but it only has that power because those who believed otherwise about firearms stood by and let the NRA take control.

We complain about systemic racism but we have done nothing to change the system.

Edmund Burke said it best, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Good people for generations have done nothing as our society has sickened and the government we have is the result.

Politician Rand Paul’s ridiculous response to the Charleston killing was to say that there is a sickness in our country ~ that part he got right ~ about which government can do nothing ~ he’s wrong on that. Government, good functional government, can solve the problem. But that means changing the government and, for that to happen, good people have to do something.

Which brings me back to the gospel lesson for St. Alban’s Day. We have violated the spirit of Jesus’ words in this story that Matthew tells. Jesus expected his good news to create friction between people who would otherwise be expected to not merely get along, but to love and support one another, to create enmity between intimate family members. That doesn’t happen because we are too concerned with being nice to one another. Like the good people Edmund Burke blamed for evil, we don’t say anything which might upset someone. And we think we’re being “Christian” when we do so; we think we’re being nice like Jesus.

But … as someone (I can’t remember who) commented in a discussion about the upcoming General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Jesus wasn’t nice. He was demanding as hell! He demands that we stand for something and take risks for it, risking friendships and family relationships for what we know to be right, no longer allowing evil to flourish simply because we are too nice to say anything.

The nine people shot at Emanuel Church are dead because of a cancer fed by three major toxins in our society: racism, mental illness, and guns. We have to deal with all three, but the one that is most dangerous because it is acute is the issue of guns. If guns were not part of the mixture, these deaths would not be occurring. We could (and should) work on one of the other chronic toxins, but let’s face it … if we work immediately on racism, mental illness and guns is a combination that will still result in death; if we work on mental illness, racism and guns is a combination that will still result in death. Racism and mental illness is a combination that’s bad, but nobody’s going to get shot!

So, as I see it, guns need to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

I used to be in favor of regulation, of licensure, of required training, of mandatory insurance, of background checks. I used to believe that the words of the Second Amendment, “a well-regulated militia,” could be used to rein in the problem of unfettered gun ownership. As a former competitive shooter (a long, long time ago), that seemed reasonable to me.

No longer. Guns are part of the toxic cancer killing this country.

I now believe it’s all or nothing. Either we cut out the tumor or we die. The Second Amendment should be repealed and private ownership of handguns and automatic or semiautomatic weapons outlawed. I can see no other way to end this crisis of death and destruction, no other way to treat the cancer than with radical surgery.

I know there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening, but cancer is cancer. It’s time to cut it out — it’s killing this country.

And it’s time to stand up and be counted as favoring radical elimination of the threat unfettered gun ownership presents to our society. If that means our closest confidants, our friends, members of our families, whomever become our enemies, so be it. It’s what Jesus told us to expect. And if racist, mentally ill, gun owners shoot us down for threatening their beloved weapons, well … Jesus told us to expect that to. It may require us to give our lives for the sake of the gospel of peace.

I’m fine with that. I’m not fine with standing by any longer and allowing evil to triumph. From now on, I am a vocal advocate for severe and radical restriction and regulation of gun ownership.

Use It or Lose It – From the Daily Office Lectionary

June 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

From New Testament lesson for Wednesday in the week of Proper 6B (Pentecost 3, 2015)
Acts 2
7 Amazed and astonished, [the crowd] asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

At an earlier time, and with regard to another context, Jesus had told his followers, “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time.” (Mt 10:19) Some years later, Paul would write, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (1 Cor 12:7) ~ So, I’m wondering how long do these gifts last? Are there some that last a lifetime and some that manifest only as long as context requires? For how long after the day of Pentecost did the apostles retain the ability to speak the various languages of the empire? Legend has it that many of them scattered to distant places, to Ethopia, to India, to Spain: did they go to the countries where the languages they’d been given were spoken because they retained that ability? Or did their linguistic talent fade, as mine always does, with lack of use? I’ve studied and gained some degree of fluency in four languages other than English: Spanish, Italian, French, and Irish Gaelic. To my sorrow, I’ve retained not much more than a few phrases of any; lack of opportunity to converse has meant a loss of ability, an atrophy so to speak. Is it the same with the various gifts of the Spirit? “Use it or lose it”? I suspect so.

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