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Thought for the Week 23 May – Pentecost Sunday
Let
us imagine for a moment that the Kingdom of God is actually a very large
business, and that God is the Chief Executive Officer. One day, as Chief
Executive Officers are inclined to do, God decided that the business needed
to grow, and indeed to become global. In order to accomplish this, God made a
plan. Making
a business plan and then making it succeed are two very different things. A
good Chief Executive knows that, even if the product is a superior one, it
takes some Marketing genius to bring it to the public. The Marketing genius in God’s company is
Jesus Christ, who uses every trick of the trade to position the company’s
product in the marketplace, making sure it appears better than any other
similar product. He is in charge of packaging and advertising, and practical
things like that. He is also in charge of the vast machinery of distribution,
and therefore needs yet another kind of genius to head up the International
Sales department. Who better for this job than The Holy Spirit, to fire up
the sales team around the world? Perhaps
it is too trite to put the salvation of the world into such a simple example,
yet consider some of the complexities of implementing the Chairman’s Plan. In
some cultures, bright red packaging is eye-catching, colorful and cheerful.
In others that color is symbolic of disaster and sadness. In some cultures a
single product is expected to perform many tasks, in others a different
product is invoked for each kind of task. The idea of One God, one salvation,
one reward in heaven makes sense to us, but there have always been cultures –
the Greeks and Romans in antiquity, and Hinduism and others in our own day -
in which many Gods need to be invoked, each one with its own “specialty” so
to speak. Thus a god of the weather, a
god of the harvest, a god of wine, one of love, one of war, even a particular
household god in some places. There are even spirits for special purposes. A
visitor to Japan visited a pretty shrine. In the garden a tree was covered
with small pieces of paper that had been inscribed and attached to the tree
with string. The priest of the shrine explained to the visitor that the deity
of that shrine was interested in promoting intelligence and cleverness. The
visitor wanted to know what the pieces of paper were for and the old priest
smiled and said, “they are petitions from many young people who want to get
into Tokyo University”. The
author of the Divine Plan knows quite a bit about diversity, and perhaps we
think we know quite a bit about it too. After all, we do live in a global
economy, we have access to rapid transportation around the world and many of
us are interested in travel and seeing other cultures. Some of us actually
travel and connect with people around the world as part of our business
activity. Indeed, some of us can remember when getting around was harder and
slower, when some cultures seemed more “foreign” than they do now, and when
international communication was much more laborious. But that is all recent
history. Imagine if the task of doing business had required a strategy that
encompassed not only the present day, but also the many centuries since
Christ came into the world, and even earlier. The
travels and conquests of Alexander the Great are known to us all, at least in
basic form, but the real story behind Alexander’s successes lies in his
extraordinary sensitivity to the logistics of providing supplies for rapidly
moving armies. He was brilliant at choosing routes that could be serviced by
supply ships at sea. He would sometimes march at times of the year when
harvests could be relied upon to provide food for his soldiers, and he would
limit the numbers of camp followers who would slow the progress down, and at
the same time drain the available supplies. He knew how much a horse needed
to eat every day, or a camel. Without benefit of science, except the science
of observation, he knew the nutritional value of many foods. Many of his
successes were the direct result of his enemies failing to be similarly
prepared, though often greater in numbers of soldiers. God’s
Plan is not a plan only for our own time. It is a sobering thought to have to
think that God, who is the God of the modern world, is also the God of Attila
the Hun, the Borgia Popes, the Tudor kings and queens, and assorted despots
throughout the ages, many of whom have piously invoked God’s name while
perpetrating what we would consider unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Adolph Hitler would regularly make the claim that God was an approving
witness to his master-race concepts. God’s
plan then, is a plan for the life of the whole world, and the duration of the
world. It may be a plan even bigger than that, but as far as we are
concerned, our part of the plan has boundaries and time constraints. Still,
it is a very vast plan. It is a plan so ambitious that it is hard for us to
imagine that it could ever succeed. Simply stated, God’s plan calls for the
peoples of the world, in every time and place, to be able to come to the
knowledge and love of God, and to achieve the ultimate reward – the place in
the eternal kingdom set aside for them. Jesus
set up marketing operations, mainly in Capernaum, the equivalent of the
internet center of Judea. From this city roads went off towards the important
capitals of the western world. Travelers came and went and carried news and
information with them. Jerusalem was a magnet for Jews from all over the
known world coming to make their periodic tribute, and today’s story from the
Acts of the Apostles sets the scene. Jews from every nation under heaven were
there, it says, and these Jews spoke the languages of their adopted
countries. Every
International Marketing Manager knows that clear and accurate translations
are key to making your product attractive. We have all seen quaint examples
of mistranslations on products manufactured in China or Japan. One that comes
to mind is a plastic box made for storing CDs and DVDs. Inside there was a
booklet explaining how to use and care for the box. The instructions
concluded with the words “Look after this box carefully and it will be your
pet forever”. If
we read the story from Acts literally, the disciples were given the gift of
speaking in tongues other than their own, and if we read it figuratively, the
joy and enthusiasm of the disciples was enough to make their message
compelling to a very disparate audience that day. Even the gainsayers who suggested
that the disciples were drunk miss the mark. Drunks may indeed mumble, but
are rarely able to communicate anything very clearly. The
disciples in this instance have just had a truly inspiring moment with the
Director of Sales – the very person to whom the Marketing Manager has
entrusted the task of carrying the product to the worldwide market. So,
we have the Plan. And,
we have the product. We
also have the sales pitch. And
now we should listen carefully, for there is one more task – and it is the
task of carrying news of the product to every person in every household, in
every town and village, in every country of the world, in every generation. And
who can do that task? Satisfied
users can pass along the good news. And people who are convinced of the
ultimate worth of the product, a product that delivers on its promises, can
become representatives of the product. Lest you may be wondering who that
might be, it is the person sitting next to you right now. And the person
sitting in front of you, or behind you. The chair you’re sitting on has the
name of a star sales representative written on it. Yet,
a plan without a product is just a plan. A
product without a market is just a product. A
market without a sales plan is just a market. A
sales plan without representation is just a sales plan. An
energized and knowledgeable and enthusiastic and committed representative
however, can make the whole enterprise a success. Today
is the Day of Pentecost – the day on which the Spirit of God, the Advocate
whom Jesus had promised, brought to the confused disciples all the confidence
and knowledge they would ever need to carry God’s plan forward into the
world. Their story is our story as well. At our Baptism we received our first
set of instructions on how to live the Christian life. At Confirmation we
receive our second set of instructions, and we receive the Holy Spirit to
give us confidence and power, in just the way the first disciples received
confidence and power. For
the modern Christian the gifts of the Holy Spirit are important, if not
essential, in representing the gospel of Jesus Christ and the God’s plan of
salvation, but those gifts need to be seen in a modern context as well. Even
the early church was not as simple a structure as we might tend to think. The
Gospel and the letters of John show us that his community of followers and
believers was at serious odds with other Christian groups during the first
century. In fact, there are five clearly distinct kinds of Christians by the
end of the first century, all struggling to understand just what it was that
following Jesus meant, and how the descent of the Holy Spirit played out in
their lives and in their separate communities. Today
we see a great many forms of this same struggle for faithfulness. It can be
seen even in our own Anglican Church with its broad spread of liturgical
traditions ranging from high Anglo-Catholic, to Evangelical. Beyond our
church we can see other Christian denominations – Roman Catholic, Orthodox,
Charismatic and many others, many of which also have distinctive internal
divisions. This is what the Christian world is like, the modern equivalent of
the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the people of Mesopotamia, Judea,
Cappadocia etc. etc. Around
the world, national elements insert themselves into the Christian Way,
providing a further layer of diversity. And
beyond the Christian world we encounter a whole new range of religious
expressions, as millions more people have, over the ages, sought the divine
in ways other than our own. So,
when John reports Jesus as praying that “we all may be one” I think we have
to assume that he is not suggesting that we should all become the same, but
that we all seek God with all the sincerity of which the human heart can be
capable. That
is the promise, and also the challenge of the gospel. It
is not easy to try to superimpose the face of God onto the face of everyone
we meet. It does not come to us naturally to do that, because we are always
in a hurry and we tend to think that too many other people around are a
hindrance to what we want to get done. Yet to see the face of God, that is
where we must look. And to implement the plan of God, that is where we must
start. Our world is troubled, yes, but the world has always been troubled and
will always be troubled, and it remains true that the face of God is to be
seen in the faces of even those who differ from us most, and those whose
ideologies differ from our own the most. Once
we can come to accept this important point, then everyone among us, girls and
boys, men and women, can be true and effective representatives of God’s great
plan. This
Pentecost, may you be renewed in zeal for the gospel, and may you be inflamed
by the Holy Spirit’s fire to be a light in the world. May the great wind of
the Spirit fill you with power and confidence and be felt everywhere, that
the Plan of salvation may be completely fulfilled. Revd
Tony Jewiss: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |