A PASTORAL LETTER
Dear family,
Well, at last we had a message on Sunday that ended with a ‘period’, not a comma! I covered a lot of ground and you will have to download it if you want the main content. For the purpose of this letter I want to focus on my closing comments which were a bit compressed and rushed for clock reasons. Thank you for listening so well and attentively … and patiently.
Someone who was really listening to my message two Sundays ago picked up on something I said and spoke to me about it afterwards. I had said that the work of the Holy Spirit is a necessity to create the unity needed out of such diversity (racial, cultural, political, educational, spiritual, denominational etc.), and that we are invited to recognize and relish the differences among us that Christ then reconciles and puts to work together. The work of reconciliation is a work of the Holy Spirit and one of the ways that reconciliation is experienced and then expressed is in the unity that Paul talks about that is fostered by the healthy function of spiritual gifts, that have three constituent elements: diversity of gifting among each other; equality of concern and honor for each other; mutuality of need of and for each other. The person in question who spoke to me was one of my close African-American sisters and we just had the best conversation rejoicing in the reconciling power of the Spirit in a community committed to the manifestations of “the same Spirit”!
Every major gift list I referenced, comments about two things: about love, and about unity in diversity.
•Romans 12: 5 precedes the list of giftings: “in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others” This rules out ethnocentric independence and individualism but preserves legitimate differences and diversity. Verse 9 concludes the list: “Love must be sincere … Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.”
•1 Corinthians 12:12 immediately follows gifts list: “though all its parts are many, they form one body … for we all are baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jew or Greek, slave or free” The follow-up about love is a whole chapter: “If I have the gift of tongues … If I have the gift of prophecy … if I have a faith that can move mountains … if I give all I possess … but have not love … Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts” (14:1)
•Ephesians 4:4 “There is one Body and one Spirit …” This is concluded in vs. 13, 15-16: “speaking the truth in love … the whole body … grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
But my concluding thought was about tongues in particular and a point seldom mentioned: that I believe that there is an inviolable relationship between tongues and racial reconciliation, and that when we exegete what kind of “sign” this gift is, we conclude from the text that it signed the fulfillment of Jesus’ commission of the disciples to bear the gospel to all the nations, beginning with their immediate world of nations bordering the Mediterranean, including Africans, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, Asians, and present-day Europeans. They all heard “the wonders of God in our own tongues” (Acts 2:5-12). Tongues was a sign that not only witnessed to God’s redeeming work for all nations, but was itself the means of communication of that witness to the gospel.
In every incident when tongues are imparted (Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6) it is in a multi-racial context, one of cultural and national diversity. God is no respecter of nationality and has no divine toleration for racial superiority and ensuing racism. The gift of tongues is different for everyone. Racial prejudice was the barrier to the Gentiles getting the gospel from the Jews. If there were February 20, 2019 any doubts, Acts 10 settles the matter. It took the vision of the sheet with unclean animals to break the bondage in Peter and prepare him to go to Cornelius’ house. The sheer supernaturalism of this chapter, both through divine vision and voice to Peter, and angelic visitation to Cornelius, tells us that God is absolutely concerned that nobody misses the point, and that He will spare nothing in order for this truth about reconciliation to be relayed and received. It took supernaturalism to break the bondages, manifested in the gift of tongues to Gentiles. The peace of biblical reconciliation is not brokered culturally but supernaturally.
Listen to the text: “The circumcised believers (not just Jewish believers – it is emphasizing the particular badge of Jewry that is circumcision!) who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even (the prejudiced Jews were surprised and could hardly disguise their deeply rooted superior patronizing attitudes of heart) on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.” (Acts 10:45-46) What was the conclusion to be drawn from the manifestation of tongues to the Gentiles? The same that Peter drew from the sheet that was dropped on his head. The text tells us: “God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation” (10:34) To think or live differently is not just to be ungodly, but to oppose God’s love and His will and purposes, and to oppose the work of the Holy Spirit. From now on in Acts, the address of the gospel is consistently to “men of Israel and you Gentiles” (13:16); “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks” (20:21). If you take racial reconciliation seriously, you will take speaking in tongues seriously, as this gift will be a constant reminder as you employ it in your daily life, that your racial identity is a gift of God but insufficient for your redeemed identity in Christ, and the fact that you need to speak another language to enhance your intimacy with God, will remind you that God is the God of all tribes and nations, and they have something you need! Everyone committed to God’s reconciling purposes when it comes to race, needs to appreciate (and hopefully receive and practice) the gift of tongues as the sign of those purposes. Does that give you yet another timely and relevant reason to desire this gift?
Without spiritual gifts we can neither mature individually or corporately. Ephesians 4:12, following the list of ministry giftings, speaks to corporate growth and maturity: “to prepare God’s people” whilst v13 speaks to personal growth: “until we all … become mature”. If biblical reconciliation is a non-negotiable gospel truth and provision and thus a non-negotiable community value, then we will equally need a personal work of the Holy Spirit as well as a corporate one. The two are always and related. We will covet earnestly spiritual gifts as a manifestation of the reconciling purposes of God among those who are different, equal and in creational mutual need of each other always.
You will embrace speaking in tongues – a sort of circumcised tongue that manifests a circumcised heart that is having all its irreconciliation and prejudice and racial superiority excised by the Holy Spirit. Every day that you use the gift you will be unable to say that your way of thinking and speaking, or your way of living according to your language group, is the definition of your identity. Tongues reminds us that the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation, in our identity in Christ, trumps our natural and national identity, which does not have the final superior word on anything. And we cannot even get superior about our ‘tongue’ because we don’t even know what language it is! Our assurance about who we are is in the gifts of God, not in the generational, racial or national histories of men. So here’s to spiritual gifts in general, and to tongues in particular! All those in favor say ‘yes’ in whatever language you wish. As a Scot, my answer is “Aye!
Pastorally yours,
Stuart
PS: ASK! Ask the Holy Spirit what your gifts are – He gave them (Discover). Ask the Holy Spirit for gifts (Desire). Ask others how they perceive your gifts (Discern together).