Put yourself in the apostle Peter’s shoes. Your upbringing and culture have ingrained in you the superiority of being a Jew. You’ve been taught your entire life that only those who are Jews, or who go through the steps to become Jews, can experience the acceptance and blessing of God. Salvation is a privilege reserved only for those who are part of your tribe. In your world there are two groups—us (Jews) and them (everybody else).
Imagine that on the day of Pentecost you are among your fellow Jews from all over the known world when suddenly fire falls from heaven. And something mysterious—something totally unprecedented—breaks out in the room where you and your homogenous comrades are holed up. Those present begin to proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus in the various languages of the surrounding Gentile world.
People look to you to explain this extraordinary phenomenon. You say the people aren’t drunk, as some have suggested, but they’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit. And a movement happens where hundreds—thousands … people from a variety of different backgrounds and all walks of life—profess their faith in Jesus.
Not too long thereafter, you fall into a trance while praying. A divine voice commands that you kill and eat unclean animals—animals that you have always avoided as a matter of conscience and faith. You object and protest, but that voice says, “Don’t label something unclean which God says is clean.” You are unsure what to make of this, but shortly thereafter three non-Jewish men show up and are calling your name. The Holy Spirit impresses on you that these are God-sent messengers and that you’re to go with them and listen to what they have to say. So you go with them, share the message of Jesus, and an event similar to what happened a few weeks earlier plays out—they profess their faith in Jesus and receive God’s Spirit in a fashion similar to the gathered Jews in the upper room. Your world, your cultural understandings, and your prejudices are all being turned upside down. And you find yourself thinking something that you couldn’t imagine you would have ever said—“I understand now that there’s no partiality with God.”
Fast forward almost 2000 years and imagine you are white on the day George Floyd was killed. Here’s my point: If it required the miracle of Pentecost to open one of Jesus’ closest followers up to the reality that God cherishes every life equally and that Jesus died for every person equally, then what is needed for you to become part of the solution to the deeply entrenched sin of racism?
I’m convinced part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal to us our sin, our prejudice, our racism, our cultural blind spots, and our exclusiveness. Where a lost world hardens us and creates an enhanced sense of polarization, God’s Spirit softens us and forges unity. If we resist the Spirit, our hearts get harder, our eyes get blinder, and our ears get deafer. But if we allow the Holy Spirit to work on us, our hearts get more tender, we listen with empathy, and we can begin to see the big picture.
As Spirit-filled followers of Jesus, we go through life as resident aliens in a world laced with brutality, murder, and racism. To be empowered for the work of healing and reconciliation that needs to be done, we need to have an encounter with the Holy Spirit similar to what the apostle Peter experienced. Being like Jesus, and being equipped to continue the work that He began, begins with the invasion and infilling of the Holy Spirit in the very core of our being.
Part of what the Holy Spirit does is awaken us to the flaws and blindness of our preconceived notions. He points out the misguided and erroneous notions of our embedded worldview. Just as he did with Peter, he helps us see the blemished and defective stuff in us that needs to be corrected so we can become the difference the world needs.
Peter could have taken a defensive posture the day he was praying. He could have reacted in a protective manner that safeguarded the status quo of his beliefs and ideas. If he had done so, he would have missed the miracle of what God was up to.
As we reflect on Pentecost, maybe a good question for us to humbly ask is, “What is God saying to me in the death of George Floyd?”