Acts | And they were all together in one place

We here at Sanctuary used to gather regularly in one place. So what happened? And what comes next? (Listen.)

Today is Pentecost, and so I’d love to talk about the intoxication of the spirit, or how her life-giving breath is poured into the world, giving inspiration, imagery and language to share good news with wildly diverse people. Or I’d love to talk about the theatre of flames, how people’s heads and hearts were set on fire, and how this led them to extend themselves for the sake and love of others. Or I could mention that Pentecost is a Jewish first fruits festival, celebrating the gift of the law, the making of a nation, and the harvest to come, and how the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost led to the formation of the church and a new harvest. But I am brought to a standstill by the words, ‘And they were all together in one place.’

We here at Sanctuary used to gather regularly in one place. We used to have a Sunday service followed by dinner each week, ever and always in the hall. Sometimes it felt good and sometimes a bit ordinary. Sometimes it was heavy with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes the kids got the better of us and we sang out of tune and dinner was rubbish and who knows what was said in the sermon. And sometimes the Holy Spirit was known precisely in the chaos and the mess.

Then, the pandemic hit. For two years, our pattern of gathering was hugely disrupted. We met online for months on end. When it was legal, we met standing at a distance in the freezing cold wind in parks and gardens and cul-de-sacs. As restrictions eased, we began to meet in people’s homes and back in the hall again. And because some moved away and others joined online, we still meet on alternate weeks via Zoom.

Now, any given week, many of our regulars are out of town. Others are sick, working, studying or rehearsing, or spending time with family or friends. Still others have shifted priorities. This is all to say, between one thing and another, we are never all together in one place, not even on Zoom; and most weeks there’s only a few of us.

So Pentecost holds a real poignancy. Some of us long for us to be all together, gathered into one body, singing, praying, and sharing bread and wine, food and drink and hugs: and I do believe that gathering regularly with other disciples is critical for a Jesus-centred faith. But all of us gathering together? It’s not who we are, nor, it seems, who we ever have been.

I’ve been looking through our attendance records. In the nearly seven years that we’ve been meeting, not once has every regular attender, or even every committed member, been at a service or event. Not once. There has never been a time when all the disciples here at Sanctuary were gathered together in one place, not in person and not online, not in a house and not in the hall and not in a garden. To think that is our future is to cling to an illusion.

What, then, is our future? I don’t know, but I look to the story of Acts for clues. And what I see is that the disciples gathered all together … but then they dispersed. After an initial intense period in Jerusalem, when they devoted themselves to the scriptures and the common  life, the shared meals and the prayers, and the sharing of their abundance with others, they went out. The Spirit poured into them and set them on fire, inspiring them to proclaim God’s word in the language of people’s hearts; then it kicked them into the big wide world where others were convinced that this story was strong enough and generous enough and loving enough for them, too. And so new clusters of disciples developed, and they too gathered around scripture, the common life, the shared meals and the prayers, and reached in love beyond their communities: and so the pattern was repeated and the church took shape and spread across the Mediterranean Basin.

The book of Acts is all about this wildly flourishing early network, and two thousand years later, we are among its fruits. Because despite shipwreck and conflict and persecution and imprisonment, and despite the violence of empire and colonization and the ways they’ve co-opted and distorted the church, the Spirit has kept moving. She has kept reaching through the centuries through countless disciples to beckon others towards justice and joy. Just as she catapulted Paul and Silas and so many others around the Mediterranean, she lured this pastor through prayer-dreams of salt wind to southwest Victoria, and she gathers us here today. She’s the power which calls us to break bread and wrestle with scripture and share our lives and pray; she’s the breath which flows through us as we share this generous life with others.

Next Sunday, we are scheduled to talk about our future. For some, our impulse will be to find a way to gather all together again; to return to the safety of the upstairs room, so to speak, to be with familiar people and to share faith among ourselves. But to do so is only the starting point of Pentecost. So when we gather next week, I encourage you to not be troubled by what we have lost. Instead, celebrate what was good; then look to what we have gained, what we are learning, and how we are already positioned to keep sharing resurrection life with others. And remember the fruits of Pentecost: the outpouring of love and generous witness into a world beyond ourselves.

So let’s not waste our energy trying to get all of us together in one place week in week out: for that has never been our reality and it’s not our future. Instead, let’s wonder about the many ways we can meet face-to-face or online to reflect on the Scriptures, pray, share our lives, then reach beyond the bounds of the church. Or, if we are no longer going to gather even in these ways, let us wonder how to disperse with justice and joy, taking stories of love, life and healing into new corners of the world. And whatever happens, let us pray that the Holy Spirit can continue to work through the people of Sanctuary to reach thirtyfold, sixtyfold, even a hundredfold of its membership, as she stirs us up and leads us on through her creative and intoxicating fire. Amen. Ω

A reflection by Alison Sampson on Acts 2:1-21 given to Sanctuary on 28 May 2023 © Sanctuary 2023 (Year A Pentecost). Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash.