two way street

Sunday May 24^th, Acts 2: They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Speaking in tongues was not for the gratification or uplifting of those speaking, it was a gift of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of spreading the good news of God’s new chapter in the salvation story to the gathered multitudes.  The spirit moved the disciples out of the locked upper room where they were hiding and into the streets where they encountered the needs of the people.  The spirit did not leave them alone even now.  They were not done and this was just the beginning.  From here the spirit moved them from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria and onto the rest of the world.  The spirit moved them into the hearts and minds of you and me in our time and place. The spirit gave them the tools and the ability to minister to the needs of the people they encountered.  So too, the spirit gives us the ability to minister to the needs of those around us, the hungry, the poor, those left out of the American dream, as well as to those caught up in the relentless pursuit of the American dream to the point where they can’t see the needs of the poor.  The spirit opens our eyes and hearts as well as our ears, and calls us to see one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, and truly love one another, in action, as we would love Christ.  Sometimes the Spirit moves us out of our hiding places and into the world where we find opportunities to minister, and to be ministered too.  Being open to being ministered to is often the most undeveloped part of ministry. Without that two way street, we are only preaching, and of that the world already has too much.