Peter and John and Philip and Paul and all the others…all blessed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And all of them seem to have become itinerant preachers. That is my word of the week, “itinerant”. It means ‘wandering’. Jesus was an itinerant preacher, on the go throughout most of the gospel accounts (although there are hints he had a home in Capernaum).
Now, to me, ‘wandering’ may hint at ‘random’, but God is not random. Just because we cannot see what God is doing, does not mean something wonderful is going on. In terms of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, it is certainly not random. This was a targeted witnessing. Go here, talk to the guy with the scroll, the work of God goes forth.
There are many blessed individuals through the history of the church that have taken on this itinerant aspect of the Spirit’s presence. They have been inspired, blessed, pulled up stakes and gone to new places far and near. Which may leave an impression with those of us ‘left behind’ that this is a mark of the Holy Spirit ‘truly’ taking hold of us. Step one of the Spirit, Jesus is with us yet. Okay. Step two, we now must get out there into the world, wandering in the Lord hither and yon?
But I don’t want to. I have my family and community and this is where I want to be. Is it okay to believe that Jesus also wants me here? I try and listen for Him. Growing up in the church, there was a time when I carried away the impression that going out to be a missionary was what it meant to receive the Holy Spirit. Which is surely not a bad thing. But in my mind, if I wasn't rushing 'out there' to be a missionary, did I only have the Holy Spirit in some kind of half-measure?
Did that mean I was somehow less committed to being a servant of the Living God? That maybe I would not get ‘the prize’ of a tongue, as of fire, above my head?
But to read of the spreading of the Spirit in the book of Acts is not to read of the establishment of a wandering faith. Yes, there were the apostles, Jesus’ force multipliers, going from place to place to place. But the foundation of the church’s power was in those places. It was where three thousand joined on the day of Pentecost, establishing the community of faith from which these apostles then proceeded.
The power of the Holy Spirit begins in the grounded community and extends to those who are sent out. This means that for most of us, we don’t need to wander the countryside at the Spirit’s guidance to share the love of Jesus Christ. We get to do so from the "comfort" of our own homes. The Son of Man did not know where he might rest his head. We have a little more continuity in that regard.
What this does not mean is that we have less responsibility to be responsive to the Spirit’s call where we are, in our established communities. We are not somehow ‘privileged’ to have our people in our walled fortresses of worship, ‘sponsoring’ others to go and do the witness work of Christ as if we passed along the call of Christ to someone else. That is not how it works.
Where there are people of faith and there are people in need, there are opportunities to go where the Spirit leads us. May we be blessed, may we be led, may we embrace the Spirit within us. It is not about other people doing ministry on our behalf, having "more" Spirit, sharing the good news of the gospel on our behalf. An itinerant preacher or a missionary is not ‘more’ blessed than a person who has attended the same church since forever. In fact, we of the church may have the greater blessing to give those called to wandering in the Spirit a place where they can lay their heads, be refreshed, and enjoy that most precious gift that we have of being ‘home’.
It also strikes me that if we look around through the Lord's eyes, for those in need, we will find that the 'comfort' of home is far less comfortable than we might think. That the need for God's grace is just as powerful right here as somewhere 'over there'.
Pastor Peter
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