This is a rough one for me, emotionally draining. We're going through so much right now and for a while we were in it together but the past few days we have been anything but in it "together." It has been us and them and those divisions are partly artificial, partly real but mostly they point to the real problem, we are too willing to believe the worst about one another and too quick to separate. Pentecost is a celebration of unity, it is the original e pluribus unum, out of many one as expressed on our currency. People from all nations came and heard the mighty works of God proclaimed by the apostles but they heard them in their own languages. They became able to understand not because the curse of Babel was removed but because the Spirit of God gave understanding and now they could go and tell others in their languages. The church became one as the families or tribes of Israel became one tribe at Sinai when they encamped together to wait for the Lord to speak. The cure for division in the cross where we all gather and in Jesus, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. He is the one who unites, not the one who divides.
