Reading
While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence. The whole congregation of believers was united as one—one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, “That’s mine; you can’t have it.” They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them. And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy.
Acts 4:31-34 (The Message)
Reflection
I subscribe to quite a few newsletters. I don’t know that it was ever my intention. I think I just sign up for stuff without thinking—like a page or an account on social media, a purchase here or there—and next thing I know, I’m getting emails about musicals and concerts, golf gear and Fightin’ Texas Aggie football, and leather-worked satchels from a pepper-bearded man whose artisan shop in Vermont is going under and he needs to liquidate his remaining “priceless” (and motivationally priced) handiwork. You know, the usual.
Yesterday, I received one from a work management platform I follow. They captured headlines of the day from various industries and distilled them into digestible chunks meant to get their readers’ minds churning productively. One headline read: EU plans first stress test of hedge funds and private equity firms.
I don’t know why that enticed me to read more, but I kept reading. I learned more about the “sophisticated investor” label—a real regulatory term that covers most hedge funds and private equity firms (those aren’t my words; they’re the words of the Securities and Exchange Commission—I’m not trying to be tongue-in-cheek here). It basically means, “You’re smart enough, you don’t need the same rules as everyone else.” Sophistication here really just means “exempted” or “excluded”—set apart as better than, rather than set apart for.
I came away from that whole thought excursion and endeavor with a stark sense of contrast between the world we live in and the world Jesus invites us to join in recreating in the image of heaven.
The transforming power of the Spirit isn’t sophisticated in terms of who it invites and envelops—it’s sophisticated in the beautiful inclusiveness and elegant simplicity of its offer to love. The Spirit of God isn’t conniving and it doesn’t game our conscience or social constructs to get what it wants. It’s persuasive and contagious—but never coercive. It flows from the margins—in our lives, in our communities, and in our halls of power—lifting the weary and oppressed, liberating the downtrodden and depressed. The Spirit of God moves to bring us clarity and provide paths of light and wisdom.
It moves as God intended humanity to move—towards one another. The Spirit of God draws us together as one body to rid us of scarcity and shame, to heal us and provide for us, to empower and embolden us to take this lived-in truth and spread it to all the world.
Our job, as those filled with the Spirit, is to choose whether or not we’ll be participants in this work. To shed our sophistication, so to speak.
That sounds pretty good to me.
Prayer
God, your Spirit is alive and at work in the world,
Spreading hope and shining light into clouded darkness.
Move with us—stir in us something miraculous and new.
Help us to live freely and boldly,
To love as we are, with all we are.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
Amen.
