We’ve just had International Week here at HTB. It was quite a remarkable event, with over 1000 people from around 70 different countries and almost as many languages. And all getting on fine. In fact better than fine, amazingly united, passionate and focussed around a devotion to Jesus. Some incredible stories or persecution, pain, poverty, yet none of it seeming too much to deflect them from that same devotion to Jesus.

It got me thinking about Culture and Pentecost. This event was a bit like a reversal of Babel - languages overcome by something beyond language. We talk a lot about culture in theological life, especially in missiology, where the main topic of conversation seems to be how we can express the gospel in different cultures. And yet the birth of the church, the first missionary expansion of the church at Pentecost, was an event that transcended culture. In something like the past week at HTB, Jerusalem had every nation on the earth represented, or so it seemed. And yet those people could hear Peter speaking the wonders of God in their own language. Cultural difference was no barrier to the word of God, spoken in the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit enables understanding, transcends culture. When the Spirit is present, cultural boundaries somehow break down, without any great linguistic or sociological theory – it just seems to happen. And the reason is surely that in Christ there is no east or west, north or south. And when the Spirit is there to make Christ real to hearts and minds, then the cultural, even linguistic barriers some down, in whatever host culture or language it is expressed. Perhaps we worry too much about culture, or at least we get worked up about it because we lack the Spirit?