‘Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.’
The Book of Acts, ch.2

The Church is a strange creature — at once set both ‘apart from’ and ‘within’ the world we exist to serve.  She receives her life from the Holy Spirit, who broods over us as over the primal chaos, and re-creates us to serve God’s purposes.

The Nicene Creed describes the Church as ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ — that is, the Church bears witness in her life to the unifying and sanctifying power of God’s love as experienced at all times, in all places, and by all people. It’s for this reason that the diversity of the Church is to be recognized as a blessing, not a curse. We are, in our own life as Church, participating in God’s mission of ‘restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ’ (bcp catechism, p.855). The Church’s vocation is to ‘mind the gap’ between God and God’s world in order to help the two better communicate with each other.

By existing ‘apart’ from the world, the Church bears God’s love into the world — challenging everything that diminishes the life and dignity of anything and anyone God has created.  By existing ‘within’ the world, the Church bears the world’s reality to God — challenging any simple, static traditionalism or fundamentalism that seeks to limit God’s own capacity to respond to us in new ways.

The Church, despite our best efforts, is a living, breathing organism — endowed with the blessing of the Holy Spirit to share God’s eternal word of hope in a language anyone can understand.

May our words and deeds always be so inspired!