Sights and Insights
Devotion for May 11, 2021
While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days. – Acts 10:44-48
When you think of the ancient spread of Christianity, what images do you have? Do you think of missionaries coming from the Roman Empire into the British Isles or northern Europe? This is certainly an important piece of the history of the growth of the church, but it is far from a complete one. The way the history of Christianity is sometimes told, it was uni-directional in its spread, overtaking the Roman Empire and then from there moving into Europe and becoming a European religion. As we have been reading from the Acts of the Apostles in worship these last few weeks, hopefully you have noticed the ways that the work of the church expanded further and further out. This movement did not just head westward. The missionary effort went in all directions. We recently heard of the gospel being taken into Ethiopia. It also went east, into Asia, from an early date.
One day in 1623, workers digging in what is now Xian, China, uncovered a carved stone that was nine feet high and over three feet wide. Along with an inscription, there was on it a design of a cross rising from a lotus blossom. It was a monument erected in 781 telling of the arrival of a Persian Christian missionary named Alopen to the city, which was the capital of China at the time, in 635. In all likelihood Christianity had made its appearance in China to some degree before this, but the monument gives details of the beginning of a vibrant Christian community in the capital city that then lasted for about two hundred years. To give this some perspective, Alopen’s mission was around the same time as Aidan’s from Iona into England. It was fifty-five years before Willibrord’s mission to the Frisian tribes in what is now the Netherlands, and a hundred and fifty years before Charlemagne’s campaign to convert the Saxons in what is now Germany.
As we continue to hear of the ways that the disciples in Acts needed to be open to the new ways that the Holy Spirit was working to cross the boundaries of their expectations, we can see the ways this continued through the continuing missionary work. The description of that ancient Chinese Christianity sounds quite different from the ways that most of us typically think of our understanding of Christianity. Even the image of the cross rising from a lotus blossom is a very different symbol of Christianity than most of us are used to encountering. Yet we can remember again from the disciples that once the work of the Holy Spirit was discerned, it was the disciples who needed to change their expectations of what a follower of Christ looked like. I find this to be a helpful reminder to us today as well for when we encounter ways of expressing Christian faith that are unexpected by us. As we discern the faith and the work of the Holy Spirit in different ways of being Christian, it can help us to see how much broader God’s work is than we had ever expected.