Black Hole: What does this mean?

“What does this mean?” is the question all were asking who was present on that Pentecost Sunday recorded in Acts 2. “Each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” As the Spirit came the people were united; they were connected to each other. They “heard” each other. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to speak the language of all the nations represented in that one room. How fabulous and miraculous! I can imagine what it would be like to “hear” all those who were distinctly other.

The Amahoro Africa Gathering was a little Pentecost. We were all together in one place. There were Ugandan’s, Kenyan’s, Tanzanian’s, Rwandan’s, Burundian’s, Congolese, Mozambigue-ian’s, South African’s, Liberian’s, Sudanese, Australian’s, a Swede, an American living in Switzerland, and the United States delegation. There were no miracles in the usual sense, no sounds of a “violent wind”—unless you count the beat of the African drum, and no appearances of “divided tongues” in the form of fire. There was an unusual Presence of God’s Spirit, which connected us and created a way of being that is entirely different from all our typical realities.

I’ve never been with a group of westerners so committed to practicing the discipline of listening. Our African sisters and brothers took the lead, told their stories and shared their life with us. On the 4-day field trip we were invited into those intimate and even painful spaces where our new friends live. It was a little Pentecost because we “heard” each other and were truly present with the other. In our hearing the Holy Spirit challenged and transformed.

Humbling!

That is the only word that describes what I feel now that I'm back to the land of high-rises and Buddha's birthday. I’m living in an experiential black hole. I was gone for a meager 2 weeks. But it feels like I was gone for a year. I haven’t even wanted to talk about what has just happened. Words? They just aren’t there. That is until I get to the keypad. Even still words are empty. There is something happening in me; it is there in the deeps of this black hole within. The images, the lives of others that deeply touched me western and African, those people who are pouring themselves out for others, the depth of pain of many for many reasons, the intensity of daily struggle, the irony of immense beauty and earthen fertility married with extreme corruption and poverty; it is all doing something which is yet nameless. Is this going to be an experience that ends on the plane to home? Like those who were together that first Pentecost, I too am asking, “What does this mean?” And I’m sure I’m not the only one. There are 200 people out there asking the same question.

What does it mean to live out a transformational gospel rather than an evacuation gospel?
What does it mean to be a vessel of reconciliation and to create viable communities of reconciliation?
What does it mean to live out a contextual theology and create space for others who are ‘other’ to do the same?
What does it mean to be a person who doesn’t just “do” ministry but a person who follows Jesus into organic friendships both for her sake and for the world’s sake?
What does it mean to “do” mission without being a neo-colonialist?
What does it mean or look like for a denomination to create space within their theology and structures to allow for a truly global church?

Those people in that room in Jerusalem many years ago found out what “it all meant” and with the empowering Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ the Church emerged. They were the first missional Christians, the first to live out the Kingdom on earth just as it is in heaven. I have great expectations for the emergings of the black hole within the Amahoro Africa people.