Distribution

It is amazing to me that now you can watch the step-by-step journey of a package that is sent to you.  It doesn’t matter if it is Fed Ex or UPS or USPS-- they all feature this option.  Distribution has changed in the last several years.  Our delivery expectations have increased, and therefore the services have responded.  But recently the USPS was considering eliminating Saturdays from its current mail delivery schedule.  This would go along with the trend that email and other technology has eliminated some of the need for continuous mail delivery.

            Our world has an interesting way of things constantly changing.  Stable things in our world soon become obsolete or passing trends.  Distribution is one of those things.  We went from the pony express to email, texting, and Skype.  As a human culture we declare what we find important to be distributed.  Years ago people would have been skeptical if typed messages on a phone would be something that caught on.  People also would have questioned whether the idea of broadcasting family information and happenings in an open forum like Facebook would have been a good thing.  Yet, we as a culture define what is necessary to be distributed.

            I heard a joke once from a comedian who said, “I love when people hand me flyers; it is like them telling me, ‘Hey man throw this away for me.’”  We can be like that with something we term junk mail--a definition that comes from what we find to be junk and not useful.  

            I found it interesting in this week’s reading from Acts 2:1-21, that one of the translations for that reading is that the tongues of fire, implying the Holy Spirit, were distributed.  I rarely think of the Holy Spirit as being distributed.  While we use distribution to describe the Lord’s Supper, for us to distribute the Holy Spirit seems weird at first, but once I wrapped my mind around it, I loved it.

            What if we were looking at the Holy Spirit like it was something we wanted to make sure everyone had?  What if we perceived it to be necessary mail that we would send out to promote our company?  What if we took the time to track how the Holy Spirit was passed on?  Sure, we can never really know, but what if we were able to observe how people came to faith?  I think we would find it would come a lot more from the people, rather than from pastors.

            This weekend we celebrate Pentecost.  We mark the event when Jesus left us, but also sent the Holy Spirit to sanctify us, and walk with us in our discipleship with God.  It is the moment He distributed the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and then sent the disciples to distribute it to all of God’s people.  This weekend God gives us the same charge.  He sends us out with the passion of understanding just what a blessing the Holy Spirit is; how God has distributed it to you and me; and then sends us out to distribute the Holy Spirit through the power of Baptism and the Word of God that changes lives.