The season of Pentecost is the season of growth. This past Pentecost Sunday, we remembered the birth of the church and its growth in numbers and witness. The book of Acts records the events surrounding the momentous day: the violent wind from heaven, the appearance of tongues of fire, and the miraculous gift of languages that caused the Jews who had come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Harvest to wonder if the disciples were drunk.

Pentecost is the celebration of in-gathering or harvest. It is not a coincidence that the “harvest” would be of peoples representing all the regions of the known world at that time. The languages spoken by the Spirit-filled disciples were native dialects and languages of the “Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya, visitors from Rome...Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9-11). The languages represented the gospel pushing outward beyond the boundaries of Jerusalem.

Indeed, this is what Jesus had promised would happen with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The good news of Jesus the Messiah would go out beyond the walls of Israel to the “remotest parts of the earth.” What we may not realize, as modern readers in a pluralistic and multi-cultural world is that taking the gospel to the “remotest parts of the earth” would not have been good news to these first century Jews who believed that the Messiah was only for Israel.

To understand why this mission of the Holy Spirit was so radical, we have to understand how Jews felt about Gentiles in the first century. Gentiles were unclean and Jews had no dealings with them. Jesus was often criticized for ministering to Gentiles or to Samaritans who were also despised by the Jews. This background helps us understand why, for example, the Hellenistic Jews (Jews from Greece) were angry at the native Hebrews for overlooking their widows in the serving of food.(1) It also helps us understand the vision of the great sheet that appeared to Peter.

For on this sheet were all the animals deemed “unclean” by Jewish ceremonial law. Peter cries out when he is told to kill and eat, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean” (Acts 8:13-14). This was not merely a protest against a new dietary law, Peter could not conceive of bringing the gospel to those he would have considered unclean. Cornelius was the Roman solider praying--praying as it turned out for Peter, his reluctant evangelist.

As a result of this vision, Peter declares about the Gentiles, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears God and does what is right is welcome to God. The word which God sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ...of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins” (Acts 10:34-36, 43).

Peter ministered to those who were considered outside the bounds of God’s grace. And when he returned to Jerusalem, the Jews took issue with him over his “eating with the uncircumcised.” Peter explained the events and the Jews eventually declared, “God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:17-18). The gospel had pushed outward beyond the walls of Jerusalem; the words of the prophet Joel were being fulfilled: “In the last days, God says, I will pour forth my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams” (Joel 2:28-32).

In this season of Pentecost, I wonder at the irony of God calling Peter (and eventually Saul of Tarsus) a “Hebrew of Hebrews” to be “apostles to the Gentiles.” God was calling them to reach out with the good news to people they didn’t even like, people deemed unworthy of the gospel and far outside the promises and plans of God. As we celebrate Pentecost and the outpouring of the Spirit, we do well to consider who our Judeans and Samarians and the ones who dwell in the “remotest parts of the earth” are. Chances are they may not be persons we like or people who are in our social or economic circles. Chances are they may not be people we would even deem “worthy” to receive the gospel. And yet, the same Spirit who changed the world by changing the minds of a handful of disciples beckons still, pushing us outward beyond our walls.

Margaret Manning is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.