Everything-Ness

Jul 1

It was Pentecost Sunday which also happened to be the end of my social media fast. I had dipped my toe back into social media that morning and was immediately met with chaos, panic, atrocities, and loads of fear.

* sets down the phone *

I got back into my physical life and got myself and my kids ready for church.

Within an hour of my first social media scroll in 50 days I was fighting back tears as my community sang the classic hymn “Glorify Thy Name” together.

I stood there, hymnal in hand, looking around the room at the diverse group of people boldly singing “Father we love you! We worship and adore you. Glorify Thy name in all the earth. Glorify Thy name! Glorify Thy name! Glorify Thy name in all the earth!”

With each verse we sang, our voices seemed to grow more powerful and I couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else was feeling what I felt?

As I stood there reflecting on the simple words that make up this song, I immediately thought of the perverted ways God’s name is being used instead of glorified today.

If you exist in Christian circles on the internet then you know there’s a 24/7 shouting match between who rightly claims the name and ways of God. I’ve participated in my fair share of these unproductive debates I have to admit. And unproductive they are.

We aren’t out here glorifying God at all. We’re fighting over God like preschoolers fight over their interpretation of plot of Moana.

My voice grew with each verse too… “Glorify Thy name in all the earth!” Tears eventually snuck down my cheek as the longing in my soul deepened with every refrain. Internally my prayer was something like “God we need your glory so desperately. Why is it hidden from us? Why are we confused?”

I sat down, quickly wiping my tears and watched 6 people walk forward for our scripture reading, which was pretty odd because usually it only takes one person.

The first reader began in Spanish. The second read in Luganda. The third in Swahili. The fourth in Filipino. The fifth in German. The sixth in English. And then all 6 began reciting the last few verses together. It was an embodied demonstration of the week’s passage from Acts 2—Gospel being proclaimed in many languages: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Everyone.

Everyone.

Everyone.

I sat pretty dumbstruck at the contrast of my morning’s experiences. I was aware of the demonization and hunting of brown-skinned people in my country. How they’ve been labeled “illegals” because of a broken and over-burdened immigration system. How they’ve been scapegoated so others could accumulate more power. How some of those people hoarding power and wielding it in abusive ways were doing so in the name of Jesus. And yet here before me, in my small community, stood the overcoming truth of the gospel.

“Let’s pay attention to the everything-ness of the Gospel. The powerfulness of the Gospel. The Spirit of God is at work in all people, all cultures, all socio-economic groups. Not one way of being but instead all ways.” This was part of the sermon that followed.

Everything-ness.

My pastor passionately called our our small-minded, individualistic default way of viewing the Gospel in so much of the modern church. The small-mindedness that seems to drive, with fury, the dehumanization and cruelty we are experiencing across the globe in 2025.

Lately, I can find myself feeling pretty hopeless. I find myself wondering if some people are redeemable or reachable. I get stuck in the sadness of pain bearing more pain. I mourn the infinity loops of trauma that have afflicted generations and generations of us.

My theological imagination shrinks. I watch people evoke the name of the Lord only to twist it and I think “they are damned.”

And yet, here I sat, challenged to believe the potential of the everything-ness. The ultimate invitation: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Once upon a time I had a hard time truly believing this Acts 2 proclamation due to a sense of superiority that gets baked into many a Southern Baptist. I was once the person to quickly label a cultural practice foreign to mine as demonic. I cheered on the 3rd world mission trips as essential to correcting the theology.

And now I struggle to believe this Acts 2 proclamation for different reasons. It’s easy for me to imagine all cultures finding God in their unique way. It’s less easy for me to honestly believe that the scales caked onto the eyes of those who think they are following the Way of Jesus will one day fall. It’s hard for me to believe that my own journey away from supremacy beliefs is walkable for others. So here I find a growing edge beckoning me toward more radical hope.

Hope for the blind who will be able to see. The deaf who will be able to hear. The hard-hearted to rediscover their hearts of flesh. Hope that the dry bones will once again rise as death, and our fascination with bringing it to others, is truly defeated.

This hope is hard to hold onto in this onslaught of headlines. But as I grab on and hold tight, what I’m discovering is other people of hope holding on too. May we, together, continue to declare the everything-ness, the powerfulness, the all-encompassing, all-resurrecting, hope of God’s Good News that the way things are now are not what they will always be.