Jesus tells John and the rest of the disciples, “Whoever isn’t against us is for us.”

And then he goes on with practical examples.

If someone gives you a cup of water on a hot day specifically because you are following me, drink it with gratitude. And whisper a blessing instead of wasting your time and mine giving them a theology quiz.

Here’s the thing, Jesus seems to say. You aren’t the gatekeepers of who I’m going to work with. Who I’m going to love. Who will have the power to tell demons to leave. Who I will die for. I am.

It was a lesson that would need to be repeated, because the boundary setting would continue. Among the disciples, in the early church, even among us.

This Sunday we’ll celebrate Pentecost Sunday, a day for celebrating the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit. The church was born that day. People from around the Roman world who were in Jerusalem acknowledged the authority of Jesus.

And within months, there were extended spiritual debates about whether the widows among the followers of Jesus who were immigrants to Jerusalem should receive the same support as the widows who were from Jerusalem. Women who had the same deep allegiance to Jesus. Women who were grieving. Women who had very limited resources and rights in the world outside the church and who now were being denied cups of cold water in the name of Jesus.

In an act of wisdom, the apostles decided that the question needed more attention than they could give. They picked seven men with names that sound very much like immigrant names to be responsible for the support system for widows. The whole system. Regardless of where they came from.

Because at their best, the disciples remembered what Jesus had been saying in that house in Capernaum. The kingdom of God is centered around Jesus, not around our measures of our closeness to Jesus.