Picture the scene – a homely middle eastern woman of late antiquity runs out of her house frantically flailing her arms, the rough weave of her woolen head covering flying about. Shouting and screaming, barely able to keep her sandals on her feet amidst the scurrying through the dusty street, her voice rises to its shrillest peaks. Her friends and neighbors, who like herself don’t have a telephone and are neither routinely subject to great thrills and enthusiasms, poke their heads out their doors, with ears perked up at the seeming prospect of exciting news.  Their curiosity near boiling, one by one they lay aside their brooms, pitchers, and pestles, encircling her with eyes peeled. Out of her pocket she whips a tiny item, barely visible from a few feet away. Straining and squinting their eyes, they muster all their concentration to no avail, because she is hysterically waving it over head while jumping up and down and expectorating squeals of laughter. When she finally and ever-so-slightly calms down, she stretches out her hand for her friends to see the small silver coin she had been brandishing about — but only for a moment — because as soon she knows they are aware of what happened, she is quickly back at full throttle – bouncing, screaming, jumping and all other actions typically associated with boisterous (and mentally unbalanced) revelry. She had lost one of the ten coins in her possession, and after lighting her lamp, sweeping her house, and searching carefully, she found it. In her excitement and joy upon finding the coin, she could hardly help engaging in the — if we were honest — silly looking behavior just described.

Whether her friends joined in her excitement, or were slightly irritated on account of the interruption in their day, or embarrassed owing to her wild antics, Jesus never lets on. Rather, he gets right to the point:

I tell you: there is joy like this before the angels because one sinner turns… (Luke 15:10)

In other words, get the picture of the wild, screaming, spinning woman swinging a silver coin over her head — then make the quantum leap to recognizing this reflects the truth of what God is like. God’s emotions are neither tame nor placid. When God thinks about weak and broken people who have turned their lives to following Jesus and his kingdom, the response is dramatic, perhaps even “mentally unbalanced.” Maybe its not a perfect picture, but what Jesus is telling us is God’s emotions towards us are infinitely closer to the way the crazy screaming woman feels about finding her lost cost than it seems most Christians feel about the individuals in their lives. Ask yourself, if you had to create a short story illustrating what God is like and how he relates to broken people, would you tell a story about a crazy wild woman? I imagine most of us would not, and some would even recoil at the thought — but Jesus would. And this tells us how far our concept of God is from the concept Jesus held and proclaimed. Until we’re comfortable with a picture of God as a crazy screaming woman, we are not comfortable with the God of Jesus Christ and we have yet to know the intensity of God’s delight in us.

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As we continue to explore the meaning of Pentecost in light of the narrative of Old Testament history, today our journey brings us to Ezekiel 37. In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel is given a vision in which he sees a valley full of dry bones. In verse 11, the interpretation is given by God, saying that “the bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Interestingly, God says that these bones are the whole house of Israel, as opposed to were. The bones represent the existent Jewish people. What this means is that we are dealing with a metaphor. Ezekiel was seeing bones that represented the nation of Israel (unless you think that bones are in the habit of speaking).

While being metaphor, the aspects of the vision are still extremely significant. The interpretation God gives has three parallel phrases:

1) Our bones are dried up – in other words, their rotting flesh has completely decomposed and only bones are left – they are completely dead – way beyond the state of for example, the boys who Elijah and Elisha resuscitated (1 Kgs 17; 2 Kgs 4). There is nothing of them left to be raised from the dead.

2) our hope has perished – we’ll come back to this one in a minute.

3) we are completely cut off – the same word is used in Psalm 88 to describe complete and utter desolation, similarly using death as a metaphor: “I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I have become like one who has no strength, forsaken among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, and they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.

What about that second phrase? What hope has perished? What is all this dreariness about? Again, the vision clues us in. Why might there be a large number of bones gathered in one location? In Jewish tradition, dead persons are to be buried relatively quickly and to leave bones unburied was both ritually and socially unpropitious. Even if someone was left unburied, that would not explain why in this one valley, so many bones were amassed together, unless they all had died in that place. I think the best explanation is that the bones belonged to people who died in a battle, a battle in which Israel was decimated. This would certainly then allude to the invasion and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC. When Israel speaks of their “hope perishing,” by this they mean the exile.

The exile was the period in Israel’s history that began in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem and burned it to the ground, including the temple. Of those who survived, many were taken into captivity to Babylon, while many others were left to pick up the pieces. Regardless, Israel as a national, social and political entity was annihilated. As a religious entity, however, they endured, specifically in relation to what they called “our hope.” I think perhaps on one level their “hope perished” in that their normal human desire to live a long and happy life had been abruptly curtailed. However, it is significant that the bones spoke collectively of “our hope” (singular). It is the national hope of Israel, the expectation rooted in their history of living under the promises of God. This goes all the way back to the promises to Abraham, that to him and his seed God would give great blessing and bless all the nations of the earth through them, which in context means being God’s solution to the problem of sin (cf. Gen. 3-11). Yet how would they be God’s agents of blessing if they were constantly being harassed, oppressed and dominated by foreign powers? How could this future be true if all the institutions of Israel’s religious and national identity had been destroyed?

The solution to Israel’s desolate state is the Spirit of God – “And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” The Spirit of God will be the agent through whom this metaphorical resurrection of the nation of Israel will take place. Israel’s hopes will be restored and fulfilled my means of the Spirit of God “breathing” new life into them and bringing them back to their land.

Fast forward a couple hundred years. Israel had been back in their land, having returned from Babylon, since 536 B.C. Nevertheless, there was still a strong belief that the exile had not yet fully ended. They were back in the land, but were still under the domination of foreign powers (Click here for more on the notion that the exile was believed to have continued past the geographical return from Babylon). Leaving aside the Gospels (which confirm the same general point I am about to make), when the sound of a great and mighty wind enters the house where the disciples were gathered, as recorded in Acts, we are meant to understand this breath of God as (an at least incipient) ending of the exile and the restoration of God’s people. In Greek (and Hebrew) the word for wind and breath (and Spirit for that matter) are the same word. This doesn’t mean that they did not differentiate between those concepts, but the ambiguity enabled authors to add layers of nuance and allusion to their texts. When the wind blew upon the 120 Jewish believers in Jesus, they were experiencing the Ezekiel 37 breath of God which launched the beginning of the restoration of Israel and the ending of exile. All of God’s promises were being answered “yes” in and through the Messiah Jesus. The people of God were being restored. There would be a worldwide family descended from Abraham that would be a blessing to all the people’s of the earth, dealing with the problem of sin and overturning the effects of the fall.

While Ezekiel 37 mostly has the national identity of Israel in mind, Acts 2 (together with the rest of the NT) has in view the full extent of the Abrahamic promise to address the woes of sin and death. In Ezekiel 37, the “resurrection” was metaphorical – speaking of the return of Israel from exile. However, beginning with Jesus, this “resurrection” suddenly became literal. When God restores his people, he does more than revive national hopes, but enables the completion of the Abrahamic mission by destroying the power of death itself. All who receive this life-giving Spirit participate in the very power that raised Jesus from the dead (cf. Eph 1.19) and are guarunteed a share in the final resurrection (Rom. 8:11). As God welcomes his people Israel home from exile, he also welcomes all of humanity back from the exile of death they had shared ever since Adam and Eve were “exiled” from the Garden of Eden, immortality escaping their grasp. All are invited home to experience the fullness of life in and through allegiance to Jesus the Messiah and Lord of the world.

At the end of each post in this series, I’ve been commenting briefly on a developing “praxis of Pentecost,” i.e., what kind of practical expressions, lifestyle, etc., flows out of an understanding and experience of the Spirit poured out on Pentecost. The Spirit of God is ever and always the Spirit of the Resurrection, whom the universal Church confesses as the “Lord and Giver of Life.” As long as the Spirit is the Giver of Life, it is the enemy of death and all that causes death. A truly “pentecostal” person will never acquiesce to the “death drives” of our modern culture, whether they be associated with the death of innocent “expendable” lives (abortion, euthanasia), the sickness that robs the life of the body, poverty that denigrates the dignity of life, the narcissism of our image-obsessed culture that effaces the true beauty of life, behaviors that abuse and destroy relationships (unbridled sexuality, violence), diseased philosophies and theologies that kill the meaning of life, reckless political, economic and domestic practices which damage the world God created and loves, or the brutality of war. I am not here making a moral statement related to the whole “just war,” but all Christians must be at least eschatologically opposed to war (Isa 2:4; 46:9; 60; Hos. 2:18; Mic. 4:3-4; Zech. 9:9-10). A “Pentecostal” Christian, alive with the energies of the resurrection flowing through their members, opposes death in all its forms, eagerly acting as an agent of the restoration of true life, in collaborative partnership with the Holy Spirit.

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In my last post I described the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost as forging the Church as a New Humanity, reversing Babel’s curse of social and national disintegration. Today I would like to look at the coming of the Holy Spirit as establishing a New Covenant marked by the dynamic corporate experience of God.

As with last time, my intention is to interpret Acts 2 through Old Testament narrative of Israel’s history as alluded to in the passage. Previously looking at Genesis 11, we now turn to Exodus 19. This is the beginning of the account of Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. God comes down upon the mountain with manifestations of fire, smoke and the loud sound of a trumpet. These are common aspects of a Biblical phenomenon called a theophany (literally, “God-appearing”) in which God becomes perceptible in a visible and physical display (cf. 1 Kgs 19:11; Isa. 66.15; Ps. 18).

Immediately following the exodus from slavery in Egypt, this event is what solidified Israel’s identity as a nation through their covenant with God. It is likely that this moment was what later writings referred to as the “creation of Israel” (Isa. 43:1, 15). Israel was offered the covenant by God and when they agreed to the words God spoke, they became his special possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19:6). Their incorporation was two-fold: (1) to have a unique relationship with God and (2) to be priests to the rest of the earth. As a nation, they received promises analogous to those offered to Abraham, which included a special relationship with God, and that he would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. As Abraham (whose covenant in Genesis 12 comes strategically following Genesis 11) was called by God to be the agent of His solution to the problem of sin amassed in Gen. 1-11, so now Israel as a nation carries that priestly task.

Of significant note, is that while God came down upon the mountain, only Moses was allowed to come near to God. Eventually, Aaron, the priests and the seventy elders were permitted to come to the mountain, but only “at a distance.” With the exception of Moses, those permitted on the mountain were told that “they shall not come near.” Furthermore, the people at large were not permitted to come close to the mountain.

Now we turn to Acts 2. Pentecost was traditionally a harvest festival (Exod. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:15-21; Num. 28-26), but came to be associated with both the renewal of the covenant with Noah and the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. It is certain that Jews in the first century associated Pentecost with the Noahic covenant, as it is attested in literature from before that time (The Book of Jubilees 6:17-21; ca. 150 BC). However it is less certain whether it was yet affiliated with the Giving of the Law (though it certainly was in the second and third century). What would make us think then that Acts 2 is meant to be understood in light of Mount Sinai?

First, the great sound and the fire descending upon the believers parallels the sound and fire that accompanied the Sinai event. In Rabbinic writing, fire was commonly used as a symbol for the Torah. Furthermore, nowhere in the Bible is there an emphasis on both the descending of fire and a great sound in a theophany except for in Exodus 19.

Second, Philo, a prolific Jewish writer in the century before Jesus, spoke about the giving of the Law in this way: “Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience, and so clearly and distinctly were the words formed by it that they seemed to see rather than hear the” (On the Decalogue 46).” This shows us that in time the New Testament was written, the Giving of the Law was being spoken of in terms of communication by fire (“tongues of fire?”) that became recognizable to the audience in their language.

Third, Luke consistently uses Moses typology to talk about Jesus. Jesus is the “prophet like Moses” of whom it was promised that God would raise up. In Luke 9:35 a voice from heaven tells the people to listen to Jesus, much like Israel was to listen to Moses. Moses was “raised up” by God, but Jesus was “raised up” by resurrection (Acts 2:34-36). Moses “received the living words and gave them” (Acts 7:38) but Jesus receives the Holy Spirit and gives it to his disciples (Acts 2:33).

It seems then, that Pentecost is meant to be understood in parallel to the Giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. Obviously, much could be said about the relationship between the Law and the Spirit, but that will have to be said at another time and place. For the present, I would like to simply focus on the theophany aspect. If Pentecost is a New Sinai (following the New Exodus in Jesus’ death and resurrection – cf. Lk. 9:30, when Jesus speaks to Moses and Elijah about the exodus he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem), notice how instead of God descending upon the mountain, he descends upon the entire community of believers. Rather than the people remaining at a distance while only Moses approaches God, the community of women and men is the place where God manifests his theophanic presence. The Church, the New Covenant people, become a theophany in person.

The Church is the mountain upon which God descends in theophanic glory and like Israel, takes up a priestly vocation to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth – to be agents through whom God deals with the problem of sin and restores the creation to Himself and to His intentions for it. As Moses proclaimed the Word of God to the people after God met him on the mountain – the assembled believers began proclaiming the mighty acts of God to those who were in Jerusalem.

As I asked previously, so now I ask – what would a “praxis of Pentecost” look like, in light of this understanding? I think, in relation to what has been said here, it begins with the recognition and celebration of the fact that God is with us. There is much to be said concerning intercession for God’s presence and purposes as well as much to be said about the experience of God-forsakeness (cf. Ps. 22). Jeremiah spoke of a time when there would be a New Covenant and one person would not tell another to “know the Lord” because they all would know the Lord. This time of New Covenant has come and is an experienced reality in the community of believers. Few could deny our need to know the Lord in deeper and clearer ways. I am even aware of a deep reticence within myself to speak concerning my knowledge of God, conceivably in order to maintain some form of humility. However, I think we need to find a way to speak positively about our knowledge of God – to recognize that God has descended in our midst, that he dwells among us, and we do indeed know Him. Perhaps a way forward in this is the awareness that the Church corporately is the location of this New Covenant theophany. Individual, all of “see in a glass dimly,” (1 Cor. 13:12) but together “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

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This is a continuation in a series on Acts chapter 2 and the account of the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was an epochal event. The way it is described in the Acts of the Apostles indicates that more is going on than a lively outreach — there has been a dramatic intervention of the covenant-creator-God to deal with the problem of sin, overturn the effects of the fall and inaugurate the eschatological age of righteousness, peace and joy. The technical term for this is inaugurated eschatology, in that while a future consummation awaits us in the new heavens and new earth, the life, power and reality of the age to come has already become present in partial form (already but not-yet). In a mysterious manner, the future and the present have intersected and overlapped so that God’s future for the world has rushed into the present time, filling it with the joy of promise fulfilled and the hope of untold possibilities that yet remain.

This becomes especially clear when the passage is understood in light of the larger narrative of Scripture and the numerous passages that are alluded to or quoted. Today I want to look at one passage in particular: Genesis 11. This chapter records the infamous ”Tower of Babel” incident. It is critical to see where this story occurs in the unfolding narrative of the book of Genesis and the Old Testament as a whole. Genesis 1 and 2 record the creation of the world and all its life. Human beings are given the blessing and command to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. They are commissioned to be God’s vice-regents on earth, administrating and increasing his gracious rule through their ever expanding family. You’ll have to believe me on this one, since I don’t have the time to develop it, but Genesis 2 is intentionally evoking the imagery of the temple and it is intended for us to understand the Garden of Eden as a temple, a sanctuary, the dwelling place of God’s glory. Therefore Adam and Eve’s tasks of cultivating (i.e., expanding) the garden and forging a family that will fill the earth can be understood as the call to fill the earth with the dwelling of God’s glory through their world-wide family. Note the dynamic interplay here between the God-blessed relationship (marriage/family) and the God-commissioned rulership.

As grand as this seems, the plan gets muddled rather quickly, with Adam’s sin in Genesis 3, Cain’s murder of Abel in Genesis 4, and the growth of violence as documented in the Noah account. Nevertheless, despite “The Fall,” the original commission remains and Noah and his descendants are called to “be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.”

This brings us to Genesis 11. Here I would like to propose an alternate (yet complementary) explanation of why God took such issue with Babel. Of course it is clear that they were attempting to build their “tower” to make a name for themselves. This undoubtedly included some aspect of pride. However, I cannot imagine that God was threatened by a supposed “take-over” scheme and that he needed to stop it before it got out of hand. In fact, it is likely that the “tower” they were building was in fact a ziggurat and is a spoof on the temple of Marduk in Babylon, whose name “house with the uplifted head” suggests a claim that it reached to the heavens. (See commentaries on Genesis by Wenham and Sarna). Thus, they were not trying to take over the role as gods (something that would likely have been a ridiculous thought in the ancient world), but were building a shrine for God/god(s). Additionally, though attention often focuses on the “tower,” in the text it mentions that they were building a “city and a tower.” When God comes down, he comes to “see the city and the tower.” After their languages are confused the text says they “left off building the city,” with no mention of the tower. In the text, the tower is never conceived of by itself, apart from the city or even as a focal point.

This becomes further significant when the builders give the reason for their project – “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The central motivation was to consolidate the human race in one central city. Here we come to the main problem with the Babel building project – it is a direct violation of God’s primary command (which is actually a blessing) to the human race – “be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.” They were never instructed not to build towers. They were never even instructed how to avoid pride. They were however, instructed to fill the earth with the world-wide family as the means for ruling the earth and filling it with God’s glory. The main sin of Babel was a refusal of the blessing of creation, fertility and vice-regency with God and thus the invention of measures to derail its fulfillment. God’s comments are not against the tower, but against the entire building project understood in this light. Thus God confused the languages of the people and scattered them across the earth. Though commonly thought of as anti-climactic, certainly much less severe than the flood, there are several reasons why this judgment is the definite low point thus far in the Bible.

“First, the Flood left no permanent mark on humanity; though the generation of the flood was destroyed, humankind was preserved, and continued to grow. The scattering of humanity, however, is of lasting effect. There are no survivors of Babel.

Second, what is destroyed at Babel is the community of humankind as a family; hitherto, as the genealogies have witnessed, humankind is one family, and the Flood has only accentuated that fact by making one family in the narrowest sense of the word co-terminous with humanity. But the punishment of Babel divides humankind irrevocably from one another (as did also the first sin in its own way). Now humanity is no longer one “people” or “kin-group,” but “nations.” (David Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, pp. 70).

It is critical to see what happens on Pentecost in light of what was previously said or we will miss the epochal nature of the event. We will not see that what follows is indeed God dealing with and overturning the problem of sin and its effects. The idea of the disintegration of humanity and the loss of a unified family is not often seen as a direct and central aspect of sin and the larger Fall (viewed as Genesis 3-11, not just Genesis 3). Indeed, alienation is a significant theme throughout Genesis 1-11 and is central to a truly biblical understanding of sin.

So what happened at Pentecost? What we see is the beginning to undo this dispersion of nations and languages. At Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak in other languages and people from many nations, gathered in Jerusalem, each heard them speaking in their own native language. What is going on? The advent of the Spirit is actually reversing the curse of Babel. Adam’s and Cain’s sins alienated humans one from another, while Babel divided the nations and destroyed the common family of humanity. The Spirit of God, however, brings diverse peoples together as one family and one “kin-group.” The Spirit forges the Church as a new humanity which is reunited as a downpayment and sign of God’s eschatological purposes to bring all peoples to unity before God (cf. Zeph. 3:9; Psa. 22:27; 86:9-10; Isa. 2; Jer. 16:19; Zech 2:11). That which was alienated is now reconciled. That which was contentious is now at peace. Those who were enemies are now family.

It is no coincidence that immediately following the outpouring of the Spirit, Luke describes the profound community life shared among the early believers, meeting together day by day, having all things in common, providing for all in need, devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42ff.). The “they” in Acts 2:42 undoubtedly included many of the 3000 converts mentioned in verse 41. This means that this early apostolic community likely had “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene…Cretans and Arabs” (v.9).  This theme of ethnic diversity and unity continues to be a major theme throughout the book of Acts (esp. once Gentiles get in the picture) and through much of the Pauline epistles. Over and over again, unity emerges as a central theme and pastoral concern of early Apostolic Christianity.

To conclude, I want to give a few thoughts on a potential “Praxis of Pentecost” (praxis simply refers to practice, as distinguished from theory). If one of the major things the Spirit was doing on Pentecost was uniting the people of God as a new humanity, a new “kinship-group,” what might that mean for those of us who endeavor to walk in that same Spirit? I would suggest that a major priority of the Spirit is the preservation and the advancement of unity in the Church. While this of course begins with individuals one to another, it expands to include entire congregations and communities, to all believers in a given geographical region and indeed, the unity of ecclesial bodies over the entire earth. Shortly before his death, Jesus’ priority in prayer was for the unity of those who would follow him – unity that would mirror the divine life of the Trinity and functioned as the sign par excellence to the world. To be people of the Spirit means to be those of whom unity is a central value and priority. Let us ask the Lord to root out tendencies toward enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy and things like these (Gal. 5:20-21) from our own hearts and to fill us with deep and profound love for those with whom we are in immediate spiritual relationship. Let’s not stop there though – let’s ask the Lord to fill us with a deep love for the whole church, to be open (indeed eager!) to receive from and be in relationship with individuals, groups and traditions that are different than our own. May the prayer of Jesus be our own – that the Church would be one – as He and the Father are one!

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The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, as described in Acts chapter 2, was an epochal and unrepeatable event in salvation history. This was not simply the first time the disciples received the Holy Spirit (remember, Jesus breathes on them in John 20 shortly after his resurrection). Neither was Pentecost simply the first is a series of similar events. Rather, as this series will attempt to show, Pentecost, taken together with the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, marks the inauguration of God’s future for the world breaking into the present (search for tags “inaugurated eschatology”). Pentecost was a turning point in the Creator God’s plan to deal with the problem of sin by overturning its effects and redeeming the entire creation. Pentecost was the beginning of the church operating in the authority of Jesus and manifesting God’s Kingdom and salvation on earth as it is in heaven, as a token, sign and pledge of the day when God’s reign will fully come in the restoration of the entire cosmos. This has broad and far-reaching implications for the present life and mission of the People of God.

I imagine this sounds slightly different than the oft-heard sequence: Jesus died for our salvation, the resurrection confirmed the efficacy of the cross and the coming of the Holy Spirit empowers us to announce Jesus’ death. I would like to challenge this sequence in favor of an alternate one: the Father sends Jesus to became Incarnate for our salvation; Jesus lived among us for our salvation; Jesus, being baptized, was given the Spirit by the Father for our salvation; Jesus died for our salvation; Jesus was raised from the dead by the Father for our salvation; Jesus ascended into heaven for our salvation; and the Holy Spirit came for our salvation. This approach prefers to see the entire sequence accomplishing our salvation as a vital and coherent unity. This may tweak our understanding of “salvation” and at the same time gives salvation an overall Trinitarian shape. It also reminds me of Thomas Cranmer’s Great Litany of 1544 (which incidentally, was the first piece of liturgy ever written in the English language), which for our salvation and deliverance implores the benefits of the entire soteriological (salvation) sequence:

…by the mystery of they holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation…By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost: Good Lord, deliver us.

Today is the day in which Pentecost is liturgically commemorated in the Western Churches (those that are not Eastern Orthodox). This is the last of the fifty day celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus and begins what is commonly referred to as “Ordinary Time,” which lasts until Advent in December. To be “ordinary” means there is no overarching liturgical commemoration marking this season in the way there is for example, during Advent and Lent. I like to think of “Ordinary Time” as the “Season of Pentecost.” That would make the largest season in the church year (varies year to year, but as much as 29 weeks) focused on the messy task of the Church empowered by God’s Spirit setting out to implement in worship, word, deed, life and love, what had been accomplished in the events commemorated from Advent through Pentecost.

So in honor of this season, I would like to take a number of posts over the next few weeks to explore, to the best of my ability, the meaning of Pentecost and the Coming of the Holy Spirit. In order to do this, I will one-at-a-time explore Old Testament passages which are alluded to in the second chapter of Acts. As is true of much of the New Testament, Acts 2 has many allusions to the Old Testament. This is not simply as a bit of cultural coloring, but precisely because the author wants us to understand these events as in dynamic continuity with the ongoing and unfinished drama the Old Testament is telling. This is especially the case because the authors (indeed, the early church) believed that these events functioned as a critical and climactic turning point in the narrative. What had been promised and prophesied in earlier days was coming to pass in their own days (this is exactly what Peter says in his sermon later in the same chapter).

In this narrative tour, our first stop will be the Tower of Babel…

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“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.” (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline)

I read these lines when I was a freshman in college. They set a course for my life, because as I read them, I determined that I was going to be a deep person. No matter what it took, I was going to be one of them. Its seems like almost everywhere I go, people (especially young adults) are disillusioned by the degree of shallowness in the Church. It can easily become a topic for griping and complaining. Though I can’t say I haven’t ever participated in such ill speech, I realized a long time ago, that unless I was going to proactively be part of the solution, I was merely perpetuating the problem. Many are content with complaining because it is exceedingly easier than radically reorienting your life in the pursuit of a different end.

Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing themselves.” In an age where being extremely shallow and narcissistic has become the norm—where our concepts of reality come from the hyper-idealized world of movies, where our heroes are celebrities who occupy a fantasy world enabled by exorbitant wealth—the only way change will happen is as we personally wrench ourselves out of the spell cast by modern society and begin to dwell deep.

The second principle in this series discussing Principles and Practices for the Spiritual Life is as follows:

Becoming a deep person is the most fruitful long-term approach to loving God and neighbor.

with its negative formulation as follows:

Remaining content with being shallow is not loving or helpful to anyone.

In John 15, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” To be connected to the vine, means to draw life-giving nutrients from the source, such that, over an extended period of time, there is a slow and gradual process of growth. It is only this slow and gradual process of growth that produces fruit, and as Jesus says, much fruit. This is what I mean by “becoming a deep person” – unplugging from the hectic mayhem of our narcissistic culture and engaging in a process of growth, whereby, over time, your entire being is both opened to and ultimately flooded with the life-giving presence of Jesus. We can often tell the difference between people who answer problems with cliches, and those who have real, helpful answers; people who are merely repeating the words of another, and those who can speak from the heart; people who wax eloquently about God, and those who seem to have been with God; people who have plastic smiles, and those who can empathize with your pain; people who interact with life in a detached and low-risk manner, and those who have a passion for life, engaging in the full range of its joys and sorrows; people who can network, and those who love affectionately and deeply; people who relate to others on the basis of what they can get, and those who give freely from the heart, laying down their lives for others in love. It is to the latter that we are invited as we open ourselves to God, allowing him to enter deeper into our lives, and in such, we become deep people.

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I know its easy to skip genealogies when reading to Bible. Loads of detail with little yield. Thought this might not be immediately apparent, the genealogies in the Gospels are rich with theological significance. Names such as Judah, Ruth, David, Uzziah, Hezekiah and Josiah that occur in the genealogy would surely have evoked many stories in the minds of readers and hearers in the first century, but none so much as the two names which head off the genealogy: Abraham and David. Altogether, Jesus is placed in the center of, so to speak; or perhaps more properly, at the end, of Israel’s history of covenant and blessing, deliverance and freedom, promise and expectation. Jesus is thus the heir of this lineage, the one who continues the story, sums it all up in himself and becomes the locus in which it reaches consummation. [Craig S. Keener, Matthew, 73-77].

However, under the surface, I suspect there is even more going on than identifying Jesus with Israel’s long history of patriarchs and kings. Perhaps Matthew is reaching back even further. The opening words of the Gospel, if I write out how the Greek letters sound for one of the words instead of translating it, are “The book of Genesis of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). In verse 18 he says again, “The genesis (γένεσις) of Jesus the Messiah…” It is pretty easy to pick up on John’s opening allusion to Genesis in the first words of his gospel, “In the beginning was the word…” Likewise, Luke’s genealogy goes all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” Is it possible that Matthew intends for his hearers to perceive that he, along with John (and possibly Luke), is writing a “new book of Genesis” so to speak? Is he writing a story about God’s purpose to right the wrongs in the creation and be faithful to the promises he made to the patriarchs? Is the occurrence of this word yet another reminder that we are to interpret the life of Jesus within the larger drama of Israel and God’s plan to restore the blessing of Genesis 1 to planet earth? Did he understand the first coming of Jesus as the inauguration of the New Creation of all things? Of course, we could never prove such in this particular instance, but it is at least my strong suspicion…

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I am not from Texas. I am not from anywhere remotely in the South. I am a Yankee to the core. Nevertheless, I believe one of the primary deficiencies of the formal English language is the lack of a word like “y’all.”

The Greek language (like many languages) has (at least) two forms of the word “you,” a singular form and a plural form (akin to y’all). However, you would never know this reading an English Bible. The following verses (plus scores others) all use a plural form of “you”, but from the standard English translation you would never have any idea:

Matt. 5:13 - You (y’all) are the salt of the earth…You (y’all) are  the light of the world.

Matt. 7:2 – “For in the way you (y’all) judge, you (y’all) will be judged; and by your (y’all’s) standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Rom. 12:2 – do not  be conformed to  this  world, but be transformed by the  renewing of your mind, so that you (y’all) may  prove what the will of God is, that which is good and  acceptable and perfect.

1Cor. 1:4    I thank  my God always concerning you (y’all) for the grace of God which was given you (y’all) in Christ Jesus…even as  the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed  in you (y’all), so that you (y’all) are not lacking in any gift…

1Cor. 3:16    Do you (y’all) not know that  you are a (singular) temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

This “plural you” has significant implications for how we interpret verses on almost every page of the Bible. For example, as in Romans 12, is Paul’s goal that each individual would be able to personally prove what is the will of God for their individual life? Or is this discernment process something that “y’all” do together in community? Are you individually the salt of the earth and the light of the world, or are the people of God collectively the salt and light?

Luke 17:21 is an oft quoted verse in which the KJV, NKJV and the NIV read, “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is frequently interpreted as the Amplified Bible has in its gloss “the Kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts]…” Is the Kingdom of God in our hearts? This was a strongly promoted idea in the nineteenth century as classical theological liberalism approached its height. It is precisely what Adolf von Harnack says in What is Christianity?:

“The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. True, the kingdom of God is the rule of God; but it is the rule of the holy God in the hearts of individuals…From this point of view everything that is dramatic in the external and historical sense has vanished; and gone, too, are all the external hopes for the future.” [Adolf von Harnack, What is Christianity? Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1956, 56]

Ironically, when evangelical Christians talk about the Kingdom of God being “in their hearts,” they are in essence spouting off, not Christian orthodoxy, not something a first-century Jewish man credibly could have said, but word-for-word theological liberalism, the same theological liberalism which is ready to dispense with the deity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the second coming of Jesus, the new creation of all things, etc. In Harnack’s mind, the notion of the Kingdom being “internal” was very much related to the way he jettisoned “all the external hopes for the future,” i.e., the New Creation of Heaven and Earth.

Because the “you” is plural, Jesus’ saying would be better translated (as the NRSV, TNIV and NASB do), “the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” The Kingdom is not a “spiritual” principle, but the demonstrable intervention of God in time and space to restore and renew life on earth. Thus the purpose of the saying is not to describe an “internal” reality of the Kingdom, but rather, the demonstration and experience of the Kingdom of God in the shared life and experience of God’s people in the public world.

A related verse is Colossians 1:27, which is often translated, “Christ in you, the  hope of glory.” I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that the “you” in this verse is also plural, although you would never know it from your English Bible. Paul is not saying that “Christ-living-inside-of-you” is the hope of glory. While of course he would not deny the reality of Christ living inside of us, this is not the point of the verse. Rather, it is Christ in the midst of the Church, the experience of the Messiah in forming a redeemed and redemptive community of self-giving love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, restoration and renewal, that is the hope of glory, namely, the sign in the present that gives us expectation for the fresh work of grace God will accomplish when he makes all things new at the end. The presence of Christ in the community of the redeemed is even now the present experience and advance pledge of the restoration of all things which fills our hearts with confidence and eager expectation of its certain consummation.

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This is the beginning of a series in which I hope to distill a synthesis of my learning and experience with respect to the manner in which one cultivates a deep spiritual life.  My intention is to combine both an understanding of how the spiritual life works along with what practically to do to experience growth. I find much spiritual counsel to have either a plethora of helpful principles, yet without clear guidance on how specifically to implement them; or lists of spiritual disciplines without a grounding base explaining their significance in the larger vision of the spiritual life (Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines is a stellar exception). Here I will attempt to do both. In such I have isolated eight principles, which, in my gleaning from the Scriptures, from spiritual masters both ancient and modern, as well as from my experience, personally and alongside others, are central to a flourishing spiritual life. Each principle will be expressed both positively and negatively, briefly explained, and then followed by corresponding practices to specifically implement them in daily life. I will grant from the beginning there is much more that possibly could be said beyond what I will say with numerous additional principles, practices, qualifications, modifications and so forth. Granting the limited nature of my experience, understanding and articulation, I hope and pray these writings will bear fruit in your life.

Without further ado, the first principle is thus:

A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

A life lived for one’s self or within which self-giving remains ancillary is the sure path to de-humanizing futility. God does not recognize this as Christianity regardless of a superabundance of Christian jargon, activities, ideas, etc.

In Matthew 22, an expert in the Jewish law asks Jesus which commandment in the law is the greatest. In today’s religious consciousness, the word “law” commonly conjures up various images of abject servitude, detached submission, despondent acquiescence or rigid legalism. When God says to do something you must do it, yet all the while, bitterly wishing there was an escape hatch through which you could return to a life of free self-determination. Yet the biblical concept of “law” is different. The word “torah” (Hebrew for “law”) is the noun form of a word which means “to throw or shoot,” usually with arrows. Some scholars suggest that meaning behind “torah” is in the aiming of an arrow or the pointing of a finger to direct such a shot. Hence “torah” means something like “guidance” or “direction.” This meaning fits well with the actual content of the “torah,” the first five books of the bible, since most of it is not lists of rules, but stories about God and his people.  Remarkably so, the massive amount of material from Genesis 12 through the end of Deuteronomy all have a coherent theme: In a world where humans have unequivocally wrought disaster through their fighting, hatred, abuse and violence (see Gen. 3-11), God graciously initiates a promise of blessing to Abraham and his descendants, which both re-affirms God’s initial intentions for humanity (Gen. 1-2) and seeks to restore them. This promise, partially fulfilled in the stories recounted, remains the outstanding invitation to God’s people to be his answer to creation’s dilemma, and the agents through whom the solution comes (see David Clines fascinating book The Theme of the Pentateuch for a fuller exposition). The “torah,” then is God’s guidance on how, in the midst of a world of corruption and violence, to become a people through whom the earth’s desolate state can be mended and healed rather than further destroyed. By directing us to be participants in this grand story, we can be people who help the problem rather than continue to break lives, relationships and communities.

While I don’t imagine for a moment this was what the law expert was asking about in Matthew 22, I have more than a sneaking suspicion this is what Jesus chose to answer to anyway. In response to what the greatest commandment is, Jesus, in his typical terse yet far-reaching manner answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The questioner asked concerning commandments in the law and Jesus responds with an answer which summarizes “all the law and the prophets.” This phrase, “law and prophets,” was a shorthand way of referring to the entire corpus of Jewish Scriptures. It seems as though Jesus is answering a bigger issue than which of the rules is most important, as if you only had one command to keep, which one would it be. Instead, Jesus is speaking to the foundational concept of the totality of Jewish Scripture. He addresses the entire unfolding narration of Israel’s history with God. In this history, God invited Israel to be the people who embody the true humanity before a world which had continually defaced nearly every trace of human semblance through its violence, ambition, hatred and greed. They would be God’s solution to the problem of sin and the agents through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3), a blessing which would prevail over the curse of sin and death (Gen. 3:15-19). Notice that Jesus does not replace the “law and prophets” with an abstract principle of “love,” as if, whenever one has subjective experiences which one might call love, then everything else in the Hebrew Scriptures doesn’t really matter. Rather, the “law and prophets,” this whole story of promise, blessing, invitation, failure and restoration can be summed up as love. The way the people of God are to be the model of true humanity and a restorative presence on earth is through a love with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind. Namely, God invites his people to be truly human, to be the restored new humanity, and participate in creation’s restoration first and foremost by loving God and neighbor with all of one’s being (heart, soul, and mind) and will the fullest’ of one’s capacity (the whole heart, the whole soul and the whole mind).

“It is the whole of Christianity,” C.S. Lewis remarks in Mere Christianity, “Christianity offers nothing else at all.” Everything we can say about Christianity begins with the notion of the whole and unreserved giving of oneself in love for God and for others. What is commonly represented as a high level of achievement, a point to which one gradually works towards in one’s Christian journey, because so lofty an idea it is relegated to theoretical endeavors for super-saints which are never really attempted. It is in actual fact the only starting point. The self-giving love of this Great Commandment is not what we relegate to the mature while we formulate a more accessible modality for the rest of us novices (after all, who is mature anyway we might retort?) where we can do some spiritual things but mostly live for ourselves. Rather, to miss this one thing is to miss the entire point. If everything else hangs on the call for an entire outpouring of love, then without it, everything falls to the ground in a tangled mess. Of course, I am not meaning that perfect attainment of love in full maturity is where one must start as a Christian. Nevertheless, a radical renunciation of self-absorption, self-promotion and self-protection coupled to the risky self-surrender which endeavors to love with all of one’s self, must be utterly foundational. By this I mean the central organizing principle of how time, money, resources, energy, emotions, relations, etc are used must be whole and unreserved self-giving love, otherwise we are failing to follow the most basic guidance about what it means to be God’s people and what it means to be human. We were made in love, we were made for love and we were made to love. God invites us to be his redeemed and restored people in the world, those in whom the restoration of true humanity is beginning to flower, and through whom the abundance of his love can flow towards the restoration of a fragmented and broken world. A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent from The Book of Common Prayer)

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I intend to give a brief and fairly unnuanced answered to this question, by way of analogy. I have often heard the question, “Can I be saved (or alternately phrased, “Can I go heaven”) without speaking in tongues?” By this it is meant, is one able to be a true member of the family of God which participates in the resurrected life of the renewed creation, without having a devotional prayer language (often called glossalalia)? To this, the answer is “yes…but why would you want to?” In other words, why would you simply settle for “making it in?” In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul evidently perceives a great value to the personal practice of speaking in tongues and wishes all the Corinthians would do it. Thus, why not aim for everything we can have in this life? Why not set our vision higher, rather than acquiesce to the least common denominator?

Thus when someone asks me, “Can I understand the Bible without knowing Greek?,” I reply, “Yes…but why would you want to?” If you are able to learn Greek, in other words,

if you are able to learn another language (which is true of the overwhelming majority of people in the world, since outside of America it is normal for even illiterate and uneducated people to speak two, three or even four languages),

and if you have some time (which most Americans do since they spend 5 hours a day on average watching television [1]; it only takes 3-6 hours a week, plus or minus a few, to learn Greek in about a year or two)

then why would you not aim for the highest level of comprehension and understanding through the steady process of learning the languages in which the Bible itself was breathed forth by the Holy Spirit? God deemed fit in the fullness of time to send forth his Son to redeem humanity from the curse of Sin and Death. He also deemed fit that the account, exposition and implementation of this glorious redemption would be breathed by the Holy Spirit in the Greek language. The thirsting soul in pursuit of God is often led by love to learn this very language in order to know the Scriptures more profoundly, and through them, to know the God of the Scriptures with increasing clarity. Pastors, teachers, reformers, mystics and revivalists throughout history have turned to language as both an expression of love and a means to deepen love. John Wesley would spend his mornings meditating on the Greek New Testament before preaching from that very text on horseback. George Whitfield would spend two hours a night, after long days of ministry, often on his knees, doing the same. At age 24, George Muller would spend 10 hours a day studying the Bible in the original languages.

You can surely learn and understand the basic truths of the Bible without knowing Greek, but why would you want to?

[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/americans-watching-more-tv-than-ever/

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• Why Greek Matters (Part 5) – Closing our bowels (1 John 3:17) (0)
• Why Greek Matters (Part 4) – The Lamb is Worthy (Revelation 5) (0)
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