On the Road to Emmaus » Christian Year

Out of Exile: When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 4)

Richard — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:44:28 +0000

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.

God is with us: When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 3)

Richard — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:17:58 +0000

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).

We’ve Been Unbabeled: When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 2)

Richard — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:05:00 +0000

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!

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When the Day of Pentecost had Fully Come (Part 1)

Richard — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 01:48:56 +0000

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…

The Coming Justice of God – The Great Reversal

Richard — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:08:27 +0000

Scripture speaks repeatedly of a coming “great reversal” when God will right all wrongs and heal all hurts – the justice or “righteousness of God.” This will affect all areas of life and society – ecological, agricultural, economic, political, physiological, relational, etc. The New Testament tells us this time of God’s favor, though remaining future, has mysteriously broken forth in the present: it has already begun through the life and ministry of Jesus as he healed the sick, raised the dead, cleansed the lepers, welcomed the outcasts and restored the penitent. This restorative nearness is consequently present through the life and ministry of those who follow in the faithfulness of Jesus (cf. Lk. 4:19; 2 Cor. 5:17-6:2). As we begin to taste tokens of this “righteousness of God,” and become agents of it in the lives of others, our hearts swell with hope, anticipation and inexpressible longing for the full advent of God’s Kingdom when the Messiah is fully manifest at his glorious appearing.

The following is simply a list of Bible quotations describing this “great reversal,” meant to fire the prophetic imagination, inspire hope and motivate further study, meditation, compassion and action based on their contents. It is by no means a comprehensive list, so if you have something to add, please mention it in the comments.

You raise up the poor from the dust and lift the needy from the ash heap (1 Samuel 2:7)

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2)

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore (Isaiah 2)

You have shattered the yoke that burdened them, the collar that lay heavy on their shoulders (Isaiah 9)

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and leopard shall lie down with the kid (Isaiah 11)

The calf, the lion and the fatling together, with a little child to lead them (Isaiah 11)

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain (Isaiah 11)

The Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well-ages wine, of rich food full of marrow (Isaiah 25)

He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (Isaiah 25)

the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth (Isaiah 25)

The wilderness and the dry land shall rejoice, the desert shall blossom and burst into song (Isaiah 35)

The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Isaiah 35)

The lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shall sing for joy (Isaiah 35)

Waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert (Isaiah 35)

Joy and gladness shall overtake them, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isaiah 35)

Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low (Isaiah 40)

The rough ground shall become level and the rugged places a plain (Isaiah 40)

Bring out the captives from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness (Isaiah 42)

I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground (Isaiah 42)

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old (Isaiah 43)

Behold, I am doing a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it (Isaiah 43)

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43)

…to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances (Isaiah 49)

to say to the captives, “Come out,” and say to those in darkness, “Be free.” (Isaiah 49)

They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill (Isaiah 49)

They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them (Isaiah 49)

I will turn all my mountains into roads and my highways will be raised up (Isaiah 49)

The LORD will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. (Isaiah 51)

her wilderness He will make like Eden, And her desert like the garden of the LORD (Isaiah 51)

the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing (Isaiah 55)

all the trees of the field shall clap their hands (Isaiah 55)

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle (Isaiah 55)

Violence will no more be heard in your land, ruin or destruction within your borders (Isaiah 60)

He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted (Isaiah 61)

To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound (Isaiah 61)

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Isaiah 61)

To give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit (Isaiah 61)

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. (Isaiah 61)

You shall no more by termed Forsaken and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you will be called “My Delight is in Her” (Isaiah 62)

I am creating a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind (Isaiah 65)

No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress (Isaiah 65)

The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 65)

I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow (Jeremiah 31)

I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety (Hosea 2)

Do not be afraid, you wild animals, for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green. The trees are bearing their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield their riches. (Joel 2)

The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. (Joel 2)

And it will come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; A fountain shall flow from the house of the LORD and water the Valley of Acacias. (Joel 3)

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the one who plows and the planter by the one treading grapes. (Amos 9)

New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills, (Amos 9)

They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. (Amos 9)

I will gather those of you who mourn, so that you will no longer suffer reproach (Zephaniah 3)

I will deal with all your oppressors, I will save the lame and gather the outcast (Zephaniah 3)

I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth (Zephaniah 3)

I will take away the chariots and the war horses, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations (Zechariah 9)

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. (Psalm 68)

God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing (Psalm 68)

The LORD upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down. (Psalm 145)

[the Lord] executes justice for the oppressed; and gives food to the hungry. (Psalm 146)

The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. (Psalm 146)

The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. (Psalm 146)

The poor will receive the kingdom (Matthew 5)

Those who mourn will be comforted (Matthew 5)

Those who are lowly will inherit the earth (Matthew 5)

Those who hunger for justice will be satisfied (Matthew 5)

Those who are persecuted will receive the kingdom (Matthew 5)

…the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them (Matthew 11)

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly (Luke 1)

He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty (Luke 1)

In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us (Luke 1)

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1)

Just as one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one vindication [the resurrection of Jesus] leads to the rectification of life for all (Romans 5)

Where sin abounded, grace abounds all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life (Romans 5)

…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from the bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8

…he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15)

The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor. 15)

…this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortality must put on immortality… (1 Cor. 15)

…then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15)

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more (Rev. 21)

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away (Rev. 21)

No longer will there be any curse (Rev. 22)

The Baptism of Christ – He Comes to Bury Sinful Humanity in the Waters…and Begin a New Creation through the Spirit and Water

Richard — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:45:08 +0000

Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptised; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.

John is baptising when Jesus draws near. Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptiser; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.

The Baptist protests; Jesus insists. Then John says: I ought to be baptised by you. He is the lamp in the presence of the sun, the voice in the presence of the Word, the friend in the presence of the Bridegroom, the greatest of all born of woman in the presence of the firstborn of all creation, the one who leapt in his mother’s womb in the presence of him who was adored in the womb, the forerunner and future forerunner in the presence of him who has already come and is to come again. I ought to be baptised by you: we should also add, “and for you,” for John is to be baptised in blood, washed clean like Peter, not only by the washing of his feet.

Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens, like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honour to the body that is one with God.

Today let us do honour to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all humankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness – a ray of its splendour, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.

From a sermon by St Gregory Nazianzen

An Advent Meditation on the Nature of Hope

Richard — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:54:12 +0000

The following is an excerpt from the book that has likely had the singular most significant impact on my life outside the Bible, Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann. Since the Advent season is significantly centers around our hope in Christ’s coming and the consummation of all the promises of God, I felt it appropriate to share this powerful meditation on the nature of hope.

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In the contradiction between the word of promise and the experiential reality of suffering and death, faith takes its stand on hope and “hastens beyond this world”, said Calvin. He did not mean by this that Christian faith flees the world, but he did mean that it strains after the future. To believe does in fact mean to cross and transcend bounds, to be engaged in an exodus. Yet this happens in a way that does not suppress or skip the unpleasant realities. Death is real death, and decay is putrefying decay. Guilt remains guilt and suffering remains, even for the believer, a cry to which there is no ready-made answer. Faith does not overstep these realities into a heavenly utopia, does not dream itself into a reality of a different kind. It can overstep the bounds of life, with their closed wall of suffering, guilt and death, only at the point where they have in actual fact been broken through. It is only in following the Christ who was raised from suffering, from a god-forsaken death and from the grave that it gains an open prospect in which there is nothing more to oppress us, a view of the realm of freedom and of joy. Where the bounds that mark the end of all human hopes are broken through in the raising of the crucified one, there faith can and must expand into hope. There it becomes boldness and comfort. There its hope becomes a “passion for what is possible” (Kierkegaard), because it can be a passion for what has been made possible. There the extensio animi ad magna, as it was called in the Middle Ages, takes place in hope.

Faith recognizes the dawning of this future of openness and freedom in the Christ event. The hope thereby kindled spans the horizons which then open over a closed existence. Faith binds man to Christ. Hope sets this faith open to the comprehensive future of Christ. Hope is therefore the “inseparable companion” of faith. “When this hope is taken away, however eloquently or elegantly we discourse concerning faith, we are convicted of having none. . . Hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God. This, faith believes God to be true, hope awaits the time when this truth shall be manifested; faith believes that he is our Father, hope anticipates that he will ever show himself to be a Father toward us; faith believes that eternal life has been given to us, hope anticipates that it will sometime be revealed; faith is the foundation on which hope rests, hope nourishes and sustains faith. For as no one except him who already believes His promises can look for anything from God, so again the weakness of our faith must be sustained and nourished by patient hope and expectation, lest it fail and grow faint. . . . By unremitting renewing and restoring, it [hope] invigorates faith again and again with perseverance.”(Calvin, Institutio III.2.42.) Thus in the Christian life faith has the priority, but hope the primacy. Without faith’s knowledge of Christ, hope becomes a utopia and remains hanging in the air. But without hope, faith falls to pieces, becomes a fainthearted and ultimately a dead faith. It is through faith that man finds the path of true life, but it is only hope that keeps him on that path. Thus it is that faith in Christ gives hope its assurance. Thus it is that hope gives faith in Christ its breadth and leads it into life.

To believe means to cross in hope and anticipation the bounds that have been penetrated by the raising of the crucified. If we bear that in mind, then this faith can have nothing to do with fleeing the world, with resignation and with escapism. In this hope the soul does not soar above our vale of tears to some imagined heavenly bliss, nor does it sever itself from the earth. For, in the words of Ludwig Feuerbach, it puts “in place of the beyond that lies above our grave in heaven, the beyond that lies above our grave on earth, the historic future, the future of mankind”.(Das Wesen der Religion, 1848.) It sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands. It sees in him the future of the very humanity for which he died. That is why it finds the cross the hope of the earth. This hope struggles for the obedience of the body, because it awaits the quickening of the body. It espouses in all meekness the cause of the devastated earth and of harassed humanity, because it is promised possession of the earth. Ave crux — unica spes! (Behold the cross, the only hope)

But on the other hand, all this must inevitably mean that the man who thus hopes will never be able to reconcile himself with the laws and constraints of this earth, neither with the inevitability of death nor with the evil that constantly bears further evil. The raising of Christ is not merely a consolation to him in a life that is full of distress and doomed to die, but it is also God”s contradiction of suffering and death, of humiliation and offence, and of the wickedness of evil. Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering. If Paul calls death the “last enemy”(I Cor. 15.26), then the opposite is also true: that the risen Christ, and with him the resurrection hope, must be declared to be the enemy of death and of a world that puts up with death. Faith takes up this contradiction and thus becomes itself a contradiction to the world of death. That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfillment of all the promises of God. It keeps him in statu viatoris, in that unresolved openness to world questions which has its origin in the promise of God in the resurrection of Christ and can therefore be resolved only when the same God fulfils his promise. This hope makes the Christian Church a constant disturbance in human society, seeking as the latter does to stabilize itself into a “continuing city”. It makes the Church the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come. This Church is committed to “answer for the hope” that is in it (I Peter 3.15). It is called in question “on account of the hope and resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23.6). Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.

Practical Suggestions for Celebrating the Church Year

Richard — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:14:08 +0000

If you’re like me, celebrating Advent may conjure up childhood memories of those peculiar “Advent Calendars” where you pop out a piece of chocolate each day as Christmas nears. Suffice to say, not all approaches to celebrating the Church Year are equally inspiring. Nevertheless, as I have come to seriously celebrate the Church Year, it has been one of the most compelling, inspiring and moving aspects of my spiritual life, both individual and communally.

As I have given an albeit brief explanation of the Church Year (I’ll use the terms “Church Calendar”, “Church Year” and “Christian Year” essentially interchangeably) elsewhere, I would like here to turn to practical suggestions on how to implement anywhere from a relatively simple to a full dress commemoration of the Church Year. My suggestions will be concerned with marking the primary seasons and principal feasts of the Church Year because there are many other commemorations which we need not get bogged down with at this point.

I should further note, that when I speak of “celebrating the Church Year,” I am mostly referring to means by which the formative themes of each Season and Feast can be shaped into our lives. In other words, I am primarily discussing the Church Year as spiritual formation and spiritual discipline. I am sure there is lots of advice that could be given for holiday-coordinated decorating, baking, party ideas, etc. I am not concerned with that here (though by all means – bring on the baked goods!!). The advice which follows centers on how our spiritual lives can be given definitive shape through the Church Year, and thus formed around and transformed by the unfolding story of God’s redemptive acts in and through the Messiah. It follows that my suggestions will generally draw from the Church’s liturgical tradition, which has always centered around the Church Year, and has developed quite a wealth of material over the centuries. Additionally, the suggestions which follow are not specific to Advent or any one season, but are general in nature, applicable to all seasons of the Year.

I will also attempt to make each suggestion applicable for both individual and communal use.

1) Determine to follow the Church Year through to the end. This of course hardly seems like a practical suggestion for my first point. However, I would like to begin by advising a long term though strategy rather than short term. The power of the Church Year is in the entire sequence of Advent through Pentecost and commemorating the entire sequence of the central redemptive acts of God in the Messiah. So while “celebrating Advent” or “keeping Lent” can’t hurt, the full power of the Church Year is its unity, rather than parts in abstraction. Its further power is the cumulative effect of celebrating the entire cycle over a course of years such that the redemptive acts of God in the Messiah become the central overarching rhythm of our lives.

2) Follow the Readings in the Daily Office Lectionary (from the Book of Common Prayer). The lectionary has one OT reading, one NT epistle and one Gospel reading for each day. They generally follow entire books is sequence that have themes corresponding to the Church Year. Use them in your personal Bible reading or meditation times. They are generally short (10-12 verses) and could form the basis of prayer-reading (lectio-divina). Read them with others and discuss them. Discuss a whole weeks worth of readings and reflection with others once per week. I have made Daily Office Readings booklets by compiling the assigned texts for each season. They can be downloaded here. Alternately you can download just the Daily Office Lectionary and look up the passages in your own Bible - booklet / standard.

3) Sing hymns and songs that correspond to the season. Contrary to popular belief, Advent songs and Christmas songs are not the same. Christmas songs/carols are sung during the twelve days of Christmas. Advent songs and carols are sung during Advent. Hymnals of churches that don’t keep the Christian year may not make this distinction. However, if you pick up a hymnal from a more liturgical tradition, such as Anglican, Lutheran or Catholic, there will be a wealth of material for each season. Should you not happen to know many of the hymns, do a search on the internet and you can often find at least midi files that will play the song for you so you can learn it. Check out these sites for starters: http://hymnal.oremus.org; http://www.smallchurchmusic.com; http://hymntime.com/tch/

4) Pray the Book of Common Prayer “Collect” for each week. “Collect” is a fancy word for a prayer which frequently draws together (“collects”) themes of a given season or day in the Church Calendar. Use it daily either upon waking or before going to bed. Pray it with others before a meal. Pray it for people on your prayer list. For the Collects of the Church Year click here.

5) Pray/Sing the Psalms on a monthly (or bi-monthly) schedule using seasonal antiphons. “Antiphons” are short sentences of Scripture or traditional material that are used with Psalms or Canticles in order to give them a specific (often seasonal or Calendar-related) emphasis. To use them, they are simply prayed (sung) before and after the Psalm, or alternately as a refrain periodically throughout the Psalm, every few verses or so. I have compiled a set of seasonal antiphons from various sources (including the Prayer Book Office, the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours, the Roman Breviary and elsewhere) for the entire book of Psalms that can be used with the Psalms in your BCP or Bible. They are arranged by season – so throughout Advent, each psalms will use the antiphon labeled “Advent,” during the 12 days of Christmas, the antiphon labeled “Christmas,” during the entire season of Easter, the antiphon labeled “Easter,” etc.

Seasonal Psalm Antiphon download links: booklet / standard.

Click here to download the monthly Psalm schedule.

6) Use a seasonal order for Midday Prayer or Compline (night-time prayer before bed). These are orders for prayer that are more simple than those for Morning and Evening Prayer. They are self-contained and require no flipping back and forth through different places in the prayer book. Unfortunately, the BCP orders for Midday Prayer and Compline have almost no seasonal variation, so I have borrowed from the liturgy of the Church of England and elsewhere to form these adaptations of the BCP orders with strong seasonal emphasis. These work well prayed alone or in groups. Download links:

Midday Prayer booklet – booklet / standard

Compline – booklet / standard

7) Begin praying the Daily Office, or at least Morning or Evening Prayer. Full details on how to do so can be found here. The office can be prayed alone or in groups. Consider praying it daily on your own and at one set time per week with others. I pray the Office daily on my own and once a week do a full sung Morning Prayer with some friends before the Sunday morning Eucharist.

8 ) If you already have been praying the Daily Office, consider using seasonal propers that add further seasonal emphasis to the flow of the Church Year. The “Proper” is the part of the liturgy which varies according to the day and/or season. These propers propose various hymns, psalms, canticles and antiphons for every Sunday of the year and for each feast. A seasonal propers booklet, largely gleaned from the unfortunately out-of-print Prayer Book Office can be downloaded here - booklet / standard

9) The Church of England has produced a book available on-line as a series of pamphlets titled “Times and Seasons” with various material for each season which could be used either as part of the Daily Office, or in other ways. They can be downloaded for free here.

10) Begin visiting a liturgical Church in the “catholic” tradition (i.e., Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Anglican), which follows the Church Year and incorporates its emphases into the liturgy. A directory of orthodox Anglican churches in North America can be found here. If not on a weekly basis, perhaps attend for special services throughout the year, like Christmas Eve, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, etc.

11) Organize a gathering of friends and family on either the day of or the eve of major feasts for a simple meal and an order for Evening Prayer, using seasonal material from some of the previous suggestions.

12) Pick up a copy of Robert Webber’s book “Ancient-Future Time.” It discusses each season and principle feast of the Church Year, highlighting the various themes for each.

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** Photo credit: tome213

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Resurrection and New Creation (Part 2) – Whirlwind Tour of the Gospel of John

Richard — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:09:08 +0000

When Jesus rose from the dead, splendor returned to the world. From the depths of death’s dark gloom, Jesus emerged triumphant and the light of new life shone out permeating the entire earth. God’s redemptive purpose to not abandon the earth to its decay, death and misery, but to restore, renew and indeed re-create it with greater glory than it possessed in its pristine state, though prophesied throughout the Old Testament, was enacted in and through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

In the last post I discussed the Jewish concept of “resurrection” as an expectation which was

bodily (entailing a return to the life of the physical body),

earthly (as opposed to other-worldly),

corporate (it happened to all the people of God),

simultaneous (all at one time), and

eschatological (as the transitional event between this age and the age to come in which all things would be restored).

In such, I began to assert the notion that the resurrection of Jesus was not simply a fantastic miraculous event, perhaps the best of all the miracles in Jesus’ career. Rather, the resurrection of Jesus, as understood in its Jewish context, marked the irruption of the life of the Age to Come into the present. This Age to Come, was heralded by the Hebrew prophets as a time when death would be no more (Isa. 25), when all areas of life would be renewed and restored, whether they be ecological, agricultural, physical, political, economic, relational, etc., and God’s people would forever rejoice with gladness (Isa. 35:10). In short, the entire earth and all that is in it would be renewed and re-created. When Jesus was raised from the dead, this re-creation began. The restoration of all things had its inauguration. As Jesus stepped out of the tomb, the springtime of all creation started to blossom and the age-anticipated promises of God for life, righteousness and freedom began to find their fulfillment. This notion is termed inaugurated eschatology, meaning that eschatological realities of the age to come have been inaugurated, that is, they have begun, even now in the middle of the present age, while yet awaiting a future consummation of fullness (this is often discussed in terms of the Kingdom of God being both “already but not yet”).

To continue to demonstrate this idea of the resurrection of Jesus heralding the advent of God’s New Creation (i.e., inaugurated eschatology), I would like to quickly breeze through the Gospel of John – a whirlwind tour perhaps, and show how the notion of “new creation” is present in this work.

To begin with, the familiar opening words of John are “In the beginning…” What is strikingly obvious to us, would have been equally apparent to hearers/readers in the first century. John is intentionally mirroring the initial words of Genesis, the famed creation story. While this would not be conclusive in itself (but will be made much more clear as we proceed), why might John be intentionally beginning his Gospel with the first words of Genesis? He continues to speak of the incarnation in terms of “light shining in the darkness,” a further allusion to the first chapter of Genesis. Is it possible that John is setting us up for precisely what it sounds like – a second (new) creation story?

In John 5:24-25, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

Three points are of note.

1) The person who believes has, that is, currently possesses eternal life. This phrase translated “eternal life” literally means “life of the age” and was used in Jewish writings from or before the time of the New Testament to mean the “life of the age to come” (Dan. 12:2; Pss. Sol. 3:12; 13:11; 14:10; 1 Enoch 37:4; 58:3). Furthermore, in the Synoptic Gospels, the terms “eternal life” and “Kingdom of God” are used interchangeably on a number of occurrences (Mk 9:43, 45, 47; 10:17-30; Mt. 19:23-29; Lk. 18:24-30). Thus, when we come to the Gospel of John and see that the term “Kingdom of God” only occurs twice, it seems very likely that the often used phrase “eternal life” (i.e., “life of the age”) is John’s preferred way of referring to the same reality the Synoptic Gospels prefer to call the “Kingdom of God.”[1] This life of the age to come, this experience of God’s Kingdom is available in the present as the possession of those who believe in Jesus.

2) This possession of eternal life entails “passing out of death into life.” Here we see clear resurrection language, as will be confirmed in the following verses. This further clarifies the reception of the life of the age to come. There is a sense to which the believer in Jesus transfers from the present evil age into the Age to Come, while yet remaining in the present age. Jesus uses a verb of motion, “passing out of,” to describe the believer’s participation in eternal life. This militates against the pure internalized understanding of these verses, as if Jesus is speaking mostly of an internal, immaterial, “spiritual” change in the believer. Jesus does not view this change as internal, but as external. It is not a “change of heart,” but rather a change of location for the entire person. Their “inner being” does not move, but “the one who believes” in their entirety of personhood moves beyond the realm where death has sway and into the resurrection life of the age to come.

3) Finally, if this wasn’t already clear, Jesus emphasizes that the time in which this happens is now. This is significant because the resurrection events that will soon happen to Jesus in the narrative cannot be construed solely as an isolated incident for Jesus. We are meant to understand the dynamic connection between what happens to Jesus and what is available to the believer. As Jesus rises from the dead in the life of the Age to Come, so likewise all believers are able to participate in that life in the present.

In John 11 Jesus makes a remarkable statement: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

As Christians, we have heard this verse so often, I think it ceases to strike us as strange. Jesus claims to be the resurrection. But the resurrection is an event. How can a person be an event? Furthermore, how can a person be an event that properly belongs to the entire people of God at an eschatological transition between the Present Age and the Age to Come? It seems like Jesus is telling us that he is somehow God’s future in person. He is the personal presence of the life of the Age to Come. Here among us, in the midst of a world inundated with decay and death, the light of God’s New Creation is beginning to shine. It is walking among us in the person of God-himself made flesh.

However, is this New Creation life restricted to the person of Jesus, as in, he possesses the life of the Age to Come, but the rest of us need to wait until his return to experience it? Does this New Creation, resurrection life, Kingdom of God presence leave the earth when Jesus ascends to heaven? The previous passage addressed (John 5) expresses the contrary quite emphatically, but even in this verse, Jesus informs us of the participation of the believer in the same eschatological realities. Since “life” and “eternal life” are interchangeable in the Gospel of John[2], and since “eternal life” means the “life of the Age to Come” (see above), it stands to reason that the phrase “resurrection and the life” is a hendiadys, in which the two words joined by “and” should be taken together as a single idea. If not, since “life” certainly means the “life of the Age to Come,” we should at least see “resurrection” as the event which initiates the “life”[3] In either case,”life” in verse 25 certainly means “resurrection life” and thus the occurrence of the same word in the next verse, the “everyone lives” in verse 26, would mean, “everyone who has the life of the kingdom of God.” This is further advanced by Jesus’ assertion that unless one eats of the bread of life they have no life in them (John 6:51), meaning they do not have the “life of the age to come.”[4] The one who believes is the one who truly lives, who shares the life of the resurrection that Jesus himself embodies in the present.

If we skip forward a bit, we come to Holy Week.

On the sixth day of the week (Friday), after flogging him, robing him in purple and crowing him with thorns, Pilate displays Jesus to the crowd with the words, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5). Note that in Genesis 1 (remember our previous discussion about John 1 quoting Genesis 1 – “in the beginning…”), on the sixth day of the week, God created the human beings, those who were meant to rule the earth. Now on the sixth day of this week, Jesus is displayed as the true human, as a mockery dressed in royal attire, yet refusing to retaliate to the false rulers, to those whose greed and violence had corrupted their humanity to the point of unrecognizability.

The power hungry inhuman forces of violence succeed in killing the one who truly embodied what it meant to be fully human. The rulers of this world put to death the world’s true Lord. After doing so, he was laid to rest in an empty tomb. It was here that Jesus spent the seventh day of the week. As God rested from his labors on the seventh day of the creation account, so too, Jesus spends the seventh day in a Sabbath rest – the utter stillness of death.

John 20 begins with the words, “on the first day of the week.” Is it possible that more is going on here than a mere temporal indicator? As we observed this Gospel starting by alluding to the Genesis 1 account of creation, saw how Jesus understood himself as embodying the life of the Age to Come and sharing it with those who believe in him, and walked through days six and seven of creation during the weekend proceeding the first Easter, are we meant to understand that the timing “on the first day of the week” signals something much bigger than we were expecting? As Jesus rises from the dead, we are beholding the advent of God’s New Creation life bursting forth from the tomb! The Jewish concept of resurrection and new creation seems sufficient in itself to indicate such, but there is more in text itself. In verse 15, John tells us that Mary, seeing the resurrected Lord, believed him to be a gardener. What an odd detail. Why would Mary mistakenly believe Jesus to be a gardener, unless they were actually in a garden? And does not being in a garden, yet again allude to the biblical creation account? As Jesus rises from the dead, he is the New Adam in a renewed Garden of Eden. Eden has been restored and humanity once again has been given access to this Paradise once Lost.

In verse nineteen, we are told that “it was evening on that day, the first day of the week.” Apparently we need reminding that this is not any day – it is the FIRST day of the week. John repeats himself in order to emphasize, however allusively, the full scope of what happened on that day. Though the doors were shut, Jesus comes and stands among them saying, “Peace be with you.” After showing them his hands and side, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” Just as God breathed the breath of life into an inert Adam and he became a living being, so now Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples at the dawn of God’s New Creation. Yet this new life of the Kingdom of God, is not merely for the disciples’ enjoyment. He charges them, “as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” As the Father sent Jesus to be the living presence of the life of the Age to Come, so now as the followers of Jesus share in that life by believing in him, they are commissioned likewise to be agents of God’s Kingdom and resurrection life.

Though not in the Gospel of John, one more verse bears mentioning. In Luke 24:30, Jesus is sitting at a table with two disciples with whom he has walked from Jerusalem. When Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, Luke tells us that immediately “their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Where else in Scripture do we have two people, who upon eating, have their eyes opened? Adam and Eve, after consuming the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience their eyes being opened into a shameful self-awareness of their nakedness. In Luke however, the resurrected Lord is reversing the curse of Adam’s sin. He is inaugurating the life of the Kingdom of God, the New Creation, whereupon partaking of blessed and broken bread (a clear allusion to the Church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper), eyes are opened from woeful disillusionment into a hope-filled recognition of the Risen Lord. After this experience, the two disciples immediately run out and announce the Gospel: “Jesus is risen!” The experience of the life of the Age to Come, the initiation of overturning sin’s curse, in John’s Gospel results in being sent just as Jesus was sent, and in Luke results in the proclamation of the Resurrected Lord. The presence of God’s Kingdom is in our midst, inaugurated through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This new life is the very impetus behind the Church’s mission in and for the world. Through proclaiming the Gospel of the Risen Lord and the arrival of God’s Kingdom, we become those who share and impart the life of the age to come amidst a world embroiled in the challenging yet, for those who believe, inevitably triumphant conflict with death.

[1] Marianne Meye Thomson, “John, Gospel of,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill,: Intervarsity Press, 1992), 380.

[2] ibid.

[3] George R. Beasley-Murray, John (Dallas: Word, 1999), 190.

[4] ibid, 191.

Resurrection and New Creation (Part 1) – The Jewish Concept of Resurrection

Richard — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:05:42 +0000

Though resurrection was the central message of the early Apostolic Church and a central theme through the New Testament, resurrection is of such minor note in the Old Testament it cannot even warrant being called a theme. It only is literally discussed in two passages. If resurrection is not even a theme in the Old Testament, let alone a major theme, how can we explain the phenomenon that resurrection became a (if not the) central theme in the New Testament? The easy and immediate answer is that a resurrection had in fact occurred, to one person in advance of all others, such that this this shocking occurrence became the determining characteristic of the burgeoning new movement. It was believed that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, far from being an isolated event, hailed the inauguration of the renewal of creation, the restoration of all things, which the prophets and sages of eras past had proclaimed.

In this series I would like to discuss the notion that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated the eschatological reign of God, in which the powers of Sin and Death themselves are defeated and the entire creation is being renewed. Not simply being a confirmation of what happened at the cross, the resurrection was the beginning of a new age for planet earth. Through the resurrected Lord, a door has swung open through which the power of life over death has begun to permeate a world long pining under the slow torture of decay and the inevitability of death. The springtime of all creation has begun, after the long era of winter’s curse, causing life to be born anew and future hope to slowly emerge from beneath the shadows of despair. This life is not only future, but amazingly, mysteriously and dynamically present.

Before I get specifically to addressing how the New Testament shows the startling truth of Jesus’ resurrection inauguration of New Creation, I would like to describe the Jewish concept of resurrection. First as a word of clarity, “resurrection” does not simply mean to “life-after-death.” Resurrection was a specific kind of expectation which would involve the revivification of bodily life on earth. For a person to have an existence as a “spirit” was not what anyone meant when they spoke of “resurrection.”

It comes as a shock to many that not only does the Old Testament very rarely speak of resurrection, but much of it holds out little or no hope beyond the grave. Just a few passages will show this:

Psalm 115:17 – “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any that go down into silence.”

Isaiah 38:10-11, 18-19 – “I said: In the noontide of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. I said, I shall not see the LORD in the land of the living; I shall look upon mortals no more among the inhabitants of the world. For Sheol cannot thank you, death cannot praise you; those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day; fathers make known to children your faithfulness.”

2 Samuel 14:14 – “We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up.”

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 10 – “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun… Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”

(cf. Job 17:13-16; Psalm 6:5; 30:9; 88:3-7, 10-12)

Other passages show the end of human life as returning to the dust:

Genesis 3:19 – “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Job 34:14-15 – “If he should take back his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust.”

Psalm 90:3 – “You turn us back to dust, and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’”

(cf. Psalm 104:27-29; Ecc. 3:20)

Many, many passages use “sleep” as a way of describing death, meaning this state of inactivity, which forms part of the cycle of our lives, was the nearest approximation they could use to speak of death. The phrase “and he slept with his ancestors” to describe the death of a person is used dozens and dozens of times (cf. 1 Kings 2:10; 11:21; 22:50; 2 Kings 14:22; 16:20; 2 Chronicles 9:31; 12:16; etc.)

It is commonly asserted that Jewish belief in the resurrection grew in three sequential chronological stages: (1) the original perspective that hope lies entirely in the goodness of the present earthly life with no hope in the shadowy world of Sheol; (2) a vague belief that the relationship of the righteous with God would endure beyond death; (3) and finally a concrete belief in resurrection. Rather, it seems more likely that the belief in resurrection is a re-expression of the so-called “earlier” belief, in that it affirms the created world and the goodness and hope of bodily life.[1] The Jewish concept of resurrection begins with the concept of the goodness of the created order and God’s commitment to it. It continues with a belief that the creator God established a covenant relationship with human beings, specifically expressed in the nation of Israel. The hope of Israel was never in the immortality of the soul, but always in Yahweh. In the glimmers of hope after the grave in Psalm 16, 49 and 73, YHWH is both the substance and ground of the hope of the people of God.[2] When the concept of the creator God who is committed to the creation is joined with the God of covenant who is committed to human beings that he is in relationship with, the ground is fertile for resurrection faith.

Resurrection is specifically spoken of in Daniel 12 and Isaiah 25. It is metaphorically described in Ezekiel 37 and possibly Hosea 6, in which the meaning of both passages refer explicitly to the restoration of Israel, not physical resurrection. This brief glimmering expectation became significantly developed in the inter-testimonial period, in which resurrection became a significant theme in Jewish literature. By the time the first century arrived, resurrection was a major (though not universal) aspect of the Jewish hope for the kingdom of God, which meant freedom, liberation, restoration and renewal of life on earth. Such a hope was frequently expressed in terms of a new exodus, in which God would act on behalf of Israel like he had when they were slaves in Egpyt, bringing salvation, deliverance and redemption. This expectation was linked with the concept of resurrection through the use of Ezekiel 37, which speaks of the restoration of Israel and return from exile metaphorically as resurrection. Resurrection thus functioned as synechoche, as a focal point for the sum total of Israel’s eschatological hope. By the first century, this was also being interpreted literally as part of the “freedom-package” that the “freedom-God” would give to his people.[3]

Jesus’ proclamation of the Reign of God put him right in line with these expectations, which he made little effort to downplay. “To affirm the resurrection was to affirm the fact that Israel’s God was at work in a new way, turning the world upside down.”[4] Jesus’ life and ministry rode in the current of these Jewish hopes. The hope was not for a disembodied state, or even the reconstrual of life after death, but indeed, the reversal of death itself. Resurrection stands to overturn and cast out the very interloper that entered the earth at the fall of humanity. Implicit in the idea of resurrection is the reversal of the curse from Genesis three and the new creation of all things.

This resurrection was expected simultaneously, corporately, and bodily at the time of eschatological fulfillment, when God’s future for the world arrives and the new age begins.[5] Individuals may be resuscitated at times (1 Kgs. 17:17-24; 2 Kgs. 4.18-37; 13.21), but not resurrected. Those individuals were brought to life, but would die again. Resurrection looked forward to the day when God himself “will swallow up death forever” (Isa. 25.8). The announcement of the angels that “he has risen” (Lk. 24.6) would strike the hearers as remarkable not simply because it was miraculous, but because the expectation of resurrection was universal, not individual. When later Christians describe what happened to Jesus by calling him the “firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1.18; Rev. 1.5) or “first fruits of those who sleep” (1 Cor. 15.20), it becomes clear that they did not see Jesus’ raising as resuscitation. Rather, it was the first in a sequence. Jesus’ resurrection was not an isolated event, but was part of the inauguration of the eschatological liberation of God, the launching of the new-exodus, the beginning of the new age. The resurrection was not simply a confirmation of Jesus’ divinity, but a sign that the eschaton is upon us. Implicit in Jesus’ resurrection, indeed nearly conceived of as the same event, is the resurrection of all of God’s people and the restoration of God’s good world. God’s freedom-movement is now in full swing and is swiftly breaking upon human affairs. The world is at present being turned upside down; it is at present being made new. Leander Keck summarizes this understanding of the resurrection when he says,

“…the way Paul made Jesus’ cross/resurrection central itself relies on an important dimension of apocalyptic theology. Like Pharisaic, apocalyptic, and earliest Christian theology, Paul regarded resurrection as an eschatological event; whoever affirms that a resurrection has occurred affirms also that an end-time scenario is now launched. This scenario entails the definitive resolution of every aspect of the human dilemma, a resolution which is not the culmination of historical processes but a definitive alternative.”[6]

[1] N.T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 86-7.

[2] Ibid, 103-8.

[3] Ibid, 428.

[4] Ibid, 427.

[5] N.T. Wright, “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins” in Gregorianum vol. 83 no. 4 (2002). Retrieved from www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm on February 27, 2007.

[6] Keck, “Paul and Apocalyptic Theology” (Intepretation) 38.3: 236.

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