O God, who deemed the creation exceedingly good, richly supplies us with all things to enjoy, and through the raising of Jesus from the dead infuses the world with life ever new: awaken in your people an undreamt-of love for life, loosen the shackles of cynicism and jaded despair and lighten upon us the daybreak colors of the new creation, that as we open to the world, faith, hope and love would once again flow freely in the risky endeavor of whole-hearted living, expecting the rebirth of everything that lives by the quickening of the Spirit, and with this expectation, experiencing our own rebirth, and the rebirth we share with everything else, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Inspired by Jurgen Moltman’s Spirit of Life

Related posts

• Resurrection and New Creation (Part 2) – Whirlwind Tour of the Gospel of John (3)
• Resurrection and New Creation (Part 1) – The Jewish Concept of Resurrection (5)
• Resurrection and Justification Part 1 (0)
• New Creation…Starting Now (3)
• Maintaining Hope in the Journey (Principles and Practices for the Spiritual Life Part 2d) (1)

In the last post, I proposed that the revelation of the divine name “Yahweh” to Moses at the burning bush is better translated “I will be” rather than “I AM.” Instead of relating to static categories of existence or other such metaphysical qualities Greek philosophers were interested in, it pertains to the future of God’s faithfulness to his word in time-space history. It has been said in many times and places that in ancient culture one’s name was not simply a tag enabling one to address another in conversation. Names convey character, quality and essence. If this is the case, and this name “I will be” is strategically unveiled in connection with the Exodus event, this means that the revelation of God’s self is not truly contained within the name, but in the yet outstanding future of God’s covenant faithfulness. In other words, if God’s name is “I will be,” the primary revelation of God lies in future historical events that confirm his faithfulness.

In theology this is referred to as revelation through history in contrast to inspiration. Historical revelation is conveyed objectively through occurrences and events in history. Inspiration is conveyed through subjective experiences, often in which the “word of God” is communicated. Both are important in the Biblical record, but the historical dimensions of revelation are often overlooked and emphasis unduly falls on the verbal dimensions of revelation. At times “revelation” becomes reducible to either the words of the Bible, specific “words from God,” or propositional statements about Christian truth. However, the concept of historical revelation conveys an idea we all intuitively know from everyday life: we know more about a person from what they do than from what they say about themselves. The repetition of propositional statements despite contrary concrete experiential evidence convinces few people of truth. To be loved in both word and deed is critical, but when loving words remain in the absence of loving action, the words become reduced to meaninglessness. It is extremely difficult to maintain a proposition “God is good” without historical evidence of God’s goodness.

Furthermore, the events of God in history cannot be simply translated into propositions in the same way we know from everyday life that verbal communication about an event cannot communicate the full wealth of meaning contained in the experience. This points to the depth of meaning in the historical revelation of God that is a necessary complement to revelation by inspiration. The person with the experience and the person with the report about the experience do not have the same meaning. If at this point an appeal to the Holy Spirit is made, how can the illuminative agency of the Spirit be understood verbally? Does the Spirit simply repeat the words of Scripture to us, or give us new ways of expressing them? If we understand that the Holy Spirit illuminates the words of Scripture as profoundly meaningful (through the generation of faith?), then this meaning (faith/belief/trust/assurance) must be recognized as something that is extra-verbal and extra-rational. It is not a given in the verbal concepts themselves.

Language and words are simultaneously translators and traitors of meaning because, even in the pinnacle of expression, they fail to fully convey “what the presence of meaning wishes to say about itself” (Derrida). Even if one believes that discourse represents reality (as opposed to constructing or constituting reality), one cannot say that discourse completely conveys reality, even if God is speaking. Therefore, informative and instrumental communication is incomplete. Reality is too big to fit into propositions.

Though seemingly “rediscovered” in the twentieth century, the authors of the Biblical text readily understood this concept as demonstrated by the emphasis on the historical revelation of God. It was not sufficient to say that God was good, loving, patient, forgiving, etc. The very words demand their historical demonstration lest their sincerity be indubitably falsified. Many verses describe how God is known through what he does, particularly the exodus events. The primary way the people of Israel understood themselves and God historically was through the Exodus. He is the freedom God, the faithful God, the God of deliverance:

Ex. 7.5 – “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.”
Exod. 20:2-3 – “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me.
Ex. 29.46 – “They shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God.
Deut. 4:35 – To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him.
Deut. 7:8-9 – the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 “Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

Even more significant than the link between revelation and the exodus event is the expected revelation of God in a future definitive intervention in which God would show himself to be faithful to his word in restoring his people.

This concept is often seen with the phrase “in that day/then you will know that I am the Lord:”

Is. 49.23 – “Kings will be your guardians, And their princesses your nurses. They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth And lick the dust of your feet; And you will know that I am the LORD; Those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.
Is. 60.16 – “You will also suck the milk of nations And suck the breast of kings; Then you will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
Ezek. 37.13 – “Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people.
Hos. 2.20 – And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.
Joel 3.17 – Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy, And strangers will pass through it no more.

But the “then you will know” formula is not necessarily present:

Is. 25.9 – And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”
Is. 52.10 – The LORD has bared His holy arm In the sight of all the nations, That all the ends of the earth may see The salvation of our God.
Is. 66.13 – “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”
14 Then you will see this, and your heart will be glad, And your bones will flourish like the new grass; And the hand of the LORD will be made known to His servants, But He will be indignant toward His enemies.
Psa. 98.2 – The LORD has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. 3 He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Ezekiel 36:36 – Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the LORD, have spoken and will do it.”

The final, definitive revelation of God comes at the end of history. Revelation of God is ultimately eschatological. This then means that, in a sense, all revelation we have of God now is partial and provisional. It awaits a final word yet to come. This “final word” comes at the end, when God renews all things.

Thus far, I have only been explicating this concept from Old Testament passages, but will illustrate it with simply one passage from the New Testament. Revelation 22:4 makes a startling declaration in saying that “they will see his face.” In the New Heavens and New Earth, the people of God who have overcome look into the very face of God. This is remarkable considering that strands of tradition explicitly state that those who see the face of God would die. Seeing the face of God means direct unmediated contact and full revelation. This realm is inaccessible to mortals. In the first chapter of John we are told that no one has seen God at any time. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that we “see in a glass dimly” and that even the best of us only “know in part.” However, when God renews all things, when he makes his definitive intervention and transformation of history, we will see him face to face. This full revelation awaits a time in the future when the fulfillment of every promise of God is made fully manifest. In the New Creation we will see God fully as He is. “Only God’s final revelation at the end of history will bring with it final knowledge of the content and truth of the act of God in Jesus of Nazareth. God alone has the competence to speak the final word about God’s work in history” (Wolfhart Pannenberg).

Related posts

• New Exodus – Part 1 – The Divine Name (3)
• Reading the Bible in the Right Direction (Part 4) – The Overarching Story of Scripture (26)
• Reading the Bible in the Right Direction (Part 2) (27)
• Pentecost – The Coming of the Holy Spirit (0)
• New Exodus – Part 3 – The Ending of Exile (5)

In a few posts I’ve included prayers for the current season that have been taken from established liturgies. The following is my first hand at writing my own prayers in a liturgical style. It is based on the readings that are in the Revised Common Lectionary (a three year cycle of scheduled readings which is followed by dozens of denominations) for this week (Epiphany 2 year A) including Isaiah 49 and John 1:29-42.

The Lord be with you
(All) and also with you.

Lift up your hearts.
(All) We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
(All) It is right to give thanks and praise.

It is right, and a good and joyful thing,
always and everywhere to give thanks to you,
Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,

For the glory of your Son
Was revealed to us as the Passover lamb
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Ending the exile of fallen humanity.
Even when we turned from you,
Each of us going our own way,
You saw our wanderings.
You took note of our lamentation.
You heard the cry of our groaning world,
beholding our affliction, our toil and our oppression.
Like a mother you could not forget your nursing infant,
or fail to have compassion on the child of your womb.
Brooding over this bent and broken world,
you sent forth your Son as the light to the nations
so your salvation might reach the ends of the earth,
That through his life he might render powerless the power of death
And save us from slavery to the fear of the same,
Leading us out of bondage and everlasting night
Through the waters of baptism and the wilderness of life
To the glorious new creation of all things:
Your new heavens and new earth
Where justice is at home.

Therefore we praise you, joining with Angels and Archangels
And with all the company of heaven
Who for ever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your Name:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Related posts

• Pentecost – The Coming of the Holy Spirit (0)
• Prayers for Revival – The Spirit of Prayer (0)
• Jesus the Crucified and Resurrected Lord Part 1 (0)
• A Prayer for Epiphany (0)
• Will You Forget Me Forever? (1)

This past Sunday was Pentecost, a day on which believers for many, many years have celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell with and within the people of God.

Even before it was a celebration of the Spirit coming from heaven, it was commemorated by Jews for the coming of God’s law, “from heaven” at Mount Sinai after they were freed from slavery in Egypt. I don’t know about you, but I personally have a hard time believing that the gift of the Spirit “just happened” to be given to that fledgling Jewish movement around 30 AD, on the same day they were remembering God’s gift of the Law. God could have chosen any day to launch this fearful group of disciples who were hiding in a back room and launch them into public, joyful, powerful mission in the world. Why this day? Was it just a coincidence?

The plot becomes thicker when we remember that the death and resurrection of the Messiah took place in context to the celebration of Passover, the commemoration of Israel’s freedom and deliverance from slavery in Egypt, which we now call the Exodus. The Jewish people were celebrating their deliverance from Egypt as Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. The Jewish people were celebrating the giving of the law at Mount Sinai following their deliverance from Egypt, as the Holy Spirit descended, filled and empowered a small Messianic movement who had seen the resurrected Lord with their own eyes.

What can this mean except that what God was doing in and through Jesus the Messiah and the Holy Spirit was not in absolute discontinuity with Israel’s history with God. Rather, it was in dynamic continuity with their historic experience of God’s covenant love and His faithfulness to the promises He had made. In a very real sense, what was happening was a New Exodus. God was being faithful to his covenant people yet again. He was delivering them out of slavery, not simply from slavery to one nation, but from all the powers of darkness and evil. In a marvelous way, this salvation was being offered universally to people of all nations.

In the first Exodus, God gathered Israel to Himself from Egypt. Now, in this New Exodus in the Messiah, people of many nations were being drawn to Him. On the first day the Spirit fell, there were people from all over the then-known world celebrating the Passover. When the Spirit came upon the disciples, they began speaking about the great works of God, that is of the resurrection of Jesus, and each person, regardless of their national origin, heard them speaking in their own language. Could this be a reversal of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11? There, all the people spoke one language, but because they planned evil together, God scattered them by giving them all different languages so they could not understand each other. In some way, at Pentecost, God began regathering humanity out of its long exile to which it was sent by the fall of Adam and Eve and the separation of the nations at Babel. Though from diverse nations and cultures, these people were experiencing unity with God and each other through the gift of the Spirit and fateful events from millennia prior were being overturned by the mighty hand of God.

Let’s not allow this season pass us by without celebrating and remembering the great acts of God in the resurrection of the Messiah and the gift of the Spirit. Through them a New Exodus is happening in which all who call on His name will be saved and even the “entire creation will be set free” (Rom. 8.23). Death has been defeated. The Holy Spirit has been sent forth, renewing the face of earth. It is the “unrestricted presence of God in which our life wakes up” and all things are made new (Rev. 21:4). Where relationships were severed, personally, corporately, nationally and culturally; the door has swung open for them to be renewed and restored by the power of the Holy Spirit. “On this day the Lord has acted. Let us rejoice and be glad in Him!” (Ps. 118:24).

Related posts

• The Spirit of the Resurrection Part 2: Gnosticism and Schizoid Spirituality (3)
• The Spirit of the Resurrection (0)
• New Exodus – Part 2 – The Historical Revelation of God (1)
• When the Day of Pentecost had Fully Come (Part 1) (0)
• The Relationship of Christianity to Other Religions (4)

This is my first and rather uneventful entry in my new blog. I figure for such a moment I should do nothing more or less than plot my course. I like to think of myself as a pilgrim, living in a world of sorrow, pain, death and decay with my sights set on a Day yet to come when the old order of things will pass away and all things are made new, when Jesus himself will establish justice, truth, freedom and love in the entire earth, and bring all who are His into the eternal fellowship of his family. Yet even now, an undreamt of love for life can emerge as glimmers of the coming Day of God diffuse over the horizon, as the image of God’s fair beauty shines forth victorious over the blight of a broken world. So that’s what I plan to do here: share some thoughts, mostly from Scripture, but occasionally from telling experiences, that may strengthen your heart in hope and your life in the noble task of giving yourself as a gift of love to God, his people and all creation.

Related posts

• Maintaining Hope in the Journey (Principles and Practices for the Spiritual Life Part 2d) (1)
• Resurrection and New Creation (Part 2) – Whirlwind Tour of the Gospel of John (3)
• Prayers for Revival – The Spirit of Prayer (0)
• Out of Exile: When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 4) (0)
• Will You Forget Me Forever? (1)