Archive for May, 2009

Taking Pentecost Seriously

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The last Sunday of this month will be Pentecost Sunday, and unfortunately very few churches in America will make very much of it. Allow me to share with you why that is spiritually regrettable.

Pentecost is, of course, the day when the disciples in the upper room were gathered and the Holy Spirit filled the room and the disciples. They spoke in the languages of the people gathered in Jerusalem for the feast and those people heard the witness of the mighty acts of God. This day was promised to the disciples by Jesus himself. He told them to go to Jerusalem and “wait for the promise of the Father.” He had pledged to them that this gift would grant them the power to be his witnesses.Yet, we fail to understand the absolutely crucial meaning of Pentecost.

Pentecost is the fulfillment of Jesus Christ’s incarnation and ministry. Recall, for a moment, how Jesus is introduced to us in the four Gospels. In all four Gospel accounts (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3, John 1), Jesus is identified not only as the one who would save the people from their sins, but as the one who would “baptize in the Holy Spirit.” He did not come just to make forgiveness possible. Rather, he came so that we might receive the Holy Spirit.

When we see the meaning and purpose of Jesus Christ’s coming in these terms, the significance of Pentecost becomes clear: the purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world begins to be fulfilled in Pentecost. Only when the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples in the upper room is the work of his Incarnate life completed.

Peter bears witness to the significance of Jesus’ life and death in his sermon on Pentecost. In so doing he indicates how the events of that day were actually a fulfillment of God’s plan. He quotes from the prophet Joel, telling them that what they are witnessing is not an out of control party, but the accomplishment of a prophecy:

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. 18And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy.19 I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. 20The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.21And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved” (Acts 2:17 – 21).The great Apostle tells us that the events of that day are evidence that “the last days” have begun. And the focus of those last days, from God’s perspective, is that He will “pour out the Holy Spirit” in a dramatically new way. God will begin to dwell in the hearts of all his people. Most fundamentally it means that God comes at Pentecost to begin to dwell in the lives of the every member of the community of Jesus’ disciples.

This was a radical notion for a first century Jewish person, because in the Old Testament the Spirit only was given to certain leaders who had close and immediate intimacy with God. But according to several Old Testament prophecies, God’s desire was that all of his people receive the presence of the Holy Spirit. The implications of this are as clear as they are astounding — the Almighty God unites his own presence and life to believers at Pentecost. Could it be that the very purpose of creation was always so that God could dwell, not just with us, but in our lives as a personal presence?

Think about that for a moment! If God begins to dwell in the lives of persons at Pentecost, it means that the disciples of Jesus Christ do not live their faith in the limitations of their own strength. A brand new set of possibilities has been introduced into our lives. In Jesus, through whom the Spirit is poured out upon our lives, we now have in our lives the same presence that rested upon Jesus Christ at his baptism. Of course, none of us are divine or eternally the Son of God, but we nonetheless have been allowed to “partake of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4.)

This means that — unimaginably — the character of Jesus Christ has broken into our lives. Something of the joy that Jesus Christ’s lived in is given to us, as well as a share in his own courage. His confidence in God is put in our hearts and his willingness to endure suffering. Most importantly, however, the love that Jesus had in his own life is now a possibility in us. No wonder we are called not only to believe in him, but to be like him. That would be an impossible task, were it not for Pentecost. But Pentecost has come!

The gift of the Holy Spirit points us to another reality, as well. Our Father sends the Holy Spirit upon the gathered presence of his people. Only corporately is the Spirit received on the day of Pentecost. This should tell us that the life of fellowship with others and intimacy with God go hand in hand. The Spirit does not fall upon Peter, James, and John and all the others in individual order. Acts 2 emphasizes that the Spirit fell when they were together and of “one accord.” Their identity in Jesus was the focus of their fellowship. Together they were waiting upon the Father’s gift. When the Holy Spirit is truly at work in our lives we find ourselves drawn into fellowship. And we also find ourselves creating Christian fellowship for others.

In the third millennium, people are looking for authentic spiritual life. In the book of Acts we are told that the Lord “added daily [to the fellowship of the Church] those who were being saved” (Acts 2). Perhaps if we open our lives to the fullness of the Spirit, spiritually hungry people might be drawn into the joy, hope, peace, love, and integrity of our various churches and their fellowship. We don’t need evangelism programs, although there is nothing wrong with a good program. We don’t need more attractive facilities, even if having adequate ones is a way to honor God. We don’t need more contemporary or more traditional worship. What we need is the life changing fullness of the Holy Spirit to capture our lives.

This Pentecost Sunday let us remember the great gift of God and open our hearts to His fullness. And may our prayer be for churches to be truly temples of the Holy Spirit.

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What Kind of God?

Friday, May 15th, 2009

What are we to make of the current explosion of interest in “spirituality” in American culture?

On the one hand we should rejoice that people are looking for answers to life’s deepest questions about meaning and significance. It is always a good thing when people realize that there is more to life than the material and the immediate. Such a realization is the beginning of the journey that can, by grace, lead a person to God in Jesus Christ.

But on the other hand…

Being “spiritual” is not the same thing as being Christian, or even being interested in the God that we Christian say is the One True God. In fact, in some instances the reality of God is too much for people to accept. God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, is not the kind of God their spirituality can accept, or perhaps even want.

The Apostle Paul experienced this reality in his discussions with the theologians and philosophers in Athens. In Acts 17 we read about the great Saint’s encounter with these folks who were deeply interested in questions about God. They loved to hear about new ideas, so they entertained his message about Jesus. However, when they heard Paul say that God had raised Jesus from the dead, much of the audience laughed at such a preposterous notion. But some of them, to their credit, said, “we want to hear more about this later.” The result of the interaction was that a few of those who heard about the God of Paul became followers of Jesus.

It is interesting to wonder what it was about the resurrection story that caused some to laugh and others perhaps to treat it like an intriguing, but not compelling, idea. We might think the answer obvious — dead men do not ordinarily rise from the dead. But I think that there is a deeper rationale that can inform us today when we look at all the various spiritualities on the cultural horizon. The key to understanding the response of the Athenian people might be found in Luke’s description in Acts of the intellectual preconceived ideas of a good part of Paul’s audience.

Luke tells us that along with the regular citizens who heard Paul were “Epicureans and Stoics.” Without going into a long lesson in the history of philosophy, we can just note that Epicureans and Stoics represented two of the dominant philosophical/religious systems of the time. Epicureans contended that fulfillment was the ultimate value to seek; and according to their view no god would interest himself or herself in human affairs, since to trouble themselves with human circumstances would interrupt their own state of blessed peace and divine self-interestedness. The Stoics, on the other hand, believed in an absolutely deterministic universe. “God” for the Stoics was just the principle of fate. The idea of God “acting” to do anything was utterly foreign to them. Therefore, Paul’s claim that God raised Jesus from the dead was for these persons laughable. The God Paul was talking about was not a God they could even begin to desire; their worldview had no place for such a God.

It is often difficult for Christians to figure out why non-believers do not find the Gospel attractive. No doubt there are many reasons; and the disconnect between many Christians’ talk and their walk is no doubt part of the reason However, there is another factor that is rooted in the nature of some people’s “spiritual” hungers. The impulse toward spirituality in contemporary America, while it has many different expressions, can be broken down into two basic categories. There are those persons who find the thought of God being active in our world and our lives — and making demands upon us or even imposing limits upon our desires — a welcome, if not comforting, revelation. In this outlook, God’s will is considered to be good and purpose-giving, even as it thwarts some of our self-made ideas or plans. For these kinds of people, the Gospel message of repentance and obedience and faith is attractive, even if they do not always live up to its fullness.

But there is another, very different, kind of spiritual worldview one can encounter in our world. On this view, the idea of a God who makes demands or places limits on our own self-understanding is a threat. So, the God of Jesus Christ is an unwelcome alien in a world where self-defined happiness, self-creative pleasure, and self-fulfilling activity are the highest ideals. The fulfillment of the self is the goal of this way of looking at the “spiritual” life. Much of the feelings and impulses that folks express in America today are merely a spiritualized hedonism.

In this kind of “spirituality” God is usually described in very Christian sounding terms, such as “God is love” or “God accepts all people just as they are.” These statements, however, are nothing but Gospel sound-bites unless one defines which God we are talking about. If we affirm God is love, for instance, that could mean that God would never judge anyone for being sinful. If one’s view of God is that God does not make demands or place limits on our own self-seeking ways, then this is what God’s “love” means. However, if the God we are talking about when we affirm God’s “acceptance” of all people has established a moral order to His universe — and especially upon those who bear His image — then “God is love” entails the acknowledgement that BECAUSE God loves us God will correct us and judge us so that we can reflect the goodness of God’s will for our lives.

What kind of God, then, do people who claim to be spiritual want? This is a pivotal question! The God who raised Jesus from the dead is the God who strikes fear into the hearts of many, because they fear anything that would impose a will other than their own upon their lives. So much the sadder for them.

As we share the Gospel, we must always remember that the only God we Christians have to offer is the God who gets involved in the world’s affairs — who sticks the divine “nose” into our business. However, as those who know the goodness of the Savior-raising Father Almighty, it is not enough that we merely acknowledge the short-sightedness or self-centeredness of the perspective of those who fear the One True God. Instead, we must live our lives in such a way that the joyfulness of radical obedience to the Will that is not our own, the peace of radical trust in the One who acts in our world, and the fulfillment of radical surrender to the God who has been made known in Jesus Christ is made evident to all who want a different kind of God. Perhaps then some might see that the God they want is way too small.

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