The Spirit in the World

Today is Pentecost Sunday and I was asked to cover the adult Sunday School class since our normal teacher was gone.  I, of course, knew what the content would cover and did not really prepare as I usually do.  Instead, we discussed the passages from the lesson (Acts 8, 10-11, 19) and what it means for the Spirit to be poured out on the Samaritans who had professed faith in Christ, the Gentiles who were "God-fearers" and were only afterward baptized into the name of Christ, and the Ephesian disciples of John the baptizer who received the baptism of the Spirit at the hands of the apostle Paul.

As we discussed these passages, I was struck by the presence and work of the Spirit throughout the world among all people.  We discussed that it was God's Spirit no longer remaining with the antediluvians in the days of Noah, and God's indwelling Spirit which sanctified David.  It was also God's Spirit in the unborn John son of Zacharias and Elizabeth that gave testimony to Mary the mother of our Lord.  That same Spirit was present and at work even as the teachers of the Law accused Jesus of casting out unclean spirits by the power of the evil one. 

Through this conversation, I confessed to my congregation that indeed we are simply partners with the Spirit who is present and always has been.  It is about our relationship (read: yielded, obedient, etc.) with the Spirit that affects in what manner we speak of the Spirit being present.  We join the Spirit's already ongoing work.  This is why I can affirm that any of us are ever drawn to salvation, because the Spirit is at work even while and where the Church is not.  However, at the feast of Pentecost, the Church discovers this new-found relationship to the Spirit that drives them to live as the Spirit lives...as those who carry the good news of Christ Jesus come into the world by the Father, crucified, died, buried...raised to life and ascended to the right hand of God.  It is a new day for the disciples of Jesus who have now discovered in the Spirit another "advocate" (a term notably difficult to translate from the Greek) who is like Jesus and reveals Jesus in and through them to a waiting world...a world where the Spirit is already at work to redeem and restore.  This is the Spirit in the world (to be fair...I probably should check out Karl Rahner's book by the same name).

So I was wondering what your thoughts on the presence and activity of the Spirit in the world might be?  Or is the Spirit only present in the Church in your way of reading the Scripture?

Abandoning Heaven

As I've worked my way through Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, I've become convinced that the notion of "heaven" should be rejected as falling short of orthodox Christian confession.  What do I mean by such a thing?  It strikes me that our world largely embraces the notion of "heaven," but that is not the confession of the historic Church.  We do not confess belief in "heaven", but in "the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting".  It is not faith in the Christian sense that is necessary to believe in heaven (I don't know that I know almost anyone who doesn't believe in heaven), but it is this kind of faith that is essential for belief in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.  These two beliefs should not be confused. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not abandoning the truth of God's presence and kingdom as now, but not yet.  What I'm abandoning is the contemporary embrace of "heaven" as a place of disembodied existence.  This fails to account for the very bodily resurrection from the dead of which Christ is the first-fruit.  As the Church, we confess, and long for, a bodily existence that is transformed by the life-giving power of the Spirit which is in Christ Jesus.  Our bodies will most assuredly be raised at the last day, even as we already are living resurrected lives of obedience...yielding our very lives to the Spirit.

Talk of "heaven" though is a disembodied talk.  It is a talk of immaterial "spiritual" existence.  It is not the Biblical doctrine of last things.  The end is an end where the dead in Christ are raised because they have died and been buried with Christ.  This has everything to do with bodily life now.  It is not a sloughing off of this body and an immaterial entrance into a better plane of existence.  It is the transformation of this body, because this body belongs to Christ as we yield all that we are to the obedience of Him.

So I reject the notion of "heaven" and embrace the resurrection and life everlasting...where death has been swallowed up in victory!  Come, Lord Jesus!

N. T. Wright's Justification and the Cry of the Spirit

I finally finished my paper for the Society for Pentecostal Studies meeting in March on N. T. Wright's view of justification.  If you are interested in reading it you can do so over on my Scribd page HERE or following the link through my "Writings" page (the footnotes are a bit goofy due to Scribd's manner of formatting, but can be followed despite this).  This paper is supposed to eventually go to print (sometime this year) as part of an edited volume of the five papers that will be presented as a part of the N T Wright panel on justification (though I still don't know the details of this edited volume).  Here's the lineup for Memphis's presentations and the title/s:

Pentecostal Responses to N.T. Wright

Jenny Everts, Hope College, Chair

Glen Menzies, North Central University, Presenter
"Vocations of Israel and Israel‘s Messiah"

Joonho Yoon, Drew University, Presenter 
 "By Faith in Work or by Work in Faith?: Rahab‘s Justification from the Perspective of Neither New or Old"

Christopher Green, Oral Roberts University, Presenter
"Who Do I Say I Am?: A Pentecostal Response to N.T. Wright‘s Proposals on Jesus‘ Messianic Self-Understanding"

Rick Wadholm, Providence Theological Seminary, Presenter
"N.T. Wright's Justification and the Cry of the Spirit"

Frank D. Macchia, Vanguard University, Presenter
"The Church and the Economy of Salvation: An Interaction with N.T. Wright‘s Theology of Justification by Faith"

I'd love to know what anyone thinks of my paper.  :-).

Worship of the Living and the Dead

Strange are the self-worshipers, since they worship carrion.

(Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran pg. 53)

Oh, that we would recognize our death, as the very dry bones filling the valley of Ezekiel's vision (Eze.37)!  Our sins have slain us and we are destroyed.  We lay scattered in all our macabre regalia...kings and paupers, priests and prophets, farmers and soldiers, clergy and laity.  How will we ever be saved if we cannot even cry out for lack of flesh for our dry bones, lack of breath to cry out to the only One who could answer?  Where is that one who will speak to the valley of dry bones and prophesy that we might be clothed with flesh and flesh clothed with skin?  Where, again, is that breath from the Living LORD that will blow and fill that valley and fill that mighty army to live as we were created to?  May the Spirit of Life speak through His people and give life to all who hear and may these dry, dry bones live and be made flesh and be filled with the breath of life!  And may we truly worship the Lord and Giver of Life and not the dry, dry bones....

Forever Listening to the Spirit

I recently read something by Lesslie Newbigin (that great missionary statesman of the twentieth century) that struck a chord with me.  He wrote the following concerning the Jerusalem congregation's recognition of the validity of the Gentile mission that Peter had just returned from (Acts 10-11):

"They were silenced because they had to recognize something new. Jesus had never spoken or acted to call in question the law of circumcision (as he had called in question the law of the Sabbath). The Church was entering a new way which it had not trodden before. Nor did the Church formulate a new policy in this matter by reflection upon and development of the remembered words of Jesus. It was a fresh action of the living Spirit which confronted the Church with the necessity for a new decision. 'The word of Jesus is not a collection of doctrines that is in need of supplementation, nor is it a developing principle that will only be unfolded in the history of ideas; as the Spirit's proclamation it always remains the word spoken into the world from beyond' (Bultmann). But this word is the word of Jesus; it is not another word. The work of the Spirit does not lead past, or beyond, or away from Jesus." (The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B.Eerdmans, 1982, pp.216-7)

We, as well, cannot simply treat the Scriptures as a comprehensive list (or we may end up being no different than some of the Pharisees of Jesus' own day--unless we take the New Pauline Perspective on the Pharisees as genuine) of do's and don't's. In every age we are called to listen to the voice of the Spirit which is the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to His Church the very words of his Father. None of this is to suggest that there will be any discord between what God has spoken, is speaking and will speak. The Scriptures are our measure, but the Scriptures are not simply words that can be adopted apart from the working of the Holy Spirit within us. This means that in all of our hearing, we must press in to hear exactly what the Spirit is saying and once we have heard...to obey.

Remember Me...

As I was reading Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007) today I was struck by several comments made in regard to "remembering" (specifically in reference to John's Gospel account) and how they might relate to the "remembering" of the Lord's Supper. In light of the "remembering" concerning Christ that occurs after the resurrection of our Lord (and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit), there is something profound that occurs at the table of the Lord.

The Resurrection teaches us a new way of seeing...it makes it possible to enter into the interiority of the events into the intrinsic coherence of God's speaking and acting (pg.232).

The "remembering" is not simply an intellectual assent to bare facts (like remembering some event that occured in the past), but a "remembering" that is vivified by the Holy Spirit; it gives life to those who "remember" and death to those who partake of it in an "unworthy manner" and thereby are disdaining the body and blood of Christ (see 1 Cor.11:27-30). It is a "remembering" that incorporates us into the hidden life of Christ; incorporates us into the very real life of the Trinity.  It is a "remembering" that changes everything...it is both of thought, word and action.  It is a "remembering" that bridges the gap of 2000 years and participates in the ever present life of the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus who is now seated at the right hand of the Father where we are already present with Him (Eph.2:6) and where He is already present with us by His indwelling and empowering Spirit (Matt.28:20).

This remembering is an understanding under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; by remembering, the believer enters into the depth of the event and sees what could not be seen on an immediate and merely superficial level....This remembering is no mere psychological or intellectual process; it is a pneumatic event [i.e., an event imbued with the Pneuma, or the Holy Spirit]. The Church's remembering is not merely a private affair; it transcends the sphere of our own human understanding and knowing. It is a being-led by the Holy Spirit, who shows us the connectedness of Scripture, the connection between word and reality, and, in doing that, leads us "into all truth" (pgs.233-234).

I certainly reject transubstantiation concerning Communion, but affirm a real presence of Christ by the Holy Spirit that does not actually involve a changing of the elements of the bread and cup. Christ is truly present in the "remembering" that is empowered by the Holy Spirit...the "remembering" that proclaims Christ Jesus death until he comes again (1 Cor.11:26).  May we "remember" until that glorious Day!