Beginnings after Endings--August 22, 2017
[Peter said to the
crowd in Jerusalem:] "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this
be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you
suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was
spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall
dream dreams. Even on my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour
out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven
above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun
shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the
Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
shall be saved'." [Acts 2:14b-21]
It's like a whole world ending... and a whole new one coming to life.
That may sound overly dramatic to our ears. But in all honesty, if we take seriously what the Reign of God in Jesus is all about, it will sound to us like the ending and the beginning of a whole new world, a whole new order of things. And once you are cued in on the new thing that Mercy is up to in the world, you cannot help but see things differently--like you are living at the overlap of the ends of the ages.... like the whole world is being made new.
Peter gets that.
In fact, what our narrator Luke gives us here as Peter's off-the-cuff speech on the day of Pentecost is all about seeing the ending of an old world order and the beginning of a whole new creation... right in the midst of the world looking like it always had. These words of Peter's are framed as Peter's response to the confused crowds in Jerusalem after the Spirit had been poured out on the followers of Jesus to gather in people from all languages and nations, all customs and cultures (yes, side note, that is always how the community of Jesus has been intended to look--it was multilingual and multinational from Day One).
And as Pete sees that happening, as he hears the different languages, as he sees visitors from foreign nations all across the empire coming to hear the Good News of Jesus, he sees that this is what God had been promising all along. And Peter finally understands that even the ancient prophets of old looked ahead to a day when God would act to welcome all, to send he Spirit on all sorts of surprising folks, and to change the vision of people in unexpected places from unexpected corners.
This passage from Acts, as you might be able to tell, is largely Peter quoting from the prophet Joel, and Joel himself had been describing some future moment he calls "the Day of the Lord." And at least on Joel's lips, that sounds at first blush like a scary moment. The sun goes dark, the moon goes blood red--it's like the most solid, most constant things you could think of in the ancient world all suddenly get wobbly. And Joel sees these as going hand in hand with the moment when God pours out the Spirit "on all flesh." Men and women. Old and young. Rich and poor. Even those still caught under the wheel of slavery. All people, not just a select few, or the priests, or the religious professionals. As Joel saw it, when God would do something like that, it would feel like the whole tired mess of the old world was coming to an end, and a whole new creation was being born.
Now flash forward about... oh, maybe seven hundred years, and there is Simon Peter watching the Spirit rush through his previously scaredy-cat friends (we usually call them "the Apostles," but come on, until this moment, they were all pretty cowardly when push came to shove). And Peter sees the way even these uneducated fisherman, ex-revolutionaries and former tax collectors are given the presence of the Spirit and the ability for others to understand their words in many languages. And Peter realizes that this is what it looks like when God sends the Spirit--everybody is welcomed. Everybody in their own language. Everybody as they are. And Peter says, in effect, "This is what Joel was talking about! This is it happening before your very eyes!" even if, to everybody else's eyes, it was just an ordinary Sunday morning at 9:00am.
It's funny to me: Peter has no problem seeing this moment, with the many languages and the wind of the Spirit rushing through them, as the fulfillment of Joel's vision--even though there are none of the scary signs that Joel had talked about. No sun into darkness--not even a partial eclipse. No red moon. No blood or fire. Not even a whiff of "smoky mist." None of the scary celestial signs or astronomical anomalies happened that day--but still Peter is convinced that this is what Joel was talking about all along. (This is perhaps a warning to us about how we read the prophets ourselves--sometimes religious folks want to turn the prophets into fortune tellers or Nostradamus-types, but they are just as often poets who are describing touchable, tangible human events with the startling language they need to use to get people's attention.) Peter sees that the coming of the Spirit really is like the ending of an old regime and the beginning of something new, like the whole world was born all over again.
And maybe even Peter himself doesn't quite grasp yet just how radical a moment this is. But it won't be long in the book of Acts before God uses this same Peter to reach out even wider to include and welcome outsiders, Gentiles, and even members of the enemy occupying army (like Cornelius the centurion, to whom Peter will be sent soon in the book of Acts). Peter is witnessing the creation of a whole new way of being human--one that is no longer bound up with separate ethnicities or exclusion based on language. He sees that God is creating a new kind of community based on the grip of Mercy, not on our DNA. And that floors him. That is like the end of a world and the start of a new humanity. Peter says, "That's what Joel was getting at all along." Peter took his Bible seriously... but he was able to see that Joel was less interested in predicting eclipses as he was in envisioning God's Reign breaking in.
We have a way sometimes of missing the boat, we Christians. (Surprise, surprise, right?) We have a way of not being able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the words of these ancient poets and dreamers we call the prophets. Instead of trying to sift through their visions looking for clues about the "end times" or trying to tie in yesterday's eclipse with some ancient scripture passage, perhaps we could listen the way Peter did--to see that the real end-of-the-world moment was also the beginning of a whole new creation, the inauguration of the Spirit-led movement of the followers of Jesus. So often, we stifle and squelch what God has been trying to do--we end up further dividing ourselves, and acting like the old lines of language, nationality, and culture still must divide us, like the old allegiances still claim us. So often we accept those as givens, while trying to figure out what astronomical signs some old prophet was trying to predict. Instead, we ought to be hearing the prophets tell us together that God is doing a new thing--a thing meant for all, for me... for you... and for people you don't particularly like, too.
If we listen to Peter there on the day of Pentecost, we will find our eyes are changed. We will begin to see, with him, how God has begun a new creation right in the midst of the old order. We will see that God has breathed a new breath into the universe, and just like the Spirit brooded over the waters at creation, now the same God has breathed the Spirit onto the motley crew that makes up the Kingdom. We will see, as we look at how varied the faces, how different the voices, how many the languages and cultures and customs of people who are being gathered into God's New Thing. We will see that the old way of living in the world--divided and segregated and isolated from one another, viewing the other with suspicion and fear--is coming to an end. We will see that God has begun a new order of the day, and it is taking shape among us right now... right here... right before our very eyes.
One of the things I noticed about the eclipse that unfolded across our country yesterday was how it was either noticeable or ignorable, depending on whether one had the right eyesight to recognize it. From here in western Pennsylvania, we had only 80% coverage in the eclipse, which meant that when we were right in the thick of it, you might not have even noticed. The sky looked a little dimmer, but no darker than if it were an ordinarily cloudy day. And if you did something foolish and ill-advised like staring at the sun without the right kind of glasses, you wouldn't have even noticed anything different, simply because of the overwhelming brightness of the sun. But on the other hand, if you had eclipse glasses--a product that was just about everywhere if you were so inclined to get them--you could see the eclipse happening and stare in wonder and awe at the brightness of the sun transforming into a slim crescent. Same planet. Same sun. Same afternoon. Same spot on earth. But the difference was whether you had the new eyesight to see what was happening right over your own head. No eclipse glasses, and you missed a wonder that hasn't happened across the entire continental United States for a century. But with the new kind of vision that a half-decent pair of eclipse glasses afforded, you could see the sun slowly getting swallowed up by the moon and then coming out the other side like it was brand new.
That's what Peter says we are offered as well. That's what the Spirit gives among us, too--the gift of a new way of seeing that changes everything and includes everyone. We will get to see signs that God is doing something new and wonderful ... and then we will get to be a part of it, too.
Great God, do your new thing among us, and help us to see it.
That may sound overly dramatic to our ears. But in all honesty, if we take seriously what the Reign of God in Jesus is all about, it will sound to us like the ending and the beginning of a whole new world, a whole new order of things. And once you are cued in on the new thing that Mercy is up to in the world, you cannot help but see things differently--like you are living at the overlap of the ends of the ages.... like the whole world is being made new.
Peter gets that.
In fact, what our narrator Luke gives us here as Peter's off-the-cuff speech on the day of Pentecost is all about seeing the ending of an old world order and the beginning of a whole new creation... right in the midst of the world looking like it always had. These words of Peter's are framed as Peter's response to the confused crowds in Jerusalem after the Spirit had been poured out on the followers of Jesus to gather in people from all languages and nations, all customs and cultures (yes, side note, that is always how the community of Jesus has been intended to look--it was multilingual and multinational from Day One).
And as Pete sees that happening, as he hears the different languages, as he sees visitors from foreign nations all across the empire coming to hear the Good News of Jesus, he sees that this is what God had been promising all along. And Peter finally understands that even the ancient prophets of old looked ahead to a day when God would act to welcome all, to send he Spirit on all sorts of surprising folks, and to change the vision of people in unexpected places from unexpected corners.
This passage from Acts, as you might be able to tell, is largely Peter quoting from the prophet Joel, and Joel himself had been describing some future moment he calls "the Day of the Lord." And at least on Joel's lips, that sounds at first blush like a scary moment. The sun goes dark, the moon goes blood red--it's like the most solid, most constant things you could think of in the ancient world all suddenly get wobbly. And Joel sees these as going hand in hand with the moment when God pours out the Spirit "on all flesh." Men and women. Old and young. Rich and poor. Even those still caught under the wheel of slavery. All people, not just a select few, or the priests, or the religious professionals. As Joel saw it, when God would do something like that, it would feel like the whole tired mess of the old world was coming to an end, and a whole new creation was being born.
Now flash forward about... oh, maybe seven hundred years, and there is Simon Peter watching the Spirit rush through his previously scaredy-cat friends (we usually call them "the Apostles," but come on, until this moment, they were all pretty cowardly when push came to shove). And Peter sees the way even these uneducated fisherman, ex-revolutionaries and former tax collectors are given the presence of the Spirit and the ability for others to understand their words in many languages. And Peter realizes that this is what it looks like when God sends the Spirit--everybody is welcomed. Everybody in their own language. Everybody as they are. And Peter says, in effect, "This is what Joel was talking about! This is it happening before your very eyes!" even if, to everybody else's eyes, it was just an ordinary Sunday morning at 9:00am.
It's funny to me: Peter has no problem seeing this moment, with the many languages and the wind of the Spirit rushing through them, as the fulfillment of Joel's vision--even though there are none of the scary signs that Joel had talked about. No sun into darkness--not even a partial eclipse. No red moon. No blood or fire. Not even a whiff of "smoky mist." None of the scary celestial signs or astronomical anomalies happened that day--but still Peter is convinced that this is what Joel was talking about all along. (This is perhaps a warning to us about how we read the prophets ourselves--sometimes religious folks want to turn the prophets into fortune tellers or Nostradamus-types, but they are just as often poets who are describing touchable, tangible human events with the startling language they need to use to get people's attention.) Peter sees that the coming of the Spirit really is like the ending of an old regime and the beginning of something new, like the whole world was born all over again.
And maybe even Peter himself doesn't quite grasp yet just how radical a moment this is. But it won't be long in the book of Acts before God uses this same Peter to reach out even wider to include and welcome outsiders, Gentiles, and even members of the enemy occupying army (like Cornelius the centurion, to whom Peter will be sent soon in the book of Acts). Peter is witnessing the creation of a whole new way of being human--one that is no longer bound up with separate ethnicities or exclusion based on language. He sees that God is creating a new kind of community based on the grip of Mercy, not on our DNA. And that floors him. That is like the end of a world and the start of a new humanity. Peter says, "That's what Joel was getting at all along." Peter took his Bible seriously... but he was able to see that Joel was less interested in predicting eclipses as he was in envisioning God's Reign breaking in.
We have a way sometimes of missing the boat, we Christians. (Surprise, surprise, right?) We have a way of not being able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the words of these ancient poets and dreamers we call the prophets. Instead of trying to sift through their visions looking for clues about the "end times" or trying to tie in yesterday's eclipse with some ancient scripture passage, perhaps we could listen the way Peter did--to see that the real end-of-the-world moment was also the beginning of a whole new creation, the inauguration of the Spirit-led movement of the followers of Jesus. So often, we stifle and squelch what God has been trying to do--we end up further dividing ourselves, and acting like the old lines of language, nationality, and culture still must divide us, like the old allegiances still claim us. So often we accept those as givens, while trying to figure out what astronomical signs some old prophet was trying to predict. Instead, we ought to be hearing the prophets tell us together that God is doing a new thing--a thing meant for all, for me... for you... and for people you don't particularly like, too.
If we listen to Peter there on the day of Pentecost, we will find our eyes are changed. We will begin to see, with him, how God has begun a new creation right in the midst of the old order. We will see that God has breathed a new breath into the universe, and just like the Spirit brooded over the waters at creation, now the same God has breathed the Spirit onto the motley crew that makes up the Kingdom. We will see, as we look at how varied the faces, how different the voices, how many the languages and cultures and customs of people who are being gathered into God's New Thing. We will see that the old way of living in the world--divided and segregated and isolated from one another, viewing the other with suspicion and fear--is coming to an end. We will see that God has begun a new order of the day, and it is taking shape among us right now... right here... right before our very eyes.
One of the things I noticed about the eclipse that unfolded across our country yesterday was how it was either noticeable or ignorable, depending on whether one had the right eyesight to recognize it. From here in western Pennsylvania, we had only 80% coverage in the eclipse, which meant that when we were right in the thick of it, you might not have even noticed. The sky looked a little dimmer, but no darker than if it were an ordinarily cloudy day. And if you did something foolish and ill-advised like staring at the sun without the right kind of glasses, you wouldn't have even noticed anything different, simply because of the overwhelming brightness of the sun. But on the other hand, if you had eclipse glasses--a product that was just about everywhere if you were so inclined to get them--you could see the eclipse happening and stare in wonder and awe at the brightness of the sun transforming into a slim crescent. Same planet. Same sun. Same afternoon. Same spot on earth. But the difference was whether you had the new eyesight to see what was happening right over your own head. No eclipse glasses, and you missed a wonder that hasn't happened across the entire continental United States for a century. But with the new kind of vision that a half-decent pair of eclipse glasses afforded, you could see the sun slowly getting swallowed up by the moon and then coming out the other side like it was brand new.
That's what Peter says we are offered as well. That's what the Spirit gives among us, too--the gift of a new way of seeing that changes everything and includes everyone. We will get to see signs that God is doing something new and wonderful ... and then we will get to be a part of it, too.
Great God, do your new thing among us, and help us to see it.
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