What is God Doing?

Acts looks back to Pentecost - a remarkable beginning. Not careful planning and strategy. Not insight by Apostles. Yes, they were prepared by Jesus. But they were carried along by God’s intervention. God waited till Pentecost for the meaning of the feasts. Passover: deliverance. Pentecost: Covenant, Community, Giving of Torah - God breaking in.

God intervenes in power and symbol in the language of Israel’s story: ‘Wind’ of creation, ‘Fire’ of Sinai. Human voices. Understanding. Babel is reversed. A light to the nations.

What does it mean? Peter quotes from Joel 2 - God’s promises to Abraham and David expand to new fullness, inclusiveness in God’s Spirit. Men - Women, old - young, even slaves are included. All can call on the name of the Lord to share this new Exodus, Sinai.

What has God Done?

God’s actions were present in human Jesus. You know it. But we were blind, self-destructive. God’s people joined pagans in killing Jesus, nailing him up. But in God’s longer story, he was taking human sin, betrayal, injustice, abandonment, pain, death into himself.

God raised him up. Death holds everyone! But he broke death’s unbreakable chains. David’s language anticipates God’s reality. God filled his promise to David with action beyond imagination. We saw it. Resurrection life. Now pouring out God’s Spirit. Lord and Messiah.

How do We Participate?

What do we do? Change mind and action to fit a new recognition of reality. Engage with God in being baptized into Jesus. Receive gifts: Forgiveness of sin (breaking death’s power) and God’s Holy Spirit, an ongoing, universal promise. Join in the community of new life...

Devoted to Apostles’ teaching (deep change), shared community of support and experience, breaking bread (enacting Jesus in shared life), prayer (a living, growing life with God).

The Spirit of the Living God Speaks - vv 1-3

The Believers in Corinth loved the work of the Holy Spirit among them and asked Paul about people and things empowered by the Spirit (pneumatikos) - not just "spiritual gifts."

Paul contrasts their experience as Gentiles (before sharing God’s promises to Abraham). They knew only voiceless idols - you could make them say anything. But the Living Spirit has a distinct will and voice. If someone is "in God’s Spirit" (like "in Christ," "in the Lord") they’ll never say "Jesus is Anathema." "In Holy Spirit" is where you know "Jesus is Lord."

One Spirit Gives Life to Diverse Individuality - vv 4-11

There is One God - Spirit, Lord, God. All are working as the Spirit works. Varied gifts of grace (charisma), service/ministry (diakonia), effective works (energema) are united at source.

God gives every believer a part in showing the Spirit and his work into community and world. Paul seems intentionally unsystematic. God loves and creates diversity. No two believers are the same. Our personal identity, talents, passions combine with the Spirit’s purposes.

The gifts are diverse: Maybe "a word." Something basic: "faith," "prophecy." Particular signs from the Spirit: "gracious gifts of healings," "works of powers," "kinds of tongues," etc. These don’t become our possessions, but the Spirit gives them individually as he wills.

The Spirit Unites Diverse Parts that Can’t Function Alone - vv 12-17

Paul focuses on the image of the Body - a single whole with many parts or members. The word member can wrongly suggest a club where each has uniform functions. Body parts are widely diverse in character and function but are united into a single living whole.

If we are "in God’s Spirit" or "in Christ" it is because we have joined with God’s Spirit in being plunged / baptized into one body. God gave us a drink of his own Spirit. We’re part of a body and must always share in the whole, including parts we don’t like or understand.

One Part Can’t Exclude Another - vv 18-27

The body is God’s doing. We can’t cut ourselves off from Christ’s body and stay alive in Christ and we can’t cut off parts that God has included. The church was never intended to have everyone alike, nor to appear as a place for upward or downward societal mobility.

We learn love in the diversity and become the full humans God created us to be, suffering and grieving together, rejoicing together. In that way the community is the continuing incarnation of the Messiah - Christ’s body. We are all parts of a part of God’s whole.

Desiring Greater Gifts of Grace - vv 28-31

But this body is a dynamic, living thing, empowered by God’s Spirit. We share in the life and learn new roles to play. Prophets, teachers, agents of healing or guidance. Don’t stay still.

Seek greater gifts of grace. The path of that seeking is the most excellent way of Love.

Everyday Bodies - "Flesh" and "Spirit"

Jesus taught his disciples about the Spirit/Paraklete/Helper sent from God - both himself and the Father. Paul teaches about the Spirit in many ways, helping people who had no frame of reference to participate in the Spirit’s work in their lives. Often religious people have set Spiritual life over against bodily, this-world life, as disembodied, heavenly life.

God created our bodies. He loves the physical. Spiritual life now and ultimately is life in body: now bodies and resurrection bodies. When Paul speaks of flesh, he means our ways of making our present selves the center of everything, our little gods, defining our idols of wealth, power, success, beauty, etc., defined by our limited passions and desires.

Spiritual life is everyday bodily life with God at center: a whole person of body, mind, spirit, everything, as a whole creature of God. It’s life in relationship with others. It’s life that undermines idols: no limited thing or status or person or circumstance determines the worth of my life. It’s life that sees God and God’s self-giving love at the center of all.

Images for Thinking about Spiritual Life

When Jesus or Paul talk about this life, it’s almost always in terms of images. The work of God’s Spirit within us is as varied as the people he creates. No formula limits the Spirit. But Paul and Jesus give us images from deep experience that help us recognize and grasp what God / Jesus / Spirit do in us: Fruit on a vine or tree. Clothing that expresses identity. Keeping in step. Being part of a single body. Crucifying the flesh, linking our experience of newness to being part of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Abiding in Jesus, having his message dwell among us. Peace as an umpire setting the standard for ways of thinking.

The images carry a depth of meaning. "Fruit": What the Spirit does is not to give orders but to work organically in our lives to let the reality of God and his love become embodied. Jesus emphasizes that this fruit comes from his own life, it creates a love of intimate friendship. It has ancient echoes from the Tree of Life to God’s vineyard of Israel in Isaiah. Fruit involves our active participation but always more as we open our lives to God’s work.

The image of clothing is receiving the gift of a new status: Clothed with Christ. Paul describes the work of Grace as God’s choice and love (like Israel). The process of Spiritual growth is responding to and imitating the Grace of God we’ve received. He speaks of forgiveness as "giving grace" to each other. Being thankful is "well-graced." It is "in grace" that our teaching and exhortation are turned into poetry and song empowered by the Spirit. But the language is very bodily: "guts" (hearts) of tenderness, thinking hearts set a standard, "patience" is having expansive passions. We see the layers of life and growth in deep, generous, honest relationships, learning ourselves as we learn to give to others the same grace we have received. All is bound together with genuine love the heart of maturity.

Grace and Thanksgiving

Paul calls us off paths of seek personal glory, competition with each other (You can’t really compete with God’s work), and envy. These are part of flesh’s passions and desires.

He comes to being "well-graced"- Thankful. The good news lives among us. We help each other in our common, shared struggles, but it takes the form of poetry and song. That way it goes deep into us remaking us so that no word or deed is untouched. Jesus’ identity and lordship shapes our relationships, aspirations, politics, vision of society, parenting, relationships in work, creativity, love of the physical world, care for all in need.

21 Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife. I’ve completed my time. I want to sleep with her."

22 So Laban brought all the people of the place together and had a feast prepared. 23 But when evening came, he gave his daughter Leah to Jacob. And Jacob slept with her. 24 Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter as her servant.

25 When Jacob woke up the next morning, there was Leah next to him! So he said to Laban, "What have you done to me? I worked for you so I could marry Rachel, didn’t I? Why did you trick me?"

26 Laban replied, "It isn’t our practice here to give the younger daughter to be married before the older one. 27 Complete this daughter’s wedding week. Then we’ll give you the younger one also. But you will have to work for another seven years."

28 So Jacob completed the week with Leah. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her servant. 30 Jacob slept with Rachel also. He loved Rachel more than he loved Leah. And he worked for Laban for another seven years.

Jacob Becomes the Father of Many Children

31 The Lord saw that Jacob didn’t love Leah as much as he loved Rachel. So he let Leah have children. But Rachel wasn’t able to have children. 32 Leah became pregnant. She had a son. She named him Reuben. She said, "The Lord has seen me suffer. Surely my husband will love me now."

33 She became pregnant again. She had a son. Then she said, "The Lord heard that Jacob doesn’t love me very much. That’s why the Lord gave me this one too." So she named him Simeon.

34 She became pregnant again. She had a son. Then she said, "Now at last my husband will value me. I have had three sons by him." So the boy was named Levi.

35 She became pregnant again. She had a son. Then she said, "This time I’ll praise the Lord." So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

Amy Bost Henegar delivers a keynote lecture on the Book of Esther at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures.

A Surprising Voice in Scripture - Ecclesiastes / Qoheleth

In Ecclesiastes, a wisdom teacher (Qoheleth) speaks sometimes in the character of Solomon, an ideal of wisdom, wealth, and power. He looks at practical human life and says "Vapor!" His image is not so much that everything is meaningless or absurd but, that it is passing. There’s nothing substantial, lasting: Life goes round without clear pattern or reason and then you die.

At times Qoh. felt despair, but he knows God is over all and gives us this life. But not so that we can make sense of it. A season for everything. Eternity in our hearts. But also frustrating confusion.

Death Turns Everything into Vapor

Ecc 9:1-12 is a surprising and disconcerting text. Is this really in the Bible? Yes! What does it mean? Qoh. is part of the Bible as a great debate with diverse voices, esp. in the OT: God wants us to hear different voices, as in the debate of Job and his friends, and to think deeply about life.

Qoh. tries to speak truth about life. He refuses easy answers and theological clichés. He is refreshing, and disconcerting. He stands in contrast to the NT and Paul. The question: What has happened?

Qoh. casts a vision of a great life (not unlike modern aspiration and advertising): A powerful, wealthy person with big accomplishments and pleasures, very smart/wise, and no suffering. It’s an almost exact reversal of the picture of Jesus, or of the early apostles, like Paul.

But Qoh. looks as his idea of a great life and says, "Vapor." But Qoh. has nowhere to go. Jesus teaches a very different view of greatness, but his disciple, like us, hope for a return to reality. If life is going to work, it must make sense now, and it doesn’t! Life’s not fair; people are caught. Qoh.’s vision ends in death (Sheol) and vapor. Even our joys and fear of God become vapor. Qoh. has calculated all the ways through human life and it always comes out zero.

What’s at Stake in Ecclesiastes and in Jesus?

The strange thing is that Jesus agrees with Qoh. God agrees! Things couldn’t remain as they were. Something had to be done, not just explained. God had to do it and God did!

God broke into our world in Jesus, crossing the boundary between creator and created. He took on human suffering, brokenness and sin. He was crucified. He drank the cup and then he died.

But God did something more! New! He took the end of all things toward which he was moving them - Resurrection and brought the end into our world in Jesus’ resurrection. The world and life can never be the same. Qoh. saw how we needed this. He embodied the difference and end makes.

The Searcher Struggling to Understand

John gives us a glimpse of a likely long, but amazing conversation. Jesus has just confronted the temple authorities and now one of them, impressed, comes to Jesus: a Pharisee, a teacher, member of Sanhedrin, open to Jesus’ teaching, affirming God’s presence.

Jesus takes him seriously. He has seen signs, but they point to revealing a new reality in Jesus. He unveils the new level of God engaging humans, doing what the temple had symbolized. Birth "from above" (another) can also mean "again." It’s misunderstood by Nicodemus.

Birth from Above and the Breath of God

Jesus is intentionally mysterious/poetic to help N. to think in new ways. The very idea of birth means starting over, profound change of things as they are, new learning, new growth.

But also a new basis of life from God. As the Spirit / God’s breath was in the first creation, so "born from water and Spirit" is new creation. For even a well-respected teacher? Yes!

N. is a good man, but he needs the very life/presence of God, the Spirit, sensed in Jesus.

Temple, Law, Sanhedrin - the heart of control, God within bounds. Jesus speaks of Wind, the uncontrollable power of God’s Spirit; birth from the blowing Wind/Breath of creation. The character of the Spirit changes the character of the child born from above. Jesus was in a process of giving that Spirit, by his teaching, his action, his promise, his own presence.

God’s Transforming Passion and Gift

Jesus meet N.’s lack of understanding with further challenge: There’s so much more. This is like the sign of the dangerous serpent that could heal as in Moses’ days (Num 21). It’s the "Son of Man" who unites heaven and earth, brings God’s kingdom to earth, as in Daniel.

The Son of Man will be lifted up/exalted - on a cross. His power/authority begins from that cross, because it embodies the passion of a loving God. God deeply loves the people of his creation in spite of their brokenness and rebellion and inability to help/heal themselves. We love the idea of self-sufficiency, independence. We can improve ourselves marginally, but we can’t stop our perishing. God wants to give more. He gives himself in Jesus, the Son.

He calls us to believe, to trust his love, trust his gift, receive God’s life in his surprising Spirit, to receive new life that in no way negates our physical life, but lifts it to new union with God’s life. This love, gift, new life breaks through the barrier of perishing into eternal life now.

Our Faces Unveiled to God’s Spirit and to Each Other

Last week we saw the whole life of God working by the Spirit in our lives to transform both the way we live now and as the creative power of new creation in the resurrection.

Following Jesus, Paul reflects a lot on how he had seen the Spirit working in the lives of believers, even when they are manifesting difficult problems. His experience with the Spirit’s work has given him great confidence and boldness with all kinds of people.

In 2 Cor 3:16-18 is a vision of that transforming process set in a meditation on scripture. But look at the image. A community of people, all engaged with God’s Spirit, who gives them freedom and boldness before God and with each other. Their faces (their whole person, identity, image) open to God and each other. They’re focused on seeing the reality, the glory of the Lord Jesus, who is the face / image of God and the true human. As they see it they are transformed into that image, ever increasing in the way they experience that reality/glory. But what’s in front of them is the mirror of Jesus in each other as the Spirit works in those lives to shape, challenge and embolden them toward the life given in Jesus.

Moses’ Challenge and Jeremiah’s Hope

Paul starts from the idea of delivering a letter/tablet/covenant from the Lord to the people. The letter that counts is written from the Messiah by the Spirit on people’s living hearts.

Paul leads us through a meditation on Jeremiah’s prophecy of a "new covenant" in Jer. 31 and reflection on the story of Moses and Israel at Sinai in Ex 32-34. Jeremiah saw the exile that came from Israel’s hard hearts veiled to God’s covenant. Paul himself had experienced that block to seeing where God was working in the Messiah and how the Spirit opened it.

Moses had a glory-filled experience with God as he received the Law. But the people already rebelled (golden calf) and the Law immediately became condemnation, a death blow.

In spite of high points, Israel’s history of rebellion led to exile. Jeremiah expressed the hope for a new covenant, written on softened hearts, bringing forgiveness and renewal.

A Covenant of Transformation Inside and Out

Paul saw the power of the Spirit creating a new covenant in the communities of believers. God’s image was being renewed as the Spirit bore fruit in transformed lives.

Diverse people together reflected God’s glory to each other and served with love in the world.

Amy Henegar shares a scripture reflection from John 2:1-12 at our monthly Saturday Evening Service.

Resurrection and Pentecost

Jesus forced weeks of waiting between his resurrection and the first public proclamation of the Good News. He did not allow his disciples to begin immediately. He was not beginning a political, social, or religious movement, though any human group has those aspects.

This was to be a new reality of God’s participation in the life of humans. It began in Jesus’ incarnation, consummated in his resurrection that joins physical life with the life of God in a new way. Now it was empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to bring ordinary humans into a transforming, growing experience of God’s life and love now, drawing them into the very life of Jesus by the power of his Spirit, embodying Jesus’ life of service, love of enemies, forgiveness, healing, trust in God, deep peace ... preparing for their own resurrection.

It could not begin with human organization and campaigning. It went with the presence and message of a crucified Messiah, with God’s Spirit, and devoted to his Love and Grace. The disciples did not plan but experienced Pentecost, and learned to follow the Holy Spirit.

The Human Life of Father, Son, and Spirit

In Romans 8, Paul unfolds some of the depth of what they experienced and learned. Humans live limited by flesh, self-deceived, self-centered, both sinner and enslaved, dying, dead.

What God has done in Jesus, seen in his resurrection, makes it possible for the whole life of God to come to dwell in humans, so that we’re not limited by our sin-plagued, dying flesh. Rather, God’s Spirit dwells in us. Paul interweaves the identities: "God’s Spirit ... Messiah’s Spirit ... Messiah ... the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus ... He who raised the Messiah...."

We seem trapped in our brokenness, with God pushed to the margins of life. But God’s presence and power by the Spirit calls us to share in God’s life, rejecting "life" of flesh that deceives, imprisons and kills us. Experiencing the life Jesus showed, the Kingdom of God.

Adopted into God’s Life

Amazingly, we little broken humans are to be brought into the eternal life of God, with all its creativity, love, community, and delight. What we experience now is the long journey, like Israel led by the cloud through the wilderness. We experience both flesh and Spirit. We sometimes feel drawn back into slavery and fear. But the Spirit in us is our participation in God’s life as God’s children, in spite of our weakness. This is God’s work, not just ours. That complex work of both suffering and glory is what is seen in Jesus’ life, ministry, and death.

The outcome: astonishing. We little humans are part of God’s family, heirs of the God of the universe, part of the Messiah’s life. His self-giving, suffering love, and his Glory are ours.