Christians have traditionally celebrated Pentecost as a linguistic
miracle, the day on which the church was born and everyone heard the
gospel proclaimed in their own language. Pentecost certainly is a
linguistic miracle, but it is also a geographic and an ethnic miracle.
Jesus never traveled with his disciples more than about 100 kilometers
from his home in Capernaum, so he preached the gospel in only a limited
area geographically. On Pentecost, one of the major feast days on the
Jewish calendar (the Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot), travelers from around
the Mediterranean world would flock to Jerusalem to worship and offer
sacrifice. The good news of God's love was shared on the Day of
Pentecost with people from all over the world, thus reaching people from
a much wider geographical range than Jesus ever spoke to in his
lifetime. Pentecost was similarly an ethnic miracle, because despite
the common religion of Judaism that all the worshipers shared, their
ethnic backgrounds varied greatly. Acts 2 tells us that visitors from
such distant lands as Parthia, Libya, and Rome were there that day, and
they represented a cross-section of ethnic groups in the ancient world.
Jews from a variety of ethnic groups, from many different countries, who
spoke various languages all heard the gospel on that day. Why is that
important? It's important because there are too many Christians today
who persist in believing that God loves them and people like them more
than God loves people who are from different countries, have different
ethnic heritages, or speak different languages. How else can we explain
the visceral reaction some American Christians have toward
immigrants--documented or not--from south of the border who have come to
America in hopes of finding a better life, or toward inhabitants of
Pakistan or Afghanistan who serve as bomb-fodder, or toward a president
who doesn't look like them? The book of Acts traces the spread of the
church from its birthplace in Jerusalem to the rest of the largely
Gentile world, and Pentecost is a foreshadowing of God's acceptance of
people "from every race and clime" into the family of faith. Christians
today need to recapture that vision of the whole of humanity as part of
God's extended family, deserving of compassion and worthy of God's
impartial love.
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b (first published 4 June 2006)
A report in today's paper says that scientists in Israel have
discovered an underground lake in which at least eight completely unknown
species of invertebrates make their home. They have evolved in complete
isolation from both the outside world and the photosynthetic energy of the
sun for several million years, yet they have adapted to their situation
with a tenacity that is typical of life on this planet. "O Lord, how
manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all." The latest
incarnation of the creation science explanation for the diversity of life
on earth is called Intelligent Design, whose name indicates that life is
too complex to have evolved by chance. This approach to evolution (it
cannot be called a theory, since it does not provide a testable mechanism
for the evolution of new species) is superior in some ways to earlier
creation science approaches, for one reason because it accepts the
scientific view that both the earth and the universe are several billion
years old. As already mentioned, it fails the litmus test of science,
because it cannot be tested. However, it also fails the litmus test of
theology, because it proposes a God who can be understood by human beings.
Beings of such complexity and beauty must be designed, says the argument,
because we can't imagine that they could come into existence in any other
way. What we're really saying, though, is that God is not smart enough to
engineer a universe with appropriate physical properties in which such
creatures could evolve without direct divine intervention. In his book
Becoming Human, Ian Tattersall writes, "Perhaps we will one day be
able at least to admit of a God possessing sufficient majesty and
expansiveness to transcend the limits of our own imaginations and
experience. But meanwhile, . . . we might do well to look upon
the inadequacy of our concepts of God as the truest mirror of those
limitations that define our condition." Whenever I hear about new
discoveries in nature such as these obscure, cave-dwelling creatures, I
marvel at God's wisdom in creating a universe in which such beings could
come into existence.
Romans 8:22-27 (first published 4 June 2006)
Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, forest
fires, floods, drought--we call all these events "natural disasters,"
because they are instances of nature negatively impacting humanity.
Imagine that humans were not on the earth, however. Twenty million
years ago, would a hurricane in the area that is now Louisiana have been
a natural disaster? No, it would have been called a natural occurrence,
had there been anyone there to call it anything. Even the meteor impact
that killed off the dinosaurs (except for birds), along with about 50%
of known species, 65 million years ago was not exactly a disaster.
Within a relatively short time, geologically speaking, life on the
planet was more diverse than ever, with new species evolving to take the
place of the dinosaurs, ammonites, and other recently extinct species.
Nevertheless, it is hard for us to think of such events in modern times
as anything other than disasters when human lives are lost in large
numbers, and from our own unique perspective, they are really disasters.
Like many of his contemporaries in Judaism and early Christianity, Paul
saw the natural disasters that afflicted the earth as indications that
the end of the world was near. "We know that the whole creation has been
groaning in labor pains until now," he says. Because of his apocalyptic
outlook, Paul saw a connection between the fate of the earth and the
destiny of humanity. As the first generation of Christians died out and
the world didn't come to a fiery end as many had expected, the
apocalyptic expectation of Paul and other early Christians was gradually
replaced with the belief that the world would continue for a long time
more or less at it was at the time. More significantly, from a modern
perspective, the fate of the earth was uncoupled from the fate of
humanity in the minds of most people. Today we are reaping the results
of the divorce of humanity from the earth, as we pollute, heat up, and
overpopulate the planet without recognizing the long-term dangers to
ourselves. Ironically, many who do hold an apocalyptic viewpoint,
believing that the world will end soon and suddenly, are the least
concerned about the tragedy that is unfolding, because they figure that
they won't be around for much longer and thus don't have to worry about
their impact on the planet. It is time for progressive Christians to
look again at Paul's contention that the earth itself is groaning in
anticipation of the end. If its groans are simply natural occurrences,
which we call natural disasters, then nothing new is happening. If, on
the other hand, the earth's groaning is the consequence of human
activity or human abuse of the planet, we need to act to correct our
poor stewardship. Regardless of whether the world ends tomorrow or
whether it lasts another five billion years, the earth's inhabitants,
including people who see themselves as God's representatives, are
responsible for making sure that we are not the ones causing the earth
to groan in anticipation of God's intervention.
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 (first published 4 June 2006)
My daughter just graduated from high school, so I've been thinking about the nature of education lately. Much of what we learn in school is lessons from the past. We learn about great events and great leaders in history, we discuss scientific discoveries of the past, and we read the works of influential authors. Christian education in our churches is pretty similar. We study ancient texts, and we talk about what earlier Jewish and Christian leaders thought. That is as it should be. The past is important, for without knowing and understanding the past, we will be able neither to understand the present nor to anticipate and plan for the future. However, it is also important to learn how to be spontaneous, to break out of earlier paradigms and patterns of thought. In today's reading from John, Jesus tells his disciples, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth." Having access to the scriptures was not enough. The Holy Spirit would teach them things that they needed to know that could not be found anywhere else. It may be true that past is prelude, so the past is important to know, but the past could not prepare them completely for the realities of the present. The same is true today. It is vital to know the past, for we have much to learn from it, but we must also learn how to listen to the Spirit of truth in our own lives. The past provides guidance to us, but it cannot tie us to a certain course of action. Unless we are able to read the signs of the times, to hear what God is saying to us through present circumstances, we will not be able to accomplish all that God has for us to do.