Beyond that, though, the whole thing makes me think back a little to earlier days of my journey as a follower of Jesus, in the first year or two as a Pentecostal in high school. Back then (1998 through early 2001, tapering off after that when I went to college) there was a lot of talk about the rapture in the circles where I ran. I read books and Study Bibles about it, knew dispensationalist theology fairly well, and in general lived under the assumption that the rapture could happen at any time.

I don’t remember ever speculating on when it would happen, or being concerned about when it would happen; I just assumed that it was there on the horizon because the people around me did, and I trusted their theology. Pentecostals saw it as a reason to pursue revival, hoping for the church to become a more Spirit-imbued body, ready to go with Jesus when he returned. I found that compelling because I wanted those kind of experiences. As an important sidenote, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the current rapture-seekers have anything to do with Pentecostalism.

Now, this expectation has been a hallmark of Pentecostalism since it started in 1906, though it has had its ebbs and flows as it has in every other movement. I’m aware of this, though by the time I reached college it was (at least in scholarly circles) acceptable to leave those doctrines behind. I’m thankful for this, but at the moment I’m interested in thinking about why it was ever such a big deal in the movement.

As I’ve said before, I’m not really a Pentecostal these days. I still pray in tongues, still seek the presence of the Spirit, still believe in miracles, and so on – so it’s not that I’ve abandoned Pentecostalism, but I can no longer deal with the ecclesiology or the theological and political ideas that usually accompany the movement, and this makes me something of an ecclesial vagabond. All well and good.

Anyway. One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Pentecostalism is that during the fundamentalist/liberal battles of the early 20th century when the movement was still developing, it went with the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism was deeply antithetical to Pentecostalism in its own theology, but Pentecostals overwhelmingly adapted the non-directly-related tenets of fundamentalist theology in their interpretation of the Bible, and eventually in things like politics.

I don’t necessarily blame them for this, as I don’t think either choice was a good one back then, but it is saddening. I wish they had been able to create a third way that didn’t succumb to liberalism or fundamentalism, and there are several reasons that I think this could have been the case (but it’s really hard to create a third way).

One of the core tenets of Pentecostalism is that God is active in the world in supernatural ways. How this manifests itself in doctrine has varied through the years and in the different tribes, but this wonderful belief has always been true. It has also always been the way Pentecostalism has viewed the Bible, and this (among other things) has led the movement to believe the Bible has, and has always had, something direct that the Spirit wants to say to its readers.

Back to eschatology. I think one of the deepest failures of dispensationalism is that it rests on the oft-unspoken and unrealized assumption that all of the Bible’s prophetic or apocalyptic language is irrelevant to the foreseeable context of its original readers. Thus, this is one of the damaging things about Pentecostalism’s embrace of early 20th-century fundamentalist biblical theology: while we’ve assumed that the book of Acts was a Spirit-inspired narrative of how the early church functioned and is relevant to how we should function today (which is one of the huge differences from that fundamentalism), we have not assumed that first-century eschatology was relevant to that same early church, but rather that it was written for us only, two thousand years after those folks lived in the same Spirit we seek.

The realization that prophetic language was primarily relevant to its original hearers is one of the greatest insights of people like N. T. Wright, Andrew Perriman, and others who have written more wisely on eschatology. While they all have different perspectives on what ways such language is relevant to us, the fact that they agree upon its primary relevance to its original hearers is a powerful thing for that relevance. It utterly changes the way we have to think about political theology (as much of this language is anti-Empire), ethics (as much of it is metaphorical), and of course how we think about eschatology in our own age.

Coming from a Pentecostal (post-Pentecostal?) perspective, I want to say that this fits better with Pentecostalism than dispensationalism does, because this is how we’ve treated our engagement with Acts. I think it fits other traditions (Anabaptism, of course, but many others as well) much better too, which is why I think it’s worth writing about. I’ve taught for years that any time we try to make definitive statements about how eschatology manifests itself in our own age, we’re on dangerous ground and shouldn’t be trusted.

My plea is for all of us to stop worrying about when the rapture (or whatever other event you like) is coming, because there’s no reason to assume such language is literal, and even less reason to assume that it’s about us. It makes us look stupid, makes our priorities antithetical to those of Scripture’s authors, and does irreparable damage to people who structure their lives around those assumptions when they turn out to be wrong.

Perhaps because of these questions, and perhaps just because I randomly think about things like this, today I was reading Common Prayer before work, and the New Testament passage was Luke 6:27-38, one of the places in which Jesus tells us to love our enemies.

In some ways, those words don’t need any commentary, as they stand on their own, demanding that we be different.

But today, as I was reading it I was reminded of Rachel’s stories of running into folks who ask whether it is loving to let people walk around with “bad theology” – in that context, I guess it’s theology they think is heretical – a couple of questions came into my mind. One was more of a rhetorical question of why people we think have heretical theology have to be our enemies (though it is partly answered by Richard Beck’s post on whether it is possible to hate a heresy but love a heretic), but the pressing one was, “What does it mean to love an enemy?”

I feel pretty confident in the bumper sticker theology of “When Jesus said love your enemies, I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean kill them,” but it’s just that: bumper sticker theology. Just because I agree with it doesn’t make it any more profound, or convincing, than the ones I disagree with. So what then?

It then occurred to me that we have an answer to that: 1 Corinthians 13. I wanted to make sure this was in fact the case, so I looked up a little bit of Greek. Now, I failed Greek in college, so I have to rely on others to tell me this, but it’s a fact that Jesus tells us to love our enemies in Luke 6 with the same Greek word, agape (about which there is a great deal of scholarly work), that Paul uses to tell us what love is in 1 Corinthians 13.

It hit me that that’s what it means to love our enemies, whatever they’ve done, because that’s what it means to love. If they’ve disagreed with us on Twitter, or have bad theology that makes us think they’re heretics, or think we have bad theology and are heretics, or disagree with us about our some of our core beliefs. Whatever. While this is not exegesis and you shouldn’t use it in a scholarly work, I think the following is an exercise that does hold up to the texts because it helps us understand the word love, and has the power to shake us:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not love my enemies, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not love my enemies, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not love my enemies, I gain nothing.

Loving my enemies is patient, loving my enemies is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Loving my enemies does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Loving my enemies never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Again, not scholarly. But can you imagine if we saw it that way, rather than thinking we’ve got to kill our enemies, or boycott them, or hate them, or gossip about them, or…

It’s important to remember what this doesn’t say – it doesn’t say love requires us to agree with, or even like, each other. That’s fine. But what it does require, if we apply it to our enemies (whatever, if we apply it to ourselves!) will change us.

There have been a number of really awful, and really beautiful, blog posts and reviews and tweets and whatever else people have decided to say. Probably far more than I’ve ever seen about a book that hadn’t even been released, and of which the vast majority of commentators had read little or nothing. It’s really… depressing, if you sit down and think about it.

But at the moment, I’m not as interested in the book. I’m interested in the event that was streamed last night, and specifically in some of the questions that Rob Bell was asked, and the ways he answered them.

As you may know, the web is often not the most nuanced of environments. One reason is that America is not the most nuanced of environments, especially in these hyper-polarized days. Another, related reason is how easy it is to live in an echo chamber in which you say things to people who agree with you, and they repeat them back to you, and occasionally you argue with people who disagree with you while making the people who agree with you agree with you more than they did before. Yes, it makes about that much sense.¹

It is also true, however, that the lack of nuance on the web is far from limited to the web. It is just magnified there. Even those of us who are admitted postmoderns, skeptical of metanarratives and of claims to know absolute truth about things (you’ll remember that the existence of absolute truth is not being questioned; just the claims to know it absolutely); who you might think would maintain nuance better than some, often fail to do so. We fail to hold conflicting ideas in tension, and let them stay there, if one side disagrees with what we’ve already decided is true.

I do it. You probably do it. I see it done on a daily basis. And I think this is a bad thing. Not always, and not in every issue. Some things are not nuanced. But many things are. Many things do deserve to be held in tension.

And this is why I was so pleased during Rob Bell’s event by several of his responses: he was talking about a deeply divisive issue (hell) on which everyone can find someone to disagree with, it was being streamed on the web, and yet he kept the ability, and repeatedly stated his case, for conflicting ideas being held in tension.

Case in point: there’s a question someone in the audience asks at around one hour into the video. It’s a very good question, especially in context of other questions the interviewer asked (I’m paraphrasing here in the question and the answer).

Question:

It seems like universalists are trying to reconcile God’s love with God’s wrath. But can God be both loving and just?

Answer:

Yes. There’s a human longing and desire for God to fix the world, essentially. To say no more greed, no more exploitation of the weak and vulnerable. We can’t have that here… you can’t do that here. Out. You also have this, side-by-side, God’s endless affirmation: God wants everyone to be saved. All peoples will be at the banquet. You have this longing, and a longing for justice, and they sit side by side.

The Western, modern mind loves “are you this or that?” Are you left/right, conservative/liberal. But the Hebrew, biblical mind is okay with both of these being true.

At the end of Revelation is a renewed, restored city where the dwelling of God is with people.. and there are people who are not in it. They are outside. And there’s a gate in the city, but it never shuts. What? This doesn’t get resolved, and it just sits there, and it’s important that we let it sit there.²

Do you see how different that is than most of our conversations around this?

There has been a conversation around hell since the church began, with people on both sides being considered orthodox, and people on both sides being considered heretics (often for reasons unrelated to their beliefs on this). The reason for this is that the Bible isn’t clear. It holds a tension, and if your beliefs stand on one side you will interpret certain passages in certain ways and have to do hermeneutic tricks to get past other passages, and vice versa. This is okay.

There are folks who recognize this, and say “I believe _____ because of these passages, and I realize I have to interpret these other passages in light of these,” but there aren’t too many who will admit that. Most say “I believe ____.” Most people, on both sides of this discussion, think we don’t need to be having the discussion anymore. Liberals because many of them have been universalists, or conditionalists, or some other thing for many decades, and because they have embraced specific methods of interpreting the Bible which they think are clear. Conservatives because they also have embraced specific methods of interpreting the Bible which they think are clear, and they think all orthodox Christians have always been exclusivists (which isn’t true, of course). Far fewer people are willing to say, “I don’t know,” which I think is a far better answer.

I’m of the opinion that we need to have the discussion about hell even now, in 2011, because so few of any tribe hold it with any tension. Karl Barth did, on the (somewhat) liberal side, and C. S. Lewis did, on the (somewhat) conservative side (in Mere Christianity), and they are often used as evidence that the discussion is old, which is true. But most who followed after them have not held tension well. So I’m happy that Rob Bell does, happy that he’s continuing the discussion (whatever specific conclusions he actually comes to, which most of us still don’t know as we haven’t read the whole book), and happy that he did it on the internet.

1. This is why the web is of questionable benefit for discussion about certain things. When it happens well, it happens really well, and it happens because someone has intentionally designed an environment for it. Yes. Designed. I believe this can become an important task for user experience designers.
2. Psalm 22 and Revelation 22 are where he’s getting these thoughts.

The phrase is this: “God will not give you more than you can bear.” This sounds really nice in certain parts of the world. We get stressed, or we have a difficult situation, or some other thing that we don’t like and we comfort ourselves by saying that God will limit the extent of it before it becomes something we can’t handle. The problem, though, is that it isn’t true.

The phrase is derived from this passage:

These things [things in the Hebrew Scriptures] happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

1 Corinthians 10:11-13

So you can probably see how such a thing can be retold and mistold to say something that it doesn’t say, but clearly this is specifically about temptations to things from which we should flee; the idea is that there is always a way out of such things, whether we take that way or not.

Now, the reason that this misunderstanding prevails in much of America is that we have a warped understanding of how God works in the world in general and in our lives specifically. I’m beginning to think that all of us who find ourselves in relative comfort in America do this, whether we are on the liberal side of things or the conservative. This has deep implications for how we pray, how we respond to events, and how we deal with people who don’t live in the same kind of context that we do.

So while this post is about something broader than whether or not God will give us more than we can bear, it’s important that we establish firmly that this is not the case. Paul is believed to have written this. Paul was beheaded. Folks can’t “bear” being beheaded. They’re dead. Far beyond the life of Paul, though, the statement is a slap to the face of people, many of whom have suffered in unimaginable ways that have nothing to do with their faith or lack of faith, across the years and across the miles from the safe American lives of people who quote this.

That is a fairly extreme conservative position of God’s activity in the world. Many conservatives are not like this, but this kind of thought and similar ones (that God always protects certain people, for example) have deep implications for how people in our context think they see God moving in the world. The flip side is, of course, that God doesn’t do anything. Whether this is because of an entrenchment in anti-supernatural modernism like the Jesus Seminar kind of folks, or because of an inability to see anything divine in the arbitrary ways that the world often works and the people it often favors.

There are many people I’ve known that prefer instead of either of these to see God simply identifying with those who suffer and expecting people to do something about it (and this is indeed a powerful thing that we cannot afford to ignore and cannot fail to share with people). But these thoughts have been running deeply through my mind, as I’m convinced that all of the above views fall short of what is healthy for us in thinking about God’s involvement with us and our involvement with God.

I’m of the opinion that the Bible doesn’t give us an answer to this. I think it clearly indicates that God does work in the world, but it also indicates that God doesn’t always work in the world and it refuses to give us answers to why that is the case. From there, it gets murkier as various authors of Scripture bring their own perspectives and questions and desires to events, just as we do. I think we can learn much more about how to respond to events (in both good and bad ways) in light of the responses taken by various authors than we can about what God’s involvement in these events might be.

If that is the case, where can we, as spoiled Americans with small worlds who want God to give us parking spaces, or as spoiled Americans with bigger worlds who feel guilty that we have cars in which to park while thousands of people die of hunger everyday, view the activity of God and our involvement in it?

I don’t have hard answers for this, but I think I’ve begun to gain some insight that is worthy of sharing. Many of us in Emergent have learned that we need to get beyond typical contexts when we think theologically. We’ve learned that liberation theology in its various types has deep things to say to us, that we’ve learned how the bad parts of American theology have been exported and caused great damage to folks around the world, and we’ve thus tried to think in broader ways. This is a beautiful and essential thing that I hope to see continue.

But it occurs to me that we have not done this with our attempts to think about whether and how God supernaturally works in the world, especially in the poor and oppressed that we seek to empower. If you’ve ever been around or listened to such folks, from the various streams of church that they have created, you’ll know that they see God working in their own lives and the lives of people around them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they are more likely to experience things that are obviously miraculous than we are, but in a broader sense they understand something that we miss.

The objection that some try to make to this is that such worldviews keep people in oppression, or they lead to dangerous theologies like the American prosperity people have. These are both valid points that need to be and are being addressed, but they do not stand up against the lives of those working for justice for the oppressed and living supernatural lives in these contexts. These are the people I want to learn from.

I wasn’t really sure how to go about reviewing this, so I decided not to read other versions for the sake of comparison, and also not to find out which authors were the contributors in any of the books I read. I got my copy during Passion Week, so I read the various accounts of the days of that week, and then continued through Acts and on to Romans, hoping to give myself a strong enough feel for the way the translation works.

So, to start: this Bible, if you are not familiar with it, is unique in the sense that there is a (fairly typical) team of scholars working to translate the Greek texts of the New Testament, and a (not at all typical) team of authors, pastors, musicians, artists, and so on working to write these texts into narrative, letter, or other form in current English, striving to maintain the personality and voice of the original authors as much as possible.

In doing this, steps are taken such as a screenplay format in narratives to show who is speaking, additions to the text (in italics) to provide information that would have been evident to folks to whom Scriptures were written, and some brief outline boxes that expand upon what is being said. This means that if you were attempting to be scholarly about a text you’d want to have another translation with which to compare things. Taking that to its logical conclusion, of course, you’d want to know Koine Greek and have a thorough knowledge of first century Middle Eastern culture.

I took a class in college where half was Greek and half was Hebrew. I made, by far, the worst grade I’ve ever made in a class. I have at least a decent grasp of first century culture, but there’s certainly stuff that I don’t know, and most people would also claim this limitation of themselves. In light of how far removed we are from the world of the New Testament (in this case) and how hard it is to get there, I’d take criticisms that talk about the additions and clarifications used in this translation with a grain of salt.

I’ll close by noting one of the greatest strengths I’ve noticed. Certain words that some folks may be really attached to are taken away and replaced with other things (“Christ” is replaced with “Liberating King,” for example, and “righteousness” is often replaced with “justice”). These replacements do two things: they get rid of words that have such historical and cultural baggage that they have become shallow and thoughtlessly used, and they bring us back to the sense that the original hearers would have had when they heard these words. It’s fascinating, and well worth getting the translation just for that.

As I said, I didn’t find out who the modern text of any of the individual books were “written” by while I was reading them, though there are wonderful folks from Brian McLaren to Chris Seay to Matthew Paul Turner and others. All of them do wonderful things with these texts in different ways, and I’d encourage you to get it.

1. In the interest of disclosure, I received the book for free, and am not required to write positively about it.

During the time of the tornado in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was gathering to discuss the issue of ordaining people in committed same-sex relationships. John Piper interprets the tornado in the following series of thoughts:

1. The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God (quotes 1 Corinthians 6:9-10¹).
2. The church has always embraced those who forsake sexual sin but who still struggle with homosexual desires, rejoicing with them that all our fallen, sinful, disordered lives (all of us, no exceptions) are forgiven if we turn to Christ in faith (quotes 1 Corinthians 6:11²).
3. Therefore, official church pronouncements that condone the very sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God, are evil. They dishonor God, contradict Scripture, and implicitly promote damnation where salvation is freely offered (does not quote anything).
4. Jesus Christ controls the wind, including all tornadoes (quotes Mark 4:41³).
5. When asked about a seemingly random calamity near Jerusalem where 18 people were killed, Jesus answered in general terms—an answer that would cover calamities in Minneapolis, Taiwan, or Baghdad. God’s message is repent, because none of us will otherwise escape God’s judgment (quotes Luke 13:4-5⁴).
6. Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners (does not quote anything).

John Piper, August 20, 2009

It is very easy to look at this post, realize that Mr. Piper believes that homosexuality is a sin, and interpret his thoughts based on one’s opinion of that interpretation of the Bible. If one thinks that a responsible exegesis of the six passages that allude to homosexuality does interpret it as sin, one may be in favor of what he is saying, and vice versa.

But this misses the bigger issue in his interpretation of the event. It may be helpful to know that this is not the first time Mr. Piper has interpreted events in this way. In 2007, the Interstate 35 West bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. This bridge was located near Piper’s church.

In his blog post responding to this event, he again quotes Luke 13:4-5⁴ and indicates that in the collapse of the bridge, God was sending a message that everyone should fear him. So, his messaging is consistent, whether the event is a natural disaster or an event caused by human engineering, and also whether it can be explained by a specific element of his theology of sin, or not.

Now, I want to respond to the points from his most recent post, but I wanted to make the connection clear as well.

1. I’m not, at the moment, concerned with Piper’s interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6. I honestly believe that the passage is vague and should not be the basis for a person’s theology, and any interpretation of Paul’s words here should be taken lightly. But that’s for a different post.
2. Same here. But again, the sinfulness or lack thereof that pertains to same sex relationships is not the issue here. John Piper’s theology of historical events is the issue here.
3. Church pronouncements that condone sins have always been a part of the church. Sorry. This happens much more often in areas of treatment of the poor and oppressed than it does in issues of who can or cannot be ordained to ministry.
4. This a simple example of bad exegesis. Jesus clearly does not control the wind (Ephesians 2⁵), and his treatment of the wind in Mark is not an indication that he does control it. He has to specifically rebuke this wind, which of course does mean that he could control the wind. But it is part of a robust biblical understanding of God’s nature that many powers which rightfully belong to God are voluntarily given up, as part of the life of a self-sacrificing God.
5. Piper’s interpretation of Luke is another example of bad exegesis. In the 2007 discussion of the bridge collapse, Greg Boyd wrote a fantastic response, specifically addressing the failure of this kind of exegesis: namely, that Jesus doesn’t indicate that God had any role in the situation Luke records, which is contrary to Piper’s assumptions.
6. The conclusion is probably the worst part of this whole thing. In it, he specifically goes against the function of a prophet by interpreting events based on his own ideology after they have already happened. Prophets are not always foretellers; I want to make that clear. In general, they are truth tellers, and this often involves speaking truth to power in the present, rather than the future. But when it does involve interpreting specific events, such as the arrival of the Babylonian army in the time of Jeremiah, it doesn’t help to give an interpretation after the event has already happened. This is not prophecy; it is ideology.

Finally, I want to draw attention to some other posts that have responded to John Piper’s tornado post.

• Greg Boyd – Did God Send a Tornado to Warn The ELCA?
• Drew Tatusko – the tornado to stop the “gays” and determinism: a core problem with piper
• Tony Jones – Who Will Call Out John Piper?
• Blake Huggins – Gays don’t cause tornadoes
• Kimberly Roth – The Tornado, the Baptists, and Old People
• Adam Walker Cleaveland – John Piper Contributes to Culture of Fear
• Jonathan Brink – Who Needs Convincing

I encourage you to read through these, in light of these events. It is important to make sure that ideological interpretations that are not biblically responsible do not represent us as followers of Jesus. This will happen, I’m sure, because Mr. Piper has a larger voice than most of us who are speaking against his words, but to act responsibly it is important for us to respond.

1. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
2. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
3. They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
4. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.
5. …in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

At The Living Room, we briefly discussed the idea that all of the people who initially experienced the first Pentecost were “in one accord,” and what that meant and why it was the case. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I think the reason for this is that these were the people who had witnessed the Resurrection.

Consider this:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

Acts 1:15 indicates that at some point in between the Ascension and Pentecost, there were one hundred and twenty believers gathered together. My belief is that these were there because they were among the five hundred witnesses of the Resurrection, and that is why they were in such unity when Pentecost did arrive.

The serious, physical Resurrection of Jesus created a community. People had been utterly shaken by the reality of what they had seen, and banded together around it. But why only one hundred and twenty?

Before we fault the other three hundred and eighty, we should consider that it is very possible that they returned to Jerusalem for Pentecost, and experienced what happened there. Yet again before we fault them, can you imagine the conversations as the days and weeks went by?

First, everyone was pumped, I’m sure. Super excited. Jesus had told them to wait for something that meant absolutely nothing to them. Then, as nothing happened, I’m sure they began to wonder if anything would. Maybe someone ran out of money to hang around Jerusalem. Maybe someone else received word from a family member of some situation. Maybe some people got married.

Any countless number of normal things could have happened – and the fact is that we as humans return to normalcy fairly quickly after we have abnormal experiences. We don’t know how much time passed between the Ascension and Pentecost, but it was enough time for people to go back to normalcy.

But still there was a community of people, desperately hoping for something they didn’t understand. Maybe they were eating and drinking together every day, remembering the things Jesus had said over bread and wine. Maybe they didn’t have anything to go back to. Maybe nothing they had was valuable enough to shake the power of Resurrection.

But regardless: these one hundred and twenty or so people were the ones upon whom the Spirit fell. They had a tangible, powerful encounter with the Other, and it shook them. It is no wonder that they ran out into the streets in ecstasy, convincing people they were drunk. But it doesn’t matter: the Spirit of God was in the streets, expanding the community of Resurrection. Without the Resurrection, there is no Pentecost. Without Pentecost, the Resurrection never raises us.

N. T. Wright has written about the ascension, and in doing so he continues his efforts to get it through our heads that biblical eschatology, from the resurrection to heaven, is not what most of us have been taught. In light of that, I think it is worth using the topic of the ascension, as Wright does, to cast a little more light on the subject.

Interestingly, I often tend to use N. T. Wright together with Peter Rollins, and this is no exception. Peter writes:

Eschatology is a theological term that is often used within Christianity to refer to events that are to come. Christianity is thus thought to have an eschatological dimension insomuch as it looks forward to a kingdom that is not yet here, a beautiful realm of love, forgiveness, and mercy that we yearn for, long for, pray for, and prepare for. Here the eschatological kingdom of God is located in the not-yet of the future. However, within the Bible we find a much more radical view of the eschatological kingdom, not as the absence of something that is to come, but rather as the absence of a kingdom that is already here.

The Fidelity of Betrayal – excerpt here

In Pete’s words, as well as, I think, in N. T. Wright’s words, the kingdom of God is a bizarre thing – something for which we yearn when we have experienced the Other, cutting into our world to show us what we desire.

The ascension reminds us of this. Jesus has not gone to some different place, in outer space or in some disembodied realm as most popular theology would have us believe. He is among us, in ways that bring the Other into our world. N. T. Wright says:

Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church – when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us, the one who tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him – only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair.

Conversely, only when we grasp and celebrate the fact that Jesus has gone on ahead of us into God’s space, God’s new world, and is both already ruling the rebellious present world as its rightful Lord and also interceding for us at the Father’s right hand – when we grasp and celebrate, in other words, what the ascension tells us about Jesus’ continuting human work in the present – are we rescued from a wrong view of world history and equipped for the task of justice in the present…

Surprised by Hope

I want to spend a few posts in the next week or so looking at the issues of the ascension, and Pentecost. I have been gripped, recently, by the thought that both of these have something important to say to me, and to us in Emergent, and the broader emerging church.

Since I decided I would try to write a post for this event, I’ve been a bit unsure of myself. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t sound like a random white guy, running his mouth about how we need to listen to women. I’ve been in situations where guys do this, sometimes when women are present, and I try to be aware of it and instead find out why the women present are silent, and what I can do to allow them to speak instead of having to listen to me.

So it’s with all that in mind that I’ve been reading other posts in this synchroblog, and trying to think of something that I can contribute.

When I was in college, I took a class on the Pentateuch. In it, we used this book. The class started out as a beautiful expression and discussion of narrative theology, and the artistic, theological nature (regardless of historical or scientific concerns) of the creation story in Genesis. At the time, I was dating my wife, and I was confident that I would marry her.

In light of all this, I want to look at Genesis 2, and try to allow the story of Eve to speak in ways that it typically doesn’t. Normally, the church uses Adam and Eve together to argue for a historical account against evolution (which is not a facet of this genre of literature, nor of the ancient Hebrew mindset), or it uses Eve herself as an example of how women should not live. Eve’s story is generally not heard.

Eve is introduced like this:

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 2:18

In the Hebrew text, the word that is here translated as “helper” is ezer, which does not have the meaning that we attach to it. We, in interpreting the Old Testament, have generally used this word as a justification for male dominance. In actuality, this word is, in its other uses in Genesis and various other Old Testament texts, applied to God. It is applied to the stronger person in the relationship.

Let that sink in for a minute, and I think Eve’s story says something entirely different than we usually allow it to say, and that reaches into the ways communities of faith function, the ways that marriages function, and any number of other things.

It is spurred on by a man who trains youth pastors in various street fighting techniques, and apparently believes that Jesus’ direct statement to turn the other cheek is an ideology that fosters martyrs and victims. He then quotes another statement of Jesus by taking it out of its context to state that Jesus didn’t intend for his followers to live lives of nonviolence.

I have to admit that, at face value, these are significant issues if one does not really understand what active nonviolence means. The problem with that “if statement” is that most real, consistent proponents of nonviolence do a really good job of communicating about these issues, but no one wants to listen to them.

One of the examples given in the comments at Tony’s blog, for example, relates to whether or not abused people should “turn the other cheek” and continue being abused. Certainly, there are churches out there that have enabled situations like these, but in my experience these churches and people are not proponents of active nonviolence. Generally, if not always, enablers of this kind of abuse are concerned, not with peace in the lives of the people involved, but with either:

• Maintaining a facade of perfection in the communities.
• Maintaining a status quo in some area of the community’s life, whether it be financial, structural, or some other area.
• A genuine desire to avoid divorce or breaking up families. I am confident that, in all of the situations where abuse is enabled, this is the least common reason for it, though it is the most commonly mentioned reason for it. This is a vital distinction to make.

Victims often honestly believe that continuing to be abused will allow them to hold their families together, and it is thus incredibly difficult for them to believe that any kind of action on their own behalf is selfish and wrong, and they often feel that they are failing to “turn the other cheek.” This, however, has nothing to do with active nonviolence, or resistance of oppression, which is what Jesus is actually talking about.

And this is the place of the active nonviolent community. That community will always advocate and work for the oppressed, but this is entirely different than both lashing out in violence and refusing to turn its own cheek, and from enabling the oppression to continue. The community must put itself between the victim and the victimizer in love and compassion for both of them, and this is where it can practice turning the other cheek, if necessary.

Do you see the difference here? This works itself out in situations from domestic abuse, up in scale to how we can respond to war and genocide, which is another example mentioned in the comments on Tony’s posts. If communities allow oppressed people, whether they be individuals or groups, to believe that their oppression is somehow ordained or desired by God, they have failed to teach it responsibly.