speaking of God

 

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when, perennially, those who preach in Christian churches feel pressure to explain how God can be both three and one.

I think this pressure should be resisted. It is not the job of the preacher to provide simple (or in this case simplistic) answers to questions, but to lead people deeper into mystery, believing that we have a spiritual need for mystery, for that which is greater than we can contain by way of reason.

The various authors of the various volumes that make up the library we know as the Bible makes no such attempt to explain God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They simply write about the experience of encountering God in combinations of these terms.

One of the texts we will hear read on Sunday is Romans 5.1-5. Here, Paul describes God—the god Jesus calls our Father in the heavens—as the source of wellbeing (peace), dignity (glory), and affection (love)—all of which, we can be assured, God shares with us.

Expanding on wellbeing, Paul describes Jesus, the one who unifies divinity and humanity in his person, as the ground of loving-kindness in which our lives are located.

Expanding on affection, Paul describes the Holy Spirit as the one through whom God’s being and your and my personal humanity are joined, in a connection of continual and constant affection.

But it is dignity that is at the heart of Paul’s reflections here. The shared dignity made possible by the wellbeing that experiencing loving-kindness creates and constant affection.

It is dignity—which elsewhere Paul describes as something we experience in increasing degrees—that is the focus of anticipation (hope). Created in the likeness of a God who possesses dignity, the human is made for dignity, and our spirit knows this even if it is not our daily experience, even if dignity is withheld from us, because of our age, or gender, or different abilities, or ethnicity, or sexuality, or religious tradition, or, or.

And here Paul introduces the idea of being constrained. This is not an abstract idea. It is something we experience in our bodies. In particular, as we grow older, our body takes on—willingly or unwillingly—more and more constraints. We are finite creatures, with limitations. But Paul rejoices in these: perceiving that it is our constraints that bring about endurance; and endurance that reveals proof of character; and character that produces anticipation—that is, sustains the secure knowledge of our God-given dignity—guaranteed to us by the affection of which God is source.

What is more, because Jesus is the human god, God who has taken constraint upon himself, this reveals endurance, or the constancy of God; reveals proof of God’s character, as loving; and reveals God’s anticipation, of our sharing in that affection, that wellbeing, that dignity.

Professor John Swinton, writing about memory and dementia, notes that the Latin root of the English word to remember means to pass time through the mind, in a sequential ordering; whereas the root meaning of the Spanish word to remember—recordar—is to pass time through the heart.

This is true also of theology, or the love of God. We can say something about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit with our minds—the Creeds do this, as well as is needed—but we experience God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the assurance of wellbeing, grounded in loving-kindness; in the anticipation of dignity; in the mysterious ways by which constraints bring about endurance, and endurance proof of character, and proof of character anticipation; testified to by affection.

This is what we (the Church) have to proclaim about God. Chances are, you believe in god; that even if you would describe yourself as an agnostic or an atheist, you can describe the god you cannot be sure exists or are convinced does not exist. But this is what we (the Church) proclaim (and must proclaim to ourselves as much as to anyone else).

This is the God to trust our lives to, or to not yet be sure of, or to reject.

 

approval : part 2

 

Our childhood experiences, whether the approval of our parents was something we had to earn through acceptable behaviour or could easily lose by unacceptable behaviour, or whether we knew their approval unconditionally, has a lasting impact on our adult responses to the idea of God.

Consider the following verses, Matthew 5.20-26:

[Jesus said] ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.’

If our childhood experience was one where parental approval had to be earned, and was easily lost, we will likely hear Jesus this way: that, however high the religious experts set the bar for approval, God sets it higher still. That while, in the past, God was willing to set the bar at a lower level — holding murderers to account — now Jesus raises the bar such that if you criticise someone else you risk being thrown into hell; for God is an exacting judge.

This message is proclaimed from many pulpits, with the “good news” that though we are judged guilty, Jesus takes the punishment in our place, appeasing God.

If, on the other hand, our childhood experience was one of unconditional parental approval, enabling us to flourish within secure attachment, then we might hear Jesus this way: that God’s approval goes far beyond the approval — or disapproval — we hold out to ourselves and one another. That, while God sought a society that held murderers to account, we have gone far beyond, such that if someone is angry with us we judge them harshly and if someone insults us we tell them to ‘Go to hell!’ Yet, Jesus calls on us to be the one who breaks this cycle, to be ministers of reconciliation towards one another.

There is all the difference in the world between these two perspectives, the one from a place of insecure attachment, the other from a place of secure attachment that allows us to admit to our shortcomings, knowing that whereas the enemy of our souls — the Father of Lies; the Satan, or Accuser — demands in the heavenly places that we be imprisoned, in Christ our Father in the heavens declares us to be innocent, and — though we have been put to death with him by the insecure actions of humans towards humans — raises us with him.

 

approval : part 1

 

‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

Jesus, Matthew 5.20

What is ‘righteousness’? For a certain kind of person, often drawn to religious frameworks, righteousness has to do with how we act in the world: with performance, that meets with God’s approval.

In fact, righteousness simply means divine approval. It has, in the first instance, nothing to do with what we do (this is not to say that what we do does not matter; simply that if we act with integrity and compassion this flows from righteousness already imputed to us) and everything to do with what God — the god Jesus reveals to the world, the god Jesus calls our Father in the heavens — is like.

‘For I tell you, if the approval you enjoy from God does not far exceed that which you enjoy (or not) from religious people, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

The good news being, that divine approval is given. God approves of you. God bestows righteousness on you.

Sometimes we struggle to approve of ourselves. And, viewing ourselves harshly, we become quick to view — to judge — others with the same harsh measure.

When we know that our Father in the heavens approves of us, we are released from the prison of performance; and set free to release others from the prison cells we have thrown them into (where, ironically, we found ourselves sharing the cell).

 

ten years a runner

 

This weekend will mark ten years since I have been — sometimes to my own surprise — a runner.

In that time, I have run a parkrun 229 times (230 on Saturday) and volunteered at parkrun in 141 separate roles over 117 separate occasions, including 50 times as Run Director.

It is worth noting that it took two years of regular, personal invitation before I finally turned up to my first parkrun; and another year before I fully committed myself.

If we are away over a weekend, we’ll take our running things with us so we can turn up at the nearest parkrun — or not, but we have the option — but if we are at home, we are at Silksworth, week by week.

Two years in, and again by personal invitation, I joined a local running club. Jo, who had followed me to parkrun after a year (which helped me commit to it) joined on the same day.

Our running club, Sunderland Strollers, knows a thing or two.

Knows that if you want to run, you really need to run on a regular basis.

Knows that it is easier to keep running with other people than on your own.

Knows that it helps to run with people of similar stamina and pace, to be able to run with those who are a little faster to bring you on, or a little slower when you are coming back from injury or just not feeling it.

Knows that not everybody can make the same day or time.

Knows that different people are looking for different things: do you want to run an ultra-marathon on mountain trails, a road marathon, or shorter distances, 10 kms? Are you training for an event, or are you more of a social runner? A beginner, or a seasoned veteran?

So, members of the club organise runs throughout the week. There are evening runs on Monday (trail; a social road run), Tuesday (track), Wednesday (main club night, a programme of different sessions run in five ability-graded packs; a steady pace 5 mile alternative), and Fridays (road); fitness training on Thursdays (Pilates; strength and conditioning); and morning runs on Sundays (one gentle and accessible for beginners; one longer).

I prioritise the Wednesday night sessions over other commitments (Ash Wednesday aside), and, currently, aim to get to the Monday and Friday night runs as often as I can.

Over the past eight years, I have run with C pack, stepped up to hang off the back of B pack, been a regular leader of D pack, and run with D without leading. My fitness levels have gone up and down. Injuries, just needing to step back at times, and other life circumstances all have their impact. I’m working to get back to running with C and leading D.

It is a community I love.

Sometimes people ask, why do runners feel the need to talk about their running all the time? And the answer is in what I wrote above: that it took two years of regular encouragement before I took the plunge. I know for a fact that my running and volunteering has encouraged other people to take up running and/or volunteering. Several of them have gone on to do things I have never done (marathons, for example) which delights me.

This weekend also marks fifteen years since I became an Anglican priest. Perhaps if we invited more people, more often, to join our churches, they might come, eventually, when they are ready, when they feel they can’t hold out any longer. Perhaps if we made sure they were accompanied in their ‘running the race,’ as saint Paul described life, they might commit.

 

hidden

Taking a turn around the duckpond, I pass a couple sitting quietly: she, on a bench, he, on a mobility scooter; his voice diminished, his breath as thin as a reed. Love is sorely pressed at times, but love endures.

Continuing along the drifts of yellow irises that line the edge of the pond — ‘past their best now,’ but what does that matter? — I pass a daughter feeding her elderly mother (again, no longer ambulant; again, a moving chair) with a spoon. A tender act of devotion. Our eyes meet in recognition: not familiarity, but one human bearing witness to the love of another human for another human.

The park is a safe place, a place of welcome and embrace. A place for stillness (as well as movement: the child being swung around on a suspended tyre; dogs pulling their walkers along). A place for quiet (not sterile noiselessness, but the song of small birds).

A place where we can be our true selves, made for love shared between us; a true self that is found — whether we recognise it as yet or not — hidden within Christ. This is the truest thing that can be said of you or of me.

I have been working on a translation of Romans 5.1-11, one might say from a disability theology perspective. It is rough and ready, as Paul’s writing is rough and ready and does not conform to the eloquence translators have sought to impose upon it, by violence.

‘Having been declared innocent, we therefore have assurance of peace/wholeness/wellbeing, drawing near to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have assurance of access to the loving-kindness we are firmly established in, and rejoice in anticipation of the dignity that is God’s — not only, but we rejoice in affliction [in being constrained by our circumstances], perceiving that constraints bring about endurance; and endurance, proof of character; and proof of character, anticipation. And what we anticipate does not shame us, because the affection of God has been poured into the heart of our being, because the Holy Spirit has been given to us.

‘For Christ continues to exist in our state of weakness, in accordance with the time when he died for the benefit of the ungodly. For with difficulty will anyone die for the innocent — though for the benefit of the good, perhaps someone would be bold enough to die. But God demonstrates union with us, of his affection for us, in that — we, still falling short [in our own strength] — Christ died for our benefit. By extension, even more abundantly, having now been declared innocent within the shedding of his blood [‘Father, forgive them,’ spoken from the cross], we will be rescued by him from opposition/vengeance. For if we, existing as enemies/in hostility, were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been changed/reconciled, shall we be delivered [from danger, into safety] within his life. Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we now receive this exchange/reconciliation.’

 

Trinity

 

The God whom Jesus called our Father is the Creator of all things, speaking everything into being with an authoritative word. God spoke, releasing the energy of life: matter coalesced and expanded outward. In response to a series of equally joyful declarations, stars and planets, including our own, formed; simple plant life evolved on earth, and when, responding to radiation from beyond, photosynthesis had changed the planet’s atmosphere enough, the sun and other celestial bodies became visible from earth (not that there were any physical eyes to see them yet); animals evolved to spread through every habitat; responding with such vigour that even mass extensions could not prevail, life always triumphed over destruction. Last of all, God, having created hominids, chose one to share God’s own breath: the homo sapien, or wise human, endowed with the very wisdom of God.

Time, as we measure it, does not exist in nature. (Indeed, time as we measure it did not exist until the Industrial Revolution.) As Einstein pointed out, time is experienced relative to the position of the beholder. Or, to put it another way, time is the attention paid by love. From our perspective, looking behind us – as Einstein put it, trying to think God’s thoughts after him – the stages of creation each took unimaginable aeons, each successive period roughly half as long as the one before. But from God’s perspective — the flow state of hyperfocus – each was but a day. Time flies, when you are having fun.

That authoritative word by which creation was authored is so one with the character of God as to be indivisible; and yet possesses such life within it as to be considered to possess its own personhood: capital W word. And God so loved creation that in time – the attention paid by love – that Word was spoken into human form: spoken over the as-yet un-cohered potential of Mary’s womb, becoming human – the crown of all creation, the most-beloved of all that is loved – taking the name Jesus, ‘God saves.’

God becomes human not because only God could save us from some great catastrophe that had befallen creation – not necessitated – but because it is the very nature of the human to be one who saves – delivers, brings aid to – his or her fellow human, and, together, all life on earth, from the frequent assaults of envious angels. God becomes human so as to be Ezer, helper. God becomes human because God becomes what God loves. The friend of humans, long spoken of anthropomorphically – the arm of the Lord, etc. – becomes one of us, actually one of us.

The fully human god Jesus – the Word from the beginning, now called the Son: faithful to, and faithful image of, the Father – lived among us and showed us what it looks like to be fully human, animated by the breath – the Spirit – of God. He loved in tangible acts of affection, in kindness. A way of being so strange to those long traumatised and retraumatised by violence against God’s good creation that we sought to remove love, put love to death. Yet – not for the first time – death could not prevail against the Word that spoke life into being. This Jesus embraced death and at the right time – the attention paid by love – he rose again. Forty days later, he ascended, returning to the Father, a human in the spiritual realm, to be the channel for peace to flow, from God to humans and from humans to God.

Ten days later, this Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. The breath of God. In our creation, we have all been given one breath breathed out by God, one breath we will in turn breath out to return to him. Our own spirit. Again, what we call time is relative to the perspective of the beholder. From God’s perspective, one breath; from ours, this breath lasts a lifetime. Yet now the Holy Spirit is poured out, incessantly.

Like the Word, the Spirit is indivisible from God; yet, like the Word, possesses such vitality as to be considered its own personhood. God waiting; Love with intention, attending to the beloved; Life breaking out, animating life. Jesus returns to the Father that the Spirit might be poured out, to dwell with our spirit, that we might not hold our breath but learn to breath in time with – that is, learning to pay attention in love – God. To trust. To give. To empower others.

Life always finds a way, makes a Way. Love always prevails, though it must struggle, though it prevails by laying down its life, only to have it given back again.

We believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Spirit to spirit

 

If you lived in the first-century Greco-Roman world and you had an important question to answer — should I marry this person? will we have children? should I undertake this venture, or opportunity? will my business be successful? should I go to war with my neighbour? — you would first go to the Oracle at Delphi. There the Pythia would enter an inner chamber, sit on a throne, and, possessed by the Spirit of Python, speak the words of the god of prophecy, Apollo.

Luke presents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as the true fulfilment of the longings expressed at Delphi. The Spirit of the living God falls upon the disciples, enthroned in an inner chamber, empowering them to speak. Peter further describes this as the Spirit of God dwelling with our own human spirit.

To be human is to wrestle with existential questions, with the aid of our own oracle of choice.

The first question we ask, long before we have words to articulate it, is ‘Am I safe?’ We ask this, first and foremost, of our parents, and if we are fortunate the answer is yes, we are safe with them, safe from them. Not every child is so blessed. But the Spirit of God whispers to our spirit, ‘Whatever you face, I will never abandon you.’

While we are toddlers, the question becomes, ‘Am I good?’ How our parents respond when we are toilet training and have frequent accidents has a massive impact on how we answer this question, on how we meet shame. But the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘I created you, and everything I created is good; indeed, you are human, and the human is not just good but exceedingly good.’

As pre-schoolers taking our first steps out into the wide world, the question becomes, ‘Am I enough?’ Do I have the necessary courage? And the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘Be brave and very courageous, for I am with you, wherever you go. I will rescue you and bring you home.’

At primary school the question becomes, ‘Am I capable?’ Not omnicompetent, but, can I master something? Here, school can open our horizons or crush us with reductive testing. But the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘See the gifts that I have planted within you — to be musical, or good with numbers or with words, or athletic, or...’

As adolescents the question becomes, ‘Am I whole?’ Can I be fully myself at home, or in front of my friends, or is there some part of me that I must keep hidden? Do I even know myself in full? And the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘You are held: while you figure out who you are becoming, I hold you; where you are vulnerable, I will protect you; and where you have been broken by the words or actions of others, or by yourself, I will hold those pieces together.’

In our twenties and thirties, the question becomes, ‘Am I loveable?’ Not just, will I find a life partner, or, can I make a romantic relationship work, but, wider and deeper, am I able to love myself? If we cannot answer this question well, we will look for love in unhealthy or even abusive relationships. But the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘You are loved from before the worlds began, and nothing — nothing at all — can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And my life in you empowers you to love, to receive love and to give love.’

In our forties and fifties and sixties, the question becomes, ‘Am I significant?’ Can I achieve something that will last beyond my own time? Can I leave the world a better place than I found it? We might seek to answer that in the realm of family or work, in different ways. But the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘You are my gift to the world, unique and unrepeatable, made to be fruitful, through whom blessing might flow.’

As we move on from the world of work into mature adulthood, the question becomes, ‘Am I content?’ Looking back on my life, have I made something beautiful? And can I come to accept the inevitable losses of life, including the truth that some things that were very important to me have not outlasted me? And the Spirit of God says to our spirit, ‘I will comfort you. See, I am making all things new: and you have been part of that as yet incomplete story. But I will restore all that has been lost. I forgive all that has been left undone. Even the dead shall rise again.’

Such questions are human questions. Pentecost is an ongoing story — a story I baptised young Arla Rose into this morning — a lifelong friendship, conversation, between our spirit and the Spirit of God.

Happy Pentecost!

 

hearing God

 

Have you ever heard God’s voice?

And, if so, has that been an exceptional experience, or is it a familiar one?

God is spirit, and so the way God speaks to us differs from a face-to-face conversation with another human being, because human beings are animals we can see, with vocal cords, and lips we can read.

But the human animal is also spirit, for God has breathed God’s own spirit into the human animal. This is what distinguishes us from every other animal, including our hominid ancestors. (God gave them life, but gave us something more: I would suggest, for the very purpose of conversation with a spiritual being.) And so we don’t only communicate body to body — including, but by no means limited to words — we also communicate spirit to spirit.

People who have experienced a bereavement will often have conversations with the person they have loved but no longer see. My own parents are still alive, but we live at a physical distance; nonetheless, there are times when I hear my mother’s voice, or my father’s voice. Distance and death come between the physical, but the spirit is not bound by such constraints. Some might say that is just the imagination or the subconscious; but I would suggest that the imagination and the subconscious are to the spirit what vocal cords and body language are to the flesh.

We have other ways of communicating spirit to spirit. These include writing. I can read words written down by someone who lived many centuries before me, and their spirit speaks to mine.

God speaks to us in many ways, including through our imagination and our subconscious — that is, through visions and dreams, and a voice in our head that is not our own conscious voice — and through things written down — whether the Bible, which is so important to some (much as I love the Bible, I think it is more a way we learn to recognise God’s voice speaking to others than a primary way God speaks to us) or the writings left to the Church by those we cal saints, or any other work written by a fellow human animal into whom God had breathed the spirit.

God also speaks to us through such other human animals who do stand in front of us, whose vocal cords move air waves that hit our ear drums, whose lips we might read.

The best way to learn to hear God’s voice is to be present to the possibility that God would want to speak with us at all. Whether what follows is constant chat or long companionable silence might depend on your personality or season of life or simply the overall length of the conversation.

But to hear God’s voice is not at all unusual, not the preserve of the exceptionally holy or the mentally ill.

 

questions, crises

 

Luke presents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to a Greek audience as the Church becoming the new Delphi, or site of pneumatic utterances; and to a Jewish audience as the Church becoming the new Creation/beginning/Genesis 1, with the Spirit/wind/breath of God hovering over what is as-yet unformed and calling it into being with a word.

That word — whether the utterance of an oracle or the series of “Let there be…”-s in Genesis 1, empowers the addressee to venture into the unknown, to become. In this, there is release, and a great deal of freedom, of choice.

If you could ask God anything, in relation to your life, what would it be?

Life has many stages of becoming, and each stage has its own crisis to which we need an answer, the very first of which — in the first eighteen months of life — is, am I safe? For young adults — which today, in the West, probably lasts until around age 40 — a key question is, am I loveable? Not just in regard to romantic relationships, but friendship, wider family, even whether we are able to love ourselves. For those in middle adulthood, the question is something to do with significance, whether anything we create will outlast us, or have a positive impact on the world. Whether we will accomplish anything. For the older generations, a key question is, am I content? Have I been able to answer that earlier crisis around accomplishments, and am I able to accept the inevitable losses of life, which accelerate at this stage?

These are all questions we might ask of our oracle of choice, or, indeed, bring before God.

These are all questions God cares about, because God cares for you intimately. These are crises the Spirit of God empowers us to face, wrestle with, and overcome — though not necessarily in the ways we might have imagined.

These are questions and crises the Church should be asking and discerning an empowering word and a faithful, if necessarily improvised, response to that word, together.

If you could ask God anything, in relation to your life, what would it be?

 

new Delphi

 

Luke is a culturally Greek follower of Jesus, writing for a culturally Greek audience.

If you lived in that world, and you needed to make a big decision, a decision that either way would change your life, and especially any decision that would impact upon other people, you would first go and seek guidance from the Oracle at Delphi. There, the Pythia (priestess) would enter the inner chamber, sit on a special seat, and breathe in the spirit of Python. In a trance state, she would utter oracles, foretelling the future in intelligible but ambiguous sentences.

When Luke recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he describes the event in such a way as to make the explicit claim that the Church — wherever it was found — was the new Delphi.

Two thousand years later, we still seek oracles to help us make significant decisions. Baby Boomers tend to take counsel from trusted family members or friends. Generation X (their younger selves would be amazed to hear) are most likely to seek the advice of an expert (including podcasts). Millennials, many of whom describe themselves as ‘spiritual, not religious,’ advocate meditation and mindfulness, and voraciously consume self-help books. Generation Z, the youngest adults, look to Web 2.0 content creators and social media influencers, with a marked and growing divide between young women — largely left-leaning and environmentally aware — and young men — in large numbers turning to the right, and influencers who argue that feminism has destroyed society.

Whatever our preferred source of counsel, we are all prone to confirmation bias. In this regard, too, we are no different from our ancestors. The oracles were notoriously ambiguous and interpreted according to the supplicant’s own desire. The legendary king Croesus enquired of the Pythia whether he should go to war with his neighbour. On being told that if he crossed a certain river he would destroy a great empire, he took this as a good omen, only to have his army defeated and his own great empire destroyed. The oracle was both an accurate and ambiguous foretelling. All too often, we suffer a similar fate, at our own hand.

In depicting the Church as the new Delphi, Luke foretells a community where the Spirit of God speaks in intelligible utterances that are weighed by men and women, youth and old age, together, as the best guarantor of not falling into the trap of Croesus. This takes us beyond our own generational, or gendered, preferences, into a more rounded discernment, as we recognise the gift that God has given to each one, as God sees fit.

Too often, my own charismatic evangelical tradition has determined what to do and sought the Holy Spirit to baptise our own interpretation. Whereas God, being a god who speaks but who does not coerce or violate human will, most often speaks in ambiguous, rather than deterministic, utterances. And then invites us to bear witness to what unfolds.

The crowd gathered at Pentecost, who heard the great things of God declared in their own native languages, asked, ‘What does this [utterance, phenomenon] desire to be?’ What does the future that is being foretold wish to become? This is less a question seeking definite knowledge and more a question paying attention to whatever will unfold.

What would it look like in practice for the local church to be such an attention-paying community of prophetic priests and priestesses available to the wider communities in which we are set? To be the new Delphis?

 

foretold

 

Next Sunday the Church celebrates Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God on all humankind fifty days after Jesus’ return from the dead.

Luke records for us that the disciples were sitting/enthroned in an inner chamber when the Spirit came upon them with the sound of a violent wind and what looked like flames dividing and sitting on them. This Spirit caused them to declare the great things of God such that visitors to Jerusalem — come to attend the pilgrim festival — from all around the Greco-Roman world, including Crete, heard them in their own birth-languages. The crowd are amazed and ask, ‘What does this desire to be?’ but others believed the disciples to be drunk.

Peter challenges this conclusion, claiming, instead, that what they were witnessing was the fulfilment of prophetic utterances by the Jewish prophet Joel, who foretold a time when God would pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, such that ‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy,’ the young receive prophetic visions and the elders dream prophetic dreams. Peter underlines the inclusion of both men and women in this eruption, which would be validated by portents in the heavens and signs on the earth, blood and fire and smoke. And all who called upon the Lord’s name would be rescued and preserved.

Luke writes for a primarily gentile audience, shaped by Greek mythology. And in the retelling of the Church calendar, Acts 2 (the Day of Pentecost) follows Acts 16 (Paul in Philippi). Both are linked in the Greek imagination to Delphi.

The Temple of Apollo at Delphi played a central role in their world. Indeed, many believed it to be situated at the centre of the world. But the centrality had more to do with the prophetic utterances of the Oracle, whose insight was sought by anyone about to undertake any civil, political venture.

The young god Apollo (a son of Zeus, so of the younger generation of Olympians), who was already associated with prophecy, took control of Delphi from older gods. Seeking priests to serve him, he chose Cretan sailors (or possibly pirates). They joined the established priestesses, who had long served at the temple complex. Once upon a time, they had sought prophecy in dreams, but at some point Dionysus, the god of wine, another son of Zeus and half-brother of Apollo — and a death-and-resurrection god — had also come to Delphi, and now the priestesses sought prophecy through a form of intoxication. As supplicants came in hope of a prophetic word to guide them, the priestess would enter the inner chamber, where she would sit on a throne, and inhale a mind-altering smoke, the spirit of divination.

But the Titan Gaia was angry with Apollo for killing the giant serpent Python (in an act of self defence) and sought to have him thrown into Tartarus, the jail deep within the underworld. Gaia also gave mortals in general the ability to receive dreams and visions, so that they would no longer come to Delphi to seek the utterances of the Pythia, the priestess who took her ceremonial name from Python. Zeus, however, ensured the safety of his son, and revoked Gaia’s gift to mortals, guaranteeing Delphi’s central place in the world.

From Cretans to smoke, from pilgrims from every corner of the world to what might be perceived as drunken prophetic utterances, from an alleged centre of the world to inner chambers and thrones, from dreams and visions released released or withheld, there are so many parallels between Pentecost and Delphi. While the details might be unfamiliar, it is hard to imagine Luke’s audience finding the account unrecognisable.

But by placing this story at the outset of his Acts of the Apostles, Luke is making a foretelling of his own: that the Spirit that empowers mortals to participate in the life of God — specifically in the risen life of Jesus — will come to usurp the spirit that gave prophetic utterances to the Oracle at Delphi.

That the stories of the gods of Olympus, the stories they had known since birth, the stories of their native tongue, would find their fulfilment in the story of the Jewish people whose own story was fulfilled in Jesus the anointed Lord, through whom all might be saved from the perils of this uncertain age.

The thing about the utterances of the Pythia was that they were ambiguous, prone to be interpreted in line with the desires of the enquirer. So, for example, Croesus, the rich-beyond-your-wildest-dreams king of Lydia (where the first woman to become a follower in Jesus in Europe originally came from) sought the Oracle before going to war. He was told that if he crossed a certain river, he would destroy a great kingdom. Taking this to refer to his enemy, he advanced, to the destruction of his own kingdom.

When the Spirit empowered a group of Galileans to declare the great things of God in such a way that the speakers of many local languages heard and understood in their native tongue, they asked, ‘What does this [utterance] desire to be?’ What, indeed? Luke will answer that question in the story he has just begun to tell. But what will that story become in the lives of his audience? And what does it desire to be in your life, and mine, today?

 

of stories and spirits

 

To begin with, the growth of the church was, with a few notable exceptions, a renewal movement among Jews. People who shared a mythos — stories by which their world was formed and sustained and navigated — in common: the patriarchs, the exodus, the wanderings in the wilderness and the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, the exile. Preachers like Peter and Stephen rehearsed those stories, and showed how Jesus fulfilled them.

But mid-way through Acts, Luke pivots from Peter to Paul, and from a mission primarily to Jews to church-planters increasingly hitting up against Greco-Roman culture, and an entirely different mythos. In Lystra, Paul and Barnabas are assumed to be the Greek gods Hermes and Zeus.

In Philippi, the church-planters meet a slave-girl who possesses, or is possessed by, the spirit of Python. Python was the giant serpent who guarded the stone at Delphi, the centre of the world. This stone was precious to Zeus, for his father, the titan Chronos, had swallowed the first five of his children, whole, at birth, to prevent any of them from usurping him. But he had been tricked into swallowing the stone instead of his youngest son, allowing Zeus to grow up to rescue his siblings and overthrow the titans.

Zeus’ wife, Leto, conceived twins, the goddess Artemis and the god Apollo, incurring the jealous wrath of Zeus’ principal wife, Hera. Hera ordered Python to abandon his post, and pursue and kill Leto and her offspring. Python caught up with them with the infants were four days old; but from his mother’s arms, Apollo fired arrows at the serpent, killing it.

When Paul defeats the spirit of Python with the arrow that is the name of Jesus, Luke’s audience might well expect the crowd to assume that Paul was Apollo in their midst. But because his actions have cost a group of (essentially) bandits — a popular enemy of the heroes or mortal children of the gods — their income stream, Paul and Silas are thrown into Tartarus, the deepest prison chamber of the underworld, where the titans had imprisoned monsters, and the Olympians, in turn, had imprisoned the titans.

Only two mortals had ever returned from the underworld, the realm presided over by the god Hades and guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus. One was Theseus, a son of Poseidon (god of the sea) who had ventured into the underworld on a quest to abduct Persephone, the wife of Hades. Theseus was the hero best known for killing the Minotaur. (Persephone only lived in the underworld for a third of every year, but Theseus and his bestie Pirithous are not the sharpest crayons in the crayon box.) The other was Heracles, a son of Zeus (god of the sky) and another object of Hera’s wrath. She had caused him to go mad, and in that state kill his wife and children; and, seeking penance, had forced him into a series of increasingly impossible tasks, culminating in kidnapping Hades’ hound Cerberus. Heracles succeeded, rescuing his cousin Theseus, who had been trapped in the underworld since failing in his own quest, as an added bonus. But he was prevented from also rescuing Theseus’ friend, Pirithous, by an earthquake.

However, it is an earthquake that liberates Paul and Silas from prison, and creates the opportunity for an encounter with their jailer whereby he, too, comes to put his trust in Jesus. Just as death could not keep hold of Jesus, so it cannot keep hold of Paul and Silas. They are participating in the resurrection. And just as Jesus’ risen life meant life for others, so did their participation in that risen life.

We create and sustain our world through stories, whether the great myths or the social media posts of a deranged president, whether the sacred libraries of religious faith or the daily news corporations. And those stories have life breathed into them by certain spirits, whether the spirit of Python, that purports to tell us our fortune, or the Holy Spirit, who empowers us with the risen life of Jesus, or some other spirit.

Which stories will you choose to be shaped by? Which spirit will you seek to be inspired by?

Where will that story, and that spirit, take you?

 

good news, bad news

 

When Paul and Barnabas give a man born lame the ability to walk, the citizens of Lystra believe them to be the gods Hermes (the Messenger) and Zeus, and make preparations to honour them with sacrifices and a feast. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, given their cultural frame of reference.

Therefore, when Paul defeats (the spirit of) Python in Philippi, we would expect the local population to assume that he was the god Apollo. Instead, Paul and Silas are thrown into Tartarus, the deepest dungeon of the underworld.

The difference is that in Philippi, Paul’s proclamation of the good news of salvation in the name of Jesus results directly in loss for a gang who have invested in grooming a vulnerable child for their financial gain.

Such people have always been dangerous.

The gospel should always be good news for the most vulnerable, and a problem for those who would exploit them.