The prophetic is silent. Its heyday is now rained out in an unbaptized haze of tolerance run amuck. O'Connor warned us: we really want a Christ without all that crucifixion talk. We want everyone carrying around open minds on top of shoulders broad enough to narrow nothing, and arms that carry no punch of truth, no signs of crosses, no healed withered-ness in its hands.
I wonder. As I approach history, visiting churches dating well before the declaration of our independence and the security of our constitution with its promise to make no laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion and the right for any of us to peaceably assemble together… I wonder... why are all these churches locked, boarded up, empty shells?
He made us, human beings, from the dirt of Earth, and he breathed in his very own breath to spring forth life, will, animation, and purpose within us. So, from the very beginning, God conspires with his human creatures, for, as you might know, conspire is broken into con and spire, which means together and breathed, respectfully. God breathed together with humans to give life, and in Jesus, life more abundantly.
At no other point has the whole world melted into a mold that looks like the end. You can cite wars and all their rumors but they are starting points that progressed us here to a tiny infectious agent that masquerades itself until it kills us, or at least some of us. Sound familiar? It’s the garden story recycled.
It’s heavy; I don’t know if I can bear it; the whips are driving into my back; my feet are sore; beneath me the riveting rocks press in; my eyes sting from the sweat; I am hot; I am cold. “Why don’t you save yourself?” jeers someone close to me from the lynch mob that has surrounded me. Father even now forgive them.
In Acts, we hear a new phrase: “in the name of Jesus Christ.” Peter uses it twice at the beginning of the book. He says to the crowd*, “Repent and be baptized… in the name of Jesus Christ…” 2:38. A little later, while walking with John to the Temple, he says it again, ordering the lame man to get up and walk, “in the name of Jesus Christ” (3:6).
In Acts 4:24, we hear a word for Lord that graduates the normal word used. In the New Testament, the word κύριος is used to refer to someone in authority, a term a servant would use to address his master, a word that appears in the text some 600 times, depending on your translation. But here, in Acts 4:24, a different word is used: δεσπότης.
The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, along with persecution and geographical changes, quickly reshapes the world for Jesus’ followers. Before Acts 10, the disciples generally understood Jesus’ message to be exclusive for the Jewish people in spite of Jesus’ clear directive to make disciples of all nations. But a challenge arrives in Acts 10.
Who started looking up anyhow? If gods are to be found, wouldn’t they be closer in? Sustenance makes leveled sense. Survival is intimate with what the winds bring in or what they keep away. And who moves these winds? Who strings up the clouds and thickens their skins to hold in the sun’s greed? Is the sky’s vastness reason for our inferiority?
Colossians 1:5 says that our faith and love spring from, “the hope stored up in heaven.” It’s a phrase that brings to mind 2 Timothy 4:8, where Paul says that, “there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Today, the word “love” is overused and undervalued at the same time. We love everything from foods to cars, from movies to retailers, from people to God himself. We may not consciously distinguish one use of love from another, in part because our speech is becoming more and more informal and reduced every year, but it’s important to be intentional about the differences.
