Tongues of Fire: Theological Reflections on Pentecost

1

A Reflection on Pentecost

Acts

2

:

1

–

21

Psalm

104

:

24

–

34

,

35

b

Romans

8

:

22

–

27

John

15

:

26

–

27

;

16

:

4

–

15

Pentecost celebrates the countless expressions of God’s love and wisdom. Like a skilled dancer, God’s Holy Spirit moves through all creation bringing forth life and love and inspiration. Fire and wind are everywhere. Inspiration and revelation are just a moment away and can come either by surprise or as a result of the interplay between God’s wisdom and our intentional spiritual practices. The Spirit blows where it wills, in all directions, embracing all life, human and nonhuman.

In other words, Pentecost is about God’s omnipresence, which I interpret through the categories of Whiteheadian process theology as God’s ever present initial aim that all things and events at every moment of space-time achieve the maximum self-fulfillment of which they are capable. Intentionally conforming our subjective aims for our own fulfillment in harmony with God’s initial aim for us, as exemplified by the historical Jesus, is the call of Pentecost. Omnipresence is an all or nothing deal. God can’t be a little omnipresent. Either God is present in, with, and under everything and event since the beginning of creation—what theologians and philosophers call panentheism—or omnipresence makes no sense. Nor is the God of Tanak and the New Testament—and process theology—present in a homogenous or passive manner in human life and in the evolutionary process happening throughout the universe. As I write these words, God is an active, personal, intimate, and vision-oriented presence moving always and everywhere in the direction of Shalom, of interdependent wholeness and peace. God’s spirit touches every life, opening us toward communion, inspiration, and creation. Moreover, if God’s aim is, as Jesus proclaimed, abundant life, then every expression of God’s presence lures us toward the personal and corporate wholeness appropriate to our context and the greater good of humans and non-humans alike. The Spirit may challenge and rebuke, but its intention is always the creation of just, compassionate community, as Micah 6:8 has it.

This is the point of the passage from Romans 8 about the universality of divine revelation. The groans of the spirit move through all creation—including the non-human world as well as human life. The sighs of creation are too deep for words, yet they move through the unconscious and intercede on our behalf and give us guidance in every moment of life—if we pay attention. God aims all things toward the good within us and around us, meaning the maximum intensity of beauty and wholeness—that joins our evolution with the evolution of the universe. These aims are not all-determining but rather all-orienting in the context of the many factors that influence each moment of experience. Another way of expressing this is that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is not occasional nor is it parochial, but all encompassing, luring forth all life with visions appropriate to each individual’s complexity and context. Anything touched by God, human and non-human, is of value and can be a vehicle of revelation. Awaken to divine intercession, to God’s dream for you, so shouts Romans 8:22–27.

This is why one of my favorite writers, Annie Dillard, advised that we should strap on safety helmets and lash ourselves to our pews whenever we attend worship.¹ After all, worship is, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead, an adventure of the spirit. We claim great things in worship and should be prepared for surprise and adventure whenever we gather as a community of faith. The living God of Pentecost calls us to expect great things—of ourselves and the creative movements of God. This adventurous Spirit was surely at work among the Pentecost Christians. They were surprised by wind, flame, and word. Pentecost joins mysticism with mission. The ecstatic experiences of Jesus’ first followers—including the women following Jesus’ Way—drove them into the streets to share words of graceful transformation with people of all nations. What is most exciting is that God moved through listener and speaker alike, creating a synergy of revelation and salvation. Lives were joined and transformed, despite the differences of race, language, class, and gender.

Peter’s sermon, grounded in the prophetic words of Joel, describes God’s embrace of all the peoples of the earth and enjoins us to cross every boundary to fulfill our role as God’s partners in healing the world. A church community grounded in Pentecost goes beyond homogeneity to embrace diversity in all its many forms. God’s providence encourages diversity in congregations as the foundation of spiritual growth and mission. This is what it means to be a church community founded on unity in diversity, always moving outward in ever-expanding circles of grace.

Psalm 124 complements the global experience of the Pentecost people. God’s works are many and varied. God’s wise ruach, God’s breath, moves through every creature giving life and energy, just as God’s ruach breathed life into Adam in the creation story of Genesis 2. And John’s Gospel describes the coming of an Advocate, God’s Spirit whose presence will guide and sustain us. God never leaves us without wisdom—if we pay attention. There is a voice of truth in every situation. God is constantly giving us the wisdom we need in the form of possibilities to lure us forward and the energy to manifest these possibilities in our daily life.

Pentecost is visionary, but it also invites us to embrace practices for receiving the Spirit’s guidance and wisdom. The Spirit is free, but often we are oblivious to it. We listen to the Spirit, as did those first Pentecost people, by personal and communal prayer and meditation. God’s wisdom touches groups and persons together, and we can create an environment of receptivity when we pray and open ourselves to whatever surprises God might place in our individual and communal life. But we must be prepared to move with the Spirit, and that means mission. When we operate from a place of mission, new and more exciting missions emerge, bringing wholeness to us and to those we serve. Further, practicing Pentecost involves openness to diversity. We need to be open to the many reflections of God in the world and humankind. In other words, to the degree we think God is omnipresent, to that degree every moment can bring inspiration and invitation. Everyone, deep down, has the capacity to hear God and be a companion on the Pentecost journey, despite—and especially as a result of—their differences. We are one and many in God’s ever-surprising Spirit. We need to breathe in God’s spirit and make every moment a prayer and a mission.

1. Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk,

40

.

2

A Reflection on the Trinity

Isaiah

6

:

6

–

8

Psalm

29

Romans

8

:

12

–

17

John

3

:

1

–

7

I have always been mystified by the doctrine of the Trinity. On a Trinity Sunday twenty years ago, a colleague of mine in the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University asked me what I thought about the Trinity. When I said that the simplest explanation I could think of was that the Father referred to God and the Son was the historical Jesus who had surrendered his will for himself to God’s will for Jesus to such a degree that in Jesus’ life and death persons of faith experienced, partially at least, something of God’s reality. The Spirit, I continued points to God’s creative presence in the universe since the first moment of creation to the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus two thousand years ago, to God’s continuing creative activity up to the present, and in whatever the future ends up becoming.

My colleague grinned and said, You could never be ordained in the Lutheran Church with that understanding.

That’s OK, I said, university teaching is my calling, not ordination.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the most difficult doctrine to comprehend in the history of Christian theological reflection. There exists no explicit Trinitarian teaching in either the Tanak or the New Testament. But the foundation for Trinitarian thinking originated in Christian reflection about the relation of the historical Jesus to God as the Jesus Way gradually separated from the Jewish Way. Just how was God experienced in the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus, and how is God’s presence to be comprehended after his death and resurrection? All questions with which a developing Jewish Way would not be concerned.

For first to fourth-century Christians the questions were: (1) what is the real relationship between the historical Jesus Christians confess to be the Christ (literally Greek for messiah) and God; (2) what is the relationship between God, the historical Jesus, and the continuing work of God through the Holy Spirit? Debates between bishops and theologians throughout the Roman Empire were contentious and often very angry, as well as socially disruptive—something no Roman emperor would tolerate. Thus in 325, Emperor Constantine, who had converted to the Christian Way as he sought to unify the Western part of the Roman empire, called into session the Council of Nicaea. Constantine’s problem was that there were so many versions of the Christian Way floating about that he wasn’t sure which version should be declared the official state religion. The dominant issue was the relationship between Jesus and God. Was Jesus only a prophetic human being, or was there something divine about the historical Jesus and what was this something?

The question is metaphysical and the theologians at Nicaea drew upon the influential philosophical speculations of Aristotle. Aristotle wrote that a thing is a formed substance. Substance was his name for the stuff that comprises all things and events, while form was his name for the patterns that substances in nature assume. Another way of saying this is that substance names the physical stuff assumed by the specific forms that constitute all things and events. So, for example, an apple is a formed apple-substance, while a dog is an example of stuff formed into dog, while a human being is an example of stuff formed into a human being. But no two apples are