Power Struggles

There is power in every place.  The only question is whose power and what kind of power.  In Acts 4:5-12, the religious leaders ask the power question to Peter and John:  “By what power or what name did you do this?” (4:7).  Maybe they have asked this question because they confused the power of their own positions in the religious establishment with the power of God, and therefore, rejected the possibility of God’s power working in ways that they cannot understand or control.  We all have that problem.  We become suspicious when the Spirit of God apparently moves in a manner that goes beyond our frameworks of understanding.  But the story of Acts is a story of how the Spirit of God cannot be domesticated and that the power of the Spirit takes us beyond human capacities.  How open are we for the movement of the Spirit in and around us?

Seeing A Ghost

When Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection (Luke 24:36-48), they originally thought they saw a ghost (24:37).  And Jesus had to make a great effort to convince them of His bodily presence in their midst (24:38-43).  This, of course, is even a bigger problem in today’s secular age when Christianity requires belief in the living presence of the risen Lord when He appears to us as the Holy Ghost.  Seeing the Holy Ghost with eyes of faith is not easy (and some would say close to an impossibility) for modern people to whom only the rational and observable are real.  The philosopher, Charles Taylor, makes the distinction between the disenchanted worldview of a buffered self in a secular age (ala Descartes) to whom everything is in doubt except the possibilities within the self and the enchanted worldview of a porous self that belief in the influence of powers outside the self.  In Luke 24, a true understanding of Scripture (24:45) and being witnesses of the risen Lord (24:48) is not possible without discerning the living presence of the Lord in our midst.

Celebrating Baptism

This coming Sunday is traditionally the Sunday during which we celebrate Jesus’ baptism.  Celebrating Jesus’ baptism naturally leads to reflecting on our own baptism.  Acts 19:1-7 makes a strong connection between baptism and the Holy Spirit.  It confirms what we already know from Mark 1:8, namely that unlike John the Baptist, who baptized with water (baptism of repentance), Jesus came to baptize with the Spirit.  So when Paul baptized in the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit came on them (19:5-6).  The main question in these seven verses is not focused on baptism, but on whether they have received the Holy Spirit (19:2).  When we are also reflecting on our baptism when we celebrate Jesus’ baptism this coming Sunday, we are not focusing on a ritual in itself but on how our identity in Christ is embedded in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Our baptism is not a confirmation of our natural attributes, but of our identity in Christ.  We are now defined by who we are in Him, celebrating the gifts of his Spirit in our lives.  Can you define yourself in terms of who you are in Christ, given the gifts of the Spirit in your life, rather than the limitations of your natural attributes?

Blessed New Year!

A new year always brings with it the hope of newness.  Everybody is in need of starting over every now and then.  We seek freshness to the stuckness that inevitably comes with our mundane pasts.  But Christians don’t rely on freshness and newness to come through our own ability to fulfill those new year resolutions.  We know creativity starts with God.  Even when we succeed to do something new, it is through the gifted power of the Holy Spirit.  So, Genesis 1:1-5 is an appropriate new year’s text, because it starts the Bible with God’s creative style of doing something new.  And yet, it is fascinating to notice how God chooses to be creative.  God’s creation is a dynamic process in which creatures are included to participate in God’s creation of newness.  In his commentary on this passage, Terrence Fretheim summarizes:  “In sum, God takes the ongoing creational process into account in shaping new directions for the world, one dimension of which is engaging creatures in creative activity. Divine decisions interact with creaturely activity in the becoming of the world. God’s approach to creation was and continues to be communal and relational.”  God is up to something new in and through your life and mine.  How can we become more sensitive for His creative power in the world so that we can participate in His ongoing creation of newness?

A Life Worthy of God

In 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Paul’s great concern is to maintain the relationship he has forged with his readers by reminding them about the time he spent with them in the past.  To this end, he gave them concrete examples as proofs that demonstrate he and his companions came as God’s emissaries and were not seeking their own glory (2:4).  In doing so, he focuses on his integrity in his relationship to them.  But he also shifts the focus to them by encouraging them to live their own lives of integrity in relationship with God.  He calls this integrity “a life worthy of God” (2:12).  If God is a trustworthy God, then our response should be likewise.  Living a life worthy of God can obviously mean many things, but in the next verse there is a clear connection with how the Word of God is received.  He says, “when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers” (2:13).  No integrity is possible without allowing the Word of God to transform your life as the true Word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Power of the Word

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 gives us an exposition of the power of God’s Word.  There are at least three dynamics to this powerful Gospel.  First, it comes to us from other people (1:4-5).  We receive God’s Word in community with other believers.  The power of the Word is in fact the power of community.  We may think there is a neutral, objective meaning of the Word, but our understanding of God’s Word is always shaped by particular interpretive communities.  Second, it comes to us “with the Holy Spirit” (1:5).  When we read the Bible, we don’t just read any book.  We read God’s Word to us.  It has the power to form and transform, because it comes through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit uses the Gospel to reveal God to us.  Third, the Word does not belong to us (1:7-8).  It is meant to pass on to others.  It is God’s Word intended for the world.  Unfortunately, many believers treat the Word as private possession for their individual well-being.  But a domesticated Word that only stays within the community that interprets it is a powerless Word not reaching its destination.  Say a prayer of thanks today for the gift of God’s Word, and ask yourself what you do to pass it on.

When You Send Your Spirit

Tomorrow is Pentecost Day.  We celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.  Psalm 104:24-35 praises the power of the Spirit in our midst.  When we refer to the Spirit, we always point to the Spirit’s work in the entire creation (and not only in and through human beings).  “When you send your Spirit, they (God’s creatures) are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (104:30).  Through God’s Spirit, God creates (104:24-26).  But more than that, God also cares for his creation through the work of the Spirit (104:27-30).  God’s continued creation and every day provision require a response of praise (104:31-35).  Pentecost is our opportunity to embrace the work of the Spirit in our midst and to celebrate its power in our lives and environment where we live.  Blessed Pentecost!

Spiritual Gifts

The core of the Christian message for people who live this side of Christ’s resurrection is clear:  “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).  We don’t have a natural ability within ourselves to know God through Jesus.  Nothing to boast about when the focus is on us.  We need the Spirit of God to enable God’s work within us (12:6).  We receive the knowledge and power of God as pure gifts from the Holy Spirit.  As much as individuals are not the origin but only the recipients of this knowledge and power, individuals are also not the purpose of these spiritual gifts.  The key for understanding the purpose of spiritual gifts is verse 7:  “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (3:8).  Unfortunately, far too often the matter of spiritual gifts is individualized among Christians.  We think to discover our spiritual gifts is all about ourselves.  That is clearly not the case from Paul’s perspective.  The gifts come from the Spirit and the gifts returns to the community (“for the common good”).  What are your spiritual gifts?  How do you make it work for the sake of the larger community (church and society)?

Glorified

Jesus prays in John 17, “Father… glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (17:1).  In the Gospel of John, glory has to do with how God reveals himself to human beings.  God’s presence is hidden until God chooses to reveal himself, and glory refers to the power of how and when this revelation takes place.  This happens through Jesus Christ.  Jesus glorifies the Father by revealing God to human beings, and Jesus is glorified by the Father through the power given to Jesus to reveal God to human beings (17:2-5).  However, Jesus’ prayer goes further than asking for the glory of the Father and Son.  Jesus also prays for his disciples (17:6-19) and for all believers (17:20-26).  He asks for the Father’s protection of them “so that they may be one as we are one” (17:11).  What this means become even clearer a few verses further on when Jesus declares, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17:22).  Jesus passed on the glory of the Father and the Son so that we can be glorified through the power of his Spirit.  Since we became part of the glory of God, The Holy Spirit can also reveal God to others through us.  May you and I live this day conscious of the fact that God wants to reveal himself to others through us.

Repent

The appropriate response to the confession that Jesus, as the risen Christ, is the Lord is repentance (Acts 2:36-41).  That is what the first believers in Acts discovered when they asked themselves the question on what to do in response to Jesus’ resurrection (2:37-38).  Those who accepted the message of repentance and who turned away from a “corrupt generation” were then baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit (2:38-41).  The Greek verb for “repent” is “metanoeo”, which is a combination of “meta” meaning “with” or “after” and “noeo” meaning “to perceive” or “think”.  It means to have an afterthought or second thought about something or someone that leads to a change of perception or thinking.  Repentance is to not accept the dominant perceptions and thoughts about what is going on our lives and in the world, but to always run it through the afterthought or second thought of the Gospel of the risen Christ.  Our actions are always determined by our perceptions and how we look at what is going on in our lives and in the world.  May the Lord bless us with the spiritual eyes and minds infused by the Holy Spirit so that we may live our lives shaped by the criteria of the Gospel rather than the criteria of a corrupted generation.