Inspired by Isaiah 35 -

O God, who causes the wilderness and the dry land to rejoice, and whose very presence makes the desert blossom and burst into song: let that same power for the restoration of life overflow with compassion through your people, making the bodies of those sick well, those injured whole, those impaired strong, and those imperiled sound, that amidst the wilderness of this present age, streams might break forth in the desert, causing your creational intent for the experience of human life to rise to its fullest expression, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son, our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Inspired by 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 5 and Revelation 21:

Creator God, by raising your Son from the dead, you have caused the firstfruits of the resurrection to burst into flower: even now, by the exceeding greatness of that same power, grant your Church to be the righteousness of God in Him, agents of your restorative presence, bringing freedom and healing to bodies oppressed by the powers of Sin and Death, that as the very Body of the resurrected Lord, we might bear witness to your triumph over darkness, testifying to the day when death will be vanquished in victory, and crying, mourning, sorrow and pain will forever cease, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Inspired by Isaiah 61 and John 20:

God of tenderness and patience, whose Son was anointed by the Spirit to bind up the brokenhearted and make the wounded whole: let this ministry never be lacking in Your Church but rather let it about through your gracious favor, that we, being conformed to the image of Your Son, being sent as he was sent and indeed doing greater works than he, may see signs of your Kingdom’s nearness as lives are restored in anticipation of the new creation of all things, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son our Lord…

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In recent days, a fresh wave of the Spirit’s presence has broken out at IHOP-KC resulting in many supernatural healings, deep heart-felt experiences of the love of God, and a number of unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence. It has been wonderful to partake of and I pray earnestly for its increase here and across our nation. If there is anything of which our nation lies in dire need, it is the life-giving, renewing and restorative presence of God’s Spirit hailing the advent of God’s Reign in our midst. In such, I am reminded of Jonathan Edwards’ excellent piece of writing, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, in which he distills the consummation of his experience and insight from being a central leader in the First Great Awakening. He calls the people of God both to earnestly support the work of the Holy Spirit and to be as diligent as possible in avoiding all misconduct and error. It seems to me that many people excel in one or the other, either wholeheartedly embracing the move of the Spirit, while at times lacking in discernment, discretion and excellence, OR people are so diligent in keeping up their “discernment” and “excellence” that they frequently oppose the work of God’s Spirit (though rejecting a true work of God’s Spirit can hardly be called “discernment”). I am myself desiring to find the middle ground, a via media, so to speak, of which Edwards’ spoke—to wholeheartedly support the work of God’s Spirit, whatever it looks like, yet with the discernment, discretion, excellence and self-control that is becoming of God.

In light of what has been going on recently, and what is sure to happen more in the months, years and decades to come, I am here reproducing a significantly abridged version of this work in outline form. Here I mainly lay out basic indicators of 1) that which cannot be used to indicate a work is not from the Spirit of God and 2) the signs of a true work of the Spirit of God. I leave out all the additional explanation Edwards gives for each point. For these further explanations see the full work which is available for free at ccel.org.

From here to the end, all is directly excerpted from Edwards himself.

I. Negative Signs; or, What are not signs by which we are to judge of a work–and especially, What are not evidences that work is not from the Spirit of God.

1. Nothing can be certainly concluded from this, That a work is carried on in a way very unusual and extraordinary; provided the variety or difference be such, as may still be comprehended within the limits of Scripture rules.

2. A work is not to be judged by any effects on the bodies of people; such as tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of body, or the failing of bodily strength. The influence persons are under is not to be judged of one way or other by such effects on the body; and the reason is because the Scripture nowhere gives us any such rule.

3. It is no argument that an operation on the minds of the people is not the work of the Spirit of God that it occasions a great deal of noise about religion. For though true religion be of a contrary nature to that of the Pharisees–which was ostentatious, and delighted to set itself forth to the view of people for their applause–yet such is human nature, that it is morally impossible there should be a great concern, strong affection and a general engagedness of mind amongst a people without causing a notable, visible and open commotion and alteration amongst that people.

4. It is no argument that an operation on the minds of the people is not the work of the Spirit of God that many who are the subjects of it have great impressions made on their imagination.

5. It is not argument that a work is not of the Spirit of God that some who are the subjects of it have been in a kind of ecstasy, wherein they have been carried beyond themselves, and have had their minds transported into a train of strong and pleasing imaginations, and a kind of visions, as though they were rapt up even to heaven and there saw glorious sights.

6. It is no sign that a work is not from the Spirit of God that example is a great means of it. It is surely no argument that an effect is not from God that means are used in producing it; for we know that it is God’s manner to make use of means in carrying on his work in the world, and it is no more an argument against the divinity of an effect, that this means is made us of, than if it was by any other means. It is agreeable to Scripture that persons should be influenced by one another’s good example (Matt. 5:16; 1 Pet. 3:1; 1 Tim. 4:12; Titus 2:7, etc.)

7. It is no sign that a work is not from the Spirit of God that many who seem to be the subjects of it are guilty of great imprudences and irregularities in their conduct. We are to consider that the end for which God pours out his Spirit is to make people holy, and not to make them politicians. It is no wonder that in a mixed multitude of all sorts–wise and unwise, young and old, or weak and strong natural abilities, under strong impressions of mind–there are many who behave themselves imprudently. There are but few who know how to conduct themselves under vehement affections of any kind…

8. Nor are many errors in judgment, and some delusions of Satan intermixed with the work, any argument that the work in general is not of the Spirit of God. However great a spiritual influence may be, it is not to be expected that the Spirit of God should be given now in the same manner as to the apostles, infallibly to guide them in points of Christian doctrine, so that what they taught might be relied on as a rule to the Christian Church. And if many delusions of Satan appear, at the same time that a great religious concern prevails, it is not an argument that the work in general is not the work of God. Yea, the same persons may be the subjects of much of the influences of the Spirit of God, and yet in some things be led away by the delusions of Satan, and this be no more of paradox than many other things that are true of real saints, in the present state, where grace dwells with so much corruption, and the new self and the old self subsist together in the same person; and the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil remain for a while together…

9. If some, who were thought to be wrought upon, fall away into gross errors, or scandalous practices, it is no argument that the work in general is not the work of the Spirit of God. An instance of this is Judas, who was one of the twelve apostles, and had long been constantly united to, and intimately conversant with, a company of truly experienced disciples, without being discovered or suspected till he discovered himself by his scandalous practice. He had been treated by Jesus himself, in all external things, as if he had truly been a disciples, even investing him with the character of apostles, sending him forth to preach the gospel, and enduing him with miraculous gifts of the Spirit.

10. It is no argument that a work is not from the Spirit of God that it seems to be promoted by ministers insisting very much on the terrors of God’s holy law, and that with a great deal of pathos and earnestness.

II. Positive Signs–What are distinguishing Scripture evidences of a work of the Spirit of God.

1. When the operation is such as to raise their esteem of that Jesus who was born of the Virgin, and was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem; and seems more to confirm and establish their minds in the truth of what the gospel declares to us of his being the Son of God and the Savior of humanity; it is a sure sign that it is from the Spirit of God (1 John 4:2-3; 1 Cor. 12:1).

2. When the spirit that is at work operates against the interests of Satan’s kingdom, which lies in encouraging and establishing sin, and cherishing people’s worldly lusts; this is a sure sign that it is a true, and not a false spirit. (1 John 4:4-5)

3. The spirit that operates in such a manner as to cause in people a greater regard to the Holy Scriptures, and establishes them more in their truth and divinity is certainly the Spirit of God.

4. If by observing the manner of the operation of a spirit that is at work among a people, we see that it operates as a spirit of truth, leading persons to truth, convincing them of those things that are true, we may safely determine that it is a right and true spirit.

5. If the spirit that is at work among a people operates as a spirit of love to God and people, it is a sure sign that it is the Spirit of God. (1 John 4:6 – Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God…)

III. Practical Inferences

1. From what has been said, I will venture to draw this inference, viz., that the extraordinary influence that has lately appeared causing an uncommon concern and engagedness of mind about the things of religion is undoubtedly, in general, from the Spirit of God.

2. Let us all be hence warned, by no means to oppose, or do anything in the least to clog or hinder the work; but on the contrary, do our utmost to promote it. Now Christ is come down from heaven in a remarkable and wonderful work of his Spirit, it becomes all his professed disciples to acknowledge him, and give him honor.

3. To apply myself to those who are the friends of this work, who have been partakers of it, and are zealous to promote it – Let me earnestly exhort such to give diligent heed to themselves to avoid all errors and misconduct, and whatever may darken and obscure the work; and to give no occasion to those who stand ready to reproach it. The apostle exhorts Titus to maintain a strict care and watch over himself, that both his preaching and behavior might be such as “could not be condemned; that he who was of the contrary part might be ashamed, having no evil thing to say to them,” Titus 2:7-8

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When Jesus rose from the dead, splendor returned to the world. From the depths of death’s dark gloom, Jesus emerged triumphant and the light of new life shone out permeating the entire earth. God’s redemptive purpose to not abandon the earth to its decay, death and misery, but to restore, renew and indeed re-create it with greater glory than it possessed in its pristine state, though prophesied throughout the Old Testament, was enacted in and through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

In the last post I discussed the Jewish concept of “resurrection” as an expectation which was

bodily (entailing a return to the life of the physical body),

earthly (as opposed to other-worldly),

corporate (it happened to all the people of God),

simultaneous (all at one time), and

eschatological (as the transitional event between this age and the age to come in which all things would be restored).

In such, I began to assert the notion that the resurrection of Jesus was not simply a fantastic miraculous event, perhaps the best of all the miracles in Jesus’ career. Rather, the resurrection of Jesus, as understood in its Jewish context, marked the irruption of the life of the Age to Come into the present. This Age to Come, was heralded by the Hebrew prophets as a time when death would be no more (Isa. 25), when all areas of life would be renewed and restored, whether they be ecological, agricultural, physical, political, economic, relational, etc., and God’s people would forever rejoice with gladness (Isa. 35:10).  In short, the entire earth and all that is in it would be renewed and re-created. When Jesus was raised from the dead, this re-creation began. The restoration of all things had its inauguration. As Jesus stepped out of the tomb, the springtime of all creation started to blossom and the age-anticipated promises of God for life, righteousness and freedom began to find their fulfillment. This notion is termed inaugurated eschatology, meaning that eschatological realities of the age to come have been inaugurated, that is, they have begun, even now in the middle of the present age, while yet awaiting a future consummation of fullness (this is often discussed in terms of the Kingdom of God being both “already but not yet”).

To continue to demonstrate this idea of the resurrection of Jesus heralding the advent of God’s New Creation (i.e., inaugurated eschatology), I would like to quickly breeze through the Gospel of John – a whirlwind tour perhaps, and show how the notion of “new creation” is present in this work.

To begin with, the familiar opening words of John are “In the beginning…” What is strikingly obvious to us, would have been equally apparent to hearers/readers in the first century. John is intentionally mirroring the initial words of Genesis, the famed creation story. While this would not be conclusive in itself (but will be made much more clear as we proceed), why might John be intentionally beginning his Gospel with the first words of Genesis? He continues to speak of the incarnation in terms of “light shining in the darkness,” a further allusion to the first chapter of Genesis. Is it possible that John is setting us up for precisely what it sounds like – a second (new) creation story?

In John 5:24-25, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and  believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and  does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you,  an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

Three points are of note.

1)    The person who believes has, that is, currently possesses eternal life. This phrase translated “eternal life” literally means “life of the age” and was used in Jewish writings from or before the time of the New Testament to mean the “life of the age to come” (Dan. 12:2; Pss. Sol. 3:12; 13:11; 14:10; 1 Enoch 37:4; 58:3). Furthermore, in the Synoptic Gospels, the terms “eternal life” and “Kingdom of God” are used interchangeably on a number of occurrences (Mk 9:43, 45, 47; 10:17-30; Mt. 19:23-29; Lk. 18:24-30). Thus, when we come to the Gospel of John and see that the term “Kingdom of God” only occurs twice, it seems very likely that the often used phrase “eternal life” (i.e., “life of the age”) is John’s preferred way of referring to the same reality the Synoptic Gospels prefer to call the “Kingdom of God.”[1] This life of the age to come, this experience of God’s Kingdom is available in the present as the possession of those who believe in Jesus.

2)    This possession of eternal life entails “passing out of death into life.” Here we see clear resurrection language, as will be confirmed in the following verses. This further clarifies the reception of the life of the age to come. There is a sense to which the believer in Jesus transfers from the present evil age into the Age to Come, while yet remaining in the present age. Jesus uses a verb of motion, “passing out of,” to describe the believer’s participation in eternal life. This militates against the pure internalized understanding of these verses, as if Jesus is speaking mostly of an internal, immaterial, “spiritual” change in the believer. Jesus does not view this change as internal, but as external. It is not a “change of heart,” but rather a change of location for the entire person. Their “inner being” does not move, but “the one who believes” in their entirety of personhood moves beyond the realm where death has sway and into the resurrection life of the age to come.

3)    Finally, if this wasn’t already clear, Jesus emphasizes that the time in which this happens is now. This is significant because the resurrection events that will soon happen to Jesus in the narrative cannot be construed solely as an isolated incident for Jesus. We are meant to understand the dynamic connection between what happens to Jesus and what is available to the believer. As Jesus rises from the dead in the life of the Age to Come, so likewise all believers are able to participate in that life in the present.

In John 11 Jesus makes a remarkable statement: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

As Christians, we have heard this verse so often, I think it ceases to strike us as strange. Jesus claims to be the resurrection. But the resurrection is an event. How can a person be an event? Furthermore, how can a person be an event that properly belongs to the entire people of God at an eschatological transition between the Present Age and the Age to Come? It seems like Jesus is telling us that he is somehow God’s future in person. He is the personal presence of the life of the Age to Come. Here among us, in the midst of a world inundated with decay and death, the light of God’s New Creation is beginning to shine. It is walking among us in the person of God-himself made flesh.

However, is this New Creation life restricted to the person of Jesus, as in, he possesses the life of the Age to Come, but the rest of us need to wait until his return to experience it? Does this New Creation, resurrection life, Kingdom of God presence leave the earth when Jesus ascends to heaven? The previous passage addressed (John 5) expresses the contrary quite emphatically, but even in this verse, Jesus informs us of the participation of the believer in the same eschatological realities. Since “life” and “eternal life” are interchangeable in the Gospel of John[2],  and since “eternal life” means the “life of the Age to Come” (see above), it stands to reason that the phrase “resurrection and the life” is a hendiadys, in which the two words joined by “and” should be taken together as a single idea. If not, since “life” certainly means the “life of the Age to Come,” we should at least see “resurrection” as the event which initiates the “life”[3] In either case,”life” in verse 25 certainly means “resurrection life” and thus the occurrence of the same word in the next verse, the “everyone lives” in verse 26, would mean, “everyone who has the life of the kingdom of God.” This is further advanced by Jesus’ assertion that unless one eats of the bread of life they have no life in them (John 6:51), meaning they do not have the “life of the age to come.”[4] The one who believes is the one who truly lives, who shares the life of the resurrection that Jesus himself embodies in the present.

If we skip forward a bit, we come to Holy Week.

On the sixth day of the week (Friday), after flogging him, robing him in purple and crowing him with thorns, Pilate displays Jesus to the crowd with the words, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5). Note that in Genesis 1 (remember our previous discussion about John 1 quoting Genesis 1 – “in the beginning…”), on the sixth day of the week, God created the human beings, those who were meant to rule the earth. Now on the sixth day of this week, Jesus is displayed as the true human, as a mockery dressed in royal attire, yet refusing to retaliate to the false rulers, to those whose greed and violence had corrupted their humanity to the point of unrecognizability.

The power hungry inhuman forces of violence succeed in killing the one who truly embodied what it meant to be fully human. The rulers of this world put to death the world’s true Lord. After doing so, he was laid to rest in an empty tomb. It was here that Jesus spent the seventh day of the week. As God rested from his labors on the seventh day of the creation account, so too, Jesus spends the seventh day in a Sabbath rest – the utter stillness of death.

John 20 begins with the words, “on the first day of the week.” Is it possible that more is going on here than a mere temporal indicator? As we observed this Gospel starting by alluding to the Genesis 1 account of creation, saw how Jesus understood himself as embodying the life of the Age to Come and sharing it with those who believe in him, and walked through days six and seven of creation during the weekend proceeding the first Easter, are we meant to understand that the timing “on the first day of the week” signals something much bigger than we were expecting? As Jesus rises from the dead, we are beholding the advent of God’s New Creation life bursting forth from the tomb! The Jewish concept of resurrection and new creation seems sufficient in itself to indicate such, but there is more in text itself. In verse 15, John tells us that Mary, seeing the resurrected Lord, believed him to be a gardener. What an odd detail. Why would Mary mistakenly believe Jesus to be a gardener, unless they were actually in a garden? And does not being in a garden, yet again allude to the biblical creation account? As Jesus rises from the dead, he is the New Adam in a renewed Garden of Eden. Eden has been restored and humanity once again has been given access to this Paradise once Lost.

In verse nineteen, we are told that “it was evening on that day, the first day of the week.” Apparently we need reminding that this is not any day – it is the FIRST day of the week. John repeats himself in order to emphasize, however allusively, the full scope of what happened on that day. Though the doors were shut, Jesus comes and stands among them saying, “Peace be with you.” After showing them his hands and side, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” Just as God breathed the breath of life into an inert Adam and he became a living being, so now Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples at the dawn of God’s New Creation. Yet this new life of the Kingdom of God, is not merely for the disciples’ enjoyment. He charges them, “as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” As the Father sent Jesus to be the living presence of the life of the Age to Come, so now as the followers of Jesus share in that life by believing in him, they are commissioned likewise to be agents of God’s Kingdom and resurrection life.

Though not in the Gospel of John, one more verse bears mentioning. In Luke 24:30, Jesus is sitting at a table with two disciples with whom he has walked from Jerusalem. When Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, Luke tells us that immediately “their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Where else in Scripture do we have two people, who upon eating, have their eyes opened? Adam and Eve, after consuming the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience their eyes being opened into a shameful self-awareness of their nakedness. In Luke however, the resurrected Lord is reversing the curse of Adam’s sin. He is inaugurating the life of the Kingdom of God, the New Creation, whereupon partaking of blessed and broken bread (a clear allusion to the Church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper), eyes are opened from woeful disillusionment into a hope-filled recognition of the Risen Lord. After this experience, the two disciples immediately run out and announce the  Gospel: “Jesus is risen!” The experience of the life of the Age to Come, the initiation of overturning sin’s curse, in John’s Gospel results in being sent just as Jesus was sent, and in Luke results in the proclamation of the Resurrected Lord. The presence of God’s Kingdom is in our midst, inaugurated through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This new life is the very impetus behind the Church’s mission in and for the world. Through proclaiming the Gospel of the Risen Lord and the arrival of God’s Kingdom, we become those who share and impart the life of the age to come amidst a world embroiled in the challenging yet, for those who believe, inevitably triumphant conflict with death.

[2] ibid.

[3] George R. Beasley-Murray, John (Dallas: Word, 1999), 190.

[4] ibid, 191.

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Inspired by Isaiah 42 and Zephaniah 3

O God, who does not break a bruised reed, nor extinguish a smoldering wick: so breathe upon the embers by your great mercy sustained within your Church, that renewed in zeal and holiness, we might become an unquenchable flame, by whose light and love, the world might be consumed in the fire of your passion, through Jesus the Messiah your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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If you were to summarize the overarching story-line of the Bible, what would you say? What if you had to do it in only one sentence? I will attempt to do exactly this in only seven words and I have a hunch my conclusion will be somewhat surprising to many.

But before I divulge my answer, I should note that this post is part 4 in a larger series concerning what I am calling “Reading the Bible in the Right Direction.” By this I am referring to the narrative order given in the Bible, most basically, Old Testament first, New Testament second. The ideas, stories, concepts, and expectations formulated in the Old Testament must be the primary base from which we interpret and understand the New Testament, rather than vice versa. More can be read on this in the previous posts, but now I am concentrating on concisely explaining the overarching storyline of Scripture. Understanding and interpreting the New Testament in light of this narratival framework causes the Scripture to first of all, make much more coherent sense, and second, to come alive in its intended dynamic vigor. This approach is critical because the early apostolic community, the original hearers of the New Testament, indeed, the people who wrote the New Testament, would have approached and understood the Bible in this way. They would have come to the New Testament writings living within the story of Israel, deeply entrenched in its expectations, animated with its hopes yet vexed with longing for this yet unfinished drama to come to its appointed consummation.

I will first give my seven word summary of the Bible’s story and then explain it. Here it is: God sends humanity to rule the earth. Surprising, eh? Yet if we read the Bible’s opening and closing remarks, we see that this is the original intent for God’s creation, and this intent comes to pass. Everything else that happens in the Bible is a subplot to seeing this overarching plot line find fulfillment.

When approaching a story and attempting to summarize its plot, a simple system has been developed to diagram the plot by identifying the six main components of the story:

1)    The Sender, who commissions an

2)    Agent, who is sent by the sender to accomplish a

3)    Task, for the benefit of the

4)    Receiver

5)    An Impediment attempts to block the accomplishment of the task and only through the aid of the

6)    Helper, is the agent able to accomplish the task.

This can be illustrated with a diagram, using the story of Little Red Riding Hood as an example.

Now what happens if we apply this type of plot analysis to the Bible? We would have to start at the very beginning – in Genesis 1. In verses 26-28, we are told that the original commission of humanity is to rule over the earth. This of course does not mean that they should function as exploitative tyrants. In Genesis 2:15 humans are told to cultivate, expand and grow the Garden of Eden. Rather than tyrannical domination, these verses mean the original purpose of human beings was to be the co-regents of God’s gracious, loving and life-giving rule, expanding both the Garden of Eden and their habitation (through having children and a family) to fill the earth with the glory of God. We often think of both the original creation and the Garden of Eden as being perfect and then subsequently getting spoiled. The texts more so tell us about something that, though perhaps not having particular flaws, was an unfinished project. The earth needed to be subdued. The garden needed to be cultivated. The ground needed to be worked. The earth needed to be inhabited. In other words, human culture, in all areas, needed to be developed and matured as part of God’s unfolding purpose for the earth.  The task of humans was then, in cooperation with God, to work on this creation project and ultimately bring it to completion (i.e., “fill the earth”).

Under our schema from above this would make the main components of our plot:

Sender – God

Agent – Humanity

Task – rule

Receiver – the earth

Hence my summary, “God sends humanity to rule the earth.” Now, it doesn’t take long to realize that this plot gets at least somewhat derailed rather quickly. However, we know this plan does not come to an end, not in Genesis 3, and not anywhere else in history. We can be assured of this because the final narrative sequence in the Bible, in Revelation 22, immediately before the concluding epilogue, says of redeemed humanity on the renewed earth, “and there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). The original plot succeeds! Humanity is sent to rule the earth, and apparently, whatever happened between Genesis 4 and Revelation 21 succeeded in restoring this original storyline and bringing it to fulfillment (although perhaps, it is arguable that Revelation 22 still does not yet show a complete “fulfillment” but that humanity’s gracious rulership of the earth will continue into the ages to come).

So far we’ve only named four of the main six components of our plot. The impediment is readily identifiable. Genesis 3-11 documents the downward spiral of humanity, not in the gracious expansion of God’s life giving presence, but in the exploitative, pernicious and cancerous expansion of violence, sin, hatred, alienation and death. In a word the impediment, is sin. But note in our storyline what sin is the impediment to. It is not the impediment to getting into heaven, but rather it is what blocks, even destroys the development and expansion of a communal cultural life on earth infused with God’s goodness, truth and beauty.

So who is the helper? Enter Abraham in Genesis 12. It seems easy to completely disconnect Genesis 12 from Genesis 3-11, as if perhaps it was just the next event in history. But Genesis 12 is a dramatic turning point in the book, both in terms of its content and the overall biblical plot. Genesis 1-11 covers a very long period of time and many generations in rapid succession. Genesis 12-25 covers the life span of one person. We also notice the issues that arise in Genesis 12 parallel those in Genesis 1. Abraham is unable to have children yet God promises he will be the father of many nations, akin to the original command to be fruitful and multiply. Abraham is told he will be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. This parallels the blessing humanity received in Genesis 1, and the curse that came upon the earth in Genesis 3. Abraham’s promise concerns “the land.”  Interestingly enough, this is the same Hebrew word as “earth,” thus forming at least a intriguing linguistic connection. All in all, Abraham (and thus his progeny, the nation of Israel) are God’s response to Genesis 3-11. God’s plan to reestablish the original plot and purpose for humanity is to be executed through God’s covenant people. God’s answer to the problem of sin is the covenant.

It also doesn’t take long to realize that this new plot line (Plot Level 2) was riddled with difficulty, whether it be family dysfunction, political conflicts, military engagement, or agricultural disaster, only to find the family of Abraham, God’s agents of reconciliation and restoration, to be held captive as slaves in the nation of Egypt. Enter “Plot Level 3″ – God sends a helper to bring deliverance to his people, in this case Moses. But as the story of the Old Testament progresses, the people of Israel get into one mess after another, usually related to wide-scale national sin. The people who God raised up to be his answer to the problem of sin, themselves became part of the problem. So God sends helper after helper, whether they be judges, prophets, kings (the epitome of which was David), to preach repentance to God’s people and to bring them deliverance from their enemies. The function of this “Plot Level 3″ however, was always to restore “Plot Level 2″ – Israel being a “light to the nations” and bringing “blessing to all peoples of the earth.” The purpose of this “Plot Level 2″ was always to restore “Plot Level 1″ – God sends humanity to rule the earth.

The final helper in this sequence (Plot Level 3) was none other than Jesus himself. This can be seen in Jesus’ resoluteness that he came only to help the “lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:6; 15:24), as well as the emphasis that Jesus had come to save Israel (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:68; 2:25). Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, “Plot Level 2″ has been restored because Jesus then sends out his company of 12 Jewish young men with a task to “make disciples of all the Gentiles/nations” (Matt. 28:19). Interestingly enough, in Acts 1, the apostles ask Jesus, “Lord,  is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus answers in his usually interesting fashion, here by giving neither a clear yes or no answer and then continues, “but you will receive power  when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and  Samaria, and even to  the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Many people assume that Jesus’ answer is “no,” as in “you are stuck on thinking about politics, but I am going to have you go around and preach a new spiritual, inward reality.” It seems rather, if we compare the second half of his answer with our plot diagram, if twelve representatives of Israel are being sent out to “disciple the Gentiles” through preaching to “the remotest parts of the earth,” then the answer to their question is more like “yes, but not in the way you are thinking.”

So then, Jesus, through his death and resurrection, restores Plot Level 2. The ultimate goal of redemptive history however, is the recovery of Plot Level 1 – and human beings restored to gracious rulership over the earth. Rather than develop this here, in what is already a too-long blog-post, I will quote four passages that demonstrate this cosmic aspect of redemption’s goal. These passages are often enigmatic when the Bible is read in context to overarching stories that are in fact foreign to the Bible (i.e., the stories of Western affluence, escapism, rationalism, secular hedonism, etc.). However, when read starting with the narrative framework of the Old Testament as the foundation, these passages make perfect sense:

Acts 3:19-21 – Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,  so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus,  who must remain in heaven until the time of the restoration of all things that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.

Ephesians 1:9-10 – he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ,  as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Colossians 1:19-20 – For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,  and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Romans 8:19‐23 – For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;  for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;  and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Links to earlier parts in the series Reading the Bible in the Right Direction: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Though resurrection was the central message of the early Apostolic Church and a central theme through the New Testament, resurrection is of such minor note in the Old Testament it cannot even warrant being called a theme. It only is literally discussed in two passages. If resurrection is not even a theme in the Old Testament, let alone a major theme, how can we explain the phenomenon that resurrection became a (if not the) central theme in the New Testament? The easy and immediate answer is that a resurrection had in fact occurred, to one person in advance of all others, such that this this shocking occurrence became the determining characteristic of the burgeoning new movement. It was believed that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, far from being an isolated event, hailed the inauguration of the renewal of creation, the restoration of all things, which the prophets and sages of eras past had proclaimed.

In this series I would like to discuss the notion that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated the eschatological reign of God, in which the powers of Sin and Death themselves are defeated and the entire creation is being renewed. Not simply being a confirmation of what happened at the cross, the resurrection was the beginning of a new age for planet earth. Through the resurrected Lord, a door has swung open through which the power of life over death has begun to permeate a world long pining under the slow torture of decay and the inevitability of death. The springtime of all creation has begun, after the long era of winter’s curse, causing life to be born anew and future hope to slowly emerge from beneath the shadows of despair. This life is not only future, but amazingly, mysteriously and dynamically present.

Before I get specifically to addressing how the New Testament shows the startling truth of Jesus’ resurrection inauguration of New Creation, I would like to describe the Jewish concept of resurrection. First as a word of clarity, “resurrection” does not simply mean to “life-after-death.” Resurrection was a specific kind of expectation which would involve the revivification of bodily life on earth. For a person to have an existence as a “spirit” was not what anyone meant when they spoke of “resurrection.”

It comes as a shock to many that not only does the Old Testament very rarely speak of resurrection, but much of it holds out little or no hope beyond the grave. Just a few passages will show this:

Psalm 115:17 – “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any that go down into silence.”

Isaiah 38:10-11, 18-19 – “I said: In the noontide of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. I said, I shall not see the LORD in the land of the living; I shall look upon mortals no more among the inhabitants of the world. For Sheol cannot thank you, death cannot praise you; those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day; fathers make known to children your faithfulness.”

2 Samuel 14:14 – “We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up.”

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 10 – “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun… Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”

(cf. Job 17:13-16; Psalm 6:5; 30:9; 88:3-7, 10-12)

Other passages show the end of human life as returning to the dust:

Genesis 3:19 – “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Job 34:14-15 – “If he should take back his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust.”

Psalm 90:3 – “You turn us back to dust, and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’”

(cf. Psalm 104:27-29; Ecc. 3:20)

Many, many passages use “sleep” as a way of describing death, meaning this state of inactivity, which forms part of the cycle of our lives, was the nearest approximation they could use to speak of death. The phrase “and he slept with his ancestors” to describe the death of a person is used dozens and dozens of times (cf. 1 Kings 2:10; 11:21; 22:50; 2 Kings 14:22; 16:20; 2 Chronicles 9:31; 12:16; etc.)

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All three of these prayers for the “spirit of prayer” are inspired by these themes from Romans 8:

Gracious Lord, who saved us in the hope of the resurrection: fill us with your Spirit, that we who live in the time between the breaking of dawn and the fullness of day, encumbered with much weakness, not knowing how to pray, may find help as the Spirit intercedes through us with groans too deep for words, united to the suffering cry of all creation, believing we will see your goodness in the land of the living, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who created heaven and earth by an overflow of your tender, faithful love: as the entire creation suffers in hope that it will be set free from the bondage to decay, may we who by your Spirit have a foretaste of the freedom of the glory of the children of God, by that same Spirit groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly, identifying compassionately, praying fervently, with and for the redemption of our bodies and the resurrection of life, that your will for the fullness of life would be brought to birth on earth as it is in heaven, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son, our Lord…

God of hope: give us grace to perceive the depth and reality of suffering which pervades our entire age and the entire creation. Then so clothe us with the Spirit of love and compassion, that crying out from the depths we would not remain silent, praying that your will for the restoration of all things would come to pass, even in our own day, through Jesus the Messiah your Son our Lord…

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Revival means quite literally, “to come to life again.” If there is anything more desperately needed in our individual lives, relationships, communities, nations, the Church or the world, it is the life-giving, life-renewing, life-regenerating presence of God – the God who spoke all created life into existence, breathed the breath of life into human beings, resurrected Jesus the Messiah from the dead, and thus destroyed the power of death; gave the Spirit of Life to the Church, and is even now renewing the face of the earth by the same gracious nearness that will one day make all things new.

In accordance with my conviction that (1) prayer is the primary means through which such a resurrection of life will happen; and (2) pre-written prayers are of great value for the life of prayer, I have set my hand to writing prayers for revival. My intention is over the weeks and months, to post prayers that draw from Scriptural concepts and images as well as incorporate the theology of the Holy Spirit, inaugurated eschatology, new creation, and Trinitarian relationality that I have been developing here and elsewhere. They will in general be modeled after a long standing 4 part format used for brief prayers over the centuries in Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions: (1) an address to God, giving a description of his nature or actions; (2) a request; (3) the reason or purpose for the request; (4) an ending, frequently Trinitarian.

If these prayers help you pray in a more focused way for a greater experience and expression of God’s life-giving presence in the Church and the world, I will be more than thoroughly pleased.

This first prayer draws imagery from Ezekiel 37 and concepts from 2 Corinthians amongst other sources:

O God whose zeal is not deterred when Your Church seems more like a valley of dry bones than a living witness to the resurrection of Jesus: Breathe the breath of life into your people once again. Renew us by your power and love. Cause us to remember the redemptive purpose for which you called the Church into being, that we might again be your people for the world; agents of reconciliation and resurrection life, through Jesus the Messiah your Son, our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The often heard saying, “prayer doesn’t change God…it changes us” is an addage notoriously absent from the Bible.

As many of you may know, by occupation I am a full-time intercessor. This means my full-time job is primarily to pray as a staff member of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City (IHOP-KC). When I tell other Christians what I do with my life, I am frequently greeted with peculiar blinks, squints, head tilts, lip twitches and eyebrow crunches. I know, I know – who’s ever heard of someone whose main job is to pray? Unfortunately this response often betrays two facts:

1) Our historical and religious myopia – throughout history and even to the present day, many Christians have been employed as full-time intercessors. They were often called monks and nuns. Their central occupation was prayer, but they frequently also had additional tasks such as teaching, spiritual direction, evangelism, etc. (much like myself and other staff members at IHOP-KC). Granted, this is predominately part of the Roman Catholic tradition, though Eastern Orthodox and Anglican traditions also have significant monastic movements.

2) Our disbelief in the efficacy of prayer. Don’t be afraid to admit this – its almost universal. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can rectify it. We who give ourselves full-time to prayer, also often have a hard time believing it. It is one thing to confess that prayer is important. It is entirely different to believe it actually makes a real difference in the world. My goal in a series of posts is to address this subject.

There are some Christians who believe that the concept of a ministry like IHOP or people being full-time intercessors is inherently a bad thing. They often preface their statements with something like, “well…I’m not against prayer, but…” and then go on to say how we should do something better or more useful with our time. I would like to respond by saying it is almost entirely irrelevant whether you are “for” or “against” prayer. Do you actually do it?  That is what matters. The Scripture never says “be in support of the idea of prayer,” but rather says “be devoted to prayer” (Col. 4:2), meaning – actually do it as a prioritized activity in your individual and communal life. Luke’s description of the apostolic church was not that they “held the concept of prayer in high esteem,” but that they “devoted themselves to the prayers” (Acts. 2:42). You will only do this to the extent that you believe prayer is in fact useful time spent.

In my opinion there are two extremely popular yet woefully unbiblical and inadequate understandings related to why one is to pray. It seems that both of these seriously curtail attempts to “be devoted to the prayers” after the model of the early apostolic church.

1) Prayer as self-help – this can be epitomized in the cliche quoted above, “prayer does not change God (or any circumstances for that matter), prayer changes us.” This perspective is rooted in a certain understanding of God’s sovereignty in which every detail of every event of all time has been perfectly pre-planned by God in an inviolable blueprint. Thus it would be ridiculous to suggest that we could alter that blueprint through our intercessory prayers. If then, asking for circumstances to change (intercessory prayer) does not actually change those circumstances, we must somehow account for the Biblical insistence on such types of prayers. The answer becomes that these prayers in fact, over time, change our desires and conform them to God’s will, so that we want what God already had planned to do.

2) Prayer as obedience – once one comes to the conclusion that praying about people and circumstances does not actually change them, but merely change us, one then often asks, why are these prayers necessary? Why are they so frequent in the Bible (say in the Psalms), why was the early church (Book of Acts) so eager in making them, and why does the New Testament regularly exhort us to make such prayer? The answer to these questions becomes “because God has commanded such.” The reason to pray (even though it doesn’t actually do or change anything that corresponds to what we are actually requesting) is because God said so and we as his servants are to be obedient.

I think almost every phrase of every sentence in the previous two paragraphs could be questioned and challenged from Biblical and theological perspectives. Instead of performing such a painful dissection, I have opted today merely to look at a few verses in which Paul talks about prayer (subsequently, I will look at other sections of Scripture as well). I want to make simple observations related to what he says and ask if they correspond to the two reasons to pray given above.

Romans 15:30-32 - Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by  the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me,  31 that I may be  rescued from those who are disobedient in Judea, and that my  service for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints;  32 so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and find refreshing rest in your company.

1) First we might note that Paul urges the Romans to pray for him. There is a sense of urgency and gravity to this request.

2) Paul considers that when believers pray for him, they are joining with him in the apostolic labor. Prayer is not merely a “duty” or a “nice thought” but is in fact “striving together” with him. He believes the saints to be working and struggling with him as they pray for him.

3) Three purposes or outcomes of the prayers are listed, indicated by the term “that” or “so that:”  (a) being rescued from people in Judea; (b) his service proving acceptable to the saints; and (c) being able to visit the Romans and find refreshing and rest with them. Describing these three as purposes or outcomes of the prayers shows that Paul does not consider their occurrence to be inevitable apart from the Roman’s prayers. In other words, the prayers of the Romans will in some manner make it possible for these three desired outcomes to come into fruition.

2 Corinthians 1:10-11 – He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again,  11 as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

1) Paul considers his rescue to be conditional upon the Corinthian’s prayers – “he will rescue us again, as you also, join…”

2) Paul considers the prayers of the Corinthians to actually be helping him and his apostolic company. His concern was not that the prayers would help the pray-ers, but that the prayers of others would actually help him.

3) The phrase “so that” indicates that Paul sees the “blessing” to be either the purpose or result of the prayers.

4) He sees the blessing of rescue being “granted through the prayers.” In other words, the prayer was not to be a self-help mental technique, but was the actually means by which the deliverance would be granted to Paul.

5) The blessing is granted through the prayers of many. The prayers of many different people combine to contribute towards Paul’s deliverance.

Ephesians 6:18-19 – And take  the helmet of salvation, and the  sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, 19 and pray on my behalf, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel…

1) The primary observation I would like to make here is the frequency of the word “all:”  all prayer and petition, pray at all times, all perseverance, for all the saints. The urgency with which such an extravagant request is made gives an indication as to how Paul felt about prayer. It is difficult to conceive that such enormous amounts of prayer were needed and with such incessancy if the prayers were not in fact effecting something that would not be the same without the prayers.

2) Of additional note is that the call for this extraordinary quantity of prayer is in the midst of an extended warfare metaphor. Its seems as though this praying at all times is part of the “sword of the Spirit.” If prayer is part of a “spiritual sword,” then it seems self-evident that prayers do change actual circumstances and play a role in the defeat of the powers of darkness (cf. Eph. 6:12).

3) Paul asks the believers to pray so that he might preach with boldness. He sees that the purpose or outcome of the prayers is that something might be different than it would have been otherwise.

Philippians 1:18-19 – Yes, and I will rejoice,  19 for I know that this will turn out for my  deliverance  through your  prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ…

1) Paul expects his deliverance to happen through (by means of) the prayers of the saints.

2) There is a co-operation between the prayers and the “provision of the Spirit.” If the provision of the Spirit would have effected deliverance on its own, its seems unnecessary to have mentioned the “prayers.”

My apologies if this has been repetitive and pedantic. It may seem that these observations are a little obvious or asinine. Yet it is remarkable how easy it is as a Christian to come to the conclusion that prayer doesn’t actually do anything and then defend the notion theologically.

My hope is that intercessors will be emboldened and strengthened with the simple notion that prayer actually does something and that such an idea is profoundly biblical.. Paul seems to express over and over again his expectation that when the people of God pray, circumstances will in fact be different than if they had not. Whether you can spend 5 minutes or 5 hours a day devoted to prayer, know that every minute is time well spent.  Be assured that every 15 second prayer whispered throughout your day is mysteriously causing the future to unfold differently than it otherwise might have. In fellowship with the God of Hope, the God who envisions possibilities beyond all we could ask or imagine, we truly have the privilege, pleasure and glory of shaping the future of life on planet earth.

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Essentially, all we will be doing is putting ribbon book marks in your BCP to keep your places in the various sections of the Prayer Book. Implementing this system will entail a little bit of crafting, which I will now outline in detail.

This is my prayer book. It actually came with ribbons sewn into the binding. But I happen to be a ribbon-aholic. Once I found out how to add ribbon book marks to my BCP – I started adding them to all of my books. This Prayer Book happens to be a BCP and Hymnal combination, thus there is need for a LOT of ribbons. So I am adding more.

You will need to get your hands on ribbon like this – a different color for every bookmark you will need (or you will never be able to tell them apart!). You can get these for around 50-75 cents a spool at Wal-mart or Jo-Ann Fabrics.

Then get a 3 x 5 file card, fold it in half lengthwise and cut it down the middle. This card will get inserted into the little space between where the binding is sewn and the outside of the spine of the book. If you have a thin book, you may need to cut the card down to make it narrower.

To cut the ribbon, open your prayer book and lay the edge of the ribbon about an inch past the top in the middle of the book (as shown in the picture). Then extend it diagonally across the page 2-3 inches past the corner. Definitely make the ribbon longer than shorter – you can always cut them down later. It is important that you measure them across the page diagonally because if they are too short, you won’t be able to use them to turn pages.

Next, tape or glue the ribbons to the top of the file card. Make sure they are secure or they will rip off when you are using them. If you have a bunch of ribbons you may need to overlap them slightly.

Then insert the card between where the pages are sewn together and the outside of the spine — and you are done!

Now you can set your page markers. I recommend placing a ribbon in the following places:

Minimally:

-Orders for Daily Prayer (75ff.)
-Weekly Seasonal Collect (211ff.)
-Psalms (585ff.)
-Lectionary (936ff.)

My Ideal:

-Orders for Daily Prayer (75ff.)
-Canticles in Morning Prayer – for use during Morning and Evening Prayer (85ff.)
-Great Litany (148) (especially during Lent)
-Weekly Season Collect (211ff.)
-Holy Days Collects (237ff.)
-Psalms (585ff.)
-Prayers (810ff.)
-Lectionary (936ff.) – unless of course you use my Readings Booklets!

It is easiest to use the ribbon itself to turn the pages. Just grab the bottom of the ribbon, drag it around the book just past the bottom corner and then pull the book open using the ribbon. This is what makes using the ribbons superior to using standard book marks (plus they don’t fall out and get lost). As you move forward in the Psalms, Canticles, etc., just move the ribbon forward as you go to keep your place.

At the beginning I suggest taking another 3 x 5 card and write down which colors are for which section. Keeping your color-scheme consistent will make it easier over the long-term. Then stick the card in the cover of your Prayer Book so for the first while you can have it to help you remember which ribbon marks where. In a few weeks you won’t need the card any more – you’ll get the hang of it real soon.

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How often have you sat down to pray and have not known what to say? You may even care deeply about a specific topic, but after sixty to ninety seconds your creativity has run its course and you find yourself spending more energy and thought on determining what to say than actually relating to God. The expectation of such unimpeded flowing inspiration must be corrected by a practical realism if we indeed value prayer and believe it to be fundamentally efficacious. Few people have the ability continue long lengths of time in prayer out of their own spontaneous internal resources. Your own experience likely testifies to this. Yet if we believe prayer actually does something (a matter to which I’ll subsequently return), as in, whether one prays or stares blankly at the wall is more than a matter of having a good time or not, but rather makes a real difference in the lives of others – this is an issue we cannot avoid.

Apparently, this post is part of a series explaining how to use written prayers and structures as an aid in prayer. Many of my comments thus far have related to the irony of how a 100% spontaneous approach to prayer can be frustrating and dull while a structured prayer life can be much more dynamic. Ultimately however, we are not simply discussing how to have a better “quiet time.” If we truly believe prayer mysteriously affects the possible outcomes the future holds for real people’s lives, the issue of whether we are spending our prayer time staring at the wall, day-dreaming, thinking up what to say, or actually praying is of urgent importance.

If using written and structured prayer, such as that in the Daily Office, helps us to have a more focused and consistent, and thus enjoyable prayer life, it also means that we are making more of a difference in changing our world through prayer. This is far from incidental, because of we believe our Lord’s words concerning the efficacy of prayer, we are speaking concerning matters of life and death.

Before describing the final “Prayers” section of the Office, I’ll share one technique I’ve used in approaching this section that I’ve found helpful. For each day of the week I have specific “intentions,” a specific target for my prayers, which I carry through the entire Office, including the Psalms, Readings and Prayers. Many of the prayers in the Psalms and in the Office are intentionally general. Each day, I will focus these more general prayers on specific targets. For example, on Sunday, I focus on praying for my church. On Monday I pray for my students, on Tuesday I pray for the nations of Uganda and Rwanda, on Wednesday I pray for my family, and so forth.

After the first three sections of the Office, the Opening, the Psalms and the Readings, the Prayers begin on page 121.

When praying the Office by yourself, you can omit greetings and responses like this one.

The Lord’s Prayer is obviously the central Christian prayer, being given to us directly by Jesus himself.

Suffrages are responsive prayers. When praying individually, you will pray all the lines, but when praying with others they are said or sung antiphonally between a leader and the others assembled. One or both of the sets of suffrages can be used.

Suffrage set A draws its lines from various Psalms and includes prayer for the Church, nation and the world.

Suffrage set B is based on a litany for the sanctification of our life from the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, which dates back to the fourth century.

Here opportunity is given to commemorate a specific saint and remember those shining lights who have gone before as examples for us. If you don’t want to do that, just say “in the communion of all your saints”

A Collect is a short prayer, often one that is assigned to a specific day or season in the Christian Year.

The Collect of the Day is that which corresponds to the given week in the Church Year. The Collect for a given week in the Calendar is used every day during that week, beginning either on Sunday morning, or the evening before that Sunday.

The Collects for each week (and major holidays) are found beginning on Page 211. They are arranged chronologically beginning with Advent. Prayers for Holy Days on fixed dates (rather than according to the Seasons) begin on Page 237.

They are listed as “Contemporary” because the BCP provides duplicate prayers in both traditional (i.e., “King James”) and contemporary English.

Additionally, when I’m wanting a longer prayer time, I may also pray all of the Collects for a given Season. For example, if it was Advent, there is one Collect for each of the four weeks of Advent. On a given night in Advent, I may pray all four collects.

Additional prayers are given within the Order for Evening Prayer on the next three pages (pp. 123-5). Any or all of them can be used each evening.

You may be thinking that using just these ten fixed prayers (plus the variable Collect of the Day) may be limiting. If you find that to be the case, there are seventy additional prayers starting on Page 810, which cover a wide variety of topics. This page shows the beginning of the Table of Contents, to give a sampling of the topics included.

Another source within the Prayer Book for a more expanded time of intercession is The Great Litany. Published in 1544 and included in the 1549 BCP, The Great Litany, was first piece of liturgy ever composed in English. The current version is almost identical to that version, save a few minor changes. It is an urgent plea for God’s mercy over a wide range of topics. It generally takes 10-15 minutes to pray through in its entirety.

A further way times of prayer and intercession using the BCP can be expanded is to use each phrase in a Suffrage or the Litany, or each collect as a “bidding,” to which you would add 30-90 seconds of spontaneous prayer related to that theme or topic, possibly mentioning specific people or situations that relate. As soon as you don’t easily have something additional to pray on that theme, move on to the next phrase.

Any of these extra prayers or the Litany can be said here, where the rubric says “authorized intercessions and thanksgivings may follow.”

Other options at this point would include

–using prayers that you personally have written

–praying prayers from Scripture

–using prayers from other books

–following a prayer list

–free intercession

The Office begins to wrap up with a concluding prayer of thanksgiving, within which you can pause and mention specific items from the day you are thankful for.

After one more optional concluding prayer, comes the ancient closing versicle and response, “Let us Bless the Lord // Thanks be to God” and the Office is done!

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (6)
• My Personal Prayer Action Plan (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 3) (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)

The Word of God does not simply give us information about religious truths. Rather the Word of God is the central medium through which we come to know and experience God (cf. Lk. 24:32). It is furthermore the central agency through which God accomplishes justice on earth in and through his people (cf. Isa. 55:7-13). The Word of God is unmistakably worthy of being thoroughly and ardently heard, read, marked, learned, inwardly digested and passionately “incarnated” through our lives. The “Readings” portion of the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer is one way in which this can happen in the life of a believer.

I am continuing today in my series in guiding you step-by-step in how to pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer. To review, the Daily Office from the BCP has four main sections, two of which we have already covered:

1) The Opening

2) The Psalms

3) The Readings

4) The Prayers

This page should look familiar from last time. We’ve already covered the Phos Hilaron and the Psalms.

Now we turn our attention to what is listed as “The Lessons.” This means a passage from the Bible (or other Christian literature) which is read out loud in a service. If you are praying the Office by yourself, you can read it silently or aloud.

While of course, every time Scripture is read, we garner new information, it is good to remember that this is first and foremost a time of prayer. I like to think of the Readings as mostly a time to hear from God. Studying the Bible is great, but that is done at a different time. Here, we primarily allow the Spirit of God to address us and speak to us through the Scripture Reading.

We saw this page briefly during the last section on the Psalms. It is a page from the Daily Office Lectionary. A Lectionary is a list of portions of the Bible to be read at appointed times, according to the Church Calendar. The Daily Office Lectionary lists the readings for the Daily Office as there is a different lectionary for use during the Eucharist.

It is arranged according to a two year cycle. Year One begins at Advent before an odd numbered year and Year Two begins at Advent before an even numbered year. The current year (2009) is Year One and began last December. This December we will move into Year Two.

During the two year cycle most of the Old Testament is read and the entire New Testament is covered each year.

Since the Church Calendar (for the most part) does not have fixed dates, neither does the Lectionary. This necessitates that you know where we are in the Christian Year  (check here for some guidance).

Three readings are listed for each day, one from the OT, one from the NT epistles and one from the Gospels. The rubrics mention that one or two lessons are read at Morning and Evening Prayer, but all of them may be read at one office. It is intended that all three are read each day, no matter how they are split up. Additionally, the OT lesson from the alternate year may be used for an additional OT lesson, if an OT lesson is desired at each office, or if you just want more readings in one office. In a section called “Additional Directions” (p. 142), rubrics explain that a reading from “non-biblical Christian literature” may follow the Scripture readings. Traditionally, the Daily Office contained readings from Christian writers in the earliest centuries of the Church.

I personally enjoy the practice of reading from each major section of the Bible every day. Even if in my study times I am focused in one area, it keeps me grounded in in regular direct contact with the words of Jesus, the apostles and the OT narrative. It also gets me reading passages of Scripture I wouldn’t necessarily gravitate towards, or haven’t ever been on my study plans.

To make completing the Readings section of the Office easier, I’ve developed a resource with all the readings for a given day collected together to be printed out in a booklet. Click here to download them.

The rubrics here explain that silence may be kept after each Reading. I like to use this time to offer a simple spontaneous prayer in response to the passage, usually along the lines of 1) thanking God for something mentioned in the text; 2) asking him to give me deeper revelation of something mentioned in the text; or 3) asking for grace to be faithful to an exhortation in the text.

After the silence, a “Canticle” is sung or said. A Canticle is a song or song-like passage from somewhere in the Bible other than the Psalms. These are sung as prayer-responses to the readings.

The two standard canticles sung at Evening Prayer are the “Magnificat” (Song of Mary) and the “Nunc Dimittis” (Song of Simeon), both of which are taken from Luke’s Gospel. Traditionally, the Magnificat is used at every Evening Prayer and the Nunc Dimittis is used daily at Compline. If you don’t say Compline, you can pray the Nunc Dimittis nightly at Evensong.

On page 145, there is a schedule you can use to rotate the canticles. The numbered canticles are found on pp. 85-95. They are part of the order for Morning Prayer, so the publishers opted not to reprint them in Evening Prayer.

I personally find it easier just to place a marker in the canticles section and proceed in number order while doing the Magnificat as the last canticle each night. On page 85, the first canticle is #8 (1-7 are in “King James” English). So I would do #8 after the first Reading, #9 after the second Reading and then the Magnificat after the third Reading. The next day I would do #10 after the first reading, and so forth. Upon reaching the last of the Canticles, I would start over again at #8 and cycle them.

The final response to the Readings is the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed. This summary of the Christian Faith is of great antiquity, being attested to in extant writings from the 4th century. From at least that time, it was ascribed to the 12 apostles themselves (though, of course, we have no way of knowing such with any certainty).

It is likely of an origin older than the Nicene Creed, which was first written in conjunction with the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. At that time, the central heresy being confronted was Arianism – the notion that Jesus was not truly God. While the Nicene Creed thoroughly asserts the truth of Jesus’ divinity, the Apostle’s Creed seems to focus on an earlier concern – that of Gnosticism. It upholds that Jesus himself was bodily born, suffered, crucified, died, buried and was raised. It also affirms the “resurrection of the body.”

By prayerfully reciting the creed, we unite with all Christians throughout the world and throughout history in affirming the central truths of the Christian faith.

Okay – only one more part left to go and we’ll have worked our way entirely through the BCP order for Evening Prayer!

Related posts

• Readings for the Daily Office of the Book of Common Prayer (2)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)

The Book of Psalms is an incredible gift of God to the Church. Regularly singing the entire book of Psalms is the spiritual practice I commend to people most frequently. Their uniqueness lies in while most of Scripture portrays the history of Israel from either a God’s-eye or birds-eye view, the Psalm give us the inside perspective of how Israel experienced their life before God, and simultaneously invites us into the personal experience of that very Story. Praying the entire book of Psalms is the core of the Daily Office and thus should never be downplayed, omitted or shortened.

Historically, the entire office developed from this nucleus of psalmody. Even as far back as the Desert Fathers and Mothers (4th century), it was common for a monk to pray the entire book of Psalms every single day. As St. Benedict established in the sixth century, it became standard practice for the Psalms to be recited once per week. To this kernel of Psalms were added Scriptural readings, prayers and chants which eventually grew into the formal structures of the Daily Office.  When Cranmer released the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, the entire Psalter was to be prayed each month. The 1979 edition makes provision for either a 7-week or one-month cycle.

Interestingly enough, my practice of praying the Daily Office began by praying the psalms. I heard somewhere that Martin Luther had the entire book of psalms memorized from singing it through every week as a monk. I don’t really know if the story is true, but I decided that I wanted the same to be true of me in 30 years. So I began singing through the Book of Psalms on a weekly basis. I’ll tell you, that when I did it the first time, I discovered how completely unfamiliar I was with the Psalms. Many passages, I felt like I had never heard or read before.

The Psalms are rather strange in the light of contemporary Christianity. Yet their incredible richness stems from a form of spirituality that is a marked alternative to the quasi-gnostic forms of spirituality that masquerade throughout the Church as Biblical. The Psalms represent to us the most concrete and expansive expression of a truly Biblical Spirituality. In contrast to a quasi-gnostic nihilism that might say “nothing in the world matters” or that history, the life of the body, circumstances, etc. all don’t matter because of Jesus (or something akin to that), the Psalmists seem to strongly believe that their lives on earth truly matter and truly matter to God. The Spirituality of the Psalms is not an “I’ll retreat into my inner life because there nothing in the world matters” but rather a much more risky partnership with the compassionate God who draws near to His people in the earthly life so unstable, unpredictable, full of calamity yet imbibed with meaning by virtue of the God who created it and continually chooses to acknowledge its worth. God’s constant intervention into earthly life (or the groan rising from the absence of God’s intervention) persistently affirms the value of an earthly, bodily, physical, sensory, historical, full-of-feeling existence which remains under the persistent threat of a nihilism seeking to render it meaningless. This spirituality, though very much full of hope (and indeed precisely because it is), never allows us to “soar above the vale of tears” but again and again brings us into a suffering resistance to the violence, evil, injustice and death that so marks our age.

OK – I’m trying just to teach you how to pray the Psalms, but sometimes I get really excited. I am really passionate about the Psalms and their Spirituality. Eventually (since I already have 4 or 5 series after this one already planned), I’ll come back and unpack this previous overly-long paragraph.

Back to the Prayerbook.

This page should look familiar from the last time.

Immediately after the Phos Hilaron, or any opening hymn/song/canticle, follows the “Psalms Appointed.” This means the Psalms that are appointed for the day, according to whatever schedule of Psalms you happen to be following (I’ll come back to this in a second). The rubrics say that the Gloria Patri (”Glory to the Father, and to the Son…”) is said at the end of the Psalms. This could be either after each Psalm (or section of Psalm 119, or other Psalm that is split up), or after all the Psalms prayed/sung at that time. I like to sing to the Gloria Patri after every Psalm because it helps me focus (and refocus) on praying to the actual persons of the Trinity, the overflowing community of self-giving love.

We’ve skipped a few pages now to # 585. The BCP contains the entire Book of Psalms.

“First Day: Morning Prayer” is the first of many indicators included right in the text of the Psalter that divides the Psalms into a 30-day schedule. If you pray both Morning and Evening Prayer, then you would pray them as divided for Morning and Evening. If you pray only one office per day, you would pray both the Morning and Evening psalms for each given day. If you want to sing the Psalter twice a month, use Days 1 and 2 on the first day, 3 and 4 on the second day, etc.

If you’re not using the BCP but just want to pray the Psalms out of your Bible, click here to download a schedule for dividing the Psalter into monthly, bi-monthly or weekly schedules.

Since it is a 30-day schedule, the “First Day” means the first day of the calendar month. On months with more than 30 days you can pick any day to repeat. In February (less than 30 days), you’ll just skip the days not in the month and start back again at the beginning on March 1.

We’ve skipped pages again – now we’re at 936.

This is the first page from the Daily Office Lectionary. A lectionary is a schedule of readings according to the Church Year.

I’ll explain how to navigate the lectionary more when I discuss the “Readings” section of the Office next time, but for now, notice how next to Sunday at the very top, there are the numbers “146, 147 * 111, 112, 113.“

These are Psalms for each day according to a 7-week schedule. The Psalms left of the asterisk are for Morning Prayer and right of the asterisk are for Evening Prayer. Again, if you pray one office daily, pray both sets of Psalms.

This schedule obviously does not move sequentially through the Psalms like the 30-day schedule. However, it is preferable if you have less time available to pray the Office.

An additional option for one with limited time would be to do a 60-day cycle through the Psalms – by praying the First Day: Morning Prayer Psalms on Day 1, then First Day Evening Prayer on Day 2, and so on.

That’s it! Having completed the Opening (section 1) and the Psalms (section 2), next time I’ll discuss the third major section of the Daily Office – the Readings.

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (6)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (0)

After discussing the Christian Year as the backdrop upon which the BCP Prayer services are built, and then introducing the BCP itself, I am now going to lead you page by page in how exactly to use the Prayerbook to pray. Much of it is self-explanatory, but I have given a running commentary along the side to spell out exactly what is going on, in an attempt to make it perfectly clear. You may not need such explanation to begin. If so, just start using it and refer back here if you have any questions.

Text in Orange is to identify words that are actually on that page of the prayerbook. If anything is confusing, please comment and I will try to clarify.

NB: The intended audience for this series is people who have no experience in using liturgical forms of prayer so I have attempted to explain everything. My apologies in advance if this seems a little pedantic.

As I mentioned last time, it’s helpful for me to see all of the BCP prayer services as having four parts, in this order:

1) Opening

2) Psalms

3) Readings

4) Prayers

There are also four different prayer services that essentially use this same four-part format:

1) Morning Prayer

2) Midday (Noon) Prayer

3) Evening Prayer

4) Compline (bedtime)

This post will focus on the first section (the “Opening”) as it specifically relates to Evening Prayer. After we discuss the central four-part structure in Evening Prayer, I’ll show you some of the ways it is used in the other three offices.

To begin, you would open to this page in the prayer book. It will look exactly like this in every Book of Common Prayer (as long as it is the 1979 version).

“Daily Evening Prayer” means that this is the same order used for prayer every evening. The general structure stays the same with certain parts (the psalms, canticles, readings, etc.) changing for each day.

“Rite Two” indicates that this order is in modern english (”Rite One” is in “King James” English)

Notice the smaller font in italics. Those are the “rubrics,” which is a fancy way for saying “instructions.”

“Officiant” is the person leading the service if it is done in a group. If you are praying by yourself, you are the Officiant.

Evening prayer begins with an Opening Sentence from Scripture. Most of them specifically relate to evening/night time and so set the mood for a time of prayer in the evening. The rubric says you can also select one from Morning Prayer, which there relate to the Church Year rather than the time of day.

Simply choose one (or more) sentence(s), read it (them) prayerfully and move on.

Next follows the Confession of Sin. The rubrics say that this “may be said.” In other words, it is optional.

It is good to take a moment where the rubric says “Silence may be kept” to ask God to show you anything you need to confess and/or repent of from that day.

At “what we have done…” feel free to pause and specifically mention what the Holy Spirit brought to your mind. The same goes for “what we have left undone.” If the Holy Spirit didn’t bring anything to mind, don’t go looking for something, just keep going.

This is a blessing of forgiveness spoken over the people when prayed corporately. When praying alone, take a moment after confession to consciously receive forgiveness from God and ask for the grace to sin no more.

The formal beginning of the service is with “O God, make speed to save us…” which was established as the opening of Vespers by St. Benedict in the sixth century (meaning it was likely standard practice from much earlier). This is a common form in liturgical prayer called “Versicle and Response,” in which the Officiant and the People alternate responsively. When prayed alone, say both parts. This set is taken from Ps. 70:1 and begins the service expressing our desperate need of God’s salvation and active involvement in our lives.

Next follows the Gloria Patri, “Glory to the Father…” (2nd or 3rd century) in which the Triune God, the fellowship of divine love, is upheld at the center of all Christian prayer. Christian prayer, though in many cases springs from immediate problems (O God, make speed to save us…), it is centered amidst and stabilized upon the deep love of the three persons of the Trinity.

Immediately, the “Alleluia” is said as an exclamation of delight in the Triune God who will come to save us (although it is not said in Lent because it is a season of penitence rather than rejoicing).

The hymn, “Phos hilaron” is included as an opening hymn, though the rubrics on the previous page say that “some other suitable hymn, or an Invitatory Psalm” may be used. I’ll discuss Invitatory Psalms when we get to Morning Prayer.

The “Phos Hilaron” dates from around the 3rd century (read: its REALLY old!) and was a traditional hymn sung at evening time when the lamps were lit. I think it is a beautiful text, so I sing it every night. However, feel free to substitute in any hymn or canticle as a form of “opening praise.”

This brings us to the end of the first major section – “The Opening.” So far its pretty easy, eh? Next time, we’ll discuss the second major section, and my personal favorite – the Psalms.

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (6)
• My Personal Prayer Action Plan (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 3) (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)

The Book of Common Prayer was so radical a book, its author got burned at the stake. Phrases from its pages like “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” “Till death us do part,” or “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” have become enshrined in the consciousness of virtually all English speakers. Together with the writings of Shakespeare and the Authorized version of the Bible, these three works constitute the foundational compositions of modern English. The beauty, simplicity and power of this book has revolutionized worship for all English speakers, whether one is aware of it or not. On a personal note, I owe a hearty debt of gratitude to its crafters, as this simple tool has played a crucial role in revolutionizing my personal prayer life (It enabled me to accomplish all of these objectives).

Having in the last post laid out an overview of the Christian Year, the underlying structure of spirituality upon which the Prayer Book is based, I will proceed to give a general introduction to the Book of Common Prayer. Next time, I will begin showing you how to pray the Daily Office (btw, the above is an actual facsimile from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer).

The Book of Common Prayer (hereafter, BCP) was first published in 1549 in England, under the direction of Thomas Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury. Its publication was ultimately caused by, but structurally unrelated to the Protestant Reformation which began 32 years earlier when Martin Luther posted his famous “95 Theses” in 1517. One of the major consequences of the Reformation was worship in vernacular languages. Previously, all public worship had been in Latin for centuries, regardless of whether the common person understood it. The Book of Common Prayer was meant to be just that – “Common Prayer” – in the language English people spoke and understood. The BCP was the first large scale collection of liturgies in the English language (the Litany had been published in 1544). Incidentally, on March 15, 1556, Thomas Cranmer was put to death by Mary I (”Bloody Mary”), in her attempt to undo the Reformation in England and restore Roman religion.

The BCP also sought to reform another aspect of worship that had developed in the Medieval period. Over time, the services of daily prayer became more and more the work of monastic communities and less and less the occupation of the common person. In the monastic communities, these services became more and more complicated.  This was no problem if your primary occupation was prayer, but it took the prayer farther and farther from the average worshipper.

This complexity manifested itself in that at least four large books were needed to perform the prayer services: Psaltery (the Psalms), Antiphonal (the chants), Lectionary (the readings), and Ordo (specific portions for ordinary and special days). Eventually all these were combined into one huge book called a Breviary (hardly brief!).

The same phenomenon existed for the Mass, the service of the Lord’s Supper. Numerous books were used including the Epistolary (epistle readings), Evangeliary (gospel readings), Sacramentary (variable prayers for the Mass), the Ordo and Antiphonal. These were eventually combined into what is called a Missal.

Then there were additional lengthy books for pastoral services like baptism and marriage (called the Manual), processional litanies (the Processional), and services only the bishop would perform, such as ordination, confirmation, coronations, etc. (called the Pontifical).

Then there was the Pie.  The Pie was yet another book, a directory of sorts, which gave all the instructions for using all the other books in a given service. You may have heard the expression that something is “as easy as pie.” Without going into the details, although the Pie certainly made having a service much simpler, it was far from easy.

The genius of Thomas Cranmer, and the revolutionary nature of the BCP can be seen in that it takes all of these books, simplifies them, and combines them into one book that does not require microscopic print. What this means, is that all one would need is this single book plus the Bible to perform any and all services of the Church.

Specifically with regard to Daily Prayer, Cranmer condensed the 8 daily prayer services of monastic orders (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline) into two – Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. Later editions of the Prayerbook add a “midday” office (replacing Terce, Sext and None) and Compline (said right before bed). These simplified orders comprised merely a few dozen pages in the prayer book, as opposed to the thousands of pages (with tiny print) in a breviary.

These two steps – simplification and English composition – put prayer back in the hands (literally!) of the common person. Any literate person could fully take part in and understand all of the Church’s worship. The Prayerbook’s simplicity and beauty also lends easily to memorization, which would additionally enable those who were not literate to participate.

The 1979 American edition of the Book of Common Prayer has much in common with Cranmer’s original, but with some modifications, which for the most part:  1) reflect what research has discovered concerning models of prayer more ancient than what Cranmer had available, 2) restore a little bit of the complexity and diversity that Cranmer removed (some would argue he over did it) and 3) uses contemporary English (as opposed to the “thees” and “thous” current in 1549).

The central prayer texts are Morning and Evening Prayer. As with all of the services in the BCP, they have two general components: the Ordinary and the Proper. The “Ordinary” is what stays the same all the time. There is a fixed skeletal structure that is used every single day. This helps to lay a solid foundational consistency and rhythm to the prayer. The “Proper” is portions that change according to the day or season of the Church Year. This includes the psalms, readings, and prayers that vary. This adds the diversity and depth to the prayer. As we begin to walk through the liturgies in the next post, it will be easy to tell the difference between the Ordinary and the Proper. I’ll also show you how to make it real easy to keep track of the varying “Propers.”

In addition to the two general components all of the prayer services (including midday and Compline) have the same four part structure:

1) Opening – this includes an opening Scripture verse that sets the time of prayer in its context in the Church Year, confession of sin, and opening praise.

2) Psalms – in Morning and Evening Prayer, this involves praying/singing the entire book of Psalms over a given period of time (your choice depending on how much time you want to give to it – any where from a one to seven week cycle). This is only interrupted on special holidays.

3) Readings – meditation readings from the OT, NT epistles and Gospel every day. They generally follow through entire books at a time and during the seasons of the Church Year, the readings usually relate to the seasonal themes. Canticles (biblical songs outside of the Psalms) are used as responses to the readings.

4) Prayers - a collection of prayers – some are used consistently (i.e., “Ordinary”), some vary according to the Church Year (”Proper”). Of course there’s room to add whatever prayers you want. This section always ends with thanksgiving.

Okay – now that I’ve got you generally oriented to the BCP, we can begin! Next time…

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 5) – The Readings (5)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)

Celebrating the Christian Year has been by far one of the most significant, dynamic and moving spiritual practices that I have ever engaged in.

It may seem strange that to begin guiding you in how to pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer, I am not going to be talking about the Prayer Book at all. Or at least it might initially seem that way. To discuss praying the Daily Office necessitates understanding the underlying framework of the Christian Year.

Along with a majority of Evangelicals, your experience of the Christian Year may have mirrored my upbringing – being limited to the days of Easter and Christmas with the possible addition of Good Friday. If you were radical, your church might have had a Maundy Thursday service or an Advent wreath. Other than that, the year at church was littered with secular, Hallmark and institutional commemorations – Labor Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Missions Sunday, Superbowl Sunday, etc. I remember being shocked as a teenager that Pentecost Sunday did not even warrant a mention in our church’s bulletin, let alone celebrated or even mentioned during the service.

Enough reminiscing. The point is that the Christian Year is somewhat of an enigma to the Evangelical populace at large and might possibly seem like an encumbering profusion of obscure holidays. Why they seem obscure is a discussion for another day (i.e., contemporary Christianity often is profoundly disconnected from historic and even Biblical Christianity…) but the Christian Year is not really about “holidays,” although there are many of them. The Christian Year is fundamentally a way to sanctify time and define our lives according to the unfolding narrative of redemption by structuring the year around the central redemptive acts of God in the Messiah. (read that sentence again, its the most important one in this whole post).

Many forms of spirituality are focused on the subjective feelings of the present moment. If you know me at all, you know that I am certainly not against subjective feelings. However, making this a central or guiding focus of one’s spirituality often leads to diametrical extremes – instability and monotony. The instability arises when the normal ebb and flow of our emotions becomes the (or a) primary criterion for structuring and evaluating our spiritual existence. When the emotions are charged we are ecstatic but when the are not we are demoralized. We then constantly shift and change our spiritual practices in order to maintain or find a certain spiritual experience. This ultimately results in a haphazard and disjointed spirituality. The monotony arises in the times that fall between the spiritual peaks. We even might call it a “dry-season” or a “desert-time.” When we’re not inspired, our spirituality nearly falls apart or ceases to have much meaning.

Celebration of the Christian Year is not simply a commemoration of holidays but constitutes an entire and alternate system of ordering our spiritual lives. In such it is a radically different approach to spirituality. Its focus is different. Rather than concentrating on one’s personal experience, it revolves around the central redemptive acts of God in the Messiah. Its temporal matrix is different. Rather than narrowing in on the experience of the present moment, it looks to the seasons of the year as its basis. Obviously this is a significantly distinct manner of structuring one’s spirituality. The purpose is not to have the most dynamic spiritual experience in this moment, but rather over the rhythms of months and years to root and ground one’s own life in a way that is centered around the person and life of Jesus and the redemption of the world God wrought in and through Him. This does not mean celebrating the Christian Year fails to have dramatic spiritual experiences (it certainly can!) – however, the guiding and evaluative criterion is located elsewhere. Our spirituality becomes rooted in something more secure than our capricious affections, freeing us from both the instability and monotony that such a misguided focus brings. Our spirituality thus has meaning even between the experiential peaks, because our ultimate goal is not now, but a future of formation and sanctification in the Messiah.

The Christian Year structures our lives around the story of redemption. Our culture contains a plethora of competing and contradictory stories which seek to explain what the world is about and give us meaning as a part of it. Christian Year spirituality seeks to contravene each of these stories of exploitation, violence and death by superimposing a different story – one about redemption, revolution, resurrection and life. Each year the life of Jesus is “acted out” so to speak, through the seasons and celebrations of the Christian Year. As we journey through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension, we become active participants in this story. The beauty of God unfolds year by year as over and over we see how different he is than the leading “actors” in the narratives weaved in alienation from him. The self-giving love, tender humility, compassionate nearness and restorative grace shown forth as the life of Jesus unfolds, demonstrates an untold beauty, beckoning us to a Kingdom that pales the allurements of secular counterfeits.  By entering this story, our lives are shaped and formed in contradiction, indeed, resistance to the pseudo-stories proffered by the spirit of our age. We look with eager anticipation to the consummation of this story, when Jesus returns to make all things new, as even now we partner with him in seeing His Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.

I know this is hardly a full explanation and justification of observing the Christian Year. I hope at some point to return and explain the concept more fully. For our purposes this simple introduction will suffice.

Now I’d like to give a brief overview of the major seasons of the Christian Year – to give you the framework within which the Daily Office is set (the Prayerbook has a more complete description of the calendar of the Church Year which you can download here). When praying the Office, it will be important at least to be able to know where in the Calendar of the Christian Year you are.

Advent

Time – from the fourth Sunday before Christmas until Christmas Eve

Color – Blue (either symbolizing either royalty or the waters of Genesis 1, the beginning of a new creation)

Central Theme – Expectation for the Messiah’s Coming – both in terms of His First Coming and Second Coming.

Spirituality – Longing for God’s Kingdom and justice on earth as it is in heaven.

Christmas

Time – from Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) until the eve of Epiphany (12 days)

Color – White or Gold (symbolic of joy and celebration)

Central Theme – The Incarnation of God made flesh. God eternally united himself with humanity in the person of Jesus in order to defeat the powers of darkness.

Spirituality – Celebrating the presence of God among us.

Epiphany

Time – from Epiphany (January 6) until Ash Wednesday (50 days before Easter)

Color – Green

Central Theme – The manifestation of the glory of Jesus through his earthly life and ministry, particularly commemorating the visit of the Magi, His baptism by John, the changing of water to wine at Cana and the Transfiguration. Jesus’ life and ministry demonstrates the content of our salvation in the restorative presence of the Reign of God (healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, feeding the hungry, delivering the oppressed, raising the dead, welcoming the outcasts, etc.)

Spirituality – Manifesting the life of Jesus in and through us.

Lent

Time – from Ash Wednesday (50 days before Easter) until the Easter Vigil

Color – Purple (symbolizes suffering)

Central Theme – Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.

Spirituality – Repentance and resisting temptation as a preparation to celebrate the newness of resurrection life at Easter. Focus on fasting, prayer and giving to the poor.

Holy Week

Time – Palm Sunday until Holy Saturday (day before Easter)

Color – Red (symbolizing blood) or Black (symbolizing mourning/death)

Central Theme – Walking with Jesus through the days proceeding and leading up to his death.

Spirituality – Putting the old self of sin to death. Joining with Jesus as he identifies with and bears the weight of the world’s sin and suffering.

Easter

Time – Easter Sunday (or Easter Vigil) until Pentecost (7 weeks)

Color – White or Gold (symbolic of joy and celebration)

Central Theme – Resurrection Life. God triumphs over the powers of death. The New Creation is inaugurated in the resurrection of Jesus.

Spirituality – We rise from the death of sin and despair into a vibrant love for life and all that is living.

Ascension

Time – 40 days after Easter (Ascension Day is always on the Thursday in the 6th week of Easter)

Color – White or God

Central Theme – The Reign of the Messiah and his victory over all the powers of darkness.

Spirituality – Confident intercession from a place of authority over the powers of darkness.

Pentecost

Time – 50 days (7 weeks) after Easter

Color – Red (symbolizing the fire of the Holy Spirit)

Central Theme – The new age of the Spirit has been inaugurated (already-but-not-yet). The restoration of all things has begun through the Spirit.

Spirituality – As participants in God’s New Creation we boldly testify to the resurrection of Jesus as agents of New Creation.

Ordinary Time (i.e., no specific season)

Time – from Pentecost until Advent

Color – Green (symbolizing growth)

Central Theme – No central theme – or a continuation of Pentecost

Spirituality – Being present and responsive to God in the ordinariness of life

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• My Personal Prayer Action Plan (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 3) (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)

This is the third part in a series on the practical side of prayer. Much can be said about the theoretical side of prayer – what is prayer exactly, what does it do, etc. Also, the subject of how God feels and responds to our prayers is a VASTLY significant subject. Many people have difficulty praying because they imagine God is scowling at them or shrugging in disinterest the entire time. This couldn’t be further from the truth of God’s actual emotions!

For as much as could be said concerning the theoretical and theological aspects of prayer – I have been discussing for two posts, what is in my opinion the primary practical hurdle in developing a consistent life of prayer. In the first post, I discussed the underlying assumption that many believers bring into the prayer time, which often ends up crippling them – that every word they say has to come out of the fresh creative spontaneity of their inner-most self expression. I then went on to describe the inherent limitations that an exclusive use of this type of prayer brings. In the second post, I attempted to show how this assumption in prayer is neither logical nor in accord with biblical or historical tradition. Instead, it comes from the Spirit of the Age, specifically Romanticism and Existentialism.

Today I want to simply describe how I personally implement the notions I’ve laid out in the previous two posts in my “Personal Prayer Action Plan.” As of late, I find myself frequently urging many people to develop a “Prayer Action Plan.” This simply means having a somewhat concrete idea about what you’re going to do in your prayer time before you get there. Making it up as you go occasionally works great, but is often disappointing. There is no use crippling 95% of your prayer times for the 5% when something incredible happens completely unplanned. I often tell people that I know exactly what I will be doing for my entire 4-6 hour prayer time each night. This is slightly misleading – I just have an easy enough system set up that it takes no thought to execute an extensive prayer action plan (I’ll explain this more later).

I recommend that a personal prayer action plan should have at least the following characteristics: (the three-point alliteration is purely accidental!!)

simple to execute – it cannot be laborious or painstaking. It cannot require a lot of careful thought simply to execute. I will never do it. I have to be able to do it easily.

substantial – Most of us will need more than “I will pray for Africa from 1-2 and pray-read the Bible from 2-3, etc.” Your plan generally will need more substance than that or it may frequently drift in aimless directions. An improvement on the former might be “I will pray [specific scripture verses] for [specific topics] for [specific countries] in Africa from 1-2 [which vary on different days of the week] and from 2-3 I will pray-read [a specific schedule of passages from] the Bible [using a specific method] from 2-3.

scaleable – since most of us pray for a set period of time, having a substantial plan runs into the difficulty of being too rigid. What happens if the amount of time you have to pray this day is either shorter or longer than usual? What if you get through your planned material, still have more time left over and don’t want to quit early? Or what if you get touched by the Lord at one point, and so one part of your plan took longer than usual? There has to be means by which even a structured prayer time can be shortened or lengthened with relative ease.

Now these three characteristics of a Prayer Action Plan are in addition to the eleven criteria for my prayer life I outlined previously (easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving). It might seem incredibly daunting to develop a Prayer Action Plan satisfying these criteria. I don’t imagine they would simply fall into place on their own accord. I mentioned that for me the “secret” was using written prayers. Of course, just any assortment written prayers would not suffice and certainly not ones that I primarily wrote myself.

What is surprising, is I found a Prayer Action Plan, meeting all my criteria, which for the most part was fully in place and operational apart from my ingenuity. Granted, I tweaked it and customized it, but the overall structure and much of the smaller details I took directly from a long standing tradition. This was not simply a collection of written prayers, but entire extended structures of prayer based on the orders used in monastic communities from the days of St. Benedict and earlier. This tradition is the daily prayer services from Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican tradition. These prayer services are collectively called the “Daily Office.” It is called the “Office” because the word derives from Latin officium, meaning “performance of a task” (which comes from opus “work” + facere “do”). The church understood daily prayer to be the central “work” of the believing community, so to speak, and so called them “Offices.”

Because I’ve found this way of praying so helpful and gloriously fulfilling everything I was looking for in prayer, I am going to take the next number of posts to explain in detail how to use the Book of Common Prayer to structure your prayer life. It may seem complicated and cumbersome at first, and that is because it is quite a complex system. However, once you start rolling, with a few practical tips, it is remarkably easy to use this incredibly rich model of prayer. The time it takes to learn to pray in this way is miniscule in comparison to the rewards it offers.

To summarize – this model essentially consists of:

-Praying the entire book of Psalms in sequence once or twice a month (or weekly for the really ambitious)

-A series of short passages from Scripture (10-20 verses) for prayer-reading arranged on a two year calendar so that a portion from the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel are read every day and all of the NT and most of the OT is covered each year.

-A number of Canticles (songs in the Bible outside of the Psalms) which are used as prayer-responses to the readings

-A plethora of written prayers for a wide diversity of subjects

-All of this is structured around the Christian Year, which roots the spirituality in the unfolding narrative of salvation as manifested in God’s salvific acts in and through the Messiah (more on this shortly).

There are two general ways to pray the Daily Office  - the standard, simple way – and one with a few means of adding a little more complexity that add a lot more diversity and depth. I’ll start by discussing the standard method. Its good to learn the Office and get used to it simply. Then in due time, I’ll discuss the “Office on Steroids,” so to speak.

To get started you will need to get a Book of Common Prayer. I use the 1979 edition and will base the subsequent comments on it.

The most basic form is a simple 5.5″ x 7.5″ hardcover which comes in red or black. You can get used copies for only a few dollars (click on links to go to Amazon.com).

There are numerous other editions in all shapes, colors and bindings (softcover, hardcover, leather). Just search on Amazon.

Alternately – you can download these files and print them double-sided along the short edge, staple them down the middle and fold, and you have your own booklets.

Daily Office from the BCP – the portions from the BCP that cover the main prayer services

Daily Office Lectionary – schedule of all of the Scripture readings for the two-year schedule

Schemes for Praying the Entire Psalter

If you are a local – just ask me, and I might have an extra on hand!

A Third option is several websites that take all the aspects of the Daily Office and put them together for you. Granted, this confines you to your computer to pray (unless you print it out daily), which I don’t personally prefer, but it does make it a lot easier at first. Some of them have options for smartphones, which make it readily portable.

Daily Office – this is the American Anglican version

Morning Prayer Evening Prayer – these are daily feeds from the British version (somewhat different than the American)

Universalis – Roman Catholic version (similar overall structure but with various nuances)

Starting with the next post, I will begin to explain practically how to use the BCP to establish an easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving** prayer life in almost no time at all (**although the deeply moving part may take a little more time).

Related posts

• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (6)
• Opposition to Pre-Written Prayers Comes From the Spirit of the Age (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 2) (3)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)

In my experience, whether talking to evangelicals or charismatics (or evangelical-charismatics), there seems to be a fairly strong opposition to using pre-written forms in either corporate or personal prayer. By this I am mostly referring to using prayers written by someone else. Even more specifically, I am speaking of using something akin to the historic structured liturgies of daily prayer that have been used in religious communities from time immemorial. It is my contention that this opposition is based both on faulty logic and presuppositions that have much more to do with the spirit of the age (zeitgeist) than apostolic Christianity. Since for the most part the “proof of the pudding is in the eating,” seeing how simple it is to acquire the eleven benefits I laid out in the last post (easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving) will ultimately be the best reason for someone to use pre-written prayers and forms to aid their prayer life. However, I want to briefly deal with the primary objection I’ve heard over the years (and I myself once espoused) to using written prayers. The objection essentially goes something like one of the following:

“If I use a pre-written prayer, it couldn’t be authentic…”

“It’s not something that is really from my heart…”

“It wouldn’t be a personal relationship between me and God anymore…”

The assumption here is that the central criterion for “good prayer” is that it must be an authentic expression of my innermost self.  Indeed, this criterion has been so exalted that it overpowers all the criteria I laid out in my previous post rendering them inconsequential. Thus expressing your innermost self (or your perception of your innermost self) trumps prayer that is consistent, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, etc. The notion that this is the paramount criterion for “real/good prayer” and is thus incompatible with pre-written forms is flawed in at least two ways.

1) LOGIC – The notion that pre-written forms cannot be authentic is an idea that almost no Christian actually believes, so it is a marvel to me that this argument is even employed. Let me explain. This past Sunday, in every church around the world, whether they were the most traditional, or the most charismatic, people used pre-written prayers to “express their hearts” to God. They were, however, in songs. Although I have regularly enjoyed and still do enjoy singing songs in both corporate and private settings that either I personally wrote in advance or made up on the spot, I have never been in a worship setting where all the songs the congregation sang were spontaneous. Even if that does happen somewhere, the congregation would still be using a form written by someone else.

I have never heard someone attempt to argue that they cannot sing worship songs or hymns written by someone else because they cannot possibly use them to give an “authentic expression of their innermost self” to God. This is because we all know that it is more than possible to express ourselves to God using someone else’s words. In fact, we do it all the time. More so, we frequently find that someone else can put into words, what our innermost self has been wanting to say but has not been able to express.

We also express ourselves to God through another’s words every time we agree with someone else’s prayer. We didn’t come up with those words, someone else did. They were not a spontaneous eruption from our hearts, yet when we say “Amen” we all acknowledge that the other’s words can be an authentic and meaningful way for us to pray to God. If they were not, then we would eschew all corporate prayer, an abstention that no one in the early apostolic community maintained.

2) BIBLICAL/HISTORICAL – Now that I’ve shown that nearly all people do in fact believe it is possible to “authentically express your innermost self” to God through texts written by someone else, I would now like to go further by questioning this notion as a central criterion for judging quality prayer. Pause for a second and ask yourself if you ever remember Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, or anyone else in Scripture ever talk about the necessity for the “authentic expression of my innermost self.” It probably won’t take you long to realize that none of them ever do. (Even when there is gut-wrenching heart expression (for example, say, in the Psalms or Lamentations), it is WRITTEN down and intended for others to use as their own form).

If the Bible does not hold up the supreme necessity of “authentic self-expression” then why is this almost a universal, immediate response to the notion of using pre-written prayers in contemporary Protestantism? Where is this value and its priority coming from? I guess I already gave it away in the title of this post – it comes from the spirit of the age, to be more precise, the spirit of the age from 1800-1950ish. I am specifically meaning two specific movements of late modern culture: Romanticism and Existentialism.

The Romantic movement of the early 19th century responded to the extreme rationalism of the Enlightenment (late 17th and 18th century), and indeed they were right to do so. Rather they said, the “heart” was the central concern. Notice how such talk could easily be crowded into the same room with Isaiah, Amos and Deuteronomy’s  emphasis on the “heart” and opposition to “outward forms” laking internal reality. To risk oversimplifying an entire cultural movement, the Romantics encouraged one to look inward, to discover the feelings that are inside of you and make them the center of your life, not least your self-expression. This was codified in Christian thought by F.D.E. Schleiermacher who said that “Christian doctrines are accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech” (The Christian Faith). Notice the subtle difference between Romanticism and the Scripture. Deuteronomy says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” while Romanticism says “have loving feelings” and Romantic-inspired theology says “let us describe our loving feelings about God.” In Biblical religion, the object of the love is central, whereas in romanticism-inspired theology, the feeling is central and the object ancillary (In his lengthy treatment of Christian theology, Schleiermacher said “this Other [meaning God] is not objectively presented in the immediate self-consciousness with which alone we are here concerned,” i.e., we’re mostly concerned with the feelings in our self-consciousness, not God).

This brings us to the largely 20th century phenomenon of existentialism (although its harbinger Kierkegaard appeared on the scene in the mid-19th century). Amongst other things, existentialism sought to highlight that each person has a “true self” of authentic existence which must be searched for, found, freed and given full expression. Like romanticism, there are ways this language can be layered within and around the Biblical text (As R. Bultmann aptly demonstrated, for better or for worse). Again, it is subtly different than what the Scripture is in fact saying. Rather than being confronted by and conformed to something larger than and external to ourselves, we must “discover who we really are” and then be true to that authentic self. Growth is not as much a process of conversion and transformation as it is discovery and realization of what was always there within me. Akin to Romanticism, one emphasizes an external relationship, the other, an inward journey.

From this brief historical lesson, I think it becomes clear where a lot of this talk about “authentic expression from my heart” derives its modern origins. At least in the ways it is often used, it is not coming from the Bible. Sure, Biblical verses are employed, but Romanticist and Existentialist interpretations and applications of those verses. If these passages are in fact explaining how the center of prayer is discovering what is really in my heart and then authentically expressing it to God in my own personally unique way, it is funny how nearly the entire tradition of Jewish and Christian prayer missed that, including the earliest records we have of the church immediately following the writing of the New Testament. When the apostles asked Jesus how to pray, he didn’t give them instructions on how to focus or how to tune into the Spirit really hard. Nor did he tell them to divide up into groups and discuss their personal story and emote what is bubbling up from their inner recesses. He did not lead them in a journey of inward discovery and affirmation. He certainly did not encourage them to abandon forms and structures of spirituality, since his answer was to give them a set of words they can say, which is now known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” It is commonly asserted that the Lord’s Prayer was not a “form,” (predicated on the assumption we already know religious forms are bad!) but a suggestion of the topics one can pray about. That’s fine to use it that way, but that is not what Jesus was doing. Luke’s text is very clear in this manner. It says quite literally, “whenever you pray, SAY: ‘Father…’” (Luke 11:2). Jesus’ central advice on prayer is to have a specific pattern and form of words to “say” “whenever you pray.” Whatever we make of this, it certainly was miles away from what a Romanticist/Existentialist might recommend.

Now don’t get me wrong. As a good product of my time I think “expressing what’s really in my heart” is important and I personally cherish the numerous times I have been able to do so. But it is not central, and it is certainty not the starting place of prayer. If prayer begins with and finds its locus in “expressing my heart,” it would seem to be right on track to transmogrify from a noble and beautiful practice into an ugly and horrid introspective navel-gazing. I know plenty of this from my personal experience. Rather, Christian prayer begins with our eyes fixed on God (rather than our emotions) and the Scripture (rather than our own creativity/authenticity). What I’ve found is that this type of heart-posture, coupled with the method of prayer that I’ll outline in my next post, has led to a significant increase in the regularity of profoundly moving and authentically expressive experiences with the Lord, over the whole gamut of emotions.

While my personal experience is not your own, for me it illustrates the futility and lack of credibility contained within Romanticist and Existentialist applications of Scripture. The difference is stark. When Isaiah rebukes Israel using words like “I hate your festivals,” etc., or Jesus speaks of the Pharisees’ honoring God with their words, but their hearts being far away, or Paul might speak of the liberty of the Spirit, the Existentialist or Romanticist might condemn the use of forms, structures or patterns in worship and prayer. The solution to a dull spiritual experience is the inward search and liberation from “religious forms.” In reality, this analysis is incredibly shallow. Isaiah makes clear that the issue is not forms but faithfulness to Yahweh (Isa. 1:12-17). Paul makes it clear that the law is good and spiritual (Rom. 7:12, 14). I also find it hard to believe that Jesus specifically condemned the forms of Jewish liturgy considering the early church continued to take part in this worship after the Ascension and even after Pentecost (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:42, 46; 3:1). The Existentialist would tell me I need to prioritize authenticity, self-expression and freedom from forms, but I have found that concerted faithfulness to God, attentiveness to his Word and commitment to structured rhythms of prayer is the context within which I have experienced more acute self-awareness, greater freedom in self-expression and deeper religious affections than I have at any previous time in my life. Using pre-written structures and liturgies have dramatically transformed my prayer life for the better, and enabled me to obtain a spirituality that is “easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving” (see the previous post for an explanation of all these components).

In my next post I will outline what this specifically looks like for me in my practice of daily prayer.

Related posts

• My Personal Prayer Action Plan (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 3) (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (6)

My apologies – I meant to say, “how to develop an easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving prayer life,” but thought that title was at the same time unwieldy and immediately open to the charge of being outside the realm of possibility for the majority of normal Christians. Furthermore, if I said all those objectives (minus the “profoundly moving” part – that’s a little more involved) were achievable in less than a week’s time, I would fear my credibility to be even more so depreciated. So, the title to this post should be “How to establish an easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical,  non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, manageable and profoundly moving prayer life in less than one week** (**although the deeply moving may take some more time),” but for now, we’ll settle with the title “as-is.”

I’ve been heavily involved in the Prayer Movement for about 10 years and have worked at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City full-time for over five years, where our central (though not only) focus as a ministry is spending lots of time in prayer (we host prayer meetings attended by 100+ people 24/7!!), and equipping others to do the same. Yet I find it remarkable (though not really — I’ll explain why shortly), how frequently I talk to people here who do not pray that much. Yes, they read Christian books. Yes, they open the Bible periodically. Yes, they sing songs, sometimes with exuberance. Yes, they listen to sermons. Yes, they exhort others with reference to the value of prayer. But actually pray?

The surprising frequency with which people actually do not pray at a ministry devoted to prayer is not a phenomenon unique to us by any stretch of the imagination. If you’ve ever attempted to have a prayer life, you know what I’m talking about. You get a certain level of determination to pray and so decide to set aside 15, 30 minutes, maybe even an hour or two each day to pray. The first two minutes go great. You announce your noble intentions to be dedicated to God, thank him for all his mercies and ask him to strengthen you in your daily tasks. Then about twenty minutes later you shake yourself into cognizance realizing that the previous segment of time had been spent either sleeping, day dreaming, planning the rest of your day, worrying about this or that situation, thinking about what you’ll say to that last person who bugged/hurt/angered you, dusting the underside of your desk, or some combination of these. Then you spend the next minute or two apologizing to God or being frustrated with yourself, only 25 minutes later to repeat the same process. Oh Sweet Hour of Prayer!! Sweet indeed! Well…God thought it was endearing, but to the pray-er it was infuriating, demoralizing or both.

Would it be a shock if I told you that this is rarely my experience (I say rarely, not never)? Not only is this rarely my experience, but this ceased being my experience shortly after learning a very simple lesson. This lamentable scenario plays itself out over and over again in the lives of sincere and eager-hearted Christians largely (not only) because they come into the time of prayer with a very significant yet unspoken assumption. Wouldn’t you love to know what that is?

Before I get to that, I want to outline the above criteria. In seeking to cultivate my own practice of prayer, I’ve sought to find a method of prayer by which all of these characteristics can be true. I am maintaining this interlude because I want to subsequently show how my simple lesson enabled me to achieve all of these objectives rather quickly.

easy – the execution of this method cannot be excruciatingly laborious and constantly require all my mental, affective and bodily reserves. This would be impossible to maintain.

consistent - It must be sustainable. I would have to be able to do this method day in and day out – on good days and bad. My central method of prayer should not require or expect me to be in top form all of the time.

deep – in the name of being “easy,” it cannot overlook significantly important issues, questions, concerns, etc.. It has to address and speak to me at the level of my deep heart. Accessibility cannot be a ruse for what is in actual fact, shallow.

rich in content – this also would be an attempt to avoid the shallow – but now in terms of theological depth. This is rooted in the conviction that ultimately, it is true content about God and His world that moves the heart. Emotional experiences without content are shallow at best and fake at worse.

diverse – it would need to draw in many different topics, ideas, themes, emotions, modalities, etc. It can’t be the same every day – because  1)  God is diverse  2) Scripture is diverse and 3) monotony is very challenging for me.

broadly-biblical – biblical verses are important but not enough to make something “biblical.” A concept can employ many “verses” in its defense but in fact be “unbiblical” if it uses those verses in a way that is incompatible with or unfaithful to the larger narrative of Scripture.  I want my practice of prayer to draw from from the breadth of Scripture in a way that the overarching drama Scripture is telling gets formed into my life over time.

Christ-centered – prayer fundamentally not anxiously fixated on problems or issues, but confidently centered on the redemptive acts of God in Christ – incarnation, life and ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, outpouring of the Holy Spirit and second coming.

non-idiosyncratic – I refuse to center my prayer life around my small collection of favorite verses, passages, ideas, pet-doctrines, etc. Of course I can have and cherish those, but my spiritually would become narrow-minded and limited if it only bore the marks of my “uniqueness.” Furthermore it would stink of individualism and and a pride insisting only I know and have the best way.

historically-rooted – it seems that the best way to avoid idiosyncrasy would be to draw on the riches of Christian and Jewish history. This would give me a “rooted-ness” that avoids forming my devotional practice on the basis of the “spirit of the age” even if I think somehow it hasn’t affected our modern forms of Christianity (it has – it’s inescapable…)

manageable – the method of prayer would need to incorporate all of the above in way that I am not trying to swallow the entire depth, content, diversity and history of Biblical and Apostolic Christianity all at once. It must be capable of consumption in digestible pieces.

profoundly moving – of course my method of prayer must lead me to encounter God on a somewhat regular basis. Now, I am not one for the “myth of constant communion” where one feels the presence of God without ceasing, either throughout all of life, or even throughout an entire prayer time. It would be best if we put that myth to rest because while it is inspiring to a few people, it is utterly demoralizing to the other 98% of normal believers who have actually tried prayer. Nevertheless, I make it my objective to deeply connect to God on the heart level every day. Ultimately, if I am unmoved by all my ideas – I don’t actually believe them. So my method of prayer must serve this function of bringing me into deeper affective awareness of God’s heart for me and deeper expression of my heart to God.

Well…now that I’ve laid out all my criteria for a method of prayer I have been seeking, prospects for such a method may seem quite dismal (especially considering EASY and MANAGEABLE are amongst the criteria). However, I am happy to say that I have found a method that incorporates all of these criteria. The best part is that I didn’t make it up at all – I found it fully functioning and happily satisfying all of my criteria without my ingenuity.

I’ll talk about this more in an upcoming post, but for now I want to get back to that important yet unspoken assumption that many, many contemporary believers bring with them into their times of prayer that often renders their “Sweet Hour of Prayer” as, well, woefully lackluster. Interestingly enough, it is not an assumption that most Christians throughout history have shared. This assumption is that when praying, the words I say, will for the most part (or entirely), be drawn from my own inner spontaneous creativity. In other words, when I pray, I just close my eyes, start talking and expect to keep going for an hour (or more!) with an unceasing flow of inspiration and corresponding cascade of eloquent and moving language. How often does this actually happen? Why do we insist on believing that it will happen anytime soon? Why do we neurotically refuse to believe that we are in fact novices in the school of prayer?

The opposite approach would be to use pre-written prayers as an aid to your own prayer. This could range from have a pre-written framework from which to add extemporaneous interjections to simply repeating the words of a prayer written by someone else. This one simple switch of mindset (that I don’t have to pull all the words I pray out of nowhere every time I pray) is essentially the key which enabled me to fulfill all of the above criteria in my prayer life. Evidently, simply using pre-written prayers and structures of prayer by itself did not enable this, but it was the key that unlocked the door. I’ll explain more on how this worked for me shortly. Now, this may be a little anti-climactic if you were hoping for a really great secret. The incredible thing is that this is not a secret at all – the majority of prayer meetings and prayer movements throughout Church history have employed pre-written prayers and prayer (liturgical) frameworks as the bedrock upon which their prayer lives were based. It is almost too easy of a solution.

I understand that there are significant objections to using pre-written prayers and I will address those in my next post. For now I simply want to lay out my initial criteria and show how they are impossible or exceedingly difficult to satisfy using the “pray only from my spontaneous internal creative resources” method.

easy – it is easy in the sense that you don’t have to plan or prepare. Try doing it for a while for extended periods of time and you will soon know it is not easy. It is really hard to come up with fresh language to pray for hours on end, day after day.

consistent - as C.S. Lewis has aptly noted, espousing this approach to prayer requires you to be on top form all the time. It commits the error of assuming that you can do all of the time what you can only do some of the time.

deep – as will be a common thread though many of these criteria – if prayer is only spontaneous, your prayer will essentially be drawn from what you already brought in with you. So…the depth of your prayer will correspond to the depth you already had – that’ll work for the veterans, but good luck for the neophytes!

rich in content – as with above, the content you already had and can spontaneously form into semi-coherent phrases will determine the content of your prayer. This does not bode well for those without 20 years of experience in prayer and the Word.

diverse – ironic as it seems, when prayer is only spontaneous, it often is lacking in diversity. This is because we tend to “spontaneously” gravitate to what is familiar and comfortable to us. Hence our “spontaneity” will only be what we already know and will be limited to our familiar (and predictable) ideas and patterns. Only by great effort does spontaneity actually sustain diversity (violating criteria #1 – EASY and #2 – CONSISTENT).

broadly-biblical – there is no way to ensure that an entirely spontaneous method of prayer will root you in a broad approach to Scripture. Rather the snippets of Scripture you have memorized will find expression in a spontaneously haphazard fashion.

Christ-centered – if the redemptive acts of God in Christ are central to everything you think about then this one will be easy. If you are like most of us and are attempting against many counter currents to form your life in a Christ-centered way, this one will be difficult on your own.

non-idiosyncratic – The very essence of spontaneity is that it is idiosyncratic. This is its main strength and weakness. Expressing yourself is valuable, but in exclusion is severely limited and bordering on narcissistic.

historically-rooted – once again, if you are already profoundly rooted in historic and apostolic Christianity, this one will be a snap (maybe). However, if you are still in the journey of prayer, considering yourself to not yet have arrived, there is no way this will happen on its own.

manageable – perhaps it is manageable – however, I don’t consider the void of all the previous elements to be manageable. I find it depressing.

profoundly moving – I think we’ve already established that a solely spontaneous approach to prayer often yields mediocre results as described above. I find it odd that one of the central objections to using written forms in prayer is the accusation that they are dry and dull. This is a most ironic accusation, considering how awful the experience is of most Christians’ spontaneous attempts at prayer. In fact, it is such a ridiculous assertion that I will not even address it in my next post, in which I will deal with a more formidable objection to written prayers.

Well – I don’t want to end on a down note – so I’ll finish by saying that if you find yourself in the experience of prayer which spends exponentially more time staring at the wall and thinking about other things than actually praying, or perhaps you’ve had that experience and just gave up assuming that it wouldn’t work – there actually is another way – and it actually works – and it actually has been practiced by the majority of praying Christians throughout Church history, especially those who have dedicated their lives to prayer. If you are an expert in prayer, feel no need to continue listening to me. But if you have been longing for “help” in prayer (cf. Rom. 8:28) and have been asking God to “teach you how to pray,” there is help available. And it is remarkably more easy than you might think. More on this to come.

Related posts

• Opposition to Pre-Written Prayers Comes From the Spirit of the Age (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 2) (3)
• My Personal Prayer Action Plan (Developing a Consistent Prayer Life Part 3) (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 7) – Making it Easy (in fact, brainless…) (1)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 4) – The Psalms (1)

As we continue to explore the meaning of Pentecost in light of the narrative of Old Testament history, today our journey brings us to Ezekiel 37. In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel is given a vision in which he sees a valley full of dry bones. In verse 11, the interpretation is given by God, saying that “the bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Interestingly, God says that these bones are the whole house of Israel, as opposed to were. The bones represent the existent Jewish people. What this means is that we are dealing with a metaphor. Ezekiel was seeing bones that represented the nation of Israel (unless you think that bones are in the habit of speaking).

While being metaphor, the aspects of the vision are still extremely significant. The interpretation God gives has three parallel phrases:

1) Our bones are dried up – in other words, their rotting flesh has completely decomposed and only bones are left – they are completely dead – way beyond the state of for example, the boys who Elijah and Elisha resuscitated (1 Kgs 17; 2 Kgs 4). There is nothing of them left to be raised from the dead.

2) our hope has perished – we’ll come back to this one in a minute.

3) we are completely cut off – the same word is used in Psalm 88 to describe complete and utter desolation, similarly using death as a metaphor: “I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I have become like one who has no strength, forsaken among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, and they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.

What about that second phrase? What hope has perished? What is all this dreariness about? Again, the vision clues us in. Why might there be a large number of bones gathered in one location? In Jewish tradition, dead persons are to be buried relatively quickly and to leave bones unburied was both ritually and socially unpropitious. Even if someone was left unburied, that would not explain why in this one valley, so many bones were amassed together, unless they all had died in that place. I think the best explanation is that the bones belonged to people who died in a battle, a battle in which Israel was decimated. This would certainly then allude to the invasion and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC. When Israel speaks of their “hope perishing,” by this they mean the exile.

The exile was the period in Israel’s history that began in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem and burned it to the ground, including the temple. Of those who survived, many were taken into captivity to Babylon, while many others were left to pick up the pieces. Regardless, Israel as a national, social and political entity was annihilated. As a religious entity, however, they endured, specifically in relation to what they called “our hope.” I think perhaps on one level their “hope perished” in that their normal human desire to live a long and happy life had been abruptly curtailed. However, it is significant that the bones spoke collectively of “our hope” (singular). It is the national hope of Israel, the expectation rooted in their history of living under the promises of God. This goes all the way back to the promises to Abraham, that to him and his seed God would give great blessing and bless all the nations of the earth through them, which in context means being God’s solution to the problem of sin (cf. Gen. 3-11). Yet how would they be God’s agents of blessing if they were constantly being harassed, oppressed and dominated by foreign powers? How could this future be true if all the institutions of Israel’s religious and national identity had been destroyed?

The solution to Israel’s desolate state is the Spirit of God – “And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” The Spirit of God will be the agent through whom this metaphorical resurrection of the nation of Israel will take place. Israel’s hopes will be restored and fulfilled my means of the Spirit of God “breathing” new life into them and bringing them back to their land.

Fast forward a couple hundred years. Israel had been back in their land, having returned from Babylon, since 536 B.C. Nevertheless, there was still a strong belief that the exile had not yet fully ended. They were back in the land, but were still under the domination of foreign powers (Click here for more on the notion that the exile was believed to have continued past the geographical return from Babylon). Leaving aside the Gospels (which confirm the same general point I am about to make), when the sound of a great and mighty wind enters the house where the disciples were gathered, as recorded in Acts, we are meant to understand this breath of God as (an at least incipient) ending of the exile and the restoration of God’s people. In Greek (and Hebrew) the word for wind and breath (and Spirit for that matter) are the same word. This doesn’t mean that they did not differentiate between those concepts, but the ambiguity enabled authors to add layers of nuance and allusion to their texts. When the wind blew upon the 120 Jewish believers in Jesus, they were experiencing the Ezekiel 37 breath of God which launched the beginning of the restoration of Israel and the ending of exile. All of God’s promises were being answered “yes” in and through the Messiah Jesus. The people of God were being restored. There would be a worldwide family descended from Abraham that would be a blessing to all the people’s of the earth, dealing with the problem of sin and overturning the effects of the fall.

While Ezekiel 37 mostly has the national identity of Israel in mind, Acts 2 (together with the rest of the NT) has in view the full extent of the Abrahamic promise to address the woes of sin and death. In Ezekiel 37, the “resurrection” was metaphorical – speaking of the return of Israel from exile. However, beginning with Jesus, this “resurrection” suddenly became literal. When God restores his people, he does more than revive national hopes, but enables the completion of the Abrahamic mission by destroying the power of death itself. All who receive this life-giving Spirit participate in the very power that raised Jesus from the dead (cf. Eph 1.19) and are guarunteed a share in the final resurrection (Rom. 8:11). As God welcomes his people Israel home from exile, he also welcomes all of humanity back from the exile of death they had shared ever since Adam and Eve were “exiled” from the Garden of Eden, immortality escaping their grasp. All are invited home to experience the fullness of life in and through allegiance to Jesus the Messiah and Lord of the world.

At the end of each post in this series, I’ve been commenting briefly on a developing “praxis of Pentecost,” i.e., what kind of practical expressions, lifestyle, etc., flows out of an understanding and experience of the Spirit poured out on Pentecost. The Spirit of God is ever and always the Spirit of the Resurrection, whom the universal Church confesses as the “Lord and Giver of Life.” As long as the Spirit is the Giver of Life, it is the enemy of death and all that causes death. A truly “pentecostal” person will never acquiesce to the “death drives” of our modern culture, whether they be associated with the death of innocent “expendable” lives (abortion, euthanasia), the sickness that robs the life of the body, poverty that denigrates the dignity of life, the narcissism of our image-obsessed culture that effaces the true beauty of life, behaviors that abuse and destroy relationships (unbridled sexuality, violence), diseased philosophies and theologies that kill the meaning of life, reckless political, economic and domestic practices which damage the world God created and loves, or the brutality of war. I am not here making a moral statement related to the whole “just war,” but all Christians must be at least eschatologically opposed to war (Isa 2:4; 46:9; 60; Hos. 2:18; Mic. 4:3-4; Zech. 9:9-10). A “Pentecostal” Christian, alive with the energies of the resurrection flowing through their members, opposes death in all its forms, eagerly acting as an agent of the restoration of true life, in collaborative partnership with the Holy Spirit.

Related posts

• Reading the Bible in the Right Direction (Part 4) – The Overarching Story of Scripture (3)
• We’ve Been Unbabeled – When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 2) (1)
• The Return of the Lost Ark (0)
• Resurrection and New Creation (Part 2) – Whirlwind Tour of the Gospel of John (2)
• Reading the Bible in the Right Direction (Part 2) (0)

In my last post I described the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost as forging the Church as a New Humanity, reversing Babel’s curse of social and national disintegration. Today I would like to look at the coming of the Holy Spirit as establishing a New Covenant marked by the dynamic corporate experience of God.

As with last time, my intention is to interpret Acts 2 through Old Testament narrative of Israel’s history as alluded to in the passage. Previously looking at Genesis 11, we now turn to Exodus 19. This is the beginning of the account of Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. God comes down upon the mountain with manifestations of fire, smoke and the loud sound of a trumpet. These are common aspects of a Biblical phenomenon called a theophany (literally, “God-appearing”) in which God becomes perceptible in a visible and physical display (cf. 1 Kgs 19:11; Isa. 66.15; Ps. 18).

Immediately following the exodus from slavery in Egypt, this event is what solidified Israel’s identity as a nation through their covenant with God. It is likely that this moment was what later writings referred to as the “creation of Israel” (Isa. 43:1, 15). Israel was offered the covenant by God and when they agreed to the words God spoke, they became his special possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19:6). Their incorporation was two-fold: (1) to have a unique relationship with God and (2) to be priests to the rest of the earth. As a nation, they received promises analogous to those offered to Abraham, which included a special relationship with God, and that he would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. As Abraham (whose covenant in Genesis 12 comes strategically following Genesis 11) was called by God to be the agent of His solution to the problem of sin amassed in Gen. 1-11, so now Israel as a nation carries that priestly task.

Of significant note, is that while God came down upon the mountain, only Moses was allowed to come near to God. Eventually, Aaron, the priests and the seventy elders were permitted to come to the mountain, but only “at a distance.” With the exception of Moses, those permitted on the mountain were told that “they shall not come near.” Furthermore, the people at large were not permitted to come close to the mountain.

Now we turn to Acts 2. Pentecost was traditionally a harvest festival (Exod. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:15-21; Num. 28-26), but came to be associated with both the renewal of the covenant with Noah and the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. It is certain that Jews in the first century associated Pentecost with the Noahic covenant, as it is attested in literature from before that time (The Book of Jubilees 6:17-21; ca. 150 BC). However it is less certain whether it was yet affiliated with the Giving of the Law (though it certainly was in the second and third century). What would make us think then that Acts 2 is meant to be understood in light of Mount Sinai?

First, the great sound and the fire descending upon the believers parallels the sound and fire that accompanied the Sinai event. In Rabbinic writing, fire was commonly used as a symbol for the Torah. Furthermore, nowhere in the Bible is there an emphasis on both the descending of fire and a great sound in a theophany except for in Exodus 19.

Second, Philo, a prolific Jewish writer in the century before Jesus, spoke about the giving of the Law in this way: “Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience, and so clearly and distinctly were the words formed by it that they seemed to see rather than hear the” (On the Decalogue 46).” This shows us that in time the New Testament was written, the Giving of the Law was being spoken of in terms of communication by fire (”tongues of fire?”) that became recognizable to the audience in their language.

Third, Luke consistently uses Moses typology to talk about Jesus. Jesus is the “prophet like Moses” of whom it was promised that God would raise up. In Luke 9:35 a voice from heaven tells the people to listen to Jesus, much like Israel was to listen to Moses. Moses was “raised up” by God, but Jesus was “raised up” by resurrection (Acts 2:34-36). Moses “received the living words and gave them” (Acts 7:38) but Jesus receives the Holy Spirit and gives it to his disciples (Acts 2:33).

It seems then, that Pentecost is meant to be understood in parallel to the Giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. Obviously, much could be said about the relationship between the Law and the Spirit, but that will have to be said at another time and place. For the present, I would like to simply focus on the theophany aspect. If Pentecost is a New Sinai (following the New Exodus in Jesus’ death and resurrection – cf. Lk. 9:30, when Jesus speaks to Moses and Elijah about the exodus he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem), notice how instead of God descending upon the mountain, he descends upon the entire community of believers. Rather than the people remaining at a distance while only Moses approaches God, the community of women and men is the place where God manifests his theophanic presence. The Church, the New Covenant people, become a theophany in person.

The Church is the mountain upon which God descends in theophanic glory and like Israel, takes up a priestly vocation to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth – to be agents through whom God deals with the problem of sin and restores the creation to Himself and to His intentions for it. As Moses proclaimed the Word of God to the people after God met him on the mountain – the assembled believers began proclaiming the mighty acts of God to those who were in Jerusalem.

As I asked previously, so now I ask – what would a “praxis of Pentecost” look like, in light of this understanding? I think, in relation to what has been said here, it begins with the recognition and celebration of the fact that God is with us. There is much to be said concerning intercession for God’s presence and purposes as well as much to be said about the experience of God-forsakeness (cf. Ps. 22). Jeremiah spoke of a time when there would be a New Covenant and one person would not tell another to “know the Lord” because they all would know the Lord. This time of New Covenant has come and is an experienced reality in the community of believers. Few could deny our need to know the Lord in deeper and clearer ways. I am even aware of a deep reticence within myself to speak concerning my knowledge of God, conceivably in order to maintain some form of humility. However, I think we need to find a way to speak positively about our knowledge of God – to recognize that God has descended in our midst, that he dwells among us, and we do indeed know Him. Perhaps a way forward in this is the awareness that the Church corporately is the location of this New Covenant theophany. Individual, all of “see in a glass dimly,” (1 Cor. 13:12) but together “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

Related posts

• We’ve Been Unbabeled – When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 2) (1)
• When the Day of Pentecost had Fully Come… (Part 1) (0)
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• The Spirit of the Resurrection (0)

This is a continuation in a series on Acts chapter 2 and the account of the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was an epochal event. The way it is described in the Acts of the Apostles indicates that more is going on than a lively outreach — there has been a dramatic intervention of the covenant-creator-God to deal with the problem of sin, overturn the effects of the fall and inaugurate the eschatological age of righteousness, peace and joy. The technical term for this is inaugurated eschatology, in that while a future consummation awaits us in the new heavens and new earth, the life, power and reality of the age to come has already become present in partial form (already but not-yet). In a mysterious manner, the future and the present have intersected and overlapped so that God’s future for the world has rushed into the present time, filling it with the joy of promise fulfilled and the hope of untold possibilities that yet remain.

This becomes especially clear when the passage is understood in light of the larger narrative of Scripture and the numerous passages that are alluded to or quoted. Today I want to look at one passage in particular: Genesis 11. This chapter records the infamous ”Tower of Babel” incident. It is critical to see where this story occurs in the unfolding narrative of the book of Genesis and the Old Testament as a whole. Genesis 1 and 2 record the creation of the world and all its life. Human beings are given the blessing and command to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. They are commissioned to be God’s vice-regents on earth, administrating and increasing his gracious rule through their ever expanding family. You’ll have to believe me on this one, since I don’t have the time to develop it, but Genesis 2 is intentionally evoking the imagery of the temple and it is intended for us to understand the Garden of Eden as a temple, a sanctuary, the dwelling place of God’s glory. Therefore Adam and Eve’s tasks of cultivating (i.e., expanding) the garden and forging a family that will fill the earth can be understood as the call to fill the earth with the dwelling of God’s glory through their world-wide family. Note the dynamic interplay here between the God-blessed relationship (marriage/family) and the God-commissioned rulership.

As grand as this seems, the plan gets muddled rather quickly, with Adam’s sin in Genesis 3, Cain’s murder of Abel in Genesis 4, and the growth of violence as documented in the Noah account. Nevertheless, despite “The Fall,” the original commission remains and Noah and his descendants are called to “be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.”

This brings us to Genesis 11. Here I would like to propose an alternate (yet complementary) explanation of why God took such issue with Babel. Of course it is clear that they were attempting to build their “tower” to make a name for themselves. This undoubtedly included some aspect of pride. However, I cannot imagine that God was threatened by a supposed “take-over” scheme and that he needed to stop it before it got out of hand. In fact, it is likely that the “tower” they were building was in fact a ziggurat and is a spoof on the temple of Marduk in Babylon, whose name “house with the uplifted head” suggests a claim that it reached to the heavens. (See commentaries on Genesis by Wenham and Sarna). Thus, they were not trying to take over the role as gods (something that would likely have been a ridiculous thought in the ancient world), but were building a shrine for God/god(s). Additionally, though attention often focuses on the “tower,” in the text it mentions that they were building a “city and a tower.” When God comes down, he comes to “see the city and the tower.” After their languages are confused the text says they “left off building the city,” with no mention of the tower. In the text, the tower is never conceived of by itself, apart from the city or even as a focal point.

This becomes further significant when the builders give the reason for their project – “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The central motivation was to consolidate the human race in one central city. Here we come to the main problem with the Babel building project – it is a direct violation of God’s primary command (which is actually a blessing) to the human race – “be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.” They were never instructed not to build towers. They were never even instructed how to avoid pride. They were however, instructed to fill the earth with the world-wide family as the means for ruling the earth and filling it with God’s glory. The main sin of Babel was a refusal of the blessing of creation, fertility and vice-regency with God and thus the invention of measures to derail its fulfillment. God’s comments are not against the tower, but against the entire building project understood in this light. Thus God confused the languages of the people and scattered them across the earth. Though commonly thought of as anti-climactic, certainly much less severe than the flood, there are several reasons why this judgment is the definite low point thus far in the Bible.

“First, the Flood left no permanent mark on humanity; though the generation of the flood was destroyed, humankind was preserved, and continued to grow. The scattering of humanity, however, is of lasting effect. There are no survivors of Babel.

Second, what is destroyed at Babel is the community of humankind as a family; hitherto, as the genealogies have witnessed, humankind is one family, and the Flood has only accentuated that fact by making one family in the narrowest sense of the word co-terminous with humanity. But the punishment of Babel divides humankind irrevocably from one another (as did also the first sin in its own way). Now humanity is no longer one “people” or “kin-group,” but “nations.” (David Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, pp. 70).

It is critical to see what happens on Pentecost in light of what was previously said or we will miss the epochal nature of the event. We will not see that what follows is indeed God dealing with and overturning the problem of sin and its effects. The idea of the disintegration of humanity and the loss of a unified family is not often seen as a direct and central aspect of sin and the larger Fall (viewed as Genesis 3-11, not just Genesis 3). Indeed, alienation is a significant theme throughout Genesis 1-11 and is central to a truly biblical understanding of sin.

So what happened at Pentecost? What we see is the beginning to undo this dispersion of nations and languages. At Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak in other languages and people from many nations, gathered in Jerusalem, each heard them speaking in their own native language. What is going on? The advent of the Spirit is actually reversing the curse of Babel. Adam’s and Cain’s sins alienated humans one from another, while Babel divided the nations and destroyed the common family of humanity. The Spirit of God, however, brings diverse peoples together as one family and one “kin-group.” The Spirit forges the Church as a new humanity which is reunited as a downpayment and sign of God’s eschatological purposes to bring all peoples to unity before God (cf. Zeph. 3:9; Psa. 22:27; 86:9-10; Isa. 2; Jer. 16:19; Zech 2:11). That which was alienated is now reconciled. That which was contentious is now at peace. Those who were enemies are now family.

It is no coincidence that immediately following the outpouring of the Spirit, Luke describes the profound community life shared among the early believers, meeting together day by day, having all things in common, providing for all in need, devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42ff.). The “they” in Acts 2:42 undoubtedly included many of the 3000 converts mentioned in verse 41. This means that this early apostolic community likely had “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene…Cretans and Arabs” (v.9).  This theme of ethnic diversity and unity continues to be a major theme throughout the book of Acts (esp. once Gentiles get in the picture) and through much of the Pauline epistles. Over and over again, unity emerges as a central theme and pastoral concern of early Apostolic Christianity.

To conclude, I want to give a few thoughts on a potential “Praxis of Pentecost” (praxis simply refers to practice, as distinguished from theory). If one of the major things the Spirit was doing on Pentecost was uniting the people of God as a new humanity, a new “kinship-group,” what might that mean for those of us who endeavor to walk in that same Spirit? I would suggest that a major priority of the Spirit is the preservation and the advancement of unity in the Church. While this of course begins with individuals one to another, it expands to include entire congregations and communities, to all believers in a given geographical region and indeed, the unity of ecclesial bodies over the entire earth. Shortly before his death, Jesus’ priority in prayer was for the unity of those who would follow him – unity that would mirror the divine life of the Trinity and functioned as the sign par excellence to the world. To be people of the Spirit means to be those of whom unity is a central value and priority. Let us ask the Lord to root out tendencies toward enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy and things like these (Gal. 5:20-21) from our own hearts and to fill us with deep and profound love for those with whom we are in immediate spiritual relationship. Let’s not stop there though – let’s ask the Lord to fill us with a deep love for the whole church, to be open (indeed eager!) to receive from and be in relationship with individuals, groups and traditions that are different than our own. May the prayer of Jesus be our own – that the Church would be one – as He and the Father are one!

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The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, as described in Acts chapter 2, was an epochal and unrepeatable event in salvation history. This was not simply the first time the disciples received the Holy Spirit (remember, Jesus breathes on them in John 20 shortly after his resurrection). Neither was Pentecost simply the first is a series of similar events. Rather, as this series will attempt to show, Pentecost, taken together with the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, marks the inauguration of God’s future for the world breaking into the present (see my previous post “New Creation…Starting Now”). Pentecost was a turning point in the Creator God’s plan to deal with the problem of sin by overturning its effects and redeeming the entire creation. Pentecost was the beginning of the church operating in the authority of Jesus and manifesting God’s Kingdom and salvation on earth as it is in heaven, as a token, sign and pledge of the day when God’s reign will fully come in the restoration of the entire cosmos. This has broad and far-reaching implications for the present life and mission of the People of God.

I imagine this sounds slightly different than the oft-heard sequence: Jesus died for our salvation, the resurrection confirmed the efficacy of the cross and the coming of the Holy Spirit empowers us to announce Jesus’ death. I would like to challenge this sequence in favor of an alternate one: the Father sends Jesus to became Incarnate for our salvation; Jesus lived among us for our salvation; Jesus, being baptized, was given the Spirit by the Father for our salvation; Jesus died for our salvation; Jesus was raised from the dead by the Father for our salvation; Jesus ascended into heaven for our salvation; and the Holy Spirit came for our salvation. This approach prefers to see the entire sequence accomplishing our salvation as a vital and coherent unity. This may tweak our understanding of “salvation” and at the same time gives salvation an overall Trinitarian shape. It also reminds me of Thomas Cranmer’s Great Litany of 1544 (which incidentally, was the first piece of liturgy ever written in the English language), which for our salvation and deliverance implores the benefits of the entire soteriological (salvation) sequence:

…by the mystery of they holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation…By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost: Good Lord, deliver us.

Today is the day in which Pentecost is liturgically commemorated in the Western Churches (those that are not Eastern Orthodox). This ends the fifty day celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus and begins what is commonly referred to as “Ordinary Time,” which lasts until Advent in December. To be “ordinary” means there is no overarching liturgical commemoration marking this season in the way there is for example, during Advent and Lent. I like to think of “Ordinary Time” as the “Season of Pentecost.” That would make the largest season in the church year (varies year to year, but as much as 29 weeks) focused on the messy task of the Church empowered by God’s Spirit setting out to implement in worship, word, deed, life and love, what had been accomplished in the events commemorated from Advent through Pentecost.

So in honor of this season, I would like to take a number of posts over the next few weeks to explore, to the best of my ability, the meaning of Pentecost and the Coming of the Holy Spirit. In order to do this, I will one-at-a-time explore Old Testament passages which are alluded to in the second chapter of Acts. As is true of much of the New Testament, Acts 2 has many allusions to the Old Testament. This is not simply as a bit of cultural coloring, but precisely because the author wants us to understand these events as in dynamic continuity with the ongoing and unfinished drama the Old Testament is telling. This is especially the case because the authors (indeed, the early church) believed that these events functioned as a critical and climactic turning point in the narrative. What had been promised and prophesied in earlier days was coming to pass in their own days (this is exactly what Peter says in his sermon later in the same chapter).

In this narrative tour, our first stop will be the Tower of Babel…

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After a lengthy google search, I managed to discover one Protestant church in the greater Kansas City area was having an Ascension Day service last Thursday. Overjoyed at finding my quarry, I happily drove the 20+ minutes to attend this service. Including myself and the other person who came with me, there were five people in attendance, including one person who arrived half way through. I guess this means that in Kansas City, approximately 4.5 Protestants celebrated Ascension Day this year. I wonder if this is an all time record low since the founding of Kansas City. Suffice to say, celebrating the Ascension of Jesus is not high on the priority list, let alone on the radar screen of the Protestant Church at large.

But why should it? The Ascension is one of those topics that seems to have slipped off the general theological grid in contemporary Christianity (nevermind the Presentation or Transfiguration). Both the ascension and session (”being seated at the right hand of the Father”) of Jesus are given prominent places in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed (indeed, considering what is NOT said in the creeds, being mentioned at all is a place of prominence). The early church apparently considered the Ascension to be a critical component of true Christian faith. However, perusing through one of the most popular evangelical systematic theology books in print at present, the Ascension is squashed into the end of the chapter on the resurrection. In fact, the topics of providence, miracles, angels, satan and demons, the di/trichotomy of human nature, election and reprobation and the intermediate state EACH receive more coverage than the resurrection and ascension combined, though the early church didn’t perceive any of those topics to be crucial enough to be included in the creeds.

I am gathering that Ascension Day has come to such a low place of recognition because in the average evangelical consciousness, the possible meaning for the ascension is rather opaque. Perhaps, if at all, it is endowed with a negative meaning - Jesus is no longer with us in person. We are alone to do what he told us to do until he finally comes back. I hope in the following to merely in outline, amend this theological lacuna, which turns out to be significantly more practical and pastoral than one at first might imagine.

1) The Ascension means Jesus is the world’s true Lord.

The grand prayer in Ephesians 1 culminates with the statement that after God raised Jesus from the dead, he “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,   far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” To be in heaven is not to be “out-of-sight out-of-mind.” Rather, heaven in the Bible is thought of as the “control center” for the earth (cf. the parallelism in 2 Chr. 20:6; Job 38:33; Ps. 103:19). For Jesus to be seated in heaven, means that he is the world’s true lord and king over all.

2) The Ascension means heaven and earth are not as far apart as we might have thought.

It is funny how the way we think is often opposite to the way reality works. When we think of the ascension, we think of Jesus going away and not being with us. The exact opposite is expressed in Matthew 28. While this passage does not explicitly mention the ascension, it bears several features in common with the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts including Jesus taking his disciples to a mountain, teaching them and commissioning them to spread the gospel. It is not a stretch to think that they were the same event (though it technically doesn’t matter for what I am about to say). It is precisely here that he gives the promise, “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” How can Jesus ascend to heaven and be with us always? It is commonly assumed that this promise refers to the Holy Spirit. But what about the 10 days in between the ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit? Where those days exempted from “always.” The only way this can be true is if Jesus can be “in heaven” and with us at the same time. My sense is that this promise implies something that we as contemporary Christians often fail to grasp – that early Judaism conceived of heaven and earth, not as discrete locations a long way off from each other – but as two overlapping and interlocking dimensions of God’s created world. Think about this one the next time you are shouting at God “up in heaven.”

3) The Ascension means that the restoration of the full destiny of humanity and the entire earth is not as far off as we might have thought.

Hebrews 2 quotes Psalm 8 in saying “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them. You have made them a little lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” The Psalmist’s awe at God’s consideration of humankind has less to do with “feeling good about yourself” as much as it does with the role and destiny God gave human beings of ruling the earth (cf. Gen. 1). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if humans are ruling the world, they are doing a terrible job, but more so it seems like the world is completely out of the control of humans. Lots of people seem desirous to do things right, whether in personal, familial, local, national or global contexts, be we can never seem to get it right, and often make matters worse either by our incompetence or intention.

The author to the Hebrews agrees with this in quite an understatement – “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them (meaning humans).” He goes on to say, “but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.” How precisely is this an answer to the problem that God gave humans rulership over the earth, and as of yet it is completely out of control, full of death, decay and despair?  Because, Jesus as a human has been exalted to the heavens, he now sits in a place of rulership over the earth. Though we do not yet see the earth under the gracious rulership of humans intended by God, there is one human who has gone before the rest and is currently, as a token, fulfilling the destiny of the human race – Jesus the Messiah. The ascension of Jesus tells us that the restoration of humanity’s destiny — wherein our propensity towards destroying the creation would be healed and we exercise co-regency with God in establishing a gracious reign of justice, peace and life on earth — has begun in Jesus.

4) The Ascension means that we are to exercise this authority NOW

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—  and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:3-6)

Apparently heaven and earth are not that far apart considering we can be in both places at once! I won’t try to explain exactly what I think this means now, but the immediate meaning is apparent – the authority that Jesus has at the right hand of the Father, we partake with him in the present. Jesus’ rule over the universe is something he already is sharing with those who are “in the Messiah.” The justice, peace, life and joy of the age to come is not something we are simply to wait for – it is something we have both the authority and responsibility to implement now. So much for the easy Christian life – we’ve got work to do!

Almighty God, who did raise your beloved Son from the dead and seated him at your right hand, so now restore your people from the mire of Death’s hold and the darkness of Sin’s night, that the light of his gracious rule might shine through our lives, growing brighter and brighter until the fullness of day, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord…

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For some time I’ve been pondering the notion that we become like what we worship. With reference to God, we become more like God as we worship him with an adoring gaze. With reference to sin, we become increasingly consumed with and characterized by that which we worship (whether it be money, sex, power, etc.). Recognizing this as a biblical principle (2 Cor. 3:18, amongst others), I’ve wondered how exactly it works. I’ve come up with a theory, not attempting to fully explain the concept, but perhaps to give one reason why worship has a transformative effect.

My theory is that worship significantly entails a reorientation of value. Worship comes from the Old English word weorthscipe (i.e. worth-ship). Worship is the recognition of the “worth” or “value” of someone or something. When I worship God, I am recognizing the worth and value of the concrete dimensions of who God is to the concrete aspects of my life. When I worship God for being loving, it is because I recognize the value of his love meeting me in my alienation and isolation. When I worship God for raising Jesus from the dead it is because I recognize the value of the hope he gives to the disjointed and desperate particulars of my existence.

When I say “recognize the value,” I primarily mean an affective and intuitive recognition rather than a cognitive or analytical recognition. Obviously they are not mutually exclusive. Obviously I very much prize the functions of cognition and analysis to our personal and indeed our spiritual lives. However, if the affective and intuitive faculties are rarely or never engaged, I would question whether the concrete dimensions of God’s self are in fact touching the concrete particulars of one’s life. I base this on the observation that when peoples’ personal lives get messed with, they get emotional, whether it is someone getting sad at the death of a loved one, frustrated at their own failure or furious when someone takes their stuff or challenges their authority.

Over time, my affective experience of what is valuable in worship reorients my sense of value in all areas of life. If in worshipping money (either through fantasy or anxiously-driven financial development), I repeatedly reinforce the value that money has for me in affording feelings of power, success, security, etc. Especially, but not only because such feelings and their cause (fantasy or actuality) are so uncertain in a world characterized by unceasing flux, my life becomes increasingly oriented around maintaining that value. This includes viewing people and circumstances increasingly through the lens of financial prospects.

If in worshipping God, I perceive him as the creator God, who formed and fashioned all that is in love, and who in spite of my disobedience, did not abandon me to the power of death, but became human, compassionately identifying with the fullness of the human condition, gave himself up to death, and rising from the grave, destroyed death, making the whole creation new — I begin to affectively understand the value of love, compassion, forgiveness, self-giving and self-sacrifice. The people and circumstances in my life look and feel different as these values are being reinforced in my life, values that are radically different than those cultivated in obsessions with money, sex and power.

Understanding (at least some of) the transformative power of worship in value-reorientation, it is thus imperative that our worship bear both specific and accurate content concerning who God is. Faulty and defective notions of “god” derived from inadequate interpretation of Scripture reinforce values and a world view that are different than those that would be imparted in the worship of the true God. If one explicitly or implicitly worships a “god” who is mean, vindictive, harsh and impatient, good luck cultivating compassion and tenderness.

“Generic” and content-less worship (i.e., endless repetition of “praise slogans,” like “we worship you,” “we bless you,” “we praise you,” “we give you glory,” etc.) would seem to be lacking this transformative effect unless the content was significantly supplied elsewhere and lies implicit behind such words. It is of consequence to note that the biblical records of worship (most notably in the Psalms and other canticles) are not of this “generic” type. In fact, there seems to be so much content in the Psalms, both about God and his activity in history, as well as the concrete situations of the worshippers, that they are too lengthy and unwieldy for most Christians to regularly use in their private and corporate worship. This is most unfortunate, because the psalms and canticles of Scripture are precisely the kind of place where the concrete dimensions of God’s self can meet the concrete particulars of the worshipping-self in a manner which would cultivate and ultimately yield the kind of value reorientation that I described above.

I’d be interested in comments, critiques, etc. on this theory, or alternate/complementary theories.

Also, if I accomplish anything by this post, let it be an encouragement to make singing/praying the Psalms a significant part of your daily devotional life.

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Today I am continuing in a series of brief snippets explaining why I find understanding the Greek text behind our English versions of the New Testament helpful. It is my hope to encourage some people who are either in the midst of or are considering learning Greek – that it really is worth doing.

If you don’t fall into that category, just consider this one of those “insights from the Greek.”

One of the funny phenomena of Greek grammar is that sometimes the verb in a sentence is omitted and you have to figure out what it is in context. Sometimes it is implied from earlier in the passage (often the last verb is meant to be repeated) or just a form of the verb “to be” is meant. An example of this is in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which most modern English translations render as something like, “if anyone is in the Messiah, he is a new creation.” However the Greek leaves out the verb “is” and the subject “he.” It simply reads, “If anyone is in the Messiah — New Creation!” Under the ordinary translation, the subject of the verb is the “anyone,” the individual who has been incorporated into the Messiah. Thus it would mean that the individual now has an opportunity to start their life over and to re-prioritize their life according to God’s ways, to re-channel their energies in obedience and holiness rather than sin. Of course this is all good, but is that what the verse is getting at?

Another option is that the subject of the verb is “new creation, giving us a translation like, “If anyone is in the Messiah, there is a new creation” (NRSV) or “if anyone is in the messiah, the new creation has come!” (TNIV). Supporting this interpretation is the observation that when Paul uses the term “creation,” he generally uses it in terms of the whole creation, not a part of it, or one individual within it.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Romans 1:20

“¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Romans 8:19-22

“…neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:39

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Col. 1:15

What does this mean then? If this latter translation is correct – then “being in the Messiah” is not simply an opportunity for a fresh start or a new chance to get things right (as great as that is). Being in the Messiah means that one is a participant in the eschatological life of the restored and renewed heavens and earth even now. Some way and some how, through the Messiah, the God’s future for the world, where peace, justice, life and joy reigns, has come forward and burst forth in the present time. This is not a “spiritualization” of eschatology. Rather, understanding the radicality of New Testament thought is grasping that the apostles believed this time of literal, cosmic, physical, eschatological fulfillment, the full restoration of heaven and earth, though yet remaining future, has nevertheless dawned in “the now.” This restoration is already tasted by those who are “in the Messiah.”

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This is from a series paintings depicting the entire passion/resurrection cycle on the walls of medieval church in Oxfordshire, UK. This scene is Jesus appearing to Mary.

Since I teach New Testament Greek, I am often asked why one should invest the time to learn a whole language just to study the Bible. It is commonly phrased as, “do actually need to learn that to understand the Bible?” Of course, the answer is no. The modern English translations are reliable enough to not lead you into heresy and to give you understand of the Bible’s main points. So then, why study Greek (or Hebrew for that matter)? Rather than give a drawn out philosophical argumentation, laying out all the benefits of learning Greek, I’ve decided to give an apologetic that goes right to the text. This will be the beginning of a series of (hopefully short) posts which will look at specific texts and explain why its helpful, illuminating and/or exhilarating to know whats “going on under the hood.” The point will not be that “these are the six passages where Greek is helpful, therefore you might consider learning it.” Rather, this is just a sampling of what will happen nearly every time you read the NT in Greek – you see things in fresh ways and from fresh angles, very often in a manner that is at once exciting and heart-warming

To start, I’d like to take a quick look at the first resurrection appearance in Matthew (apropos, since we are in Easter Season). The women arrived at the tomb, only to find it empty, with an angel sitting on the stone that had once concealed its interior. Instructing them that Jesus had risen from the dead (just as he said), and that they were to go report the news to the disciples, they ran off quickly in fear and great joy. Suddenly, Jesus “meets them” and says to them…according to the NRSV, “Greetings!” according to the KJV, “Hail!” and the NASB simply says, “he greeted them” without telling us what he said. However, in Greek, Jesus literally says “Rejoice!” Granted, this was a common greeting in first century Judea (ironically, earlier in Matthew, Judas greets Jesus with the same words as he betrays him), however, I just love that the first words out of Jesus’ mouth to another person after the resurrection are about gladness.  I can only picture Jesus saying this with a huge smile on his face. What he or the women should be happy about is not specified in the text. While, there were undoubtedly many things to be happy about (see my previous post on the resurrection and the renewal of the earth), I think Jesus was, amongst other things, simply happy to see them. After the agony of the preceeding weekend, Jesus’ heart was thrilled with delight to see his friends and for them to see that he was well (and indeed, far more than well…).

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My apologies if this is a little long. It is a paper I recently wrote for a seminary class on religious pluralism and how Christianity relates to the other major world religions. It was supposed to be under 1200 words, but reached about 1600…

Any discussion of how Christianity relates to other religions must first begin with a clear and concrete articulation of what Christianity is centrally about. Much discussion on religious pluralism assumes or posits a universal notion of what is “central” to religions (a norm to which Christianity conforms) or that the content of Christianity is flexible (that which does not conform to the “center” is shed). For example, Paul Knitter explains that, “Every religion, it would seem, seeks to place its followers in contact with a Reality, or to provide them with an exercise, whereby they can break the bonds of ego-clinging in order to embrace and be part of and so be transformed by that which is other.”  John Hick, similarly, would locate this soteriological locus “as an actual change in men and women from natural self-centredness to, in theistic terms, God-centredness, or in more general terms, a new orientation centered in the Ultimate, the Real.”  Hick also points to the universality of something akin to the “Golden Rule” amongst the major traditions as indicative of this shared soteriological emphasis.  Once this center has been determined, Hick believes it is possible (indeed, necessary) to postulate a Christianity without a trinity of unique persons, a de facto incarnation of God in the flesh, or a substitutionary atonement (of any kind).  Perhaps if one is seeking to arrive at a general theory of religion, such abstract and vague generalizing is a necessary starting place. However, to address the relationship of  Christianity to the other world religions, one must first begin with an adequate expression of what Christianity is, in its own right, before determining potential areas of coherence and/or incoherence with the other great traditions.

The Biblical text begins (Genesis 1-2) with an account of God creating the world (which is oddly enough, a polemic against the leading, and of course the non-leading, accounts of cosmology and theology in the surrounding cultural milieu). This confession of God as creator finds expression repeatedly throughout the Bible.  The fact that Yhwh was recognized as the sole creator of the cosmos, means that at least four other religious options cannot be true: (1) henotheism (confession of Yhwh as creator affirms God’s ontological, not merely practical, superiority over the so-called “gods” of the nations); (2) pantheism (confession of Yhwh as creator affirms that God is ontologically distinct from the creation, having an existence both separate and prior); (3) deism (confession of Yhwh as the creator-God was frequently the basis for Israel’s belief that God would intervene in history, not that God was untouchable beyond it); and (4) Gnosticism (the world is the good creation of the one true God, not the bad creation of a foolish lower demiurge).    Chapters 3-11 recount the devastating downward spiral the creation takes directly on account of human decisions and behavior. In the opening chapters of the Bible themes are established which are maintained and serve as foundational throughout the rest of the corpus of Scripture: (1) Yhwh is the one true God; (2) the world is affirmed as the good creation of the creator God; (3) the pristine (though not necessarily perfect) created order is corrupted by human sin; and (4) human action repeatedly and progressively destroys the created order. As for this final point, David Clines aptly summarizes Genesis 1-11 in saying, “Humankind tends to destroy what God has made good. Even when God forgives human sin and mitigates the punishment, sin continues to spread, to the point where the world suffers uncreation. And even when God makes a fresh start, turning his back on uncreation forever, humanity’s tendency to sin immediately becomes manifest.”

In chapter twelve of Genesis, God makes a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. They are to be the people through whom the blessing originally granted in Genesis 1, deconstructed in chapters three through eleven, would be mediated to the entire earth. “Abraham emerges within the structure of Genesis as the answer to the plight of all humankind…Abraham and his progeny inherit the role of Adam and Eve…[they] are to be the means of undoing primeval sin and its consequences.”  They will be God’s agents in restoring the corrupted and decaying earth.

Thus the nation of Israel is born. Nearly immediately however, and such becomes a recurrent theme throughout the Old Testament, the covenant people themselves are in peril, either through unelected circumstances (the barrenness of the matriarchs, oppression in Egypt, captivity in Babylon, etc.), interpersonal strife, or national sin which elicits God’s judgment. However, the calling to be the mediator of God’s blessing to the earth and the means by which the problem of sin would be dealt with was not rescinded. Even in the midst of the Babylonian captivity, the Book of the Prophet Isaiah calls Israel, “my servant [who] will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa. 42:1), the “light to the nations” (Isa. 42:6), those by whom Yahweh’s “salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6), and those who are appointed to “restore the earth” (49:8).

To the prophets, who stood in the theological, emotional, intellectual and pastoral chasm between the unabashed calling of Israel to be God’s means of dealing with the sin of the world and the ever-precarious status of that same covenant people, it became understood that Israel’s calling would only be fulfilled by a dramatic intervention of God in history. Indeed, it would be history’s climactic moment, in which God would “bare his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Isa. 52:9). This redemptive, restorative justice-effecting salvation would be a decisive act of God, through his people within the world, yet very much so from beyond the world. Within the Old Testament itself (Isa. 25:6-8; Daniel 12) but increasingly so in the intertestimental period, this expectation became understood in terms of resurrection, the post-mortem revivification of bodily life.

It was as these expectations for God’s justice to break in upon the world reached, in many quarters, a feverish pitch, that Jesus, the one hailed Messiah, entered the world scene, announcing the Reign of God. This kingdom was understood by his Jewish followers to be in direct continuity with kingdom expectations  flowing from the Jewish prophetic writings about God’s justice and salvation coming to earth.  Though this has been the subject of numerous entire monographs, the life, message, ministry and actions of Jesus were meant, by him, to be understood in continuity with these messianic expectations. Of particular note are his actions at the temple (Mt. 21:12ff; Mk 11:15ff.; Lk. 19:45ff.) where he announced that it would be torn down and he would rebuild it, therein declaring himself to be Israel’s (and the world’s) messiah and king; and the Last Supper (Mt. 26:20ff; Mark 14:12ff.; Lk. 22:7ff.), where he interprets his impending death through the lens of the Passover, in which God will work to effect a New Exodus of freedom and liberation in fulfillment of his covenant with Abraham.  Jesus’ announcement of the nearness of the Kingdom, in conjunction with these “prophetic parables” indicate his belief that the long awaited time when God would decisively act to deal with the problem of sin and restore the entire creation in God’s salvific justice was happening through him. This great restoration was in fact inaugurated when God raised Jesus bodily from the dead as the first-fruits of the resurrection of the entire creation (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20). After his resurrection, he affirms that “all authority in heaven and on earth” had been given to him as the world’s true Lord and that the apostles were to go, in the spirit of Psalm 96 and Isaiah 52, announcing to all nations that God was bringing salvation, righteousness and wholeness near, putting the world to rights, and was simultaneously demanding their allegiance to the kingdom proclamations (teachings) of Jesus.

The other New Testament writings, of Paul in particular, continue to implement the message and work of Jesus, in continuity with the story of Israel’s history.  They herald both the dawning new day of God’s kingdom of salvific justice upon the world,  yet at the same time acknowledging the lingering realities of the “present evil age,” including evil (Rom. 8:35-36), sickness (Phil. 2:26-27), suffering (1 Cor. 12:26), death (Rom. 8:10), decay (Rom. 8:20-21), demonic powers (Eph. 6:12). Though God had decisively acted in and through Jesus, and makes his people agents of restoration, the earth still awaits a future moment of salvation which will be brought by God to the earth (Rom. 8:18ff; 1 Cor. 15:23ff; Phil 3:20-21; 1 Thess. 4:13ff; 2 Thess. 1:6-8; 2:7-8; Rev. 21-22).

This articulation of Christian faith is, albeit, extremely abbreviated. What it hopefully makes clear is that Biblical Christianity, when expressed in concrete terms, cannot accept the soteriological proposals made by Hick and others. Of note is that the preceding articulation of Christianity did not even mention the common stumbling blocks of Trinity, Incarnation and Substitutionary Atonement, but focused on the Biblical framework in which a historically situated understanding of Christian salvation emerges. Christian salvation is not about a personalistic and moralistic attempt to move from “ego-centeredness” to “reality-centeredness.” Rather, Christianity affirms that existent reality is itself in need of salvation, both the constituent members and the greater whole. Although this salvation will certainly affect the internal orientation of individuals, its paramount feature is that it comes from God to the entire cosmos, for those who are of the faithfulness of Jesus (Rom. 3:26), those who have given believing allegiance to the world’s true Lord, Jesus (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). Christianity is thus incompatible with the major world religions, not because of certain distinctive doctrines, but because if its concepts of God, humanity, the earth and its salvation are true, then by nature, it does not allow for the truth claims of other religions in as much as they conflict with its own.

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I’ve decided to write a prayer for each of my “New Creation…Starting Now” posts. We’ll see how it goes…

Creator God, who is ever faithful to finish the work he started: so now continue through us the great harvest of new creation and expand through us the renewed humanity of reconciliation, that we might share with you in the joining of heaven and earth; by Him who is the first fruits of the resurrection and the firstborn from the dead, Jesus the Messiah our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

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In my last post, I quoted a line from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet who lived between the years of 1844 and 1889. The poem is so magnificent, I felt compelled to reproduce “God’s Grandeur” in its entirety. If some of the lines seem a little dense, try this commentary for assistance.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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