So Jesus casts a prophetic arc for the first part of Acts. He says in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Holy Spirit is coming with deliberate steps. The first step of the Spirit’s coming is recognized as Pentecost. There were the disciples, speaking in other languages, literally on fire for the Lord. It was so shocking, the people gathered accused them of being drunk because they could not explain it otherwise.
Peter’s defense always tickles me. He says, “We are not drunk as you presume. It’s only nine o’clock in the morning…”
I have always presumed the drunken accusations were based on their enthusiastic behavior. I still do, but it might also be a way of trying to explain exactly how we are supposed to be thinking of God in this moment. Because we have God the Father, always have, First Person of the Trinity, behind all that is happening. God is up in heaven, Creator of the Universe and All, "Holy of Holies" perhaps being the closest language we have in the human understanding.
Yet God sent God's only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus, to live among us, teach us, heal us, love us, prepare us, train us up, finally die and rise again for us. Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Christ...I have a poster in my office filled with names by which we know Jesus. When thinking about God and Jesus, He is the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity.
And now we have the Holy Spirit, first step at Pentecost. The Father is always there...up there. Jesus came, Jesus went, the Spirit came. So Jesus is as the Father, at the Father's Right Hand. But now also the Spirit, sent in place of our Lord Jesus.
Anyway, Pentecost was the Spirit coming down in Jerusalem. There will now be steps forward, where the Spirit is identified as coming down on believers in Judea, then in Samaria. Then, finally, the Spirit comes down in a manner recognized and endorsed by the believers present upon Cornelius and his family. There are Jews in Jerusalem. There are Jews in Judea. There are Jews in Samaria. Move beyond them, to the ends of the earth, and that earth is full of Gentiles. So here is the Spirit, fulfilling the prophetic arc. In Cornelius, the Spirit begins the fulfillment of Jesus’ words that will take it to the ends of the earth.
Meanwhile, God the Father and Jesus are in heaven, overseeing I suppose.
But maybe if we step away from trying to define God and where God is and dare to reverse our point of view. Dare to take a peek from heaven.
Where did it all start? God walking with us in the Garden of Eden. And we messed that up. Fine, technically Adam and Eve did. But since then, every one of us continued life in sin and God has not walked with any of us. But from the moment we were cast from the Garden, God began the Plan in which God would walk with us again.
That came to us with Jesus. Fully human, fully God, Jesus did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but came down to us in the form of a human. So Jesus was among us for about thirty years and then the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. For us, that was the transitional moment when Jesus stepping into the role of Messiah and Christ for us all. That is when He began to walk among us the way God did back in the Garden.
But there was something else. The first time, in the Garden, God stopped walking with us when we were punished and cast out. The second time, with Jesus, punishment fell upon Him and it looked like God stopped walking with us once more when Jesus ascended into heaven.
Between God walking with us and God walking with us again is the arc of the Old Testament. In that time, God laid down all the pieces that point to the coming of Jesus. The prophecies of the Messiah, the law of sacrificing a lamb for the forgiveness of sins, Isaiah's Suffering Servant, again and again God points us to Jesus. God walked with us once, God will walk with us again.
In Jesus, God walks with us again. Then Jesus ascended into heaven and God came down in the person of the Holy Spirit. Now consider this. If the Old Testament provided the arc pointing to God as Jesus coming among us, the Gospel story of Jesus points to the Holy Spirit coming upon us.
It begins with the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus as Jesus' baptism, fulfilled in the Holy Spirit coming down upon the church at Pentecost. All that Jesus did, all the temptations, all the miracles, all the healing, the casting out of evil, all the teaching, every time he spoke against power and privilege, even to the very sacrifice of His life, points to what the Holy Spirit would then do among the people of the church.
From the divine point of view, as the Holy Spirit, God now walks with us, each of us, indwelling us to do so. Not as one entity among many, but as The One among the many. We are the many. Take that in hand with the Great Commission and we become those who carry the promise of God to walk with the rest of humanity. We are sent out as witnesses to do this.
God, Jesus, Holy Spirit...God in Three Persons. Blessed Trinity, blessed confusion as well? Or is it simply the journey that God has taken so that our Lord will walk with all of us once again?
Peace, Pastor Peter
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