Part One

Anyone who loves Jesus cherishes his parables. As a matter of fact many of us came to know Jesus by means of his parables. We began hearing these stories when we were four years old. At first they were intriguing stories. As we grew older they became moving stories. As we grew older still they became revelatory stories; they revealed the truth of God concerning God, concerning us, concerning our world.

No one dismisses the parables of Jesus just because the parables don’t describe historical events. “A certain man had two sons”, Jesus begins his best-seller about the prodigal. Jesus isn’t referring to an actual historical figure, Mr. X on 42nd Street, Mr. X being a man known to everyone in Nazareth who happens to have two sons. The parable, rather, is a story that Jesus makes up on the spot. Luke tells us (Luke 15) how the parable of the prodigal came to be. Our Lord’s opponents are mumbling and grumbling and grousing and not-so-quietly accusing him of dirtying himself by befriending irreligious people. Jesus, never as stupid as his opponents think him to be, is aware of what they are saying about him. They are faulting him. In order to exonerate himself and the people he’s befriending he spins out the parable on the spot. The parable is utterly fictitious. Jesus makes it up on the spot. It is utterly fictitious, and utterly true; true, that is, in that it tells us the truth about ourselves under God, true in that it tells us the truth about God over us. Wholly fictitious, wholly true. No one denies that the parables of Jesus are revelatory just because they are fictitious.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are parables too. Like the parables of Jesus, the parables in Genesis 1-11 tell us the truth about ourselves under God and the truth about God over us. Then why is it preachers have been expelled from pulpits for saying so, hearers have been crushed or enraged at hearing so, and congregations have been split over it all?

If someone says, “But if we admit that the first eleven chapters of Genesis aren’t historical, where will it all end? What will we deny to be historical next?” If someone advances this argument, the immediate reply is, “But if we ever admit that the parables of Jesus are parables, everything is lost!” This is not a very profound argument.

All of the parable-stories in Genesis 1-11 are profound. One such story is the Tower of Babel.

I: — Our story begins with humankind’s cry, “Let us make a name for ourselves! Let us build a city, and a tower, a tower so tall that everyone will be able to see our tower. As our city becomes famous on account of our tower, our name will be known everywhere. Let’s make a name for ourselves!”

“What’s wrong with building a tower?”, someone asks. “Is there something wrong with creativity?” Of course there is nothing wrong with creativity. God is creative. We are made in his image and likeness. We have an inborn urge to create. To stifle this urge is to impoverish ourselves and to disdain his good gift. There is nothing at all wrong with creativity.

“What’s wrong with building a tall tower, even the tallest tower?”, someone else adds. “Is there something wrong with the pursuit of excellence?” Of course there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence. There is everything right with it. We need to see more of it. After all, we live in an era that congratulates mediocrity. Mediocrity is sin. The pursuit of excellence can only be commended.

“What’s wrong with building a city, the venue of civilization?”, a third questioner asks. “Is civilization bad? Is culture bad? Should we be more holy or more virtuous or more human if we lived in caves and swung from trees and ate bugs and grunted in monosyllabically?” Of course there is nothing wrong with culture. Culture is riches without which we should be humanly poorer.

“Then what is the problem with fashioning city and tower? What is wrong with making a name for ourselves?”

According to the parable the problem with making a name for ourselves is that we reject the name that God has given us. He has named us his creatures. When he names us his creatures he emphasizes both words: “his”, “creature”. He is Lord and life-giver. We come from him, we belong to him, we can be blessed only in him. Because we come from him and belong to him and can be blessed only in him, to reject him is to reject blessing and therefore be stuck with curse.

“Name”, in Hebrew, means “nature”. The name God gives us is our nature. Our nature is to be God’s loving, obedient, grateful, faithful covenant-partner. Anything else is unnatural.

But we don’t like the name God has given us. We are irked by the nature God has given us. Be his obedient covenant-partner? Surely it is servile to have to obey anyone! We want to make our own name, make a name for ourselves. The name we give ourselves will be a better name; it will render us superior.

The problem is, of course, that there is no agreement among humankind as to what this name is going to be. The name we give ourselves will render us superior? Superior to whom? If I find it demeaning to be inferior to God, how much more demeaning do I find it to be subordinate to my fellows! Then I shall have to be superior to my fellows. I shall have to give myself a name that establishes my superiority over them!

And so we set about naming ourselves.

(i) One such name is race. The name of racial superiority isn’t mentioned in polite company, yet it is a name that no one renounces readily. Professional boxing is always looking for what it calls “the white hope”: a superior caucasian boxer who can end black domination of the “sport”. Several years ago when Sean O’Sullivan was in the newspaper every day it was hoped that this Canadian welterweight (147 pounds, the most competitive division in boxing, whose champion is nearly always the best boxer in the world) would become world-champion. The media “hyped” him. The fact of the matter is, O’Sullivan was never in the top 20 welterweights; I don’t think he was even in the top 30. Still, he was “hyped” as a future champion, only to lose in the second round to a black man who has never distinguished himself. Nevertheless, for a few months we had our “white hope”.

All races attempt to make a name for themselves through pretended racial superiority. Wherever black people have assumed power in African countries they have treated brown people savagely. And if you want to commit a huge social blunder and call down someone’s fury on you, simply mistake a Japanese person for a Korean.

(ii) Another such name is harder to describe. It isn’t racial, it isn’t even nationalistic. It is deep-down ethnic. When I was studying in Britain I noticed that war films appeared on TV every week; not Hollywood movies about war, but actual film-footage of World War II: the Battle of Britain, Rommel in North Africa, submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, and so on. When I returned to Britain in the mid-80s I saw the same films on TV. I thought this must be unhealthy, since it must surely inflame anti-German hatred. And yet I kept noticing that the British appeared much fonder of the Germans than of the French, when the French had been their allies twice in this century. I was puzzled and spoke of it to one of my relatives. Whereupon he smiled cheerfully as he said, “It’s not difficult to understand why we like the Germans but not the French. The British and the Germans are descended from the same Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic stock. We and they constitute the master-people. But the French are Latins, inferior.” There is no end to the ways we can make a name for ourselves.

(iii) Another name is social class. The jokes about social-climbing are legion. The jokes are legion, of course, just because social-climbing itself is never-ending.

A woman, no longer in our congregation, tore into me one day inasmuch as she felt I hadn’t made enough of her husband’s Ph.D and his work-place position. His Ph.D had elevated him in the work-place. His work-place ascendancy issued in social ascendancy, according to this woman. By not fussing about his Ph.D I was failing to acknowledge his social superiority. Her parting shot was, “You are a phoney. You won’t recognize a Ph.D, but you worship the ground that M.D.s walk on.” (And all along I had thought myself to be rather hard on M.D.s!)

(iv) Language is another “name” we give ourselves. In our saner moments we might think that language-diversity can only be enriching. At the very least another language exposes us to another literature. What is more enriching than this? Besides, thinking in another language is a good check that our thinking really is thinking and not merely the shuffling of cliches. Yet most of the time any suggestion of another language begets suspicion and hostility.

There is a delightful touch in the parable we are probing today. When we have finished building that tower so tall that it reaches to the heavens, God still can’t see it! Our tallest tower, as high as the heavens, we think to have penetrated even the abode of God himself. But in fact our tall tower is such a pipsqueak thing that God can’t see it. The text in Genesis tells us that he has to “go down”; he has to leave his abode, get down on his hands and knees with his magnifying glass in order to see this puny fabrication.

The racial superiority we deem simply obvious; the ethnic advantage that is surely self-evident; the social elevation that declares itself to the world; all of these are so paltry, so puny, such trifles that God has to get down on his hands and knees to see them.

In any case we have achieved what we set out to do: we have made a name for ourselves. But others have just as effectively made a name for themselves too. They are now boasting of their superiority in blind ignorance of our boasting of ours. The consequences are far-reaching. Our story-teller tells us of two consequences. We are “scattered over the face of the earth”; which is to say, there is no community. There are crowds everywhere, but no community. The second consequence is that we do not understand each other. We talk, we listen, we even claim to hear. But we don’t understand each other. We certainly know the meaning of the talk we utter; we know the meaning of the talk we hear. We say we understand others even as we insist they don’t understand us. Everyone claims to understand but not to be understood. In other regards, regardless of the words we understand, we don’t understand each other. Of course we don’t. People understand most profoundly not with their ears but with their hearts. Our hearts are clogged and calcified. We don’t understand each other. But we keep talking anyway. We talk past each other. Our attempt at communicating has become babble. The builders of the tower of Babel can only babble.

Part Two

What is the solution to the “Babel-babble” that is endemic to humankind? Many solutions are proposed, virtually all of them one form or another of social engineering.

One man, a schoolteacher, bent my ear several times about Esperanto, an artificial language whose devotees are attempting make the international language. A common language will undo everything that the parable of the Tower of Babel describes, says this man. Most of us needless to say, find this naive, albeit harmless.

Equally naive, but not harmless, are the attempts of totalitarian states to enforce conformity, including thought-conformity. Citizens don’t appear to understand each other? don’t appear to understand their rulers? don’t seem to know their place? won’t surrender their pretension to individual superiority even as they are told to support a national superiority which finds them dead on battlefields? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet alike insisted that people appear to understand much more quickly when threatened with torture; solutions seem to be forthcoming much more quickly when a gun is held to people’s heads. But of course what such tyrants describe as a solution is actually a brutal manifestation of the problem.

The Ba’hai religionists and the New Age ideologues are touting world-government. Why do they think that world-government is going to solve what governments on a smaller scale have never been able to solve?

The only genuine solution to Genesis 11 is the one that begins in Genesis 12. Genesis 12 begins with the calling of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are promised that through them all the families of the earth will be blessed. Through Abraham/Sarah and their descendants the curse of Genesis 11 will be overturned. Through Abraham’s and Sarah’s lineage there will come someone, finally, who doesn’t have to make a name for himself in that he honours the name which his Father has given him; someone who knows not only that he is the Father’s creature but the Father’s son; someone who doesn’t have to twist himself grotesquely in the attempt at rendering himself superior just because he is willing to be humbled, humiliated even, for the sake of those whose preoccupation with “climbing” is killing them. The turnaround comes fully and finally in Abraham’s descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.

The turnaround which Jesus is is magnificent as God’s triumph over humankind’s self-victimization. As magnificent as it is “out there”, as an event in world-occurrence, it is nonetheless useless for us unless what occurs “out there” also occurs “in here”. That turnaround which our Lord is is useless for me unless it also turns me around. Can it do this? Can he do this? Is our risen Lord merely risen (i.e., risen but also ineffective), or is he risen and able, able to turn us away from our self-destroying and neighbour-destroying tower-building and name-making? The event of Pentecost answers this question with a huge “Yes!”. Pentecost, after all, is the incursion of that Spirit who is simply the power in which Jesus Christ acts upon us and within us; Pentecost is the celebration not merely of Christ risen (resurrection), not merely of Christ ruling (ascension) but of Christ reversing and reforming; reversing the curse of the tower and reforming the people who are otherwise fixed forever in the curse.

On the first Pentecost, Luke tells us, there are crowds of people in Jerusalem who have come from civilized lands. They hear the apostles declare the gospel. As the apostles speak and the gospel is declared hearers understand “the great things God has done”, says Luke. Hearers, scattered in places near and far, are alike grasped by what God has done. As they are grasped by what God has done for them, God does it afresh in them. Pentecost is God’s reversal of Babel. In Jesus Christ alone, and through the power of his Spirit alone, people find that they don’t have to make a name for themselves, glorying as they are now in the name that God has given them. They don’t have to invent something like Esperanto in order to understand each other, for now they understand with a heart refashioned by the heart-specialist himself. They don’t have to exhaust themselves in a quest for superiority which only disfigures them and afflicts others. They are content to identify themselves with him who ate and drank with anyone at all and was glad to do so.

Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves through nationality or nationalism? But Jesus Christ has made us members of his body, the church. And the church, St.Peter reminds us, is the holy nation. Are we still tempted to advertise ourselves as extraordinarily talented at tower-building? But we are now identified with the tower, “towering o’er the wrecks of time”, the cross. Are we still tempted to make a name for ourselves, give ourselves whatever nature we want to have, through that city whose cultural achievements let us strut and boast and sneer? But we are citizens of another city, the New Jerusalem. Not only are we citizens, we are heralds of this new city; we point to it and point others to it, therein pointing them away from those other cities where they trample each other in pursuit of a name that isn’t worth having.

These other cities are many, old and varied. They are Rome, Babylon, Sodom, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Montreal, Mississauga. Jerusalem is the city that slays God’s prophets and crucifies his Messiah (i.e., Jerusalem is every city inasmuch as it spurns the gospel). Sodom is the city of those whose sensuality will prove destructive on all fronts. Rome (ancient Rome) is the city of admirable cultural accomplishment and also the site of every idolatry imaginable. Modern Beijing is the city of conscienceless cruelty. (Think of Tiannemen Square.)

Babylon is almost in a class by itself. Babylon is the city that gathers up all other cities. Babylon is the city whose paganism grows with its wealth and whose affluence swells only as a blind eye is turned everywhere. Everybody lives in Babylon; we can’t help living in Babylon. But as Christians we aren’t citizens of Babylon. We are citizens of the New Jerusalem. We belong to the holy nation; we are people of a new name and a new nature and new understanding and a new community.

There is a most important feature of the parable of the Tower of Babel which we must not fail to mention. The Hebrew bible puts forward the tower of Babel as the Hebrew equivalent of Babylon, Babel and Babylon alike being Jewish and Gentile monuments to humankind’s God-defiance. But paradoxically the literal meaning of the word “Babel” is “gate of God”. Bab-el is the gate of God. God meets us at our point of greatest defiance (the cross of him whom we crucify) and by his grace renders it the point of our access to him.

Pentecost is that miracle of grace, that miracle of the Holy Spirit, that wonder at the hands of Jesus Christ risen and ruling whereby our God-defiance collapses just because we are granted access to God. Babylon (“babble on”) is rendered the gate of God, where we hear each other as never before, understand each other, cherish each other, find community in each other — and all of this because we are no longer desperate to make a name for ourselves, but want only to be named citizens of that city which cannot be shaken, the city of God, the holy nation, the church of Jesus Christ.

Pentecost, everyone knows, has to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that power whereby the victory of Jesus Christ becomes his victory in us. Our Lord was never driven to make a name for himself in that he cherished the name his Father had given him. He never had to bend himself out of shape by trying to give himself a nature he was never meant to have. He was son by nature. You and I are to become sons and daughters by faith, thereby regaining that nature we have long since forfeited through our building and babbling.

Pentecost means this: the Holy Spirit is the power by which Jesus Christ does in us what he has already achieved for us. In other words, Pentecost celebrates that power by which the wreckage of Babel-babble is turned into the gate of God, as by faith we own our place in the holy nation and in faith cling to him whose name is above every name, above all the silly, false and dangerous names we should otherwise give ourselves.

Victor A. Shepherd
June 1995

Joel 2:28-32
Acts 2:29-42
John 14:26; 16:8-11

If today were Christmas Sunday or Easter everyone would know it was Christmas Sunday or Easter and the turnout would be large.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. Few are aware of it. The turnout isn’t larger than usual. This should surprise us, since Christmas (the incarnation) and Easter (God’s vindication of the cross); Christmas and Easter exist for the sake of Pentecost. Pentecost, after all, was the occasion when there was fulfilled everything that Jesus had promised his followers concerning the Spirit, everything Jesus had promised concerning the Spirit’s application of Christ’s earthly achievement.

[1] In anticipation of Pentecost Jesus told his disciples, “The Spirit will convict/convince (the one Greek word means both ‘convict’ and ‘convince’) the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement: concerning sin, because they don’t believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father…; concerning judgement, because the ruler of this world is judged.” (John 16:8)

We must be sure to understand something crucial here: only the Spirit can genuinely convince people of the truth of God. Which is to say, only the Spirit can genuinely convict people of sin, convict them of the nature of sin and the scope of sin and the depth of sin. Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are moralists at heart they will always equate sin with immorality. They never grasp the profundity of the apostle Paul when he declares that Jesus died for the ungodly, not the immoral. They never grasp the profundity of Jesus when he insists that harlots and tax-collectors (moral failures who are also indifferent to their moral failure) enter the kingdom God ahead of the morally faultless.

Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are not moralists but socialists they will equate sin with rich people’s economic exploitation of the non-rich. They never hear Jesus when he exclaims, “It’s from within, from the heart of every individual, that there come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, slander, pride. All these come from within, and these defile.” (Mark 7:22-23)

Left to themselves, people never get it right. If they are not socialists but social conservatives they will equate sin with the self-victimization of the weak, the lazy, the loser; and then equate sin again with the tyranny with which weak, lazy losers tyrannize everyone else in the society. Alas, they seem never to hear what Jesus says about the deadly power of wealth, the callousness of the wealthy and the brutality of the powerful.

Only the Spirit can bring home the truth that sin is what Jesus says it is, what all of scripture says it is: unbelief. Unbelief, we must note, isn’t a matter of lacking the right beliefs, even the right religious beliefs. Unbelief isn’t ideational insufficiency of any kind. Unbelief, everywhere in scripture, pertains not to so much to the head as to the heart. It’s hardness of heart; it’s defiance of God, disobedience to God, disdain for God. It all ends in estrangement from God, estrangement from humankind’s ultimate good; in short, it ends in estrangement from God, loss of intimacy with God, and depravity or corruption within. Do I exaggerate? Argue not with me but with Jesus. “From within, from the heart, come ….” Only the Spirit can convince us of the truth about ourselves in the course of convicting us of our violation of the truth of God.

In anticipation of Pentecost Jesus told his followers that the Spirit would convict and convince the world of righteousness. Now we all think we don’t have to be told what righteousness is. Righteousness is rectitude, rectitude of some sort. The most righteous people are those who possess rectitude of all sorts.

But righteousness can’t be rectitude, since Jesus insists that people will be convinced of the nature of righteousness only as Jesus himself “goes to the Father.” Only as he goes to the Father? What do our Lord’s resurrection and ascension have to do with convincing the world of righteousness?

Throughout his earthly ministry, and particularly in the last week of it, Jesus was savaged again and again by people who thought they knew what righteousness was. And that’s precisely why they executed him. Pilate thought he knew; so did Herod; so did the crowd that hailed him one week and howled for him the next. Let’s be honest: his mother thought she knew too. That’s why she had pleaded with her son months earlier to stop embarrassing the family and come home quietly.

“When the Spirit comes (Jesus had said), he will convince the world of righteousness because I go to the Father.” Our Lord knew that his resurrection and ascension would vindicate him and vindicate the cross specifically. His resurrection and ascension would vindicate that righteousness which is unique to the cross.

Everyone “just knew” that execution by means of a cross meant shame before God, even rejection by him. More than rejection, it meant God’s curse pronounced upon the crucified one himself. Everyone “just knew” it. To be sure, “everyone” had one thing right: a cross did mean shame and rejection and condemnation. What nobody knew, however, and would never know apart from the Spirit, was that in the Son of God whom the world didn’t recognize God had taken upon himself that very shame and rejection and condemnation, therein bridging the gap between himself, holy God and just judge, and a world that could otherwise only perish. Righteousness is God’s righting of a capsized humankind that can otherwise only drown. First it’s the self-sacrificing of the Father in the cross whereby people who are deservedly barred from his presence are graciously granted access. Secondly, righteousness is the righted relationship that individuals enter upon and enjoy as they renounce their unbelief and cast themselves upon the clemency of their creator.

The Spirit, only the Spirit, convinces us of the nature of righteousness and thereby convicts us of our unrighteousness. And the Spirit can do this only because our Lord’s sin-bearing cross is vindicated as he is raised from the dead and ascends to his Father.

Our Lord has something more to say. The Spirit, God’s power to convict and persuade, will also convince the world of judgement; specifically, the Spirit will convince the world that God’s judgement is operative now. “The Spirit will convince the world of judgement”, says Jesus, “because the ruler of this world has been judged.” Plainly the evil one had been exposed in the cross of Jesus and defeated in the resurrection of Jesus. Exposed and defeated, the evil one still prowled around in search of victims, but his destruction was inevitable; defeated, he was destined to be destroyed. Judgement had been rendered.

Our Lord’s point is this: because the evil one has been defeated and is now destined to destruction, judgement is plainly operative now. Because judgement is operative now, God is sifting men and women at this moment. Because judgement is operative now, it’s ridiculous to think that judgement can be postponed, let alone evaded.

But who believes this? Doesn’t the world continue to unfold as it always has? Don’t some people even maintain that “the world is unfolding as it should”? Then who is going to believe that judgement is operative now, that the verdict has been rendered, that the outcome is inevitable? Only those will believe it whom the Spirit has convinced.

[2] On the day of Pentecost Peter preached a sermon that was boring by anyone’s standards. The sermon had no illustrations, and no “catchy” title. It had no big words wherewith to impress the wordsmiths. It didn’t even have especially small words wherewith to please the anti-wordsmiths. Boring? Half of Peter’s sermon was a lengthy quotation from the older testament. When Peter had finished quoting a book already hundreds of years old he began accusing his hearers. Accusing people antagonizes them, makes them resentful and angry. Therefore the only reaction Peter’s sermon could ever generate was sleepy-eyed boredom followed by resentful anger.

But this wasn’t how hearers reacted to Peter. Instead they were “cut to the heart”, we are told, and cried out, “What are we going to do?” They certainly weren’t bored; neither were they angry. They were defenseless and desperate at the same time. How did they come to be defenseless and desperate? The Spirit had precipitated a response within them so very different from a merely human reaction. Their Spirit-quickened response demonstrated that they knew the judgement of God to be operative; the resurrection and ascension of Jesus had convinced them of his cross-wrought righteousness; their unbelief – both the source and the outcome of their deep-dyed sinnership – now confronted them undeniably.

They were “cut to the heart.” Were they terrified of God’s judgement? Yes. Were they terrified only? No. They were also horrified at their heart-condition, horrified that they had dabbled for decades in the pseudo-comfort of the ghastliest self-delusion. As the Spirit surged over them they knew they were a disgrace before God, a shame to themselves, and more self-deluded than the most naïve child.

“What are we going to do?” they cried in their helplessness and horror. Peter told them what they should do. They should repent, believe, and be baptized as a public declaration of their repentance and faith.

But of ourselves we can’t repent; of ourselves we can’t make a “U-turn” in life; of ourselves we can only wear even deeper the grooves we’ve worn for years and now can’t escape. That’s why repentance and faith are depicted everywhere in the book of Acts as possible only by means of the Holy Spirit.

Consider Cornelius. Cornelius was a Gentile, an officer in the Roman army. He first heard the gospel when Jewish Christians preached in the synagogue that Cornelius frequented but had never joined, preferring to remain on the fringe. As the Spirit surged over Cornelius he moved from a fringe hanger-on at the synagogue to the most intimate companion of Israel ’s greater son; for the Spirit had granted him that repentance and faith which he could now exercise for himself.

It’s the same story over and over in the book of Acts. Everywhere in the early church it was known that people can repent and believe only as the Spirit first grants them repentance and faith. There were people in Corinth who thought frenzy, unrestrained frenzy, to be the pre-eminent manifestation of the Spirit. They jumped and jabbered and spouted ejaculations that were not only ridiculous but even blasphemous. Paul told them they were dead wrong. He told them the manifestation of the Spirit is that someone is constrained to confess from the bottom of her heart that Jesus is Lord. It’s our sincerest faith in Christ that attests the Spirit’s possession of us.

“They were cut to the heart and cried, ‘What are we going to do?’” Peter told them what they had to do. They had to make the farthest-reaching “U-turn” in their lives (i.e., repent); they had to embrace Jesus Christ from the bottom of their hearts (i.e., exercise faith); and they had to make a public declaration of all this.

[3] On the day of Pentecost Peter told his hearers that as they did as instructed they would receive the Spirit; that is, receive the Spirit fully. To be sure, the Spirit had already convinced them, convicted them, and converted them. One aspect of all this, however, was that the Spirit would not only inform them and move them; the Spirit would also saturate them. What does the Spirit’s saturation involve? Elsewhere in the New Testament the Spirit’s activity within believers has to do with fruit and gifts.

(i) The fruit of the Spirit is the effect of the Spirit upon the believer’s character. The fruit of the Spirit, say the apostles, is love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, self-control, and so on. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruitfulness of the presence and power of God. To be sure, some people are more patient than others by nature, more patient than others simply by genetic coding. Some people are cheerier than others, or more self-controlled than others, simply by nature. But regardless of what we are by nature, there is a transformation wrought by the Spirit that transcends natural endowment.

The apostle Paul contrasts the fruit of the Spirit with the works of the flesh (“flesh” being human life lived without reference to God.) The works of the flesh are fornication, idolatry, jealousy, selfishness, bickering, etc. (Galatians 5:19-22) The works of the flesh, of life lived without reference to God, are the spontaneous outcroppings of fallen human nature; they are what fallen human nature, left alone, invariably yields. The fruit of the Spirit, however, is precisely what God alone can effect in us. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruitfulness of that Spirit now rooted ever so deep in us and suffusing us throughout.

(ii) The gifts of the Spirit, on the other hand, have to do not with the formation of Christian character but with the ministry or service that we render to the congregation or to the world. Fruit has to do with character; gifts have to do with service.

The service we are to render is whatever talent or ability we have, now made available to others for the edification of others. What’s different now isn’t the talent or ability itself, whether the talent is music-making, public speaking, care-giving, accounting, cooking, concrete-pouring or painting. What’s different is our motivation: the desire to honour God and exalt the kingdom. What’s different is our aim: the edification of others in congregation or wider world. Paul insists that gifts of the Spirit are given “for the common good.” (1 Corinthians 12:7) Peter insists that gifts are to be deployed “for one another.” (1 Pet. 4:10)

Fruit and gifts are the result of the Spirit’s saturation of the man or woman whom the Spirit first convicted and convinced and brought to repentance and faith.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. On the day of Pentecost two millennia ago our Lord’s promise concerning the Spirit was fulfilled: “The Spirit will convince, convict, the world of sin and righteousness and judgement.” On the day of Pentecost itself Peter preached a sermon boring in the first half and antagonistic in the second. Many hearers, however, were neither bored nor antagonized. They were terrified and horrified in equal measure. They found relief as they embraced the risen Jesus Christ who in turn poured his Spirit upon them. And thereafter they were blessed with the fruit of the Spirit and were made a blessing to others through the gifts of the Spirit.

Pentecost is plainly every bit as important as Christmas and Easter. Indeed, Christmas and Easter, incarnation and vindication of the cross, exist for the sake of Pentecost. Then why aren’t the Christmas and Easter crowds here today?

Victor Shepherd
May2007

Joel 2:27-29
Acts 2:1-21
Luke 11:5-13

Some people crave money; others, fame; others, power. The desire for power, everyone knows, is greater than the desire for fame or for money. Power is a narcotic to which people become addicted even as their craving for it visits suffering upon those nearest and dearest them.

In the book of Acts we learn of Simon Magnus, a man who trafficked in occult power. Simon Magus noticed the unusual effectiveness of apostles like Peter. He concluded that he should have whatever power they had, for such power would magnify his manipulation of the occult. He approached Peter, flashed his money and attempted to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostle. Peter was outraged at his crassness and blasphemy. “Away with your and your money, thinking you can buy God’s gift with cash!” the text says with undisguised vehemence and disgust. The truth is, we can’t buy God’s gift with money. We can’t grab it and hoard it and then use it for whatever self-serving end we have in mind. We can’t co-opt God in our pursuit of power; we can’t harness his power to our schemes. We can, however, find ourselves infused with the unique power that is God’s Spirit. Pentecost is the festival of the Spirit, the acknowledgement of God’s singular effectiveness in and with his own people. Let’s think for the next few minutes of how God’s people before us, centuries before us, were moved to speak of the Spirit.

They spoke of the Spirit as breath. “Breath” in Hebrew denotes creativity. The breath of God that God breathes into his own people is that movement of God upon us and within us which enlivens our creativity and frees it for service in God’s kingdom. We mustn’t think of creativity here in the sense in which this overworked word is used every day: the creative person is the one with rare talent as writer or painter or composer or dancer. Where the Spirit is concerned, creativity has nothing to do with extraordinary artistic talent. The creativity of the Spirit, rather, is simply the freeing, the freeing up, the magnification and multiplied usefulness of any gift we have in order that this talent might now be sued for God’s purposes among those near and far.

One of my friends was employed as a chemist all his working life. Having become weary of the “grind,” he decided to retire early. At the conclusion of several of those twists and turns in the road of life that we can make sense of looking backward but can never see looking ahead, he ended up teaching mathematics to high school dropouts who were serving prison sentences. Until he began this work no one knew he could teach mathematics. He didn’t know this himself, for the simple reason that he had never taught anything. More important, no one (including himself) was aware that he could relate to convicts. (Not everyone can.) He looks upon his work with these sufferers (he has come to see them not merely as offenders but as men who have usually sustained extraordinary childhood wounds) as kingdom-service the likes of which he has never known in his life.

There’s something about Spirit-creativity we must take to heart. The Spirit, or breath, of God fosters and frees up such creativity as and only as we first decide to do something. I don’t think the best approach in congregational life is to draw up a list of talents in the congregation and then conclude that we can attempt only those things for which we have demonstrable talent. It’s just the opposite. Suffused with the gospel, our hearts pierced by the suffering around us that the gospel frees us to stop denying, we see what has to be done and therefore what we must do, since there’s no one else to do it. Then, as we resolve to do it, even in fear and trembling, the Spirit breathes upon us and whatever is needed always turns up. (By now we should have stopped saying “somehow turns up.”)

A year after I arrived in the Mississauga congregation I last served the congregation decided to assist a refugee family from Viet Nam . We discovered talents and gifts among us that we never guessed existed. We discovered that lifelong office workers could teach English to Asian people who had no familiarity with a western language. Whenever we decided something less dramatic – something as apparently mundane as making improvements to the physical plant or building a new sidewalk or rearranging plumbing – we turned up talent we should otherwise never have heard of.

Whenever we’ve wanted to do anything little or much out of the ordinary at worship here in Schomberg, we’ve found people here who can write, act, dance, arrange music, handle lighting, sing, blow, encourage the timid, and pray down God’s blessings. It’s never a congregation’s responsibility to sleuth out what it thinks people can do and then tell God that this is the range of his Spirit’s breath. It’s always our responsibility to discern what the king and his kingdom require, and resolve to do it. For only the, but certainly then, the Spirit will breathe life, vitality, creativity, as gifts come for that not even their possessors are aware of. The Spirit is breath.

Our Hebrew foreparents in faith also spoke of the Spirit as oil. Oil was used for anointing. Moses anointed Aaron. Samuel anointed David. Anointing was the sign of being equipped. The Spirit equips those whom the Spirit has appointed to a specific task. Such anointing is necessary just because our “doing” will have to last longer than ten minutes; it has to last past discouragement and setback.

The one bible verse that everyone can recite is from Psalm 23: “Thou anointest my head with oil.” We frequently overlook, however, the one thing that the psalmist wants us to remember: we are anointed precisely at that table which is prepared for us in the presence of our enemies. To be anointed with oil doesn’t mean we’ve been supplied with a cosmetic like suntan oil; it doesn’t even mean that we’ve been supplied with a safeguard like sunscreen. To be anointed with oil in the presence of one’s foes is to be nerved; it’s to be fortified; it’s to be comforted in the Renaissance English sense of “comfort.” In Renaissance English “comfort” is formed from two Latin words, con and fortis: “with strength.” Profoundly to be comforted isn’t to be pampered or even consoled. It’s to be strengthened. There’s an old tapestry of William the Conqueror hanging in an English museum. The artwork is titled, William Comforts His Soldiers. It depicts William himself standing behind his men with the point of his sword one millimetre away from their posteriors.

The old Molson’s Brewery advertisement said, “You’ve got to have heart, miles and miles of heart.” It’s true. We’ve got to have heart. But beer won’t give it to us. Oil will, specifically the oil of anointing, the Spirit, God’s effectual presence and power.

Our enemies are many. Often we are our own enemy, even our own worst enemy. For instance, we tell ourselves we’re past the immaturity of not needing to be congratulated for what we do; we tell ourselves we’re past being tempted to quit the project when it doesn’t go exactly our way; we tell ourselves we’re grown-ups now and therefore the indifference of others to what we hold dear and hold dear just because it’s true and right and good; the indifference here can’t chill us or deflect us or discourage us. We tell ourselves. We keep on telling ourselves in the attempt at nerving ourselves, but it doesn’t work. We need to be oiled.

We all have “those days,” days when we are tired out, done in, fed up, broken down. Out, in, up, down. On these days we say, “I’m getting it from all directions.” What next: capitulation? Quitting? vindictiveness? a shrivelled heart and a sour disposition? We can only fall on our face before God and plead for oiling.

The Good Shepherd who provides us (in his own way and his own time) with green pastures is also the Good Oiler who anoints us, nerves us, in the presence of everything that threatens to deflect us from the course we are to pursue until our life’s end.

Our Hebrew foreparents also spoke of the Spirit as dove. Romantics like us associate the dove with romance. Doves appear to be lovebirds who sit side-by-side and coo to each other, oblivious of everything else. In scripture, however, doves are something else. In scripture the dove is associated with the Holy Spirit coming upon someone at a specific time for a specific task, and associated as well with the sacrifice that faithful worshippers offer to God as the sign and seal and vehicle of their self-sacrifice, their self-renunciation. Where the Spirit is concerned, then, the dove speaks of God’s suffusing us with himself so as to summon from us that sacrifice which is nothing less than our self, given back to him who gave us our self in the first place and then gave himself, all of himself, for us.

Having been a parent of teenagers myself I appreciate the concern parents have to get their youngsters through the minefields of the teenage world; specifically to get them through school undrugged, unpregnant and unsavaged. I’m not making light of any of this. At the same time I’m aware that our efforts in this regard, doubled and redoubled and redoubled again, all the while rendering our youngster the focus of everything we parents have and are aspire after; our efforts here can get through the undrugged, unpregnant and unsavaged to be sure, but also render them narcissistic. In ensuring that our youngsters aren’t under-attended we can easily leave them with the impression that the world exists for them; nothing matters except them; no one is as important as they, and they can do no wrong even though others without end can do wrong to them.

While it’s important to get our young people through the minefield, such a victory is hollow if they emerge on the other side of it uncaring, uncompassionate, as unwilling as most in our society to sacrifice any comfort for the sake of the wounded people who have never known the silver spoon privilege of this congregation’s youth. What have we gained if, in keeping all the members of our smaller and larger family “on the rails” we render ourselves self-preoccupied, concerned only with our own ease? What will we have accomplished if we confirm each other as those who are decent, sophisticated, able to move around in drawing rooms and city hall receptions and political backrooms but don’t have in it us to share ourselves with people whose lives would be enriched immeasurably, if not transmogrified, by even the slightest, self-renouncing generosity?

In Jerusalem of old some people took a lamb to the temple service when they joined others in worship. Those who couldn’t afford a lamb took two doves. A week after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph took their son to the temple “to present him to the Lord,” the text tells us. (Luke 2:22) They were offering back to God the one who was dear to them above all else, their child. They took two doves with them. They sacrificed the doves at the same time as they offered back their child to God. In accord with Hebrew understanding, at the moment of the doves’ being slain, Mary and Joseph put their hand on the birds as a sign that they identified themselves with the life that was being offered up to God. At the same time, of course, that they identified themselves with the life in the doves that was being offered up to God, they were declaring that they would never do anything or be anything that impeded their son and his self-renunciation for the sake of others.

Surely we want nothing less for our children; surely we want nothing less for ourselves. Then the Spirit as dove must alight upon us as surely as the Spirit-dove alighted upon our Lord at the commencement of his public ministry.

Our Hebrew foreparents spoke of the Spirit as fire. Fire warms. Fire thaws cold hearts and limbers up cold hands. Fire brightens surroundings, enabling us to see what there is to be seen, even as fire brightens moods. (We know that fire brightens moods. For what other reason would people whose homes have central heating spend thousands of dollars on fireplaces?) As fire the Spirit must ignite us if we are to bring real warmth and brightness to people whose situations are colder, darker, bleaker than ours. And whatever we do on their behalf we must do cheerfully, or else our doing is an insult that begins by demeaning them and ends by having them resent us.

Most of you know me well, and therefore you know how concerned I am with the cerebral dimension of faith. I’m concerned – rightly concerned, I’m convinced – with having people understand the truth of God and the purpose of God and the way of God. Unless people understand something their deity is an idol, their worship is superstition, and their discipleship (so-called) is cult-following. At the same time, in the maturer years of my pulpit ministry, I’ve come to see as never before that while understanding is necessary it’s never sufficient. Correct understanding alone leaves people sitting in an armchair, and leaves them sitting their while regarding as inferior those whose understanding is less sophisticated. In addition to be brought to understand, people have to be warmed and brightened; they have to be lit. Then the fire of Pentecost has to ignite us as surely as it ignited disciples in a Jerusalem room two millennia ago and has continued to ignite men and women ever since.

Throughout my ministry I’ve found that church folk usually have a more-or-less adequate idea of Christmas (the saviour of the world was born,) of Good Friday (they know that Jesus died for us in some sense) and of Easter (resurrection is an even tin world-occurrence that can never be overturned.) When it comes to Pentecost, however, I’ve found that most church folk apprehend little, if anything. Then we must grasp the simple truth that the Holy Spirit is God’s effectual presence and power.

Today, on Pentecost Sunday, let’s think of the Spirit in terms of biblical symbols connected with the Spirit: breath, oil, dove, fire. For then we shall know that the Spirit is the effectual presence and power of God, whereby our gifts are made fruitful in his kingdom (breath;) we ourselves are anointed for service and nerved in the face of opposition (oil;) self-renouncing sacrifice is required of God’s people everywhere (dove;) and all of this is to warm and brighten others as we, “lit” already, are the occasion of his igniting others (fire.)

Victor Shepherd
Pentecost 2004