God Tests the Covenant

by Peter Lockhart

I am not preaching on the lectionary this week but here is my sermon from 2007 on the story of Abraham and Isaac Gen 22:1-14.

I said to someone the other day that if I allow the Old Testament passage to be read in today’s service then I must also preach on it. This is simply because of the challenging and disturbing nature of the story. I would also say that this sermon comes with an M rating – for a mature audience, for the story in itself should carry such a label.

The story of God’s testing of Abraham is one which raises all sorts of questions and has been much meditated upon and written about in the history of Biblical studies. The idea that God would test a man by asking him to sacrifice his son is utterly distasteful. It is a horrific tale so far beyond comprehension that at face value it can cause a person to ask, ‘Is this really the kind of God I want to be associated with?’ A God who asks for infanticide!

But digging deeper into the narrative that has already unfolded for Abraham the extent of what he is ask to do goes far beyond this. Abraham was an elderly man and in ancient times the future and hope of a person was intricately tied to having children, particularly sons. Abraham and Sarah had waited so long, and eventually had used a surrogate, one of their servants Hagar, to produce the heir Ishmael whom Abraham had loved as his son.

Then in the midst of human impossibility for Sarah, Sarah conceived and bore Isaac, even though she was in her eighties and had laughed at God’s promise for the provision of this child. With a true son to be the heir of Abraham and Isaac, Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham questioned God on this matter and found reassurance that God would deal well with Ishmael and make a nation from him. And so Abraham sent his first born son away confident in God’s promise that his name and his nation would rise through Isaac.

This sets more starkly in its context the test which God brings to Abraham. It is not simply the request to kill his son, which is abhorrent enough in itself, but the request to kill the son long waited for to fulfil the faithfulness of God to Abraham and Sarah and who was also promised to provide a future and a hope for them and the world.

The question is no longer simply how could God ask a man to kill his own son but how could God command Abraham to do something which seemed to so contradict what God had already done: his faithfulness in providing Isaac.

For listeners to the story and readers of the scripture the story opens with the revelation that this is to be a test for Abraham. Maybe in being told this the blow of what is asked is softened. We might reasonably imagine that God whilst asking this horrific thing does not really intend for Abraham to carry out the act. Yet what we need to understand is that Abraham does not know this is a test he bears the full emotional force of this divine command and his faithfulness to God, his trust is astounding.

One of the reasons Abraham’s faith here is so astounding is that on other occasions when God had made such grave decisions Abraham had questioned God. When God sought to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, veritable dens of iniquity, Abraham had pleaded on their behalf. When Sarah told Abraham that Hagar and Ishmael were to be sent away Abraham was deeply distressed and questioned God.

But here, now, in this story, when asked to kill his son we are told, “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.” No questioning, no pleading on Isaac’s behalf; just a mechanical going through the motions. Could it be that he was simply numb with the shock and horror of what he was to do? Or could it be that in the face of previous impossibilities Abraham placed his trust in God to create another possibility so that his blood line could survive?

The Rabbis called this story the binding of Isaac. What do we do with it? How can we reconcile this image of God with the God of love whom we wish to proclaim? For even if we think that God was never really going to let the act be carried out how can we countenance such terrible games played with the lives of mortals?

Whilst Abraham’s faith is upheld in the letter to the Hebrews, do we really want to have such a blind mechanical faith that when we hear God’s voice we are obedient to the point of acting in such terrible ways? For me this makes us no different to those Christians who have placed bombs in abortion clinics or the terrorists who strap explosives to themselves and walk into crowded market places. How do we discern God’s voice and differentiate it from other voices we may hear? The voice that many a murderer has claimed has spoken to them – go into this place, or that, and kill in my name! Is our faith so blind, so unquestioning, so obedient that it cannot discern the inherent evil in such actions?

These are disturbing questions, questions that cut us to the core and this very story has been enough for people to reject God and the Biblical witness because of these kinds of issues.

Yet for me the Bible does contain the witness of God’s love for the world, the coming of Jesus, the story of the covenant and if I am to accept the stories of faith it tells then I must, you must, be able to give an account for the inclusion of the difficult passages of scripture just as much as we want to hold on to the sentimental passages that fill us with warm and fuzzy feelings.

For me to think again on this passage means taking a different perspective, to ask is there something that I am not seeing in the story? Is there something more at stake in the request of faithfulness by Abraham? What really hangs in the balance? Is there a different perspective?

We know what hangs in the balance for Abraham – his son, Isaac, so with this in mind we have to look from the perspective of the other stakeholder in the test: God! What does God risk in this encounter? What do we learn about God?

In asking this unseemly act of Abraham God puts at risk the very covenant he has entered into with Abraham, a covenant that began many years early when he asked Abraham to leave his father’s house. The Old Testament scholar Terrence Fretheim reverses the questions for us, he asks:

“Is this not only a test of Abraham’s faith in God, but also of God’s faith in Abraham?” Fretheim assumes this is the case as he asserts, “God places the shape of God’s own future in Abraham’s hands, in the sense that Abraham’s response will affect the next move that God makes… Something is at stake for God in this matter”

What is at stake for God is the covenant relationship and the possibility that what God has invested in by entering into covenant with Abraham will fail. If anything the trust that Abraham exhibits that God can work this situation out ups the ante for God. The scripture poses the question can God really be trusted or will God require the infanticide that Abraham has been commanded to commit?

When Abraham says in response to Isaac’s question about where the sacrifice is Abraham declares his trust and his hope that God will provide a lamb. Just as there is a lot riding on the outcome for Abraham so too God is placed in the position of being tested – “can this God really be trusted”, maybe even “should we love this God”?

As the story unfolds we see that God can be trusted… a lamb is provided and Isaac is spared. In the end we find that God’s trust in Abraham was warranted and vice-versa, Abraham’s faith in God was reasonable even in the face of the bizarre command that Abraham received.

There are many lessons we might ponder for ourselves from this story not least of which is how we approach our understanding of difficult passages. There are also many questions left hanging.

I want to finish by raising just two issues one to do with the nature of human freedom and the other to do with the nature of God.

In this story what Abraham will do appear to be unknown by God, Abraham has genuine freedom to act as he will and what he does will have consequences. Whilst in other parts of the Bible we might have a sense of God predetermining things this story indicates that God entrusts to human beings the freedom to respond, or not, the commands God gives. God is no puppeteer pulling all the strings as it were. If Abraham did not have a choice, or if the all knowing God knew what Abraham would do then the test was a furphy, there was no real test just an expected outcome. This raises questions for me in terms of human freedom and God’s knowing which are a little too difficult for me to explore at this point, suffice it to say that we have freedom in our choices and maybe the possibilities of our choices are unknown not simply to us but to God.

This is a vital principle to bring out in the second issue which is the willingness of God to be vulnerable in the context of the freedom of human response. Ultimately this vulnerability is exposed in the story of Jesus of Nazareth in whom we believe God was fully present yet at the same time was fully human. Jesus resistance of temptation and choice to walk all the way to the cross involves real choice, a real risk it could have gone otherwise. If this was not the case then it was all a charade.

Ultimately God’s choice of vulnerability leads to a response of rejection and condemnation – Jesus is betrayed, deserted, condemned and hung on the tree by human hands. Whilst Abraham stayed the course and followed the command when God becomes fully vulnerable in being one of us human beings reject God.

The grace present in the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection though is that whilst humanity rejects this God who is so freely vulnerable God’s choice is to renew the covenant and in Jesus bear that rejection so that we might remain with God in that promised relationship.

There are times that confronted by the complexity of life and the complexity of the Biblical message we might rather turn away. As I contemplated the story of Abraham and Isaac this week I wondered how could any of us believe in a God who would ask such a thing of a father. And, I must be honest that this was a very personal response to the concept of killing a son. Yet as I have struggled with the passage and the questions it raises maybe the question I might now rather ask is, “How can I not be willing to be faithful to this God who would be so willingly vulnerable to those he created by giving them, us, so much freedom?”

I do not think we have covered everything in this story by a long shot but maybe, just maybe, despite its macabre and horrific nature we have found some reason for its presence and for our own faith to continue.

And God said

Peter Lockhart  Genesis 1

Whenever any of us are confronted by an issue or a question about our lives we are influenced in our decisions making and our direction by the voices around us. There are many voices around us, friends and family, people on the radio and TV, blogs and websites, and books that we read. And there are the voices within us: the voice of our own memories and our conscience. 

One of the voices that we have an option to seek to listen to is the voice of God as it comes to us through the scriptures but it is not an easy voice to hear or understand. This morning we heard read the story of creation from the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. This story is a somewhat controversial story for many reasons and has become a stumbling for many in their willingness to accept and listen to the voice of God as it speaks to us through the scriptures. 

This morning I want to just pick up one phrase from the story to begin to explore the difficulties of reading the Bible. In Genesis 1 we read, “And God said.” These may seem fairly innocuous words but they are repeated 10 times in the chapter. Whoever wrote this story wanted us to know that God was speaking because he kept making the point, “And God said.” 

Now for the moment I am not overly concerned with what God said simply the claim that God spoke at the moment of creation. I remember years ago being troubled by this whole story of creation and the notion that the story is supposed to convey what God said at the moment of creation. In terms of logic and reasonable thinking this claim borders on the nonsensical. 

 It’s a bit like that question “if a tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it” “If God spoke at the dawning of creation does anyone hear it” 

Of course I can romanticise the answer and suggest something along the lines that the echoes of God’s voice continue to resound in every moment of our existence and the wonder of creation. But this kind of romanticising of the voice of God does not deal with the claim that is being made by the storyteller, to know exactly what God says. 

 Based in the knowledge that there was no one there to hear what God said and neither can we present any scientific or historical proof of God’s words it would be easy to dismiss the voice of the scriptures as being important in shaping my life because the claims are not scientifically or historically true. But, and this is a vital but, I don’t believe that the point of the story is to claim that this actually what happened but rather to say something about the nature of God and what the creation is in relationship to God. 

So the truth of the story lays not in some historical claim but in the truth the reveal about God. Each phrase, each word, recorded by the author carries weight as it unfolds before us who God is and what God is like and through the discovery of the meaning of the words so we may even hear God’s voice speaking to us. 

If we approach the scripture in this way the question might then be not whether it is historically true but what does it tell us about God that God speaks? “And God said.” Here are just a few quick observations. 

 First off, in affirming that God speaks the scriptures tell us that God chooses to communicate with humanity in a way in which human beings can relate to and understand. Moreover, it would seem to me that there is no logical necessity for God to speak, so in God speaking God make this choice for relationship: a choice to love what God is making. 

Second, that when God speaks there is authority and power in his words. Without going too much into the content of God’s words what occurs in the story is that when God speaks there is a consistency between what God says and what occurs. “Let there be light”, and there was light! 

Now I could say more on this but I wanted to make a fundamental point here about how we read the Bible and whether or not the voice of God is worth listening to in the course of our existence. 

If we try to ask is the Bible “true” in a logical or forensic scientific sense then we come into having problems in the first few verses but if we listen for the theological truth of the scriptures what we encounter is that the God we believe in speaks and God speaks because of God’s choice to love and God speaks with authority. This is good news for all of us and the whole creation.

Trinity Sunday: An old sermon!

Peter Lockhart

An sermon from 2007 Year A Trinity Sunday... what to do this week?

Today the lectionary gives to us a gift from the church – today is Trinity Sunday. The reason that I say that it is a gift from the church is that the concept of the Trinity does not come to us directly from Scripture because the Bible does not use this language, this word Trinity, to describe God. Rather, in reflecting on the depth of God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ the early church in its struggle to articulate the truth of God’s existence adopted this language of describing God as Trinity.

This comes to us as gift in the context of the struggle of humanity to know its creator and to understand the creation. In his book The Mind of God the eminent mathematician and physicist Paul Davies declared ‘While we assume there is a design behind the physical reality, science can’t really tell us anything about the designer, the nature of God, or God’s relationship with human beings.’ (end quote)

To seek to understand God and to listen for the story of God does not mean turning away from scientific inquiry and reason but marrying it with the revelation of this very creator in our midst. For, to borrow a phrase from another physicist and theologian John Polkinghorn, to describe God as trinity is not a case of doing some ‘speculative mystical arithmetic’ but is grounded in the very narrative of the revelation of God found in the scriptures.

Jesus’ claims concerning himself and his relation with God and the Holy Spirit give rise for us to speak of God in this way.

John asserts Jesus to be the eternal word of God.

Jesus claimed that he was in the Father and the Father was in him and that those who had seen him had seen the Father.

The promise of the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Spirit sent from the Father, the same Spirit that was seen descending on Jesus at his baptism.

And, Jesus command to go and baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit further makes this description of God appropriate.

Here in these passages and others we encounter God not simply as some monad but that God in Godself is a community of existence – a communion of being.

If we listen to the very first story found in the scriptures this truth of God’s very nature as existing as a communion is found as we hear that we are created in God’s image:

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness:

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”

Here we find that to be made in God’s image is to be made male and female – not male or female, but both together – a community. To be in the image of God is to be one, yet one with distinct entities. The fullness of being human in the image of God is being humans together, just as God is one yet three.

This helps us to make sense of the statement that God is love. To love involves both a lover and an object of that love. If God in God’s very self is love then that love is a love expressed in the mutuality of existence of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

This gives to us the context of our own existence created to love and be loved by God and by each other – to do less than this would be to deny the reality of our being created in God’s image and thereby to deny what it means to be truly human.

Yet the narrative that unfolds in the pages of the scriptures is that this exactly what human beings do: rather than live in the communion of love whereby we exist as one for each other we as human beings continually seek our personal end, our personal gain.

The story of Adam and Eve is not some isolated event in prehistory but is each of our own stories – we deny the reality of our existence and seek more as if what we have already been given is not enough. And when we are questioned about this we try to blame someone else.

But God’s love for us is so deep that he gives to us himself, his son, the incarnation – Jesus with us to live for us. Here the work of God as Trinity becomes clearer and even yet more confronting. Jesus fully human and fully divine shares our human existence living in communion with God and the creation.

The culmination of Jesus share in our existence as well as our estrangement from God and each other is found in the cross and resurrection. The theologian Jürgen Moltman describes Jesus death as an entirely Trinitarian in which Jesus human cry of abandonment, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ is matched by the desolation of God the Father as mourns the estrangement of humanity in the death of his only son.

Here we begin to have an insight into the concern of God at our suffering and of God’s will that this not be the last word for the cross without the resurrection leaves us without much hope. The Spirit descends into the realm of dead to – a place complete oppose and devoid of God’s existence to meet Jesus there and bring him to new life.

To contemplate this is to understand that even in the place of death to which Jesus descends, a place of complete separation from God Jesus is retrieved. The Eastern Orthodox churches speak of the days between Jesus death and resurrection as the time of his descent into hell. There is no place in this life or in our death that God has not been and that God cannot reach us.

This God, who is love, loves us to this point of self sacrificial giving so that we might be with God eternally. The sending of the Holy Spirit to us makes us one with Jesus in his action for us and in the church we are made to be a sign of hope for the world as humans existing as human beings created in God’s image are meant to – as community.

The church is meant to be God’s people living in respect to how we were created and were recreated to live, but it does not take a genius to see that we do not live this way as the church, even though this is the church we believe that God calls us to be. Like those who lived before Jesus death and resurrection our fall into temptation, to live as if we are not in created God’s image and so to seek something other, is continually there.

The rampant individualism of the post enlightenment world, both modernism and post modernism, have so impacted on the belief of the western church that for so many our faith is private or personal matter. Evangelists continually emphasize our personal relationship with Jesus as being the central reality of faith, but unless we understand that as persons we are not drawn into a one on one faith experience but into the community of God’s existence which includes not only other people but the fullness of creation then we have turned away from the truth of the gospel.

To be Christian means to be the church – for the church is the body of Christ, it is the Church in the power of the Spirit. Bound together by God’s love and into God’s existence together we celebrate our risen Lord.

This understanding of the church came up in my lecturing on Thursday when I was quoting a passage from John Calvin’s Institutes written in 1559.

“For when we believe the Church, it is in order that we may be firmly persuaded that we are its members. In this way our salvation rests on a foundation so firm and sure, that though the whole fabric of the world were to give way, it could not be destroyed.”

Half of the students reacted to this understanding of the church expressing that whilst the ideal and imagery is great it had not been their experience of the church. Many had been hurt and burnt within the community of the faithful – a reality for most of us.

Yet within the arms of the church that we believe, the church that God has made through the power of the Spirit, our hope is that we do share in the Trinitarian life of God and we become fully human.

Calvin, being the realist he was, declared:

"But in order to embrace the unity of the Church in this manner, it is not necessary, as I have observed, to see it with our eyes, or feel it with our hands. Nay, rather from its being placed in faith, we are reminded that our thoughts are to dwell upon it, as much when it escapes our perception as when it openly appears."

Being church is as much a matter of faith and an expression of God’s Trinitarian life as our hope in the promise of Jesus that we will find our way home in him.

The depths of the mystery of our faith stand alongside the mystery and wonder that is seen in the creation by the physicists and biologist and ecologists. Our unity with God who is Father, Son and Spirit, our unity with each other, our unity with all living things humbles us and gives to us place in this world, in our lives and with our God.

Giving thanks for this mystery we can echo the wonder of the great Albert Einstein:

One cannot but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one merely tries to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

So with him and millions before us and millions to come let us pass into silence before the mystery of the Trinity and seek the face of the one who loves us.

Psalm 8 Dominion over the sea

Peter Lockhart

I had a request to put up the rest of the sermon about "Care for the Creation" which I posted the end of a couple of days ago here . The sermon was based on Psalm 8, which is the Psalm set down for Trinity Sunday.In Psalm 8 we read about our responsibility as human beings.

The Psalmist declares:

“You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.”

This week as I contemplated this concept of human dominion I was drawn into reflecting on the question, “So, how is that working out for us?” or maybe it is better put: “How is our exercise of dominion going?”

This question was focussed for me after reading a blog by Byron Smith entitled, “And the sea was no more.”

Attached to the article on the blog was a video by Jeremy Jackson a Marine ecologist who painted a grim picture for the future of our oceans.

As human beings we are having a huge impact on the marine environment, an impact on a global scale. This seems to affirm the notion that we do have dominion over “the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas”

Of course I am not one to use one Marine Ecologist’s view on a topic found on a random blog so I did some further reading and reflecting. After confirming some of what Jeremy had to say I came to one of those kind of moments where you just go “oh no”.

If we just consider how we as human beings are dealing with the marine environment, there are some concerning issues!

The first issue is that of overfishing. In some parts of the world we have fished the marine landscape to the point exhaustion – since the 1980s world fish stocks have been in rapid decline and as we have sought new and ingenious ways of catching the fish the impact has been getting worse.

Long line fishing with millions of hooks and drag netting have horrendous side effects.

In some places the ocean floors have been absolutely devastated, disrupting the whole marine environment. The scientists simply do not know how long the recovery of these ecosystems might take.

If we add to this issue of overfishing the impact of the pollution of the world’s oceans the situation gets just that little bit more scary.

Of course most of you will have heard the news about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico emanating from the Deepwater Horizons rig. It was an accident to be sure, but no less driven by our hunger for fossil fuels.

The impact of the pollution is astounding and the toxic impact on the whole Gulf of Mexico will be felt for decades to come.

This is but a small sample of the toxins we are feeding into the water, in Queensland there have been issues with the nitrogen run off from farms and debates and disputes about the control of the use of fertilizers and so on.

Then there is just the everyday rubbish that finds its way into the sea – especially plastics.

In my reading I discovered something called the Great pacific Garbage patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is caused by the flow of ocean currents which seem to circle towards a point in the northern centre of the Pacific.

Here at the centre of this gyre is an area somewhat larger than the size of Texas with 3.5 million tonnes of trash floating just below the ocean surface.

Then add to these two issues the possibility of global warming and in particular the warming of the ocean temperatures the equilibrium of the marine environment is in dire straits. Jeremy Jackson suggested somewhere in the next 20-50 years it is plausible to argue that we will no longer be able to eat fish coming from our seas.

So to return to my question at the beginning, “So how are we going with the dominion over seas thing?”

I find it kind of bizarre this whole issue given that many of us claim to see God’s glory reflected in nature. I wonder how many of you would claim to have experienced God by the sea, for example. One would think if we see God’s glory in nature then we would respond to God’s glory by caring for it and celebrating our place as a little lower than the angels by living generously and wisely as people in this wonderful world God has created.

500 years ago John Calvin wrote about this very thing saying: “But although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward such manifest testimonies, and they flow away without profiting us.”

Even if we do see something of God’s glory reflected in nature, Calvin goes on to say, “After we rashly grasp the conception of some sort of divinity, straightway we fall back into the ravings or evil imaginings of our flesh, and corrupt by our vanity the pure truth of God.”

Reading another blog the biblical scholar Daniel Deffenbaugh writes in response to the state of the environment:

"It is in a situation like this that I can be thankful for my Reformed roots – extending all the way back to Augustine, and finally to Paul – reminding me that, when I look at the heavens and the work of God's fingers, and then consider what human beings have done to it all, I cannot help but disagree with the Psalmist's hopeful anthropology: we are, in fact, a lot lower than God. We're not even close to how we were originally created. This being the case, I am then led to ask, and with some trepidation, why God would even want to be mindful of us."

The dying oceans and the disappearing stars seem to match the increasing clamour of competing voices which seek to drown out the good news of Jesus Christ and the revelation of God’s love for the world.

The whole situation draws us to reflect on Paul’s letter to the Romans not simply the snippet we read today but from Romans 8 as well

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and 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. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Pentecost: Sermon Preview

Peter Lockhart

A sermon based on Acts 2:1-21

The Holy Spirit descends and breathes into the disciples, and those listening, an amazing ability.

They are given the ability to speak and listen and understand languages other than the one that they speak.

At its base level I believe that this description of the day of Pentecost is a reversal of the confusion set upon human beings at the tower Babel, a story found in the book of Genesis Chapter 11.

In summary the story of the tower of Babel goes like this.

“Up until this point in the Bible, the whole world had one language - one common speech for all people. The people of the earth became skilled in construction and decided to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. By building the tower they wanted to make a name for themselves and also prevent their city from being scattered.

God came to see their city and the tower they were building. He perceived their intentions, and in His infinite wisdom, He knew this "stairway to heaven" would only lead the people away from God. He noted the powerful force within their unity of purpose. As a result, God confused their language, causing them to speak different languages so they would not understand each other. By doing this, God thwarted their plans. He also scattered the people of the city all over the face of the earth.”

http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/towerofbabel.htm

In one sense then I see the Day of Pentecost as a reversal of this story. It is a sign that human beings are reconciled again to God. A reconciliation that is understood to occur by the disciples through what Jesus does. So whilst understanding comes through shared communication it is not the shared communication that draws human being back towards God and each other.

So, and this is a big so, whilst shared understanding is given as a sign of reconciliation with God, the reversal of the Tower of Babel, onlookers of the event fail to understand it, even though they can see and hear in their own language, “they must be filled with new wine!” In other words, “they are drunk!”

One of our greatest problems as humanity is our inability to understand one another, even when we speak the same language. You only have to observe politicians and the issues that humanity is confronting to understand this.

What I find particularly disturbing is our inability to hear those who may be speaking a word of prophecy amongst us. During the week I heard a report about the death threats being levelled at climate scientists in Australia.

These scientists are speaking the same language as those listening: but is the problem that people don’t want to listen? Is it because people cannot see beyond the meal on their table and the roof over their head?

The hopeful, yet naive, notion that J.F.K propounded in the 1960s was :

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn124671.html

When we as human beings fail to listen, to really listen, even when we are given a common language, how can we place so much faith in ourselves?

The Spirit was poured out to give an opportunity to witness to God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ. The shared language on that day was a sign of what God was doing, but what is clear to me is that even with a common language we as human beings are still confused and more often than not even selfish bunch, we are all at sea.

The witness of the disciples was that it was because of God’s love expressed in Jesus Christ that we have become reconciled to God and one another and it is only when we find some unity in this proclamation that it can make any sense. It is this which becomes our hope, not the amazing gifts we may have to share with one another, but the God who through the Spirit and in Christ is present at work in and through us giving us hope even when we are misunderstood and sneered at as drunkards.