Idol-rife
Commentary
In Garret Kreizer's novel, God of Beer (2002), the high school social studies teacher tells the class about Gandhi's assertion that if God ever came to India, he'd have to come as bread, in order to get the attention of the starving peasants. The teacher then asks the class what form God would have to take in order to get the attention of their high school. "Beer," says one student. "Yeah," another chimes in, "it's the only thing to do around here."
When Paul walked into the city of Athens, he was shocked to find it "full of idols" or "idol-rife" (Acts 17:16). We still live in that city. Following Paul Tillich's definition of God as "ultimate concern," it becomes an easy task to see the informal gods of our Pantheon. Teenagers kneel before the throne of alcohol, while their younger siblings worship in front of the GameBoy or the TiVo, and their parents bow to their iPods. We celebrate sex and wealth and celebrity. Entertainment becomes an idol, an ultimate concern. We expect our virtues to keep us from calamity, and are amazed to discover that death overtakes all capriciously. We willingly hand over our consciences to politicians and pundits who promise to make us safe and prosperous if only we will trust them.
Against the prevailing winds of idolatry, the Bible calls us to recognize as ultimate the Creator rather than the creation. The "god of beer" is no god at all, just an awkward, ill-fitting bandage over the God-shaped hole at the center of the human heart, which no created thing can be made to fit. The biblical call is not (as so many suppose) to give up the things, but to recognize things as the products of the one who made us along with them. To recognize that there is no god but God is the fundamental meaning of the command, "Repent!"
Acts 17:22-31
Athens in Paul's day was no longer the crown of the civilized world; the population had dwindled from its glory days, and Rome was now firmly in charge. Nevertheless, Luke presents Athens as a slightly idealized intellectual center, so he can show Christianity interacting with the best of Greek culture. He shows Paul working within one of the conventions of Greek thought, in a kind of philosophical symposium, and actually imitating the most famous of the Athenian philosophers, Socrates, who was condemned as a proclaimer of strange deities (Acts 17:18). In Luke's presentation, Paul becomes the Socratic teacher of Jesus, pointing Epicureans and Stoics toward what they already know but do not realize. He subversively introduces the God who raised Jesus from the dead into the famous Athenian Pantheon, not as a new member, one among many deities, but as the true God who calls the Athenians to repent in the face of judgment.
Paul has gone solo into Athens (17:15; cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:1) and is distressed to find Athens idol-rife (17:16). He argues in the synagogue and the agora (v. 17), debating with Epicureans (who denied divine judgment and argued against the fear of death) and Stoics (who believed in living through reason and self-control in accord with a nature ruled by divine guidance) and sparking some interest (v. 18). Thus, he is brought to the Areopagus (either the place, the Hill of Ares, or the administrative council named after it) and invited to speak (vv. 19-20), for "all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new" (v. 21).
Paul's speech at the Areopagus is the only speech in Acts given to a pagan audience. While it is similar in form to the Lystra speech (Acts 14), it differs from the synagogue speeches in that there is no scripture cited and no history of Israel recounted. It does reflect Lukan themes, however, and also harmonizes with Pauline themes (cf. Romans 1:18-32; 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10), due to Luke's use of prosopopoiia, the historian's technique of writing in character. The speech also reflects typical Jewish polemic against pagan idolatry. The speech falls into three sections: introduction (vv. 22-23); critique (vv. 24-29); exhortation (vv. 30-31).
In the first section, Paul establishes both theme and audience as "religious" (vv. 22-23). Here, Paul curries favor with his audience (though the reference to their piety would be construed as ironic by Luke's Christian audience) and indicates that this subject and purpose is religious. He also shows himself to be an authority on the subject and not a mere "babbler" (v. 18); the "unknown God" uncovered in his studies will now be "proclaimed" (v. 23).
The second section of the speech involves a critique of idolatry (vv. 24-29), using conventional Jewish polemic against idolatry as the human creation of gods, rather than the acknowledgment of a Creator. The speech subtly reflects the beliefs of the Epicureans, which Paul has been debating (v. 18). Epicureans held that deities enshrined in wood or metal could not possibly be able to effect human happiness -- the very idea was silly. Further, a true god would need nothing from a human being, certainly not carving and polishing, nor subsequent worship (here Epicurean and Jewish critiques of idolatry coincided). Paul also reflects the view of the Stoics when he presents God as the sustainer of the universe. The Stoics believed that the deity was immanently bound with all of humanity (vv. 27-28). Paul presents a God who both established the human race and continues to uphold it (v. 26), in order to make us curious about our origins, to the point that we begin to "search" and "grope" for the foundation of our being -- because searching and groping might ultimately lead to finding.
The third section presents God as the final judge. Human ignorance can be overlooked, but now that the unknown God has been proclaimed, the only possible response is to turn away from creation to the Creator: in other words, "Repent!" (v. 30). Paul offers as proof of God's work the resurrection from the dead of the man appointed by God to judge the world in righteousness, Jesus (v. 31).
As elsewhere in Acts (cf. 2:37), the speech is interrupted at its climax (v. 32). There is a mixed reaction, but few commitments (vv. 32-34). Some listeners scoff; some want to hear more (at least it does not produce the violent reaction found, for example, in Thessalonica, 17:1-9). As the story concludes, Dionysius, the Areopagite, (said by Eusebius to be the first bishop of Corinth), Damaris (otherwise unknown) and some others believe and join Paul.
1 Peter 3:13-22
This odd passage moves from an ultra-conventional, almost banal, exhortation to one of the strangest statements (to modern ears) in the New Testament. Our lection begins as a continuation of the "household table" of instructions to various members of the community (2:13--3:17); now similar instructions are offered to all believers. The passage reflects a situation in which the early Christians were suffering slander if not outright hostility on the part of the wider society (there is no evidence that they were undergoing any official government persecution at this time). We know from second-century writings that Christians had to defend themselves against the same sorts of accusations from the Romans as the Jews did: They were accused of impiety (because they would not worship the imperial gods), and of misanthropy (because their community was insular and close-knit). According to later writers such as Tertullian and Origen, Christian practices produced their own unique misunderstandings among outsiders, and they were maligned for "orgies" (nocturnal worship sessions), "incest" ("love one another," "kiss of peace"), "murder" (baptism as "death and resurrection"), and even "cannibalism" (the Eucharist). Thus it was necessary for them to prepare their defenses (3:15). Peter's exhortation is to focus on proper behavior, no matter what the consequences. This will shame the enemies who make these false accusations, both now and at the final judgment (v. 16).
Peter buttresses his exhortation with the example of Jesus as the righteous sufferer (vv. 18-22). The parallels are clearly drawn between what the community has to endure, and what Jesus had to endure. The innocent do suffer (vv. 14, 17, 18), as they look to the one who is "righteous" as a model (vv. 12-13, 18). Through it all, they are to keep a good "conscience" or "mindfulness of God" (vv. 16, 21).
Then comes the odd part: the "proclamation to the spirits in prison" (vv. 19-20). While modern Christians may naturally relate this passage to the creedal statement "He descended to the dead," and the later tradition of a "descent to the dead" to proclaim the gospel, this is not what Peter is talking about (the tradition of the descent to the dead stems from the end of the second century, and was not initially connected to 1 Peter). The section draws on a widespread tradition popular in the Judaism of the day, which spoke of disobedient angelic spirits precipitating the Flood of Noah (Genesis 6:1-4). These angels were punished for the sin of taking human women as mates (cf. the apocryphal book 1 Enoch 12:4-6; 13:1-10; 14:1-7; 15:1--16:3; references to this tradition are also found in the books of Jubilees and Baruch, the Testament of Levi, the Testament of Reuben, and the Testament of Naphtali). In 1 Enoch, Enoch takes a heavenly journey (poreuomai, 1 Enoch 12:4; 13:3; 15:2) and makes an announcement of final condemnation to these sinful angelic spirits; the picture is of a multi-layered heaven (common in Judaism of the time), with the prison on one of the lower levels.
Peter's unique contribution is to apply this tradition to Jesus. The similarities with the Enoch tradition are undeniable; he even uses the same word to describe Jesus' trip (poreuomai, vv. 19, 22). Peter presents Christ preaching to these sinful angel prisoners after his resurrection, in the course of his ascension to heaven (there is thus no descent to the dead at all here). The proclamation is one of judgment; Christ announces his authority over all angelic beings (v. 22; the alternative idea -- that Christ preached repentance to the angels -- is unlikely, since the notion that there would be a second chance to repent is inconsistent with the rest of 1 Peter, cf. 1:17; 2:7-8; 4:17-18). That the announcement is one of judgment, and that it takes place during Christ's ascension, is clear from the chiastic arrangement of Peter's statement:
A (v. 19) He went (poreuomai) to proclaim to the spirits in prison.
B (v. 20) Noah and family were saved through water.
B' (v. 21) Baptism now saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A' (v. 22) He went (poreuomai) into heaven with cosmic powers subjected to him.
Since verse 22 obviously refers to the ascension and the subjection of cosmic powers, the parallel verse 19 probably refers to the same set of ideas.
Peter's further contribution to the development of this tradition is to connect the flood to baptism as an "antitype" (NRSV "prefigured," v. 21). The correspondence between past and present sacred events is a common notion in the New Testament (cf. Hebrews 9:24; 1 Peter 5:3; Acts 7:44; Romans 4:14; 5:12; 1 Corinthians 10:6; 10:11). Here baptism is related to the flood as a kind of salvation through and in water. It is connected to Christ's resurrection as the basis of such salvation (cf. Romans 6:4-5, 8-11; Colossians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; 29-34). The link between the resurrection and baptism roots the human ritual in divine action, making baptism God's act of changing our hearts, rather than another one of our own feeble attempts at mere dirt removal.
John 14:15-21
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you" (John 14:18). "Orphans" was a common way of describing disciples who had no masters, but the Gospel of John made promise of "No Orphan Left Behind." The linchpin of that plan involved a unique Johannine concept: the Holy Spirit as Paraclete.
This section of Jesus' "farewell discourse" (John 14-17) focuses on how Jesus will empower the community he leaves behind. It will be the mutual work of Father and Son (14:12-14), and it will be based on the love of God and Jesus (vv. 15-24). Our lection asserts that loving God and Jesus cannot be divorced from keeping Jesus' commandments (vv. 15, 21, 23-24), and that even with Jesus' departure, there will be for the disciples an abiding presence of God (vv. 16-20, 22-23).
The passage begins with a conditional sentence that is actually a definition (v. 15). What does it mean to love Jesus? It means to keep his commandments. John uses "commandments" and "word" interchangeably in this passage; both words refer to the totality of Jesus' teaching. To love Jesus is to do his works, and there is little distinction to be made between "having" and "keeping" his commandments (v. 21).
The abiding presence of God after Jesus' departure will take the form of the Paraclete. The Greek word means "advocate, helper, comforter, exhorter, counselor," and John takes advantage of the full range of meanings available (thus I use the Greek term rather than choosing one English translation over another). The five Paraclete passages in the Johannine Last Supper narrative outline the various functions of the Paraclete: the Paraclete is Jesus' abiding presence with the disciples; the Spirit who teaches them; testifies to the truth and enables them to do so; vindicates them against persecution; and mirrors the relation of Jesus and the Father (14:16-17; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7-11; 16:13-15). The Spirit is the real presence of the resurrected Lord, in no way inferior and actually superior to his pre-resurrection physical presence. The Paraclete represents a new mode of Jesus' existence with the disciples. The Paraclete simply continues the work of Jesus on a new scale.
Thus Jesus will soon come to them literally (at Easter), but also in the presence of the Paraclete with them (v. 19). While his coming at Easter is fundamental, even more primary for the disciples is their reception of the Paraclete, who is "another" -- similar to and different from Jesus (v. 16). The Paraclete is similar because it is the Spirit of truth (v. 17), just as Jesus is the truth (14:6). But the Spirit not only "abides with you," but "will be in you" (v. 17). And the Spirit will be with them "forever" (v. 16). Thus the Paraclete provides communion with Jesus for all disciples, even successive generations of believers. The Paraclete makes Easter available beyond its original temporal limitations. We don't have to meet the gardener outside the empty tomb to see the Lord (20:11-18), because Jesus will always be available to us through the Spirit.
Application
Denys Arcand's film, Jesus of Montreal (1989), pictures bikini-clad dancers auditioning for a beer commercial as they lip-sync a striding rock pitch to the target audience:
Nothing's sacred to you,
But a good glass of brew.
The young crowd's here,
We worship beer.
Of course, only in a movie parody (or a high school class) could such idolatry be confessed.
Today's problem is that we are so dishonest about our idolatry. We tell ourselves that since we don't bow down to molded icons or sacrifice animals before wooden carvings that we are upholding the primary commandment. Yet we have reduced our religion to a political agenda. We have defined faith by financial profit. We have invoked God on behalf of horrendous causes such as war. We cannot see the idolatry we have practiced.
The Bible stifles our self-deception with one word, the same word Paul used for those seemingly-quaint Athenian idolaters: "Repent!"
Alternative Applications
1) John 14:15-21. The Gospel of John offers a clear view of the importance of the Holy Spirit for the daily life of the Christian. John's concept of the Paraclete embraces a number of functions of the Spirit, the primary one being the Spirit as Jesus-substitute. We could not be there with him in Galilee, but he can be here with us now. We could not listen to him teach, but he can teach us still. We could not see how his life echoed his relationship with his Father, but we can experience the same connection now. The Spirit guarantees all this. The Paraclete becomes our helper, comforter, exhorter, advocate, and counselor by being Jesus for us. This is why we can do greater things than he did (John 14:12) -- because he could not physically be in our time and place, but through his Spirit, we can be his presence to our world.
2) 1 Peter 3:13-22. The odd story of Jesus' proclamation to the imprisoned spirits -- briefly touched on by Peter, but illuminated by the flood tradition found in many contemporaneous Jewish texts -- reminds us that the Bible did not descend to our desks yesterday. It was not written to us, but to people of a different society, culture, and worldview. The audience Peter wrote for did not know that the earth revolved around the sun, or that the stars were suns billions of miles of away. They expected that if you could fly upward, you would pass by the gates of the jailhouse that had held spirits since the time of Noah. What the odd passages of the Bible do is help us remember this, and thus jar us out of that complacent idolatry that assumes that God is just like us, that the Bible is easy to understand because it says only what we already know, and that faith is nothing more than moving in the direction we are already headed. To recognize the oddness of the Bible -- which is to say, its human quality, rooted in a certain time and place -- is to acknowledge that God is, in fact, qualitatively different from us, that the Bible functions as the Word of God precisely because it comes from outside of us and not from our own musings, and that faith is most effective when it surprises us. The one true God uses a foreign and alien Word to jolt us out of ourselves and toward our Lord.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:8-20
As with many psalms, this one recalls the Lord's glorious deeds in saving the people. There is an abrupt shift between verses 12 and 13, from community to individual praise. Some commentators speculate that in this psalm two separate psalms have been combined into one -- although the transition between the two sections is smooth (except, of course, for the change in pronouns). The collective memory of national salvation, related in verses 1-12, sustains the individual psalmist -- who, beginning at verse 13, shares individual praise which continues for the remainder of the psalm. That praise takes concrete form in the presentation of burnt offerings (vv. 13-15). This is as it should be: Faith finds its natural expression in worship.
In this psalm, two stories merge: the collective story of God's people and the story of an individual's deliverance. The boundary separating the two is blurred. The macro-story becomes the micro-story.
Again, that is as it should be. As we hear the great story of salvation-history retold again and again, we gradually come to realize it is our story, too. "Come and see what God has done ... He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot" (vv. 5-6). "Come and hear ... and I will tell what [God] has done for me ... truly God has listened" (vv. 16, 19).
Phyllis Tickle, longtime religion editor for Publishers Weekly, has written about the importance of sacred story: "Religion holds a group together. Next to blood and maybe even beyond it, religion has been within recorded history the great cohesive agent in life, the one around which to-the-death loyalties are formed. When differing peoples -- even those of different bloods -- have shared a common religion, they have been one people ... All of which really is to say that people are one when they share a sacred story" (God-Talk in America [New York: Crossroad, 1997], p. 165).
In our hyper-individualistic culture, there is a strong temptation to discard the collective story as obsolete. There are many settings, from twelve-step groups to Internet blogs to television talk shows, in which individuals repeat their salvation stories ad nauseam. The church is not like that. Yes, there is a time for individual testimony, but always that takes place in the context of the larger story, the narrative of salvation-history. If we abandon the collective story, God help us -- for we will have cast aside our one great hope of unity and mutual understanding.
When Paul walked into the city of Athens, he was shocked to find it "full of idols" or "idol-rife" (Acts 17:16). We still live in that city. Following Paul Tillich's definition of God as "ultimate concern," it becomes an easy task to see the informal gods of our Pantheon. Teenagers kneel before the throne of alcohol, while their younger siblings worship in front of the GameBoy or the TiVo, and their parents bow to their iPods. We celebrate sex and wealth and celebrity. Entertainment becomes an idol, an ultimate concern. We expect our virtues to keep us from calamity, and are amazed to discover that death overtakes all capriciously. We willingly hand over our consciences to politicians and pundits who promise to make us safe and prosperous if only we will trust them.
Against the prevailing winds of idolatry, the Bible calls us to recognize as ultimate the Creator rather than the creation. The "god of beer" is no god at all, just an awkward, ill-fitting bandage over the God-shaped hole at the center of the human heart, which no created thing can be made to fit. The biblical call is not (as so many suppose) to give up the things, but to recognize things as the products of the one who made us along with them. To recognize that there is no god but God is the fundamental meaning of the command, "Repent!"
Acts 17:22-31
Athens in Paul's day was no longer the crown of the civilized world; the population had dwindled from its glory days, and Rome was now firmly in charge. Nevertheless, Luke presents Athens as a slightly idealized intellectual center, so he can show Christianity interacting with the best of Greek culture. He shows Paul working within one of the conventions of Greek thought, in a kind of philosophical symposium, and actually imitating the most famous of the Athenian philosophers, Socrates, who was condemned as a proclaimer of strange deities (Acts 17:18). In Luke's presentation, Paul becomes the Socratic teacher of Jesus, pointing Epicureans and Stoics toward what they already know but do not realize. He subversively introduces the God who raised Jesus from the dead into the famous Athenian Pantheon, not as a new member, one among many deities, but as the true God who calls the Athenians to repent in the face of judgment.
Paul has gone solo into Athens (17:15; cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:1) and is distressed to find Athens idol-rife (17:16). He argues in the synagogue and the agora (v. 17), debating with Epicureans (who denied divine judgment and argued against the fear of death) and Stoics (who believed in living through reason and self-control in accord with a nature ruled by divine guidance) and sparking some interest (v. 18). Thus, he is brought to the Areopagus (either the place, the Hill of Ares, or the administrative council named after it) and invited to speak (vv. 19-20), for "all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new" (v. 21).
Paul's speech at the Areopagus is the only speech in Acts given to a pagan audience. While it is similar in form to the Lystra speech (Acts 14), it differs from the synagogue speeches in that there is no scripture cited and no history of Israel recounted. It does reflect Lukan themes, however, and also harmonizes with Pauline themes (cf. Romans 1:18-32; 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10), due to Luke's use of prosopopoiia, the historian's technique of writing in character. The speech also reflects typical Jewish polemic against pagan idolatry. The speech falls into three sections: introduction (vv. 22-23); critique (vv. 24-29); exhortation (vv. 30-31).
In the first section, Paul establishes both theme and audience as "religious" (vv. 22-23). Here, Paul curries favor with his audience (though the reference to their piety would be construed as ironic by Luke's Christian audience) and indicates that this subject and purpose is religious. He also shows himself to be an authority on the subject and not a mere "babbler" (v. 18); the "unknown God" uncovered in his studies will now be "proclaimed" (v. 23).
The second section of the speech involves a critique of idolatry (vv. 24-29), using conventional Jewish polemic against idolatry as the human creation of gods, rather than the acknowledgment of a Creator. The speech subtly reflects the beliefs of the Epicureans, which Paul has been debating (v. 18). Epicureans held that deities enshrined in wood or metal could not possibly be able to effect human happiness -- the very idea was silly. Further, a true god would need nothing from a human being, certainly not carving and polishing, nor subsequent worship (here Epicurean and Jewish critiques of idolatry coincided). Paul also reflects the view of the Stoics when he presents God as the sustainer of the universe. The Stoics believed that the deity was immanently bound with all of humanity (vv. 27-28). Paul presents a God who both established the human race and continues to uphold it (v. 26), in order to make us curious about our origins, to the point that we begin to "search" and "grope" for the foundation of our being -- because searching and groping might ultimately lead to finding.
The third section presents God as the final judge. Human ignorance can be overlooked, but now that the unknown God has been proclaimed, the only possible response is to turn away from creation to the Creator: in other words, "Repent!" (v. 30). Paul offers as proof of God's work the resurrection from the dead of the man appointed by God to judge the world in righteousness, Jesus (v. 31).
As elsewhere in Acts (cf. 2:37), the speech is interrupted at its climax (v. 32). There is a mixed reaction, but few commitments (vv. 32-34). Some listeners scoff; some want to hear more (at least it does not produce the violent reaction found, for example, in Thessalonica, 17:1-9). As the story concludes, Dionysius, the Areopagite, (said by Eusebius to be the first bishop of Corinth), Damaris (otherwise unknown) and some others believe and join Paul.
1 Peter 3:13-22
This odd passage moves from an ultra-conventional, almost banal, exhortation to one of the strangest statements (to modern ears) in the New Testament. Our lection begins as a continuation of the "household table" of instructions to various members of the community (2:13--3:17); now similar instructions are offered to all believers. The passage reflects a situation in which the early Christians were suffering slander if not outright hostility on the part of the wider society (there is no evidence that they were undergoing any official government persecution at this time). We know from second-century writings that Christians had to defend themselves against the same sorts of accusations from the Romans as the Jews did: They were accused of impiety (because they would not worship the imperial gods), and of misanthropy (because their community was insular and close-knit). According to later writers such as Tertullian and Origen, Christian practices produced their own unique misunderstandings among outsiders, and they were maligned for "orgies" (nocturnal worship sessions), "incest" ("love one another," "kiss of peace"), "murder" (baptism as "death and resurrection"), and even "cannibalism" (the Eucharist). Thus it was necessary for them to prepare their defenses (3:15). Peter's exhortation is to focus on proper behavior, no matter what the consequences. This will shame the enemies who make these false accusations, both now and at the final judgment (v. 16).
Peter buttresses his exhortation with the example of Jesus as the righteous sufferer (vv. 18-22). The parallels are clearly drawn between what the community has to endure, and what Jesus had to endure. The innocent do suffer (vv. 14, 17, 18), as they look to the one who is "righteous" as a model (vv. 12-13, 18). Through it all, they are to keep a good "conscience" or "mindfulness of God" (vv. 16, 21).
Then comes the odd part: the "proclamation to the spirits in prison" (vv. 19-20). While modern Christians may naturally relate this passage to the creedal statement "He descended to the dead," and the later tradition of a "descent to the dead" to proclaim the gospel, this is not what Peter is talking about (the tradition of the descent to the dead stems from the end of the second century, and was not initially connected to 1 Peter). The section draws on a widespread tradition popular in the Judaism of the day, which spoke of disobedient angelic spirits precipitating the Flood of Noah (Genesis 6:1-4). These angels were punished for the sin of taking human women as mates (cf. the apocryphal book 1 Enoch 12:4-6; 13:1-10; 14:1-7; 15:1--16:3; references to this tradition are also found in the books of Jubilees and Baruch, the Testament of Levi, the Testament of Reuben, and the Testament of Naphtali). In 1 Enoch, Enoch takes a heavenly journey (poreuomai, 1 Enoch 12:4; 13:3; 15:2) and makes an announcement of final condemnation to these sinful angelic spirits; the picture is of a multi-layered heaven (common in Judaism of the time), with the prison on one of the lower levels.
Peter's unique contribution is to apply this tradition to Jesus. The similarities with the Enoch tradition are undeniable; he even uses the same word to describe Jesus' trip (poreuomai, vv. 19, 22). Peter presents Christ preaching to these sinful angel prisoners after his resurrection, in the course of his ascension to heaven (there is thus no descent to the dead at all here). The proclamation is one of judgment; Christ announces his authority over all angelic beings (v. 22; the alternative idea -- that Christ preached repentance to the angels -- is unlikely, since the notion that there would be a second chance to repent is inconsistent with the rest of 1 Peter, cf. 1:17; 2:7-8; 4:17-18). That the announcement is one of judgment, and that it takes place during Christ's ascension, is clear from the chiastic arrangement of Peter's statement:
A (v. 19) He went (poreuomai) to proclaim to the spirits in prison.
B (v. 20) Noah and family were saved through water.
B' (v. 21) Baptism now saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A' (v. 22) He went (poreuomai) into heaven with cosmic powers subjected to him.
Since verse 22 obviously refers to the ascension and the subjection of cosmic powers, the parallel verse 19 probably refers to the same set of ideas.
Peter's further contribution to the development of this tradition is to connect the flood to baptism as an "antitype" (NRSV "prefigured," v. 21). The correspondence between past and present sacred events is a common notion in the New Testament (cf. Hebrews 9:24; 1 Peter 5:3; Acts 7:44; Romans 4:14; 5:12; 1 Corinthians 10:6; 10:11). Here baptism is related to the flood as a kind of salvation through and in water. It is connected to Christ's resurrection as the basis of such salvation (cf. Romans 6:4-5, 8-11; Colossians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; 29-34). The link between the resurrection and baptism roots the human ritual in divine action, making baptism God's act of changing our hearts, rather than another one of our own feeble attempts at mere dirt removal.
John 14:15-21
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you" (John 14:18). "Orphans" was a common way of describing disciples who had no masters, but the Gospel of John made promise of "No Orphan Left Behind." The linchpin of that plan involved a unique Johannine concept: the Holy Spirit as Paraclete.
This section of Jesus' "farewell discourse" (John 14-17) focuses on how Jesus will empower the community he leaves behind. It will be the mutual work of Father and Son (14:12-14), and it will be based on the love of God and Jesus (vv. 15-24). Our lection asserts that loving God and Jesus cannot be divorced from keeping Jesus' commandments (vv. 15, 21, 23-24), and that even with Jesus' departure, there will be for the disciples an abiding presence of God (vv. 16-20, 22-23).
The passage begins with a conditional sentence that is actually a definition (v. 15). What does it mean to love Jesus? It means to keep his commandments. John uses "commandments" and "word" interchangeably in this passage; both words refer to the totality of Jesus' teaching. To love Jesus is to do his works, and there is little distinction to be made between "having" and "keeping" his commandments (v. 21).
The abiding presence of God after Jesus' departure will take the form of the Paraclete. The Greek word means "advocate, helper, comforter, exhorter, counselor," and John takes advantage of the full range of meanings available (thus I use the Greek term rather than choosing one English translation over another). The five Paraclete passages in the Johannine Last Supper narrative outline the various functions of the Paraclete: the Paraclete is Jesus' abiding presence with the disciples; the Spirit who teaches them; testifies to the truth and enables them to do so; vindicates them against persecution; and mirrors the relation of Jesus and the Father (14:16-17; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7-11; 16:13-15). The Spirit is the real presence of the resurrected Lord, in no way inferior and actually superior to his pre-resurrection physical presence. The Paraclete represents a new mode of Jesus' existence with the disciples. The Paraclete simply continues the work of Jesus on a new scale.
Thus Jesus will soon come to them literally (at Easter), but also in the presence of the Paraclete with them (v. 19). While his coming at Easter is fundamental, even more primary for the disciples is their reception of the Paraclete, who is "another" -- similar to and different from Jesus (v. 16). The Paraclete is similar because it is the Spirit of truth (v. 17), just as Jesus is the truth (14:6). But the Spirit not only "abides with you," but "will be in you" (v. 17). And the Spirit will be with them "forever" (v. 16). Thus the Paraclete provides communion with Jesus for all disciples, even successive generations of believers. The Paraclete makes Easter available beyond its original temporal limitations. We don't have to meet the gardener outside the empty tomb to see the Lord (20:11-18), because Jesus will always be available to us through the Spirit.
Application
Denys Arcand's film, Jesus of Montreal (1989), pictures bikini-clad dancers auditioning for a beer commercial as they lip-sync a striding rock pitch to the target audience:
Nothing's sacred to you,
But a good glass of brew.
The young crowd's here,
We worship beer.
Of course, only in a movie parody (or a high school class) could such idolatry be confessed.
Today's problem is that we are so dishonest about our idolatry. We tell ourselves that since we don't bow down to molded icons or sacrifice animals before wooden carvings that we are upholding the primary commandment. Yet we have reduced our religion to a political agenda. We have defined faith by financial profit. We have invoked God on behalf of horrendous causes such as war. We cannot see the idolatry we have practiced.
The Bible stifles our self-deception with one word, the same word Paul used for those seemingly-quaint Athenian idolaters: "Repent!"
Alternative Applications
1) John 14:15-21. The Gospel of John offers a clear view of the importance of the Holy Spirit for the daily life of the Christian. John's concept of the Paraclete embraces a number of functions of the Spirit, the primary one being the Spirit as Jesus-substitute. We could not be there with him in Galilee, but he can be here with us now. We could not listen to him teach, but he can teach us still. We could not see how his life echoed his relationship with his Father, but we can experience the same connection now. The Spirit guarantees all this. The Paraclete becomes our helper, comforter, exhorter, advocate, and counselor by being Jesus for us. This is why we can do greater things than he did (John 14:12) -- because he could not physically be in our time and place, but through his Spirit, we can be his presence to our world.
2) 1 Peter 3:13-22. The odd story of Jesus' proclamation to the imprisoned spirits -- briefly touched on by Peter, but illuminated by the flood tradition found in many contemporaneous Jewish texts -- reminds us that the Bible did not descend to our desks yesterday. It was not written to us, but to people of a different society, culture, and worldview. The audience Peter wrote for did not know that the earth revolved around the sun, or that the stars were suns billions of miles of away. They expected that if you could fly upward, you would pass by the gates of the jailhouse that had held spirits since the time of Noah. What the odd passages of the Bible do is help us remember this, and thus jar us out of that complacent idolatry that assumes that God is just like us, that the Bible is easy to understand because it says only what we already know, and that faith is nothing more than moving in the direction we are already headed. To recognize the oddness of the Bible -- which is to say, its human quality, rooted in a certain time and place -- is to acknowledge that God is, in fact, qualitatively different from us, that the Bible functions as the Word of God precisely because it comes from outside of us and not from our own musings, and that faith is most effective when it surprises us. The one true God uses a foreign and alien Word to jolt us out of ourselves and toward our Lord.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:8-20
As with many psalms, this one recalls the Lord's glorious deeds in saving the people. There is an abrupt shift between verses 12 and 13, from community to individual praise. Some commentators speculate that in this psalm two separate psalms have been combined into one -- although the transition between the two sections is smooth (except, of course, for the change in pronouns). The collective memory of national salvation, related in verses 1-12, sustains the individual psalmist -- who, beginning at verse 13, shares individual praise which continues for the remainder of the psalm. That praise takes concrete form in the presentation of burnt offerings (vv. 13-15). This is as it should be: Faith finds its natural expression in worship.
In this psalm, two stories merge: the collective story of God's people and the story of an individual's deliverance. The boundary separating the two is blurred. The macro-story becomes the micro-story.
Again, that is as it should be. As we hear the great story of salvation-history retold again and again, we gradually come to realize it is our story, too. "Come and see what God has done ... He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot" (vv. 5-6). "Come and hear ... and I will tell what [God] has done for me ... truly God has listened" (vv. 16, 19).
Phyllis Tickle, longtime religion editor for Publishers Weekly, has written about the importance of sacred story: "Religion holds a group together. Next to blood and maybe even beyond it, religion has been within recorded history the great cohesive agent in life, the one around which to-the-death loyalties are formed. When differing peoples -- even those of different bloods -- have shared a common religion, they have been one people ... All of which really is to say that people are one when they share a sacred story" (God-Talk in America [New York: Crossroad, 1997], p. 165).
In our hyper-individualistic culture, there is a strong temptation to discard the collective story as obsolete. There are many settings, from twelve-step groups to Internet blogs to television talk shows, in which individuals repeat their salvation stories ad nauseam. The church is not like that. Yes, there is a time for individual testimony, but always that takes place in the context of the larger story, the narrative of salvation-history. If we abandon the collective story, God help us -- for we will have cast aside our one great hope of unity and mutual understanding.
