Acts 4:13-22

     Look, I'm back again, so soon.  It's amazing. My daily discipline failed so I'm seeing if a weekly discipline will also fail.  I should be spending Sundays doing things other than work work, anyhow.  Not many thoughts today, as I read through Acts 4:13-22, but there were a few that stood out to me a bit.

     One that I particularly liked was from verse 13, where these preppy intellectuals are looking to see who's causing all the commotion, and then they "realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men..."¹  And of course Luke would not be Luke if he did not make it a point to tell us all once again, after some miracle work or witty remark, that the people were amazed. 

     It's a lesson I've been constantly trying to learn, by the way... to be OK with being ordinary, and not to get caught up in this American ideal of being the best, the greatest, the most respected, the most remembered, etc.  It seems that the average American nowadays believes that she is above average.  It's the average ideal, to be above average... to be the leader and the standout.  But what's so bad about being ordinary? 

     That's actually a side note, though.  According to NT Wright, this wasn't about a lesson on being OK with ordinary as it was a lesson about acknowledging the other ways in which one can know something.  He used the example of a teacher who was teaching her students about Australia, and talking about what the textbook was saying about Australians.  But then one girl in particular started talking about what people in Australia are like, and what they do, and she spoke beyond what was just written in the book.  So the teacher asks her how she knew all this, and it was because the girl had grown up in Australia.  So Wright says:

      There are, in other words, more ways of learning things than studying them in books.  Book-learning, in fact, is often a poor substitute for first-hand experience if you want really to get inside a subject or have it inside you.  And that was what was so striking about Peter and John... Clearly they hadn't been to rabbinical school to study the scriptures...
     Like the little girl who used to live in Australia, Peter and John had a secret - a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities.  They had been with Jesus.  They had been with him night and day.  They had seen and heard him pray.  They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it. Now that he had died and had been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.  This didn't just give them 'boldness' in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes can be bold even when they're muddled.  It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.² 

     What I gather here is not necessarily something new, but maybe more of a reminder... not just that ordinary can be OK (the side note lesson I thought of).  It's that there is a kind of knowing that comes from experience and immersion, and this kind of knowing is not only valuable; it can be insightful even to learned. It can amaze even the learned. 

     This is not something I'm necessarily very good at.  I like being learned, and I have grand images of being more learned (even though I lack the discipline to become more learned).  I like the status, and often lament that I don't really have it like the big shots have it.  In fact, I'm of the lowest status among the learned.  I'm the ordinary one who does grunt work with the lowest pay.  I'm expendable.  Someone can always be found to do what I do... I'm the low priority worker whose job requires the least level of expertise. 

     What should become more important for me, though, is the immersion and experience.  But it's not just any immersion and experience. According to the Scriptures, what is significant is the immersion into a life lived with Jesus.  So while, there is tremendous value in the learned and the extraordinary, there is also tremendous value in the average and the ordinary. Even this kind of person can do extraordinary work. 

      The religious leaders (the preppy intellectuals) tried to threaten the ordinary guys and get them to stop talking about Jesus.  They responded, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen or heard.'" (4:19b-20)³. 

But the point about this one, which distinguishes it from many claims that might be made which simply borrow the name of Jesus as an excuse for running with an agenda someone has reached on quite different grounds, is that the people making the claim have already shown that they are living by it, and that it has power, kingdom-power, healing power.⁴

     Not that I am gifted or that I am good at any of this.  In fact I am terrible at it.  It's just the lesson that came together today as I was reading and writing.  In a life lived and immersed with Jesus, even the ordinary can be used to amaze, and what the even ordinary does in the name of Jesus can bring kingdom healing power. 

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(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.  Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 192 New Testament.
(2) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 67-68. 
(3) Not really sure why, but my Oxford Bible has a footnote commentary that compares this with Socrates' response to his accusers in Plato's Apology in 29d - "Gentlemen, I am your very grateful and devoted servant, but I owe a greater obedience to God than to you; and so long as I draw breath and have any faculties, I shall never stop practising philosophy and exhorting you and elucidating the truth for everyone that I meet..."  (Plato. The Last Days of Socrates. Hugh Tredennick, Trans. Penguin Classics (1954): 61.)
(4) Wright, 69.

Acts 4:1-12

     Well, the whole plan to do a section a day didn't work out after about the first week or so.  The plan to come back after vacation and get right back into things also didn't work out well.  Nearly another two months went by, and I'm still in the beginning of Acts.  Given the pattern I imagine I will be here for quite some time.  At least I'm still around, even if very infrequently.  It's progress.

     Decided to take a read into Acts 4:1-12.  Only a couple of things stood out to me while reading this.  The first thing that stood out was how interesting it might have been for the religious leaders when they found that that this Jesus guy that caused up a huge stir, whom they had a hand in putting to death, just won't go away.  He was this person with such a huge following, broke important religious rules and then made these witty remarks about them like it was no big deal, undermined the religious authority, and seemingly blasphemed God by calling himself God.  Now there are these followers of Jesus around doing similar inconvenient things like making more followers and breaking more rules (apparently it was illegal to hold a judicial inquiry at night¹)... This Jesus guy just won't go away. 

     The second thing comes from Psalm 118, which, for context, is a Psalm for "Thanksgiving for victory in battle."² The chapter talks about how God is on my side and is always there for me.  Even when enemies surround me, the Lord is there to help me.  If we read further to v.22, we see here "a metaphor of reversal of expectations (cf. Ps 113:7-9)."³  It's interesting to see the disciples use this verse as an extra jab at the religious leaders, telling them clearly whose side they (the followers of Jesus) are on. 

Psalm 118:22	Acts 4:11
The stone that the builders rejected     has become the chief cornerstone.	This Jesus is      ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;         it has become the cornerstone.’

     Note here how the verses are different between Psalm 118:22 and Acts 4:11.  Added to Acts is the clear indication that Jesus is the stone, as well as the clear reference to the builders as "you."  Why the word "chief" was added out, I don't know (not sure whether it's significant or insignificant).  The fact that it was Peter who was the bold one (filled with the Holy Spirit) giving this message is significant as well.  He was the cowardly one who denied Jesus three times.  But now, things are changed, and things are different.

     So what does NT Wright have to say about all of this?  He spends some time talking about the Sadducees, who were the religious leaders in power and did business with the Roman governor.  They disapproved of the idea of a resurrection, as that was an idea that said that God was bringing about restoration to the world, and the power structures that were already in place would be in jeopardy.  Wright also talks about how Peter's claims about the resurrection in Jesus shook the religious leaders even more. The same accusations Jesus had against them are reiterated again by Jesus' followers.

This is the new level of subversion, which will burst out dramatically in Stephen's speech in Acts 7. As Jesus himself had hinted, he is the one prophesied in Psalm 118, which speaks of a stone that has been rejected by the builders but has become the head cornerstone of the whole building.  When builders are searching around for ordinary stones to put up a wall or a house, they reject the one with the odd shape, because it won't fit.  But they may then find, when they get to the top of the building, that the one with the strange angles is the very one they want.  This passage in Psalm 118 already came to the early Christians full of hints about the Temple itself.  God will build a new Temple, thus declaring the present one redundant.⁴ 

     These are pretty bold and clear statements by the disciples of Jesus, not meant to be wishy washy or open-ended in interpretation.  Clearly they wanted to undermine the religious leadership and remind them that they were not the bearers of leadership and authority.  Clearly, especially, they wanted to claim Jesus, whom the religious leadership despised, as true source of leadership and authority.


     (Not sure when I'm come back again, but I think I'll come back again eventually.)


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(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.  Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 191 New Testament.
(2) Ibid. 878 Hebrew Bible.
(3) Ibid. 879 Hebrew Bible.
(4) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 64. 

Acts 3:17-26

     It's been about two months but I always had intended to come back here.  Things got busy for a month, and then incredibly un-busy and un-motivating for a month.  Writing sometimes comes easy for me, and most times incredibly slowly.  I can sit here as hours pass by waiting for the right thought to come to mind so that I can compose the right sentence which would cohere well with the previous sentence.  Most of the time I am utterly dissatisfied, so what I write ends up taking hours, even if I only intended it to take 10 minutes.  I know this is good for me because writing helps me remember and soak in information (otherwise I would forget... and I forget such things very easily).  The point is that I'm still trying to make an effort, so here we go.

    The passage from Acts 3:17-26 continues Peter's sermon to the Jews.  Here, he continues to tell them that the culmination of the very hopes that had shaped their cultural and religious understanding (especially as it surrounds the message of the prophets) was found in this person called Jesus.  NT Wright emphasizes in v.20-21 the following phrases: times of refreshment and when God will restore all things¹ (English translation based on Wright's translation, not the NRSV).

     Wright talks about a time when he went on this hike in Scotland, and he and his companions were getting really tired, thirsty, and hot from the sun.  Then, out of a blue, a vehicle stops by and gives the group a bunch of cold drinks to help them along their way.  Wright says that these cold drinks came as a surprise for them, but it was so nice to get something in the meantime.  "It was still good to get back to the camp, but the refreshment had come to meet us before we even finished the walk."²   This example is used, of course, as an illustration for the passage - that the life lived is this journey towards a final destination where "God will restore all things," and that this is the hope of one who puts her faith in God.  Jesus, specifically, is he who would be the conduit through which all things are restored. So, while it's been a long and tiring journey, there is always the anticipation that the journey will finally end and there will be the ultimate opportunity for final rest.  Before that, though, God provides moments - whether expected or unexpected - of much-needed refreshment.

     Not too long ago I finished watching the last 2 episodes of a Netflix series called When They See Us, which is based on the real-life stories of individuals once vilified as the Central Park Five.  I saw the press conference interview with Oprah and learned about the depressing direction the show would go in documenting the life circumstances of 5 innocent victims in a court justice system that was hungry to convict them of a heinous crime.  Eventually these people were exonerated and given a $40 million settlement, but not before having their lives scarred by prison.

     There's a lot of details I could give, but the point is that these people had to serve some really hard time, and had their innocence stolen away from them when they were locked up.  Some had it far worse than others, and some seemed more well-adjusted than others.  They all seemingly live relatively comfortable lives now as millionaires, celebrities, and contributing members of society.  Because of them, there is more awareness of the wrongs of the justice system and perhaps more continuing impetus to change it for the better.  Because of them, one can say, God is working in a way that we can't imagine.  Maybe it is now where we can see that small glimpse of the refreshment perhaps, and we can look forward to the day when God will use this tragedy and others to help restore all things.

     Oprah did ask these men now if they felt their experience was worth the lives they are currently living, and all of them give a resounding "NO."  There was a lost childhood they could never take back, serious psychological trauma they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives, and broken relationships with family that could never be healed.  One person did seem to find more solace in his faith (he is Muslim), but one lost his religion.  One became a repeat offender and found himself in prison again.  Another has trouble speaking in straight, coherent sentences.

     It's one of the things I think and worry about: That the hope of God's promises in this journey of life ultimately become empty for millions across the world, because out of those who reap the benefits and outcomes of the differences made are those millions who come before it, as the punching bags.  They may have moments of refreshment, but in the end we may ask them the question, "Was it all worth it?" and they may respond with a resounding NO.

     What happens to the soul of the person who has his innocence stolen from him, becomes an atheist, harbors hatred against his father, and lives broken, all because of something he could not control?  Was the destruction of his soul worth it for the restoration of God's Kingdom?

     I suppose I am just a worm, who must despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
   

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(1) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 56. 
(2) Ibid 57.
   

Acts 3:11-16

      Well, it's been a few days since I've posted anything, and a few days since I've really looked at anything.  It's been a little tougher as we're in finals week, and I am doing my best to try to focus as much of my attention on my final exams as possible. I may not post very much over this next week, but I still wanted to devote a little time tonight to the reading.  It may not be a lot, but perhaps I will come back to it again at a later time. 

      The reading from Acts 3:11-16 occurs right after Peter and John look intently at the beggar and use the name of Jesus to heal him.  What I find significant here is this word amazement, which (as I mentioned previously) I was slightly obsessed with in our Luke reading. I looked up this word in an old Interlinear Bible that I was given, and found that this word from Acts 3:10 seems to be the same word that is used often in the book of Luke to refer to the reaction of onlookers upon witnessing acts of God, or acts of Jesus (θάμβους)¹.  

     So why is this significant?  What I've noticed in the reading of Luke is that this word seems to be used only when it comes to the reactions of others to the works of God or Jesus.  People are amazed at Jesus, and Jesus lets them be amazed at him, and attention remains with him.  But the moment Peter and John do something that Jesus had previously done and people are amazed, for the first time we see this question asked: "Why do you wonder at this...?" (3:12) That is, I believe we had not previously seen this question asked in Luke.  Because of this, I think this question alone is another one of Luke's ways of drawing distinction to Jesus, and equating the works of Jesus to the works of the Holy Spirit, which are the works of God.  When Peter and John are quick to insist that the attention of the onlookers be turned to Jesus, they are drawing attention away from themselves. They don't want credit for what is done; they don't want the distinction.  They are undeserving of the amazement.  

     This makes me want to be a little more careful in the future of how I use the words "wonder" and "amazement." 

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(1) The Interlinear Bible.  Jay P. Green, Ed. & Trans. Baker (1976): 827.

Acts 3:1-10

      I've finally reached the next chapter!  That took a while.  The next reading comes from Acts 3:1-10, where Peter and John are walking together on their way to the temple, when they run into a regular beggar on the street asking for money. Peter and John look intently at the beggar, and tells the beggar to do the same, and then Peter tells the beggar to walk "in the name of Jesus" (v. 6) The beggar is healed, praises God, and the people around are... *cue in dramatic music* "filled with wonder and amazement"¹ (v. 10).  Before I even got to this point, I already suspected that Luke would mention that people would be either amazed or afraid.  Luke usually has a tendency to say this after some miraculous event.

      One thing that stood out to me in reading this section was that the apostles were still very much Jewish, and were very much interested in worshiping at the temple with other Jews³.  These early believers of Jesus didn't branch off into a private sect and isolate themselves from others around them.  Sure, they still had their own four landmarks (apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayer²). But at this point they still very much saw themselves as part of the greater community of Judaism.  They were intent on keeping faithful to their religious identity, and on engaging with the world around them. 

      This observation seems very significant to me.  I think a part of me wants to say, of course this is obvious. Jesus was so significantly fresh in their minds, and they were Jews who saw Jesus as the culmination of the hope they had longed for for centuries.  They would never give up their identity as Jews.  But another part of me wants to point it out to recognize that there's a strong connection we nowadays should have to Judaism. I feel like any Christian who wants to understand Christianity more would do well to study more Judaism.

      Another thing that stood out to me was that Peter and John looked intently at the beggar who was asking for money. This was a guy who had been there for years, and everyone recognized him as that same guy who was always there. But did these people do what Peter and John did?  Was there this personal, eye-to-eye contact with that beggar? 

Somehow there is something important about that deep, face-to-face contact: not only did Peter and John stare at him, but they told him to look hard at them, too. No good turning your face away in embarrassment, as often happens with beggars who are ashamed to catch your eye, and passers-by who are equally ashamed to look at beggars. What is about to happen is something that involves a deep human contact as well as a deep work of God.⁴

This made me wonder how much it rings true to us nowadays.  Even now when I see homeless people that I don't know (i.e., anyone who doesn't go to my church) I am afraid to make eye contact with them.  It's sad, but they're just another person standing there in that corner.  I think nowadays I may feel a little more compassion towards them, and maybe if they talked to me I might be less uptight and anxious about talking to them.  But for the most part I still ignore them, and this does make me feel like I need to be more conscious about making that deeper human contact with other people (so long as I am safe), so that they know that I respect them as a person and not just as another object in the corner to pass by like the tree or the light pole is an object in the corner.

     The third thing that stood out to me was the title of and emphasis that NT Wright gives to this section of the reading: "More than He Bargained for."  This theme seems to happen a lot in my reading of Luke's writing. There are these people, and these people are hopeless.  They don't see a future for themselves (like those "dry bones") and they can't foresee anything positive to happen.  For some of these people, they had suffered their whole lives (like the woman with the bleeding problem, or these beggars in the street).  All they want is a little bit of relief, or just a little bit of comfort in the midst of their terribly uncomfortable life.  But God's purposes and intentions are so much more and so much greater than what these people have ever thought.  God had actualized a circumstance for these people that was so much more than what they could ever imagine for themselves.  In these circumstances, what else, but amazement? 

     I'm still waiting for my moment of amazement, whatever that will be. The pessimist in me suspects that it will never come (it seems awfully self-absorbed, selfish, and self-serving to expect it at all). I suspect I should instead look towards God's kingdom purposes and seek that first; even if I'm still doubtful that anything else will be added unto me.

   What a downer.  I really should have just ended this post with the amazing rhetorical question.


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(1) During our Luke study over Lent season, I became slightly obsessed with the occurrence of this word "amazement" and "fear" in the Gospel.  As a result of this, I made an extensive chart showing all of the instances where these words showed up.  I somewhat stopped as we kept reading, though (the word didn't come up as often, and I wasn't sure where I was going anymore in my interest in those words). 
(2) See post from previous day (Acts 2:42-47)
(3) An interesting side note here: I noticed that they they went to the temple at 3:00 in the afternoon.  My study Bible commentary notes that this was when sacrifice was offered.  However, they reference Ex. 29:39 and Lev 6:20, which states that sacrifices should be offered in the morning and in the evening (doesn't say anything about the afternoon).  This is curious to me. 
(4) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part 1. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 50. 

Acts 2:42-47

     I've finally made it to the end of Chapter 2.  It seems I may have spent about a week on this chapter (maybe more), and I probably have to read the whole thing again in one sitting just because I might have lost sight of the bigger picture perspective of this specific chapter.  That's OK, though.  Sometimes a big read-through teaches you certain things, and sometimes a focused read-through teaches you other things. 

     Here in Acts 2:42-47, we read about what went on with the early followers of Jesus, and how these people built community with one another.  The significant theme NT Wright outlines is that these early group of believers modeled for us the way a Christian community ought to be lived.  There are "four landmarks of the church," which include: 1) the teachings; 2) the common life (a.k.a. "fellowship"); 3) the breaking of bread; and 4) the prayers.¹  All four of these landmarks are significant, and when one aspect goes missing things don't work out the way they are supposed to. 

     When I read this several thoughts came to my head.  One thought was about of my own life, and how much my upbringing mirrored this.  It was incredibly important and significant to have that Christian community around - they were essentially every part of our lives.  We went to church at least four days a week: Sunday morning (Sunday school & worship), Sunday evening (dinner and evening service), Wednesday evening (prayer meeting) and Friday evening (youth group).  In my upbringing church was everything.

     Another thought that came to my head was about the absence of this, particularly in the lives of some of my friends who do not go to church.  In the nonreligious friends I see parts of these things (eating together, spending time together), and I see what seems to be parts of a nice, wholesome life.  For them their lives seem to work.  But what I've recently noticed in a good friendship with a non-religious person is this sense that something is missing when notions of prayer and God's sovereignty and governance are absent. It's hard to explain, but without these religious notions that have helped bound my relationships together, and kept me with a sense of security and hope for this life, I'm left with a somewhat unsettled groundlessness in talking to them about their lives and their futures.  Sometimes I find my attempts at encouragement to be empty when the hope of/faith in God's governance is missing from the language of my conversations. 

     Yet another thought that came was the other extreme of this - when a community grounded in religious belief becomes cultic and ends up corrupting.  These communities do practice these four landmarks are indeed held together.  But they can become, to some, more like a prison cell (for both the mind and the individual members).  In the name of the religion, religious beliefs, threat of hell, hope of heaven, etc., people can become trapped in hopeless and toxic circumstances which end up destroying their souls and senses of self worth. They are told to sacrifice and give up their well-being, because their lives are worthless compared to the greater glory of "God's kingdom work."  In some stories I've watched in Escaping Polygamy, women who are deemed "unworthy" in God's eyes are separated from their children (often for years, or for lifetimes), and are then forced to live in isolation in order to contemplate their sins and seek repentance.  These people can become so broken down and think so lowly of themselves that they are more like obedient automatons, hoping beyond all hope that they will be at least OK enough in God's eyes to be welcomed into heaven. The need for community is strong in us as humans, and the need to share our lives of faith together is so essential.  But the risk of deterioration and corruption within a community can also seem so high.

     These early Christians lived lives that would be very difficult for us to live nowadays.  We are told that "the earliest Christian families lived as a single family," and that they didn't have strong notions of possessions.² Rather than keep their excess earnings for themselves, they put it all in a pot and shared it with others who did not have enough.  Sounds exactly like what the FLDS are doing.

      So what is the difference, then?  What makes a Christian community the kind of wholesome community that God intends, and another one toxic? 

      I don't have a good answer to this question.  Wright talks about the importance of agape love, and the need to generously share our resources. He thinks these elements will help to draw people in to the community. I would probably add to this and take an idea that Martin Luther King discusses when he talks about just and unjust laws - consider what uplifts the human personality and what degrades the human personality. I'm sure there's more here we could add on, to help strengthen our understanding of the four landmarks.


     Anyways, I have a number of other thoughts about community and the communities that I am in now.  I can't seem to fit them well into what I want to say, so I'll just stop here. 

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(1) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 44.
(2) Ibid, 46.

Acts 2:37-41

     I hope no one RSS feeds my blog, because I have a habit of constantly going back and editing my posts, and re-editing my posts, and then re-editing them again (that's a lot of notifications of updates).  I think this is yet another reason why I hate writing papers.  It's hard to get past the first paragraph because I wouldn't be able to be fully satisfied with it  And then, after all that editing I take it to the professor who writes all over it and tells me it's wrong. 😑  Truly, I should be more compassionate towards my students.  If they're at all like me with their editing tendencies I would totally shatter their universe.  That should be my motto:  Shattering students for 15 years, and counting.


     Back to Acts.  Today's reading comes from Acts 2:37-41.  At this rate I'm seriously never going to make it to Chapter 3.  I don't think I'm going to do any intertextual stuff today, but I did read some things that NT Wright covered in his book, which were somewhat encouragements.  Wright starts off this section talking about someone who is going down a steep hill and is going so fast that they can't stop.¹  Sometimes this can be dangerous (Wright was talking about sledding down a hill, and heading straight towards a cliff).  In times like these the only thing that can stop them is this sheer force (like a wall) to help keep them from plunging down further.  On a side note, this metaphor made me think of the time I was in Mexico with the missions team, and we went hiking one morning up on the hill (our campground was in a valley).  As we were coming down I was running down the hill, and I realized that I wasn't able to stop.  So I remember running downhill going, "I can't stop!  I can't stop!  I can't stop!"  My friend Kit got in my way, stood still, pivots his leg, and just grabs me.  We all made it down the hill in one piece, thankfully.  Our time and hike up that hill was a really memorable moment.

     Anyways, the point of Wright's story is to say that this describes the projection of those who are living in evil and corruption.  They are headed towards a cliff, and their eventual downfall is destruction.  The people who heard Peter's sermon seemed to recognize this need for repentance when they say in v. 37, "What should we do?"  This, by the way, also echoes or alludes to Luke 3:10, where the listeners to John the Baptist ask the same question when John calls them to repentance.

     Another side note.  One of my favorite philosophers is my former professor, John Hare.  It's been a long time since I've read him, but out of all of my professors he's one who has made the biggest impact in my life.  In my classes now I play a debate between him and Peter Singer, where they discuss the question of whether God is necessary for morality.  One of the points that Hare makes in this debate is the argument of God's governance.  He says the following:

God has organized the world in such a way that our morality and our happiness can be consistent with each other... How can I trust that the moral life and my happiness can be consistent with each other, so that I don't have to do what's morally wrong in order to be happy?

If I don't have that trust, then the commitment to the moral life becomes rationally unstable, because our experience of the world is one in which those two good things, morality and happiness, come apart. The most that we can justify by enlightened self-interest is being fairly good - at least, when other people are looking.  But morality requires unconditional commitment to the impartial point of view, or the point of view of the universe... 

...[Without this hope that God governs the universe], the moral life would not be worthwhile. The same thing can be found in my father's work², who talks about the governance of the universe, about people like Hitler coming to a bad end.  He quotes from Psalm 75:3, where God says, in the translation from the Book of Common Prayer which my father loved, "The earth is weak and all of the inhabiters thereof; I bear the pillars of it." 

So this is a basic trust in the governance of the universe that I'm talking about, that the good is more fundamental in it than the evil, and that good will, in the end, prevail. As Martin Luther King Jr. said: "I still believe that one day humankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.  We shall overcome."³

I spoke last night of hoping that we really do have salvation from the corruption around us (especially religious corruption).  I think one of Hare's reasons here for the belief in God is to say that we do.  Peter in Acts testifies exactly to this when he says that Jesus, who took on the height of evil itself, has ensured that we can be saved.  According to Wright's commentary, the corrupt are like the ones falling faster and faster down the hill and are headed towards the cliff.  The only thing that can stop them and break their momentum is the strong foundation of Jesus. "'Salvation' is therefore pointing towards a very concrete and particular reality in the future... 'Salvation' regularly refers constantly, not in the least in Luke and Acts, to specific acts of 'rescue' within the present life: being 'saved' from this potential disaster, here and now."⁴

     Most days I'm sure my faith is only hanging on by a thread.  But there's a really stubborn part of me that just hangs on, and won't let go to the hope of this kind of salvation.


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(1) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 40.
(2) John Hare's father is utilitarian philosopher RM Hare.
(3) Hare, John & Peter Singer. "Moral Mammals: Does Atheism or Theism Provide the Best Foundation for Human Worth and Morality?" A Place for Truth. Dallas Willard, Ed. InterVarsity Press (2010): 178-180.  The debate is also available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU7sqi8iBBI
(4) Wright, 43.

Acts 2:22-36

*+*+* Last updated May 8th (scroll down down down) *+*+*

     Just for some context to set things up to where we are now: Jesus' followers are all together in a place to commemorate the 50th day after Passover known as the Festival of Weeks (a.k.a. Pentecost).  Then, like a violent wind, God sends down the Paraclete to inhabit the people (a "law on their hearts"), redefining the previously-held divine-human boundary. The followers began speaking in the tongues of other languages, and outside observers are unsure of what's going on.  They wonder if they're all drunk, and Peter speaks out in part to dispel their suspicions.  He testifies that this event is yet another example of how Scripture has been fulfilled through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  He tells them that we are in "the last days," and that God's long-awaited promise is not just arrived, but made available to all people from all nations.

     So Acts 2:22-36 is the continuation of Peter's speech to the people.  He continues to talk about Jesus, the one whose ministry revealed signs and wonders, and the one whom the Jews had arrested and crucified. Peter then asserts that Jesus is also one whom David (also considered a prophet) referred to in the Psalms, and that this resurrected Jesus is the one whom the apostles are witnesses of.   He references the following Old Testament passages: Psalm 16:8-11; II Samuel 7:12-13 & Psalm 132:11; and Psalm 110:1


Psalm 16:8-11

     Because I am in super-nerd mode tonight, I'm going to give four versions of the Psalm to compare-contrast.  The first lines comes from the NRSV translations; the second lines come from the Jewish Study Bible¹ (what Jews nowadays would probably read... from a contemporary Masoretic translation) and an online version of the Septuagint translation.  My NRSV Study Bible² mentions that all OT citations in the book of Acts are based on the Septuagint (LXX).  I think the NRSV uses the Masoretic (MT) as its source, and the Jewish Study Bible most certainly uses MT.  My main goal is to use the three Psalms versions to help me compare with what Peter says in Acts.

Psalm 16:8-11 (NRSV MT)	Acts 2:25-28 (NRSV)
8 I keep the Lord always before me;     because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;     my body also rests secure. 10 For you do not give me up to Sheol,     or let your faithful one see the Pit. 11 You show me the path of life.     In your presence there is fullness of joy;     in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.	‘I saw the Lord always before me,     for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;     moreover my flesh will live in hope. 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,     or let your Holy One experience corruption. 28 You have made known to me the ways of life;     you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
Psalm 16:8-11 (Jewish MT)	Psalm 16:8-11 (LXX)
8 I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence;    He is at my right hand; I shall never be shaken. 9 So my heart rejoices,     my whole being exults,     and my body rests secure. 10 For You will not abandon me to Sheol,     or let Your faithful one see the Pit. 11 You will teach me the path of life. In Your presence is perfect joy;     Delights are ever in Your right hand.	8 I foresaw the Lord always before my face;     for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart rejoiced an my tongue exulted;     moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: 10 because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,      neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. 11 Thou hast made known to me the ways of life;      thou wilt fill me with joy with thy countenance:      at thy right hand there are delights for ever.

I'm glad I did this, because I notice interesting differences.  Here are some (but not all) of them:

• NRSV MT says: "I keep the Lord always before me" and Acts/LXX says "I saw/foresaw the Lord always before me."
• Jewish MT and Acts say the same: "I will not be shaken," while NRSV MT and LXX say "I shall not be/I should not be moved." 
• Both MT versions use the present tense in v.9 ("My heart rejoices"/"My heart is glad") whereas LXX/Acts use the past tense ("My heart was glad"/"my heart rejoiced.")
• Both MT versions refer to a "faithful one" who God will not let see "the Pit."  But both LXX/Acts instead talk about the "Holy One" (emphasis on capitalization) who God will not let "experience/see corruption." 
• MT versions say "You will show me"/"You will teach me" whereas LXX/Acts say "you have made known to me." (I don't know what the tense word for this is, but maybe whatever it is, it's significant)

Anyways, I'm not smart enough (or educated enough) to understand these differences.  I'll just leave it here for now as observations and maybe one day I'll figure it out.  For the most part I currently don't see these differences as useful given my level of understanding.  What might be useful, though, is the noticeable difference occurring in Ps 16:11 (all versions) and Acts 2:28.  Here, Peter omits the part about the "right hand."  This is interesting, because he does talk about the right hand later in Acts 2:34.  So is he leaving it out to re-interpret it later, or leaving it out to emphasize it later?  I don't know. 

     I think I'm going to leave my study at this tonight, and maybe come back to it later.  At this rate I think I'm totally not going to finish my 10.5-year plan on time 😅.  Oh well, I'm just going to go slowly because I'm just slow.  And I'm not in a rush so who's counting down?  Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with some deep spiritual insight rather than these boring intertextual comparisons.  It's not boring; it's fascinating. 🤨

May the Fourth (be Mia's Birthday) Update

      Unfortunately, I haven't really gotten around to thinking more about these sets of verses tonight.  I did, however, read all of Psalms 16 ("A Psalm of Trust and Security in God").  The interesting thing I gathered from that was that, within the context of Peter's speech in Acts, it seems very clear that he is saying that David was making references to Jesus.  But the more I read that Psalm, the more it seems to be talking about the Holy Spirit.  For example, what Peter left out in his quote was Ps 16:7, which when read alongside of 8-11, sounds more like language indicative of a Paraclete.  Here it is again, but now within the context of v. 7:

7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
   in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I keep the Lord always before me;
   because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
    my body also rests secure.
10 For you do not give me up to Sheol,
    or let your faithful one see the Pit.
11 You show me the path of life.
    In your presence there is fullness of joy;
    in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

     In any case, this was an interesting find for me, as this might have been one of the areas in Scripture where theologians believe point towards the Trinity (note the kind-of interchangeableness of language that includes God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit together). The quote above is actually from the NRSV (MT source), but if you looked at the LXX source, a significant identifier is from v. 10, which Peter quotes, is "Holy One" (emphasis on capitals, which always indicates God or a Godhead).

     Perhaps this may have been quite obvious to some, and perhaps it may have been something I may have learned earlier before and forgotten. But it seems like a new discovery to me today, to read this Psalm slowly and get that sense. So I think that's kind of cool.


     There's a part of me that feels like I should rush to stay on schedule and just get to the next set of verses already. But I think I actually enjoy going through a few of these over the course of several days. It gives time for things to soak in slowly, which is, I think, the way Scripture is meant to be done (slow meditation). So maybe my 10.5 year plan will be more like a 21 year plan. Oh well.


May 6 Update

II Samuel 7:12-13; Psalm 132:11

     So I missed a day (yesterday), but only in the blog world did I miss the day.  I did spend some of yesterday reading through II Sam 7 and Psalm 132, and thinking especially about II Sam 7.  I thought this chapter was interesting because it was when David wanted to build God a permanent residence (a "house of cedar"), because God's ark had always resided in tents.  This didn't seem right to David, for him to live in a house while God's presence dwelled in a temporary structure.  However, God spoke to Nathan and told him to tell David that He had never asked for a house of cedar.  Instead of David building something for God, God promises to build David a house (that is, God will give David a dynasty).  (Side note: as we know, or should know, David was not the one to build God's Temple.  Solomon was to be the one.)

    Psalm 132 seems to be a song/poem recounting these events and this promise of God to establish a dynasty for David.  It also speaks of a chosen residence for God (his "habitation" and "resting place").

Acts 2:30 (NRSV)
Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne.
II Sam 7:12-13 (NRSV)	Psalm 132:11 (NRSV)
12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.	The Lord swore to David a sure oath     from which he will not turn back: “One of the sons of your body     I will set on your throne.

     It's been hard to think lately, and when I can't think, things just don't come out in writing.  But I do have a few jumbled thoughts that surround these two themes of the dwelling place for God and the dynasty for David. It's significant that these two go together, and that God in part sees David's heart and turns it around, giving David a permanent residence in history.  But it isn't just this that God does.  God's purposes here and his words seem to have multiple meanings.  God promises David a dynasty.  But also, from David's dynasty will come God's promise to establish a physical Temple (through his son Solomon).  But also, from David's dynasty/lineage will come the establishment of God's ultimate kingdom (through Jesus).  But also, from David's dynasty (as we now see in Acts) will come the establishment of God's dwelling place in the hearts of God's people (the Holy Spirit).

     There's so many but alsos, and there's probably more than this.  But that's kind of the extent that I could get at yesterday and today.  I'm sure there's more depth here in the meaning to these verses, and all this stuff could be articulated so much better than it is.  It's all I've got tonight, though, and I think it's good enough for now.


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
May 8 Update

     It's been a little tougher these past few days to keep up with the readings. In the meantime, I have been reading a little here and there. One thing that NT Wright delves into in his book is Acts 2:27, where Peter quotes Psalm 16:10. Acts 2:27 says the following: "For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption." I wondered this myself (alongside of a bunch of the other verses Peter cites, which in my lack of understanding can still seem like stretches of verses being artificially inserted into the NT in order to accommodate/mold it to a particular interpretation³).

     In any case, what Wright says here is that this verse is a pointer to what Jesus has done. Evil and death, at their height, try to defeat Jesus and bring him to his torturous end. But this would not be the end of it.

God's plan of salvation, Peter is saying, was always intended to reach its climax with Israel's Messiah undertaking his ultimate rescuing task. The anointed king would come to the place where evil was reaching its height, where the greatest human systems would reveal their greatest corruption (Rome, with its much-vaunted system of justice revealing itself rotten at the core; Israel, with its celebrated Temple and hierarchy, revealing itself hollow at its heart), and where this accumulated evil would blow itself out in one great act of unwarranted violence against the person who, of all, had done nothing to deserve it. That, the early Christians believed, was what God had always intended.⁴

     I think this is a somewhat thought-provoking verse, to wonder what it meant for the people at the time, and to wonder what it means for us today. When I initially read it, I thought of something we read in Luke (Luke 13:1), where we are told about the blood of the Galileans being mingled with their sacrifices. Here was an example of the corruption of the society at the time, and the oppressive circumstances the Jews had to live in. In this instance, some Galileans were at the Temple ready to make their sacrifices, when they were immediately slaughtered (possibly for breaking some Roman regulation). This is maybe a totally unrelated thing to what Peter (and Wright) were referring to, but it did make me think of the height of evil and corruption, and all of the examples of it that we hear about constantly in the news. Even today, the cry for salvation from corruption is great. Recently I've been watching these episodes of a show called Escaping Polygamy, talking about girls & women (and men) who were trapped in a cult (more like a Mafia family) and are in desperate need of escape.  Sometimes it's a happy ending when someone does escape, but it can be really sad and depressing, seeing so how many of women and girls are being brainwashed and beat down by a religious system that compels them to submit, or face eternal damnation in hell.

The good news, the great news, of Jesus is that with his resurrection it becomes clear not only that he is Messiah and Lord, but that in his death he has dealt evil itself a blow from which, though it still retains some real power, it will never recover.⁵

So I read a quote like this I think, I hope it's true, especially in the midst of so many who now misuse the name of Jesus to corrupt and maintain control. Evil still seems to retain a lot of pretty awful power.

     I feel like I've kind of gone off in a tangent. And this tangent I've gone off on has no resolution; only another one of those unsettling thoughts that "I hope what it says is true, because I don't see it right now."

Psalm 110:1

     I meant to move on to Psalm 110 (apparently a "messianic psalm," which NT Wright also talks about.  He talks a little about the "right hand," which was something I was interested in looking into.  Essentially Wright says here that Psalm 110 was a significant Psalm for the early Christians, because it seemed to point to Jesus as the descendant of David who is the Messiah.  I don't have really any further thoughts here, though.  It might be a good Psalm to end with and to read, after my depressing note above about the stories of evil and corruption (especially at the hands of the supposedly religious).

Acts 2:34-35 (NRSV)
34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,           ‘The Lord said to my Lord,           “Sit at my right hand, 35             until I make your enemies your footstool.”’
Psalm 110 (NRSV)	Psalm 110 (LXX)
1 The Lord says to my lord,      “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” 2 The Lord sends out from Zion      your mighty scepter.      Rule in the midst of your foes. 3 Your people will offer themselves willingly      on the day you lead your forces      on the holy mountains. From the womb of the morning, like dew, your youth will come to you. 4 The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind,      “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” 5 The Lord is at your right hand;      he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. 6 He will execute judgment among the nations,      filling them with corpses; he will shatter heads      over the wide earth. 7 He will drink from the stream by the path;      therefore he will lift up his head.	1 The Lord said to my Lord,      Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. 2 The Lord shall send out a rod of power      for thee out of Sion:      rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. 3 With thee is dominion in the day of thy power, in the splendours of thy saints:      I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning. 4 The Lord sware, and will not repent,      Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec. 5 The Lord at thy right hand      has dashed in pieces kings in the day of his wrath. 6 He shall judge among the nations,      he shall fill up the number of corpses, he shall crush the heads      of many on the earth. 7 He shall drink of the brook in the way;        therefore shall he lift up the head.

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(1) The Jewish Study Bible: Tanakh Translation. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, Eds. Oxford (2004): 1298.
(2) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.  Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 186 New Testament. 
(3) I know this to be an ignorant perspective, though (especially since I'm not skilled in exegesis and I still can't possibly see things in the way a Jewish person in the 1st Century, immersed in a lifetime of Scripture, can see things).  
(4) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 38-39.
(5) Ibid, 39.

Acts 2:14-21

     The next brief section of reading (Acts 2:14-21) talks of Peter the apostle spokesperson quoting from the book of Joel (2:28-32).  Apparently we talked about this intertextual reference in my Biblical Interpretation class (because I have Joel written in pencil in my Bible).  So what I did was I went and searched for it, and here is the chicken scratch 😅

    In reading this chicken scratch I can't really gather or remember much of what I had written or what we talked about.  I'm probably too tired to think really hard about these comparisons.  The few things that pop out to me in re-reading this was to note that Peter was saying that we are in the last days (an important theme that seems to stick out in the Acts version of Joel), and that we are living in the time of God's fulfillment of his promises. 

    I can also try to figure out the greater context by looking into Joel 2, to see what it is talking about and how Peter wants to use Joel to show that Scripture is being fulfilled on that Pentecost day in Acts.  My study Bible basically outlines it in the following way¹: 

• 2:1-11 - The locust plague, and act of God
• 2:12-17 - A call to repent
• 2:18-27 - An oracle of salvation
• 2:28-32 - The faithful are delivered 

So what I'm reading seems to be a theme that's common: there's this plague, and this plague is God's judgment.  But repent and sanctify yourselves so that the plague will be averted and you will be spared.  God will make your lands fruitful and he'll keep the invading armies away.  You will be vindicated and God will deliver you. 

     Peter, then, is referring to this last section (of the faithful being delivered).  NT Wright here uses an illustration of people who are going on a long trip.  They have this destination, but it takes a long time to get there, and there are a lot of snags on the way.  Maybe they go on detours, and they have to find their way back to the correct road.  Despite it all, after this long and tiring trip, the people have finally reached what was promised to them.

What did that mean, 'the last days'? It was a general term for the time to come, the time when promises would be fulfilled. The story would arrive at its climax, the journey would reach its destination, and so all sorts of new things would start to happen... we've arrived! The journey's over!  Here are the signs of the destination!  Time to have a fresh look around and see where we are!²

As we know, the journey doesn't necessarily end when we reach our destination (it certainly doesn't end here).  Once they're there, they have to settle in and explore and do the next thing. 

     I'm pretty tired, and I can't think of any continuation of what I just wrote above.  Maybe I'll come back later to continue it.  Maybe not.  In the meantime, I wanted to note that the other thing that stuck out to me (related to what was read yesterday) about this coming together of people (speaking in other native tongues) was this other representation about the universality of God's work.  It's not just for the selected few, or the elite, or the especially gifted.  Says Wright:

God's spirit has been poured out upon a lot of people all at once.  There is no discrimination between slaves and free, male and female, young and old. They are all marked out, side by side, as a nucleus of God's true people... 

This work of God is wonderfully inclusive, because there is no category of people which is left out: both genders, all ages, all social classes.  But it is wonderfully focused, because it happens to all 'who call on the name of the Lord' (verse 21). Here, once more, 'the Lord,' which in Joel meant Israel's God, YHWH, now seems to mean Jesus himself. And with this Luke introduces as vital and complex theme in his work: 'salvation.' All who call on the Lord's name will be saved.³ 

     

     Anyways, I feel like there's no huge and profound thoughts tonight.  Nevertheless, I did what I aimed to do.  I read the Bible, and I thought about it, even if not very well. 

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(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.  Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 1298-9 Hebrew Bible. 

(2) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 32.

(3) Ibid, 34.

Acts 2:5-13

      Before I get to talking about this section, I have a side note.  I went through the Acts for Everyone table of contents to count how many reading sections there are.  Apparently there are somewhere around 90 of them for 28 chapters.  This means that if I went through a section a day, it would still take me about three months to finish through the book of Acts.  This got me a little curious, so I decided to guesstimate the length of time it would take me to get through all of the books of the Bible, assuming that it would take around 90 days for every 28 chapters.  Apparently, there are a total of 929 chapters of the OT, and 260 chapters of the NT (for a total of 1189 in the Bible).  At this rate, if I were to do a section a day (John Goldingay does the OT for Everyone series and NT Wright does the NT for Everyone series), it would probably take me almost 10.5 years to get through the whole Bible. 😮
     A part of me is OK with taking the slow route (though this would be a very very slow route).  It's not all that bad of an aim, to try to get through a small section a day.  I would have a nice 10-year plan.  On the other hand, the other part of me wonders how long it will take before I get tired of it and stop (and that usually happens, because I'm very good at getting really gung-ho about something and then losing interest after a few months).
     One more thing... if I wanted to buy the whole Bible for Everyone set in one swoop (a 35-volume set), it would cost me a total of $450. 😲 Or, I could just get a book at a time, which would be less burdensome.  I think this book series actually might be a pretty good volume to put in my library, so I'm not opposed to starting a collection, as long as it doesn't go out of print in 10 years.  In the meantime, we'll see how long it takes before I lose interest.  It'll be a shocker if I last the 10 years.  For now, I'll just take it a day at a time.

* + * + * + * + * + * + * + *

     The reading for today comes from Acts 2:5-13, which is somewhat like "Part II" of the account of what happened when the Holy Spirit came down like a violent wind.  I wrote in a footnote yesterday that the people speaking in tongues thing reminded me of the Tower of Babel story (CC: Gen 11:1-9; "Babel" means "confusion" ¹), where God scattered the people and confused them with different languages.  I remember there was a parallel between this and the Pentecost story, where the opposite occurs - God in a sense unites the people together by some work of a supernatural universal translator.

     We're all pretty familiar with this story of how people in their pride wanted to be like God and build a tower to heaven, so God cursed them with different languages so they couldn't understand each other.  At this level, then, we can see how this Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative is coming through in the Acts reading (God now doing the work of redeeming by uniting people in their languages, so that we can be restored to our created nature and created purpose).

     When I read the Tower of Babel story again, though, and look at the commentary footnotes, some more interesting things arise which might shed deeper light into the aforementioned narrative.

     The first thing that stood out to me was the following: "This narrative (from the non-Priestly or J source) revisits the theme of preservation of the divine-human boundary."² This boundary also is noted as having been asserted in Gen 3:22-24, when Adam & Eve ate the fruit to be like God; and in Gen 6:1-4, when God gives humans a mortal life-span. I think this is worth noting because something significant happens with this boundary when the Holy Spirit (God) comes down to dwell in human beings. I'm not sure what else to say here other than that it's worth noting that God's boundaries have been re-drawn somehow because of what Jesus had done.

    The second thing that stood out to me was Gen 11:4, which talks about the humans who build the tower to "make a name" for themselves, so that they would not be scattered across the earth.  The commentary here says that following:

The humans are depicted as fearful of being scattered and thus aiming to make a name for themselves through a tower reaching into heaven. The humans' intention here to stay together contradicts the divine imperative to "fill the earth" now found in Priestly traditions (1.28; 9.1,7).³

This is significant, because it helps to reinforce this great theme we see emerging in the New Testament of "filling the earth."  I see this as an imperative of cosmopolitanism (I'm not sure if this is the right word to use, but I can call it "the imperative of the worldwide-ness of the kingdom of God.").  Included in this, then, is that what was for the Jews is for all the world - God's intentions are meant to be extended to all people everywhere. We see this as well with the Great Commission of Jesus, to "go make disciples of all nations"  (Matt 28:19). So at Babel, God divides the people so that they would "be fruitful and multiply" and "fill the earth."  He does this as a curse, so people would be compelled to do what God wants.  At Pentecost in Acts, however, God through Jesus undoes the curse, and restores and unites them through a blessing and a gift.  With this gift, they as agents of renewal can be empowered to fill the earth in this new, redeemed way, in order to help bring about what God had intended all along.

Now, Luke is implying, with the day of Pentecost this curse is itself overturned; in other words, God is dramatically signalling that his promises to Abraham are being fulfilled, and the whole human race is going to be addressed with the good news of what has happened in and through Jesus.⁴

     So I think that's it for tonight.  A few interesting insights gathered once again from the footnotes of the study Bible.  As usual these posts are taking me several hours to get through.  I am trying to take the positive perspective and count these are worth my time, though (rather than not worth my time and procrastinating from what I should be doing).  True, I do enjoy it; but also true, there's a part of me that thinks in the long run this regularity will be worth it.  There's also the skeptic part of me that considers this just another thing that will die away in a few months.  We'll see what happens.

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(1) The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha.  Michael Coogan, ed. Oxford (2007): 26 Hebrew Bible. 
(2) Ibid 25 Hebrew Bible.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Wright, NT. Acts for Everyone: Part I. Westminster John Knox Press (2008): 29.