I-N-G-S is for "It's New God-Speak"

God came to us then at Pentecost,
to Wendell Berry and Robert Frost,
to put a new spin on our old word "home,"
converting plain prose into Spirited poem.

God took the stern vocables, "discipline"
and (sterner still) "obedience,"
disarming them of the firing-pin
of Levitical law and sinner's offense,
through Steven the Kuhl, articulate tool,
and Michael, a Hoy, a kindler of joy.

"It's new God-speak." With this simple, four-word explanation Peter could have replied to the Pentecost crowd who "were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean'?" Think how the text would then read. "Others sneered and said, 'They are filled with new wine.' But Peter,...raised his voice and said, 'New wine?! This is new God-speak." He didn't say that. But he could have.

Some of us have been on a theological kick for the last forty, fifty years, reminding one another what all it means to say that Christ came to "save the world." Right, he came first of all to save people, human persons, worldlings. And them, because they are uniquely created in God's own image, he came to save eternally. But there is so much else about the world that he came to "save" as well, even if all that is merely a temporary creation and scheduled for eventual liquidation. He came to save the Law, for instance, if only for awhile yet. He came, as Paul insisted, "not to abolish the Law but to uphold it." Indeed, as Jesus himself says, he came to save "every jot and tittle" of the Law, at its original very best, and not to abandon it to legalists and antinomians -- until, of course, it too will "pass away." But when it does, and God will say when, it will in turn be replaced by "a new heaven and a new earth."

Michael Hoy once wrote an article in dialog calling attention to this "save the world" theme, and wrote a whole book on how he found that theme in Liberation Theology. Steven Kuhl, once a space scientist and before that a farm boy, wrote a book on how Christ, as Saver of the world, has something saving to say to agriculture, as a demoralized culture. Ed Schroeder, another farm boy, reminds us of the prayer in The Eucharist which talks of "the care and redemption of all that you have made." This newsletter, to the groans of its longsuffering readers, has long indulged the most atrocious punnery and word-play -- Word-play! What we intended by that, I probably need to explain, is that even language, no matter how ordinary a part of the Old Creation it is, is fair game for being re-Worded by the Pentecostal Spirit.

In an ethics class the other evening, where we are trying to "save" the sexuality of marriage, there was a cute episode about the word "carnal." That's the closest word in English to the Latin carnalis, which means fleshly. We wanted to make the point that marriage, which Scripture boldly calls a "one-flesh" union, is definitely "carnal." But student Nell Pinckert, who has her own bold way with words, winced at using such an adjective for marriage. "Because it sounds so negative," she said. She's right, it does. That's just the point, and the challenge. How to take such an Old Creation thing as marriage and call it by its name, "flesh," without thereby putting it down but on the contrary extolling it? So Nell, swallowing a bit hard, toughed it out and even dared to say the words, "glorious carnality." It's new God-speak. Thanks to Pentecost.

rwb