The next generation will prophesy

One of the best/only(?) gifts the non-denominational church I grew up in gave me is that they seemed to care not at all about teaching scripture, just forcing kids to memorize cherry-picked verses so that we could be wielded as adorable, and unignorable weapons of evangelization. I call this a gift because, now, the vast majority of the Bible remains virtually untouched for me. Maybe podcast references or textbook chapters from my fall New Testament class on the Epistles have given me some context, but aside from the tired and overused verses that continue to fuel conservative evangelical theology, I get a mostly blank slate introduction to the rest!

The Pentecost story is one of those mostly blank ones for me—and thanks be to God for that, because what a beautiful story with so many angles to explore it is. For my friends who also have a blank slate this 50th day after Easter, let me paint a quick picture: 

The apostles are hanging out, maybe crafting their dinner menu for the week so they won’t have to make a bunch of trips to the market or something. But all of the sudden, a super loud noise like gusty winds fill the house, and they all start speaking in languages they’ve never learned. We can imagine that they probably ran outside or something bc what else are you supposed to do in that circumstance?? I’d be freaking out for sure. And like any good middle school lunchroom commotion, this activated the attention and curiosity of all the people who were around, so they came over to see what was going on. All of the onlookers heard what the apostles were saying in their own respective languages—which only adds to the wildness of the sitch bc the onlookers were from allllll around that region of the globe. Some people where like “Lets fucking go? Lets go? I guess?”and kept listening, but other people were like “Damn. 9am is a little early to be wasted, don’t you think?” And then Peter gets up on his soapbox and does his little thing up there and some people like it so they become Christian.

Like any good seminarian who has just finished their first year of classes(read: is annoying), I have nuanced thoughts about The Message translation of the Bible. On one hand, it’s written to be accessible to normal people who don’t happen to have PhDs in Shakespearian rhetoric. On the other hand, there are some liberties taken from the original Greek that I don’t think are always necessary. But, after my own heart, most of those liberties are taken to amp up the drama of it all. So it can stay. Anyway—I want to highlight a section of what Peter said on his soapbox, but I’m going to use the MSG translation, with some of my own edits inserted for gender neutrality. 

Peter says, “...this is what the prophet Joel announced would happen: “In the Last Days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: [The next generation] will prophesy; Your young [adults] will see visions, your [elders] will dream dreams. When the time comes, I’ll pour out my Spirit on those who serve me, [of any gender], and they’ll prophesy.”(Acts 2:16-18ish, MSG) 

It always changes how I read scripture when I’m reminded that the apostles were around my age—likely in their 20s—during the time of Acts. Narrating the scene for the onlooking crowd, a young adult Peter repeats, with “bold urgency,”(MSG) centuries-old wisdom from the prophet Joel, who speaks from a time of great social devastation and upheaval. Helping people make sense of this mystical, maybe slightly scary, scene of young prophets overcome with the languages of the World, Peter takes his stand and the Holy Spirit shows up to steady his voice.

God says, in no uncertain terms, that young people will be the ones to look to for confirmation that we are in the end days. And because we know that “end” for God is synonymous with “new beginning,” I think we should read this as God saying that young people are the ones to follow to the other side of Resurrection. If we substitute these two ideas in the scripture, I think God could be saying, “As we enter new beginnings, young people will point us in the right direction. Young adults will re-write mission statements and build new structures, church elders will offer their wisdom as guidance. The time has come, and I’m already working through those who prioritize neighbor over arbitrary traditions.”(Acts 2:16-18-ish, Kayla’s version)

I’m only a couple of weeks into this focused exploration of death & resurrection, so I don’t really have more to offer than noticings and curiosities. But one noticing I’ve picked up on so far is that God shows us over and over that current leaders rarely are the people who lead us towards resurrection. It’s the voices silenced by Empire, the voices who haven’t (at least yet) been given platforms, the voices who care more about Truth than protecting equilibrium, who lead us in those directions. When we are only willing to appoint those who have demonstrated enough moderation to be trusted by the institution, we deny the Holy Spirit’s anointing of the prophets, visionaries, and dreamers that Peter boasts about, and we prolong the time in which we sit in the pain of death.

I don’t want this platform to become a weekly lectionary text study or anything. There are brilliant and qualified people already doing that work. But, for this week, I can’t help but get on my own soapbox to talk about Peter on his soapbox—two young adults, standing in our time-appropriate public spheres(Peter in a densely populated, public space, me on the internet with 15 substack subscribers lol), begging for people to hear, see, and be activated by the Holy Spirit through our calls for a different world that we have both the responsibility and the power to create.

That’s what I have for this week. Love ya!

P.S. The preview photo for this is post me and two of my brilliant, prophetic seminarian peers, Erik Nelson(far left) and Rachel Wyffels(far right), who go to Luther Seminary, doing a “silly one” with our Bishop Elect Jen Nagel, who will ordain us each in the next couple of years. Seemed like fitting ambiguity for the wrestling with Positions of Power highlighted in this post.