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But the only thing in the way before your coffee break is me. Mhm. So let's get it on. Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray. Every time I

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feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray. Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray. Oh every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will

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pray Curry Lecture# two. Every time I feel the spirit a new rheumatology for particular charity. As I start this lecture, I remember Sam hose, who I mentioned in the first lecture, the Black

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Farm laborer who was decapitated and whose body parts were sold. All the king's horsemen and all the King's men could not put Sam holes back together again. We cannot literally remember put back together any historical body

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as we search for common ground. Those bodies are buried in the ground. But what we can do , especially in the churches, offer some constructive theological human perspectives to counter the perpetual in humanities, Inside

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and outside the church. I say this because the historical, perpetual evil inhumanity of anti blackness, anti black bodies, anti black humanity is actually anti spirit . And how can it not be? So when

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we hear the apostle paul say, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? This would mean, as we said in the Q and A earlier today, that

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the assault on the black body and really anybody is an assault on God. I propose that the haunting echo of historical in humanities through slavery and christian institutions and more, can be met by another sound,

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another wind, Another Spirit, The Holy Spirit of Pentecost Fire. In this lecture, I want a foreground new methodological thinking for this conversation about racialized in humanity and humanity, despite the fact that it is

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always a precarious situation to speak about a wind that blows where it wills, but you do not know from where it comes or where it goes. The spirit is both a concealed and revealed mystery, a

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wind that hovered over the face of the waters at creation and breathe life into the world into human beings . Even on the day of Pentecost. Suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of

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a violent wind. The hebrew word for spirit rua means wind or breath. It is feminine. The greek word for spirit is neuter. We grasp for language to talk about the spirit of God. He

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she it something defy the spirit and can't make sense of this third person of the trinity who is sometimes perceived as the step child in the divine family. Yet the Holy Spirit is the Lord, the giver

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of life, the one in whom, according to theologian Juergen moellemann, our life wakes up. So for this issue of racialized inhumanity, we need to wake up, we need a wake up call.

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We need a new way, a new perspective, a new language and tongue, a new creation of sorts that might shape us to see and experience a new humanity in the future. Present to borrow from

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Dr King. The spirit can help us shift from a thing oriented society to a person oriented society in which every person, every body, every tongue is a some body not to be broken but blessed.

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I turned to the day of Pentecost and acts as a fruitful partner in this theological exploration. Liturgical Christians celebrate Pentecost as an end of the Easter season at 50 days linking the resurrection and ascension of Christ with

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the sending of the Holy Spirit. Historically, Pentecost is related to the jewish harvest festival of shall vote , or the feast of weeks. It commemorated the giving of the law at Sinai, but also celebrated

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harvesting of wheat during this festival. People could bring their first gifts to the temple as an offering Using this historical lens, one might say that Pentecost is the human experience of the first fruits of the Spirit

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or the communion of the Holy Spirit with the human spirit. The liturgical or historical significance of Pentecost is not unimportant. But this lecture aims to utilize the day of Pentecost as a lens through which to engage

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racism, racial difference and divisions in the church. One might call what I'm aiming to do, a kind of numb Atallah gee of race. Through this constructive theological reading of the day of Pentecost. I

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seek to answer this question. How might the Day of Pentecost and the work of the Spirit on that day in particular, help us think constructively about and resist historical racial hierarchy and dehumanization in the book of

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Acts. Chapter two We hear this when the Day of Pentecost had come. They were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it

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filled the entire house where they were sitting, divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak

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in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout jews from every nation under Heaven , living in Jerusalem. And at the sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them

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speaking in the native language. Of each amazed and astonished, they asked, are not all these who are speaking galleons. And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language.

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Party ins means ella mites and residents of Mesopotamia, judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and asia frigia and pamphlet to Egypt in the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene . And visitors from Rome, both jews and process

00:08:07.920 - 00:08:26.550

elites, Crichton's and Arabs in our own languages. We hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another . What does this mean? But others sneered and

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said. They are filled with new wine, but peter Standing with the 11, raised his voice and address their men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you and listen

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to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk as you suppose, For it is only 9:00 AM. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel in the last days it will be

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God declares that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even upon my slaves,

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both men and women. In those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy at Pentecost . What is revealed is that even the coming of the Spirit on this day is a gift, jesus

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reminded the disciples of the promise of the father and told them to wait for it. They had to wait to be baptized in the Spirit because the descent of the spirit is a gift, not something of

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our own creation. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound. The sound came the Spirit came on . Divine foolish in reminding us that the Spirit is God's gift to us to all people, all flesh

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. Divine agency is the prelude to human agency. Without God's breath, God's Spirit, there would be no human breath, no human life. This is true for all human creation, regardless of race,

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class, gender, breath. Spirit is God's grand equalizer. That is life and breath are a gift . It comes. It came no breath, No life. As we saw when a police officer choked

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eric garner to death. As he said, I can't breathe, no breath. No life gifts are given, not created by us, meaning all is gift. No human group is self made, No

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human group can sustain itself without breath. Spirit, we are all gifted with breath. Spirit. Life , even if we consider the ministry of preaching. If God doesn't speak, we have nothing to say

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. And, as one writer put it, blessed is the man who having nothing to say. Abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact at Pentecost . When the Spirit came, we hear that all

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of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. The Spirit enables humans to speak in other languages. Again, this is a gift, the

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gift of ability, language, speech power, it is not human made, but in spirited breath. Gifting is part of our common humanity. All have received gifts and life from the Spirit. Thus all

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are called, We are called to be stewards of breath, no race, no ethnicity is the life giver. Thus all human beings are life receivers. All are dependent on God. In this way,

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the spirit is egalitarian and perhaps this is why the observers and Acts thought they were drunk because the spirit was poured out on all flesh, all bodies not just a privileged few, which was the normative way

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of doing things. The Book of Acts emphasizes over and over again how people were together all together. But to be together in one place doesn't mean they were homogeneous because not even the Tryon God within the

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christian tradition is homo genius in that God is three persons in one father and son and holy spirit. The miracle of Pentecost was that the people were different , particular and yet remained together, showing us how

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God the God of Pentecost is big enough to hold difference and differences. We may not be able to do it, but God can God is big enough , but is our theology big enough like those on

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the day of Pentecost? Some get perplexed over diversity and some even sneer. This motley crew of culture , ethnicity, race and language disturbs the usual relational and social sensibilities which keep like people together, which

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is why the onlookers think it's the last day of classes in the semester because they see what they think is a drunken frenzy at nine a.m. In the morning . I mean, some people see diversity and difference

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as being drunk from sipping the libations of a secular ideology or political correctness when it really is the gospel of God. A Pentecost ecology, a reflection of the beauty of God on earth or what dr King

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called the world. House diversity is a gift of God and Pentecost reveals that God embraces difference and doesn't erase who we are in our particular charity. In fact, by the spirit, human variations are created

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. So this diversity is God breathed ill. The miracle of Pentecost is also that diversity and unity converged for a unified diversity. All of them were filled with the spirit and began to speak in different languages

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, but through each different language all spoke of God's deeds of power. Mean something Pentecost or diversity is about division. But really you can only have unity if the members are diverse. Otherwise all you have

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is uniformity, not unity. This is why I coined the term diverse Unity without the E. And diverse. At the end of diverse, diverse unity . One word to indicate that there is no true

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unity without diversity. This is a way of reminding others that uniformity and unity are different realities. Sometimes we can obsess over relatively small differences and use them to divide comedian emo phillips made this point very clear

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. At one time he said once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump and I said don't do it. He said nobody loves me and I said God loves you. Do you believe in

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God? He said yes. And I said, are you a christian or jew? He said a christian? And I said me too protestant or catholic . He said protestant. And I said me too

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what denomination? He said baptist, and I said me too northern baptist or southern baptist? He said northern baptist. And I said me too Northern conservative baptist or northern liberal baptist. He said Northern conservative

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baptist. I sent me to Northern Conservative baptist, Great Lakes region or Northern Conservative baptist Eastern region, He said Northern Conservative baptist, Great Lakes region. And I said me too Northern Conservative Baptist, Great

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Lakes Region, Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. And he said Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. And I said di heretic and I

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pushed him over. That's the baptist for you. Uniformity. Uniformity means everyone looks the same. Acts the same, thinks the same as the same kind of baptist or person. But what uniformity really means

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is that we are just worshipping ourselves and not God , whose beauty is embodied by multiplicity and diversity. The world house the day of Pentecost is really about the unity of our diverse people. There's a common

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idea that diversity or difference or multiplicity means division and problems. It's a problem to be solved. It's often presented like that at institutions. But multiplicity is the context for unity and God. It's what makes

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unity possible. Because without multiplicity, there will only be constant conformity. The gift of this Pentecost community , according to Michael Veverka, is that it is not a homogeneous unity But a differentiated one. Pentecost

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represents the preservation and goodness of human diversity. In particular charity in God's community. The spirit embraces particular charities and doesn't break us apart because of our differences , but rather pulls together a diverse community of bodies

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and tongues. The church is called to be unified , not uniform. We aren't the church when we are uniform, we are the Church and the power of the Spirit when we are unified. A unified

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diversity focused on God. And this is a powerful witness in a world that is so divided and polarized around such issues as race and racism. Sameness is actually more problematic than diversity because the latter is a

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gift of God, whereas the former suggests we are in charge, but we are born into diversity and not even identical twins are exactly the same when different people come together for work and witness. It's a

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sign that God is at work. If diversity is absent, we may only be worshiping a God made in our own image, because there are people who cannot handle racial difference and must only have it their

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way on a british airways flight from Johannesburg. A middle aged well off white South African woman found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin crew attendant over about her seeding. What seems

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to be the problem madam? Asked the attendant. Can't you see? She says you've sat me next to a cuff. Fear I can't possibly sit next to this disgusting human. Find me another seat.

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Please calm down madam, the stewardess replied. The flight is very full today, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first

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class. The woman gave a snooty look at the outraged black man beside her, not to mention many of the surrounding passengers. A few minutes later the stewardess returned and with the good news which she delivered

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to the lady, who could not help but look at the people around on the airplane with a smug and self satisfied grin madam. Unfortunately, as I suspected economy is full. I've spoken to the cabin

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services director and the club is also full. However , we do have one seat in the first class before the lady had a chance to answer, the stewardess continues. It is most extraordinary to make this

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kind of upgrade and I have had to get special permission from the captain. But given the circumstances, the captain felt that it is outrageous that someone be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious person.

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With that she turned to the black man sitting next to the woman and said, So if you'd like to get your things sir, I have your seat ready for you. At that point, many of

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the surrounding passengers true story stood up and gave a standing ovation while the man walked to the front of the plane. I mean when we think of Pentecost and the formation of the church, it's not about

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my way or my culture or my race or my tribe or my language or my personal biases, but God's way, God's way includes party ins means elements and residents of Mesopotamia judea and Cappadocia Pontus and asia

00:22:22.560 - 00:22:36.360

fridge and pamphlet to Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome. Both jews and process. Elites, Creighton's and Arabs, Duke Blue Devil fans and even Carolina. Tar heels.

00:22:36.940 - 00:22:52.650

Yeah, we should never attempt to erase our particular charities, our names, our languages, our cultures , our skin culture, our hair texture, the color of our eyes, the shape of our bodies

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, our identities, we shouldn't obliterate whom and what God has created in order to suit our needs and comforts and opinions and prejudices. God made all of us. And when we are tempted to erase that

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, which is different. It is an affront to God in God's collective body. Poet and priest Malcolm Gheit writes that on Pentecost, the gospel crosses every border. All tongues are loosened by the Prince of

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Peace. The lost are found in his translation, whose mother tongue is love in every nation. God's way in acts, border crossings, not the construction of walls. The way God builds the people of

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God is by diversifying, we become more whole, more excellent, stronger, more faithful, more beautiful , more unified, more like God. The spirit when we diversify, when we aren't just locally clannish

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but global in scope. The irony is that we can only unify when we diversify because there has to be diversity in order to speak of unity. Many interpreters have viewed Pentecost as the inverse of the Tower

00:24:15.650 - 00:24:33.920

of Babel, seen in genesis, where the divided tongues brings confusion and scatters, while at Pentecost, divided languages brings understanding and unity centered on God. God's vision for the Church for the world. His

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vision. God's vision is born in and through multi lingual, multi ethnic proclamation in God's hands. The makeup of the church, the nature of the world is diverse. God's dream is a world house,

00:24:49.740 - 00:25:07.370

a house of prayer for all nations. Now, the cultural particularity of the Spirits gift as shown at Pentecost is not contrary to the universal quality of proclamation . There is what eaves conger would call the catholic

00:25:07.370 - 00:25:26.680

city of Witness at Pentecost, the spirit blows on everyone. Universality and everyone doesn't lose their particular charity . And though the people speak in different languages, they all speak of God's deeds of power, there

00:25:26.680 - 00:25:44.080

is a common message God People heard in their native language is a message about God, not a sermon on seven principles for having a happy life. This turn to the Spirit is a turn to God.

00:25:44.090 - 00:26:02.870

Even in the midst of this conversation about racialized hierarchies , we can't forget God in the midst of this conversation, especially in the church, Pentecost privileges God as the universal content of proclamation through particular cultural means

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. The end is always God, but the means is always particular, holding together the creative relationship between particular charity and universality. Both are gifts. Yet God is primary as central to pneumatic proclamation. Dietrich

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Bonhoeffer once preached that people are bored with the church and the cinema appears to be more interesting than the church because we talk too much about false, trivial human things and ideas in the church and too little

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about God. The Pentecostal Spirit will not allow us to forget about God for as Veverka rights through the pouring out of the spirit, God affects a world encompassing multi lingual polly individual testimony to God's self in

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this way, God attest to God's self in a process that unites people in the way that causes them both. Wonderment and fear. Though there is a diverse community, there is unity around the presence of

00:27:06.170 - 00:27:23.990

God. Pentecost is a community building festival but it is a distinct community in which God is the center . Cultural and ethnic specificity is important as noted already , but in the spirit it is d centered but

00:27:23.990 - 00:27:45.380

not erased or whitewashed. This is for certain no color blind rheumatology yet God dethrones cultural or ethnic hegemony at Pentecost but cultural and ethnic identity are not obliterated either or torn into pieces like the body of sam

00:27:45.380 - 00:28:02.150

hose diverse human in fleshed bodies are fully present and fully in spirited. Yet the spirit leads proclaims to speak about and praise God, not the self. At the same time, the gift of a word

00:28:02.150 - 00:28:18.040

from God about God occurs within and creates a distinct community. The spirit doesn't hide behind or promote God as a way to homogenize the community though, God centered Pentecost reveals the gift of a community that represents

00:28:18.050 - 00:28:34.730

boundary breaking realities across culture, ethnicity, race and language. In the spirit, there is no room for segregation or silos because the spirit works towards integration , collaboration and mutuality toward the formation of community and

00:28:34.730 - 00:28:52.140

dialogue through this communal interaction, there can be greater understanding about the fullness of God in the world. The formation of a global community through the in breaking of the spirit breaks humanity out of our proclivity toward

00:28:52.140 - 00:29:11.530

homogeneity and moves us toward the embrace of a broad Gospel for the ends of the earth. The Gift of God opens us toward a hospitable vision in which the spirit is poured out on all flesh for proclamation

00:29:11.530 - 00:29:22.290

to the ends of the earth. Any culture or ethnic group anywhere can be a conduit of the spirit . Thus, there is no limit to whom or where the Gospel can be preached. Though a word

00:29:22.290 - 00:29:38.310

maybe contextual in a particular culture, the Gospel is never enclosed or trapped within any culture. The Gospel is free and open in the light of an expansive Pentecostal spirit, who knows no bounds and creates a

00:29:38.310 - 00:29:55.450

diverse human community. Pentecost suggests that the spirit opens us up to the possibility of hospitable relationships across cultures and races as opposed to close systems and practices that restrain the full scope of the Gospel message of God

00:29:56.340 - 00:30:14.090

. Pentecost challenges us not to strive to make others just like us, our words, our deeds, our theologies, our preaching styles our congregations, but rather shaped into the beautiful diversity of God. This

00:30:14.090 - 00:30:32.850

turn to the spirit turns to God, but it is also important to affirm that this turn to the spirit is also a turn to real particular human beings , bodies, and tongues. Pentecost is not philosophical

00:30:33.040 - 00:30:51.730

, but physical as a rheumatology implies materiality and incarnation to incarnation. The incarnation, and this is what we see on the day of Pentecost. In light of the historical, racialized in humanity's that I spoke

00:30:51.730 - 00:31:10.890

about in the first lecture, it's important to note that the spirit embraces black flesh, black tongues, black bodies. The human often dehumanized and hugs them with holiness and power in their particular charity, inspires

00:31:10.900 - 00:31:30.410

all to breathe, to speak, to dance, to ignite joy and community. The spirit humanizes rather than dehumanizes, fills every human empties dynamite power into every human life so that all might be baptized with

00:31:30.410 - 00:31:47.180

breath and power. The spirits embraced through this. Outpouring is so critical for those who have been dehumanized historically and not embraced or loved as human beings but seen as objects to be controlled and destroyed as has

00:31:47.180 - 00:32:02.270

been done with black bodies. Pentecost offers a positive theology for particular charity and racial and ethnic difference. It's the gift of God. One can affirm blackness and brown nous and otherness and flesh, penis.

00:32:02.940 - 00:32:21.590

Pentecost is a fusion of the pneumatic sonic and somatic . The perpetual history of inhumanity of anti blackness is a history of being anti spirit and anti God because assaults on human beings, our assaults on the glory

00:32:21.590 - 00:32:38.360

of God in human flesh. What does Iranians say ? The glory of God is a human being fully alive. So slavery with its anti black dehumanization. What's death wielding? Of course, because the spirit

00:32:38.360 - 00:32:57.790

is life and humanizing the spirit initiates in flesh mint as seen with the incarnation and inhabits human flesh fills all human beings empties gifts into all cultures. A kind of new methodological keno sis asem partying of the

00:32:57.790 - 00:33:16.340

spirit bodies are temples of the spirit housing the divine presence within human flesh. This is so critical and humanizing for those whose bodies were disgraced by hanging and swinging from popular trees. Pentecost shows that the spirit

00:33:16.340 - 00:33:32.690

loves us so much that she wants to get inside of us dwell in us, commune with us in a bond of love. Pentecost reveals that the spirit honors the bodies of all people, young, old

00:33:32.690 - 00:33:50.720

, male female, all human beings throughout the world . And these bodies are sites of the spirits work and fire and speech regardless of race and ethnicity and gender. The spirit is an equalizer and holy resistor

00:33:50.720 - 00:34:10.580

to racism and racial hierarchical systems that the spirit fills all and rests on all. Not just some bodies is the affirmation needed in the face of historical dehumanization and provides an opportunity for those deemed non human to

00:34:10.580 - 00:34:28.930

reclaim their humanity in God. Pentecost shows us that the spiritual is linked to the material and real human bodies matter to the life of faith. The glory of God is revealed through all human flesh and is

00:34:28.930 - 00:34:44.760

the sign of a special favor from the spirit. Each body, each tongue is affirmed as sacred and of worth as a human being loved by God. And the most evident body part emphasized on the day

00:34:44.760 - 00:35:04.020

of Pentecost is the tongue because there is much speaking tongues of fire rest on each of them and all began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability. This is Spirit speech Spirit sounds in

00:35:04.020 - 00:35:17.170

which speakers speak in the native language of others, so that they hear this is amazing and perplexing. At the same time, it is a holy carnival of new wine in a new way. New tongues

00:35:17.740 - 00:35:35.430

, new languages, the m breaking of the spirit breaks open a new reality, new speech, new life, new community and a new future. This fiery in breaking breaks apart total izing paradigms of sameness

00:35:35.440 - 00:35:51.040

or whiteness or of one tongue or one way or one thought or one practice. The different languages reveal plurality as the power of the spirit. The breaking out of tongues signifies the redemption of our bodies as

00:35:51.040 - 00:36:13.180

vessels of the spirit and breaks apart racial ization that leads to dehumanization. Fire falls and burns away illusions of a pure race or people, tongues of fire breaks us into a new language about each other and

00:36:13.180 - 00:36:35.690

breaks open a new discourse about God and a new creation. This break dance of the spirit through bodies de colonize is limiting myopic inhumane racial constructs because each tongue speaks, voices, breathes unleashes what action carly

00:36:35.700 - 00:36:55.590

calls otherwise possibilities. Tunnels are an eruption that disrupt racial dominance and hierarchy and a revelation of God's embrace of human flesh. All flesh. All tongues galleons . Party ins means ella mites, residents of Mesopotamia

00:36:55.590 - 00:37:12.150

judea and Cappadocia Pontus in Asia, fridge and pamphlet to Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both jews and proselytize creighton's and Arabs, it's almost a surplus of the spirit

00:37:12.150 - 00:37:38.190

in that list. And though it is. Language tongues represent an unspeakable or an unlearning an unthinking and an undoing of racialized control. They are a new way of speaking about God and one another tongues of

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fire, but also power dynamite exploding hate speech. For a language of love. And liberation tongues are free in the spirit and will not be controlled by one colonial dominant. Language, mouths are free in

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this vision, bodies are free, Humans are free . All flesh are free, not enslaved, not engaged, not behind walls of inhumanity, tongues break out when there's a fire in the spirit and they

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reveal otherwise movements of God in the world and the church. So your body is a temple of the Spirit and your tongue is the speech of the spirit . Humans speak of multiplicity of languages. To reveal

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the diversity of God tongues and the multi ethnic bodies reveal that the future present of God is the world House historian luis baldwin notes that the World House refers to a totally integrated world, undeterred by human differences

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and committed to the ethical norms of love, justice , community, and peace. In more simplistic terms , the World House amounted to a global communitarian ethic that embraces persons across geographical and cultural boundaries. King

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calls it in an ecumenical worldwide fellowship that lifts neighbourly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation as a call for an all embracing an unconditional love for all people. This notion of the World

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House is Pentecost and the Pentecostal Spirit is for all people, the dynamism of the spirit offers a constructive way to approach racial hierarchy and dominance. The history of inhumanity, especially within the church. Pentecost is

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a constructive theological lens to handle or engage racial difference and dehumanization and provide some otherwise possibilities for talking about these issues. This is not to say that just speaking about the spirit will change human interactions magically.

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one might name the spirit and things still go awry , as it did during my first year in seminary , on a particular week day in Princeton seminaries, Miller Chapel, the preacher spoke of the spirit as

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if she was his best friend and closest confidant. This senior class student began to preach and as he proclaimed, he interjected, the phrase helped me Holy Ghost one time, two times, three times.

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I don't know if you were there Beverly or not , but and then I lost count of how many times he said, help me Holy Ghost. Now , maybe he was praying for himself in that moment

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because he realized the sermon wasn't going over too well . Maybe he thought that if he said holy ghost 10 times, that would make his sermon more spirit filled and cause us to actually pay more attention to

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his sermon. But saying Holy Ghost store Holy Spirit does not guarantee that one is in the Spirit led by the Spirit or bearing the fruit of the Spirit . We might be in what harvey cox calls the

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Age of the Spirit. But to linguistically play off of a spiritual, everybody talking about the spirit ain't got the Spirit. So sitting in holy shock that morning, we began to silently affirm this preacher's prayer

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and say our own version of it, uh huh . Help him. Holy Ghost, Help him. And that sermon. Or perhaps we set our own help me. Holy Ghost meaning helped me endure what

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is being said. Uh huh. And as he continued, it became increasingly clearer that something was sorely wrong and our shock reached its unforgettable peak when the preacher announced to us, those of us in the

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congregation, you won't praise God because you're just mean . It didn't seem to occur to him that maybe meanness was not the reason we didn't praise God, but rather because the sermon was a smelly linguistic version

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of some mean cow manure. He had unknowingly performed rhetorical terrorism and dropped a hot political weapon of mass destruction, which left many hearers thinking the spirit was all about death rather than life. I don't think

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the Holy Ghost answered his prayer during his sermon on that day, but our prayer was finally answered and we were helped when he finished his sermon and sat down. This doesn't mean that we fully understood what

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happened that morning. Indeed, some of us who were there are still searching for the black box from that sermon to see what actually went wrong on that morning in the miller chapel. I mean there's nothing

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wrong with saying. Help me Holy Ghost. It is the right prayer even for our topic. But the challenge going forward is whether we will engage in the right practice of the Spirit. So we ought

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to be careful if we say this prayer, because do we really understand to whom and for what we are pleading? We ought to be careful because we might actually get what we ask for. And if

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the Spirit comes to help, you will not only have to change, but there may be a fire that we will never be able to put out.