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"come the countless echoes of the first eternal Word"  

by Joshua Stamper

May 31, 2020

“...we might think of the creative Word as spoken into the vast cavern of potential that is the first moment of created existence; that from that darkness come countless echoes of the first eternal Word, the 'harmonics' hidden in that primal sound. When we rightly respond to, relate to, anyone or anything, it is as if we have found the note to sing that is in harmony with the creating Word. Or, to use language more familiar in Eastern Christian thinking, each living being in the world rests upon a unique creative act of God, a unique communication from God within the infinite self-communication that is the one eternal Word. Every being has at its heart its own word, its one 'logos'. A truthful relation to anything is an uncovering of that word.” 

– Rowan Williams, Where God Happens

The mechanism by which all tribes and tongues encountered the gospel of Jesus at the first Pentecost is remarkable—an explosion of languages like the sound of a rushing wind; a burst of comprehension; an inverse tower of Babel. But as I've been ruminating on what that morning might have been like, I can't help but think that Pentecost is about more than impressively efficacious evangelism, or a proto-United Nations summit of languages and cultures. 

When Williams speaks of harmonics, we're reminded of the physical fact of sound: how any one sound is a composite of thousands of other sounds. There is the fundamental, the most prominent sound, and then a constellation of other resonances, harmonics that are less audible but vital to the character of the sound.

At Pentecost, with all of those languages (or harmonics) intertwining, something fundamental was revealed, about God and humankind. As each new tongue emerged from the cloud of voices to proclaim the best tidings of all joy, it beckoned toward a world made new; toward the "harmonics hidden in that primal sound" that a right response and relationship to one another and to God represents. The cloud of voices is an uncovering of the First Voice. We hear resonances and echoes and shockwaves of the first creative Word. The full harmonic spectrum is not just audible and visible, but inhabitable.

In Romans, Paul describes a direct relationship between wickedness and godlessness and the suppression of truth; truth about God, about humankind, about our relationship to one another and the earth that we share. That we human beings have such power to delay the advancement of Truth is a sobering reality. As I write this, the nation is reeling from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the latest named-and-noticed casualties of the godless scaffolding of racism that crushes millions while propping up, for a select few, the American Dream. We forget ourselves—who we are and whose we are.

But if unjust action, thought, speech, and character suppresses truth, then the inverse is also true: love, justice and, godliness reveal truth.

Williams’ “truthful relation” to things speaks to the fact that to refuse to see the image of God in another results in an incomplete rendering of God’s image; I am dooming myself to an inability to see. But in “truthful relation,” the aperture is widened: a paradigm is revealed where the personal and the communal are no longer pitted against each other, but instead function in tandem to create an emergent elasticity—strong and pliable and able to respond to the needs of this good earth and the people and creatures who fill it. It is a paradigm where human beings find one another and find God. This paradigm is what comes into view at Pentecost, the birth of the church. This is the picture that the church is to be and to share: countless echoes of the first eternal Word.

Visions

by Lisa Abaya

The video art piece Visions, depicts fractured visual elements within a larger symmetrical design in order to reflect the difficult truth of our world. We may only see shards, but each piece is subject to the beauty of the final design. The first Pentecost marks a moment in time we cannot truly fathom: what did the world feel like before the gift of the Holy Spirit was among us, and how would that pouring out effect the body, sight and speech? Acts 2 describes the physical manifestations of the Spirit on people as prophesy, visions and dreams. Visions imagines the outpouring of the divine counselor that day, glazing the sight of the people present and revealing a kaleidoscope of perspective.