In the season after Easter Sunday, readings from the Acts of the Apostles replace the Hebrew Bible readings in the lectionary. And this week, the readings thrust us into the midst of a rapidly changing nascent Christ community, provoked by the Spirit into newness of life.

In the book of Acts, the Spirit is the protagonist of the action and the thrust of that action is the bringing about of a new community of Christ followers. For the Jerusalem church in today’s text, the “boundary-crossing and border-transgressing that marks the presence of the Spirit of God,” as Willie Jennings names it, is the boundary crossing transgression of the border erected between the Torah observance of the Jerusalem church and the non-Torah-observant Gentiles whom the Spirit has beckoned into the Jesus movement.

It is helpful to remember this week as the Spirit comes unbidden to provoke surprising developments in the community’s life that whenever the Spirit is made palpable in the text of scripture, it most often arrives the shape of something in the wider web of life. In the Gospels, the spirit descends upon Jesus emerging from the baptismal waters, incarnate in the feathery flesh of a dove. Mark I. Wallace calls this the “double incarnation,” embracing “the fleshly reality of all interrelated organisms.” In other instances, like at Pentecost earlier in Acts, the Spirit descends upon the gathered from all nations like the “rush of a violent wind” and tongues of fire resting upon each person (Acts. 2:2-3). This harkens back to the Genesis creation account “when God began to create the heavens and the earth…while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). This wind – or ruah – is often understood to be the Spirit of God, portrayed even in the second verse of Genesis as a mighty wind.

In today’s Acts reading, my colleague Matthew Skinner notes, “the Spirit simply came. Neither Peter’s sermon nor a response from Cornelius’s household unleashed the Spirit.” Neither animals – like wild birds – the elements of the earth – like fire – nor the features of weather – like the rush of a violent wind – can be easily controlled. These are not just helpful metaphors for the Spirit. They are the naturally appropriate embodiment of the incarnate Divine moving in the creation, not in the body of a human, like Jesus’s incarnation, but in the wild bodies of the wider web of life, the elements of nature, and the features of weather.

         Peter’s question, “Who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:17), is the question that still guides our interpretation of the Spirit’s workings in our life and world.

         Then we arrive at Psalm 148, one of the most beautiful songs of creation in the Hebrew Bible. And we are caught up with the whole cosmos in praise to God. The angels praise God, the sun, moon, and shining stars praise God. The sea monsters of the deep praise God alongside the cattle and creeping things and flying creatures. The mountains and trees, and even the weather praises God: hail, snow, frost, and stormy wind! Only after this litany of praise from the cosmos and all creatures do human voices enter the polyphonic cacophony of praise: kings and princes and all peoples of every gender (Psalm 148:11-12). Voices so small in comparison to all that has come before!

         As my colleague Rolf Jacobson says of this Psalm, “We are reminded that nature is powerful and dangerous. It operates according to the laws that God has established for it. Humans are to respect those laws or be placed at risk. This Psalm and the Old Testament in general do not have a romantic view of creation — nature can be dangerous.” There seems a natural connection here to the workings of the Spirit, so often embodied in wild bodies of the more-than-human world, the powerful elements of weather, and even the dangerous presence of surprising fire.

In the Genesis 1 creation account, the sun, moon, stars and all creeping things are brought forth prior to the human. Likewise, in Psalm 148, the whole cosmos and all of creation gives voice to their praise of the Creator before the human voice ever enters the chorus. What are we missing if we fail to listen carefully to the witness of the cosmos and all creatures, instead centering our own human voices as the ultimate purveyors of sacred knowledge? A theology of human supremacy misses the reality iterated in this Psalm and others like it (e.g., Psalm 19), that the earth knows God intimately. The sun, moon, and stars have knowledge of the Divine that humans cannot fathom. This Psalm puts into perspective humanity’s role in the cosmic drama of creation and its unending praise, all of which orients us to the one whose “glory is above earth and heaven” (148:13).

         The heavens and earth are also central to the text of Revelation in this week’s lectionary readings, but a new heaven and a new earth. Importantly, if we’re reading and preaching the Apocalypse, we should note that there is no destruction of the “first earth” that has “passed away” (21:1). All our typical apocalyptic nightmares are not the stuff of Revelation. As Lynn Huber and Gail O’Day note, “passed away” here is a fine translation but shouldn’t be read as the English euphemism for death. More accurately, it is that the first heaven and first earth have “gone away.” As a mythopoetic protest drama set within the context of a violent Roman Empire, Revelation is revealing to us an earth without empire because that earth has gone away, and a new earth is coming into being. There is no destruction of the old needed – just a dramatic rendering of its transformation from old to new unfolding. The words of the one on the throne echo out through the cosmos: “See, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

The dwelling of God is with mortals, yes, but the imagery here is more fully of emplacement. The holy city “coming down out of heaven from God” to the “new earth” bespeaks the drama of God’s dwelling taking root as an earthy reality. Note that no one is taken up to escape the earth. Our dualistic, body/soul, earth/heaven imaginations have no firm rootedness in the biblical text – certainly not in Revelation.

The renewal drama is portrayed as the heavenly city coming down to earth where God dwells with mortals – humanity, for sure, but with all mortal earth creatures alongside. All those creatures who know the Divine with the sacred wisdom of creation. “With” or “among” here, as Huber and O’Day note, “underscores this as a place of divine and human togetherness and connection.” And that connection should be widened in our own perspective to include the more-than-human web of life, as the dwelling of God has come down to the renewed earth.

         But don’t miss that this dwelling is one of liberation! God dwelt among God’s people in the tent of meeting (Exodus 40:34-35) as they traversed the wilderness to escape the oppression of Egypt. The Divine is often at work in the danger of the wilderness throughout the biblical text, as well as in life! God dwelt among God’s people in the incarnation of Jesus, pitching the divine tent in a poor body within the Roman Empire’s reign (John 1). And God dwells among God’s people again in the eschatological consummation, with the first earth and its empires fleeing and a new earth arriving where every tear will be wiped from every eye and death and pain will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

Eschatological consummation: “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (Revelation 21:6). In an era when water is becoming one of our scarcest resources upon which all our lives depend, this word of life takes on new relevance. This United Nations fact sheet on water scarcity makes a helpful companion in this week’s sermon preparation.

With the Dakota Access Pipeline protests that arose in 2016 as a grassroots protest movement led by Native Americans, the Lakota phrase “Mní Wičóni – Water is Life,” entered our collective consciousness. The pipeline was being constructed directly under the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal land’s primary drinking water source, threatening it with pollution. At Standing Rock and elsewhere, water’s sacred source of the livability of life for humans and the more-than-human ecological web is threatened by greed and human supremacist hubris. And when we make it all the way to the end of Revelation, it is water that is the Holy One’s “gift from the spring of the water of life” (21:6).

         Then we come to the Gospel text. Just before this passage, Jesus is “troubled in spirit” and tells the disciples that he would be betrayed…by one of them (John 13:21). My colleague Karoline Lewis argues that this (John 13:31) is the true beginning of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse (rather than 14:1 where we typically place it). He begins to say good-bye and speak the words they will need to sustain them in the hard days ahead. “I am with you only a little longer,” he says. “Where I am going, you cannot come” (13:33). So, what words will he leave them with? What wisdom to guide them? What teachings to sustain them?

         “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (13:34-35).

         The simplicity of that teaching belies its profundity. The ease with which it is spoken by contemporary Christians, only highlights the overwhelming lack of love in so much of our contemporary context – especially those actions against the earth’s most vulnerable supported by supposed Christ-followers.

In summary, today’s readings span the chaotic creation and eschatological consummation, with the Psalm bringing into unified praise the voices of the cosmic created order, the earliest followers of the way of Jesus being thrust into new life with new companions by the wily workings of the Spirit, and the Apocalypse of John drawing our eye heavenward as the new Jerusalem comes down to earth: “See, the home of God is among mortals…I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:3, 5). Then, set within the grandeur of it all, the final wisdom of Jesus is revealed in the profound simplicity of love for one another. I encourage you to read these texts outdoors this week. Texts like Psalm 148 and Revelation 21 beckon us into the wider web of life. Read them with the more-than-human web of life that enfolds you and see what new wisdom is imparted.

         When we believe we know the boundaries of the Spirit’s movement in bringing about the beloved community, Acts confronts us with the recognition that the Spirit, incarnate in the wildness of a bird, the power of a mighty wind, and the danger of fire, will always fly over, blow down, and burn boundaries we believed were so impermeable.

When we think we know everything we can know of God, the Psalmist says the depths of God’s greatness and grace are unknown to you unless you can hear the voices of the creation and cosmos in praise of the creator.

         When we come to believe that the present-day empires of cruelty and violence have had the last word, look for the signs of transformation and renewal penetrating the present order. As philosopher Antonio Gramsci said it, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

         And when the monsters are all around and despair is setting in and we are searching for the words of wisdom to sustain us in the interregnum between the old world going away and the new world being emplaced upon the earth, remember that we already have the wisdom we need for the way ahead: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (John 13:34). Now go and practice them.

A Prayer for the Day: Holy One, who in polyphonic symphony of the cosmos is praised, be near to us now in the hour of our worship, though the sound of songs and prayers and sacred texts, and even in the sheer silence that envelops us when words can no longer escape our lips. Tune our ears to listen with care to the voices of creation and the cosmos who praise you before we can even raise our voice. Spirit wild and wonderful, powerful and dangerous, blow through the boundaries we erect that keep us from knowing you more fully because we have not known others through the singular lens of love that makes us true disciples of our brother and lord, Jesus. We stand in astounded gratitude that you would dwell among mortals. Be palpable to us now as we weep and cry in pain and sorrow with the world’s most vulnerable, awaiting a time when our limping love for others now will meet its consummation in your great love for the whole cosmos as you wipe every tear from every eye and make all things new.

For more, see his recent article in the Luther faculty journal, Word & World, “Feral Hope for Futurist Leaders.”