By Dr. Lani Wilson

Good Morning, faithful servants. It was a glorious Resurrection weekend and we are now four days into Pentecost. We don’t seem to celebrate Pentecost much in the Baptist church as much as we celebrate Easter or The Resurrection (as you prefer). Nonetheless, our Christian Pentecost is a wonderful way to continue the Resurrection celebration. Of course, we know that there was a Jewish Pentecost that Jesus celebrated as an observant Jew: Fifty days after Passover for the wheat harvest.

Agriculturally, it commemorates the time when the first fruits were harvested and brought to the Temple, and is known as Hag ha-Bikkurim (the Festival or the First Fruits). Historically, it celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is also known as Hag Matan Torateinu (the Festival of the Giving of Our Torah). The period from Passover to Shavu’ot is a time of great anticipation. We count each of the days from the second day of Passover to the day before Shavu’ot, 49 days or 7 full weeks, hence the name of the festival.
Jewfact.org/Shavu’ot

“Where” is the word given for our consideration a couple of weeks ago. I marvel at its simplicity, straightforwardness, and firmness. We can use it as an adverb, relative adverb or a conjunction, but its most used and basic sense is as an adverb zeroing in on a place. In response to the query, “Where?” we know that the answer could a negative “I don’t know” or it could be directional: “Here” or “there.” If we have the inclination, the time, the interest, and/or desire, we will be more specific: “Over there by the bench;” “here in the living room;” “upstairs in the bedroom;” “across the street;” “another city.” Thus, the concept of “where” seems simple enough. All of these answers preclude an understanding that whatever we are discussing is some-where and can be located. Whatever it is has substance and/or importance and holds a place in the physical universe.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss national born in 1896 who was trained as a scientist. He conducted research in several fields: Sociology, History of Science, Psychology, Education but is most renown for his work in Developmental Psychology and Epistemology, specifically Genetic Epistemology (the “origins of thinking,” as he called his work). Piaget studied “how knowledge grows.”

His researches in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology had one unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults.
Jean Piaget Society, piaget.org/about

Piaget’s complex stage theory has been applied to many diverse fields of study, including economics and law. The first stage is called Sensorimotor (ages 0-2 years) and “The main development during this stage is the understanding that objects exist and events occur in the world independently of one's own actions ('the object concept', or 'object permanence')” (simplypsychology.org). The achievement of object permanence is demonstrated best by the example of hiding an object, usually a toy, under a blanket in front of a baby. Prior to about nine months old, the baby will not know where the object went, even as they sat and watched it being placed under the blanket. After approximately nine months old, the baby will know to look beneath the blanket for the toy. Psychologists say then that the baby has “achieved object permanence.” There may be implications for us as we consider The Christ and His teachings and then the revelations after His death and resurrection.

A couple of the more telling passages that might reflect the concept of object permanence in the complexity of just Who Jesus was is John 13:36-14:5 and John 14:8-9, Jesus’ interchange with Peter and then Philip.

Simon Peter asked, "Master, just where are you going?" Jesus answered, "You can’t now follow me where I’m going. You will follow later." "Master," said Peter, "why can’t I follow now? I’ll lay down my life for you!" "Really? You’ll lay down your life for me? The truth is that before the rooster crows, you’ll deny me three times. Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking." Thomas said, "Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?"
(TMB)

Philip said, "Master, show us the Father; then we’ll be content." "You’ve been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don’t understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, ‘Where is the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
(TMB)

The disciples’ consternation over exactly where Jesus was going is clear in these passages as well as Who Jesus was. They, of course, kept trying to locate a physical locale, a place, for where Jesus said He was going. And then they also were befuddled about when He was going and why they couldn’t go with Him. You could say that they definitely had not “achieved object permanence.” Yet, according to scripture, had they not seen Jesus somehow slip away or disappear in the midst of angry crowds?

They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.
Luke 4:29-30 (TMB)

But he told them, "The man who made me well told me to. He said, ’Take your bedroll and start walking.’ They asked, "Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?" But the healed man didn’t know, for Jesus had slipped into the crowd.
John 5:11-13 (TMB)

If I don’t do the things my Father does, well and good; don’t believe me. But if I am doing them, put aside for a moment what you hear me say about myself and just take the evidence of the actions that are right before your eyes. Then perhaps things will come together for you, and you’ll see that not only are we doing the same thing, we are the same-Father and Son. He is in me; I am in him. They tried yet again to arrest him, but he slipped through their fingers.
John 10:37-39 (TMB)

2100 years ago in those Greek and Roman cultures, there were claims of magicians performing miracles all over this forsaken Roman province of Palestine. So they should have not been surprised at Jesus talking about Him going somewhere they couldn’t follow and He being one with God even while on earth. Most certainly, Jesus talking about going to a place they could not follow and simultaneously saying that He was one with God who wasn’t physically present flummoxed these mostly uneducated simple men (unfortunately, the Bible didn’t reveal many responses and reflections of the women disciples). Regarding the experiments with babies and where the toys went after being placed under a blanket in front of their very eyes, we could say that the disciples were pre-object permanence, stage-wise. Jesus either had to be either with them on earth or not and He was either a god or He was not. But one with the God the Father [sic] but also His Son? No, too confusing.

Piaget identifies six stages in the development of the concept of the permanent object, and Stage IV marks an important transition. Before Stage IV, the infant lacks object permanence and knows a thing and its location only in the context of his ongoing actions. He either cannot find hidden things or can only find them when he has begun to reach for them before they disappear. In Stage IV, the infant is aware of object permanence. When he observes an object disappear, he searches for it even when he has not begun to reach for the object before it disappeared. However, his objectivity has an important limitation which indicates that his ideas of things continue to be bound up with how he acts upon them. He does not localize the object in terms of where it has moved, but, rather, he localizes it in terms of where he has found it in the past. After Stage IV, the infant localizes the object in terms of its movements and not in terms of his actions.
Gratch, G., & Landers, W.F. (1971)
Stage IV of Piaget’s Theory of Infant’s
Object Concepts: A Longitudinal Study.
Child Development, 42(2), 359-372.
doi:10.1111/14678624.ep7248891

If we extrapolate the application of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage and object permanence to the period we celebrate now, Pentecost, would the disciples have made the leap forward?

And here is what happened: He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. And then he disappeared.
Luke 24:30-31 (TMB)

The Road to Emmaus: Reflecting on God’s Eternal Presence
Ravi Zacharias Ministries, April 26, 2014

Cleopas and the other unnamed disciple immediately recognize this man they have been talking to for hours as The Christ, and then he disappears. They didn’t seem at all perturbed (at least it is not reported) that He disappeared but reflected on how it “warm[ed] our hearts” when Jesus talked with them along the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:32). Then they rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples.

While the apostles were still with Jesus, they asked him, “Lord, are you now going to give Israel its own king again?” Jesus said to them, “You don’t need to know the time of those events that only the Father controls. But the Holy Spirit will come upon you and give you power. Then you will tell everyone about me in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and everywhere in the world.” After Jesus had said this and while they were watching, he was taken up into a cloud. They could not see him, 10 but as he went up, they kept looking up into the sky.
Acts 1:6-10 (CEV)

Jesus the Christ has appeared to them and proven that He is alive and risen. As He ascends to heaven, they continue looking up to the sky for Him until two men in white appear and say,

“Why are you men from Galilee standing here and looking up into the sky? Jesus has been taken to heaven. But he will come back in the same way you have seen him go.”
Acts 1:11 (CEV)

• We have Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road.
• We have The Christ’s appearance to the remaining eleven disciples in Jerusalem.
• We have Jesus’ ascension to heaven as reported in Luke 24:50 in Bethany.

In these three instances the physical presence of The Christ is confirmation of all He told them before His crucifixion. Yet, the disciples are still fixed in their understanding that Jesus is the one-dimensional Messiah that the Hebrew scripture presages. Right before He ascends to heaven, they ask Him a question.

While the apostles were still with Jesus, they asked him, “Lord, are you now going to give Israel its own king again?”
Acts 1:6 (CEV)

In spite of all they have experienced in the three years of Jesus’ ministry and His fulfilment of scripture as the Son of God, they are still expecting a triumphant, liberator king for the nation of Israel. From a simplistic Piagetian position, we could say that the toy has been hidden under a blanket in front of their very eyes, and the disciples are still wondering where it went. Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.
simplypsychology.org/Piaget

We don’t know exactly when the disciples made the cognitive leap forward, but if the Piagetian comparison holds, we can assume that it was a monumental shift for each of them: That Jesus the Christ is actually alive and is both with us and with God. Could it be that many of us “in the church” are still at pre-object permanence stage with regard to The Christ? Could it be that we get so involved in “churching” and singing and entertaining and producing that we miss that leap forward. Oswald Chambers says it thusly:

The battle is not against sin or difficulties or circumstances, but against being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ at every turn. That is the one great need, not the facing our belief, or our creed, the question whether we are of any use, but to face Him…It is not service that matters, but intense spiritual reality, expecting Jesus Christ at every turn.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, pg. 63, 1935

Are we so trapped in being an Historical Black Baptist Church that we can only see that the Object has disappeared and wonder where “It” went when “It,” the Spirit of the Living God, is right here waiting for us to make that leap forward, whatever the leap is?

Chambers, again:

If we are going to be ready for Jesus Christ, we have to stop being religious, (that is, using religion as a higher kind of culture) and be spiritually real.
Ibid. pg. 64

“Spiritually real?” “Higher kind of culture?” Say what? Chambers said that eighty-one (81) years ago. How does it – or does it – relate to ATBC? For all the good we do (and we do a lot) are we still waiting for The Nazarene to come and crown us as good Christians when He may actually want us to be real Christians? And what will that leap forward look like if and when we achieve object permanence? Moving out and forward into unfamiliar new territory, unafraid, undaunted, straight-backed, facing forward with the knowledge that The Christ is with us, even when we can’t see Him; that He’s still and always there, that even when we place Him under blankets of our insecurities, He is still there.

Easy Baby Blanket, crazylittleprojects.com

LORD Jesus, thank You for Your patience as we “assimilate, accommodate, equilibrate” (simplypsychology.org/piaget) to that next stage of growth. We know You have us on the precipice of great leaps forward. We can feel ourselves straining to break free of that spiritual inertia that binds us and we pray that You will help us break free and flow forward. Gear us up. Gird our souls. Sprinkle us with Your Spirit because with You, a sprinkle is all we need. And guide us toward the new stage awaiting us, the one You have prepared, the one You require, the one we must ascend, for Your people, Your world, Your kingdom.

Bless us.
Bind us.
Assure us.
Remind us.
That You are always there.
Where? There.
Always there.

Blessed Assurance, Jubilant Sykes
(Click the hyperlink to listen. Happy Pentecost!

Amen.