Death of Zeal

The brown vinyl bus seats were hot and stuck to our legs. The vinyl on my seat was also cracked, and it rubbed my legs raw. I could not have cared less, for I was on my way to teen camp.

It was finally my time. Having been a youth pastor's kid for many years — always lingering on the edges of wild youth group games, playing the part of everyone's cool little sister but never actually being a part of things — I was more than ready. I sat toward the front of the bus with the other newly christened seventh graders, some more nervous than others. My dad was now the lead pastor, but he had a CDL license and thus was driving us to camp. I looked up into the long, rectangular rearview mirror and caught his smiling eyes — celebrating the important milestone but discreetly allowing me to shine.

The next nine hours were bliss: stopping at Stuckey's rest stop to buy snacks and that Somewhere over the Rainbow magnet I had needed all my life, singing absurd songs until annoyed adults pleaded for a break, playing MASH over and over again on sweaty, crinkled notebook paper, working up the courage to casually throw in names of boys in the youth group, hoping no one would take notice and call out my crush. The thrill of being a part of the group was intoxicating. I drank deeply.

A few hours into the trip, the damp Kansas summer air turned brisk as the bus began the trek up the mountain to our denominational campground in Colorado. I felt a shiver of excitement as the campground came into view: Golden Bell.

The week would be full of firsts: first time rappelling off a cliff, first late-night game of capture the flag, first youth group crush (the boy I'd marry nine years later ... but that is a different story). I experienced my first emotionally charged teen worship service and took my first tentative sermon notes, carefully penned in the fresh journal that was a gift from my mother. It was my first mountaintop spiritual high, dizzying in its power. So many firsts! It was a rich taste test of what was to come over the next six years in that youth group.

Two summers later, in July 1999, I found myself on yet another bus, this time in Toronto, Canada. No more hot, sticky vinyl. We drove from our hotel to the convention center in style, in charter buses with lush cloth seats and air conditioning blasting us with an icy breeze. For the past year, I had plunged my hands into countless soapy buckets at car washes, babysat kids I did not like, participated in dinner theaters, even cleaned toilets — all to raise enough money to attend an international gathering of Nazarene teenagers that takes place every four years.

Every night, dynamic speakers took to the stage, preaching fiery messages of salvation and full consecration to God. And every night, hundreds of teenagers poured into the aisles and knelt at altars, responding to the movement of the Spirit and the highly charged emotional atmosphere. I had not yet made my way forward. I had long since decided to follow Jesus and had even experienced what we in our tradition call a moment of "entire sanctification," that second work of grace in which the Spirit empowers you to give your entire self to Jesus — at least as thoroughly and sincerely as you can when you are eleven. Now I was waiting to see if the Lord had a new word for me.

On the fourth night it came. Overcome by the Spirit and the passion of the moment, I sat down heavily during a worship song sung by the nine thousand voices. I was brought low by the weighty presence of God. The voice was not audible, or even terribly specific, but it was clear nonetheless: I am calling you to ministry.

The fires of zeal were ignited.

Several weeks later, on a muggy Sunday night in August, I stood nervously behind a pulpit for the first time, testifying to my local congregation about God's call in my life. No going back now. I basked in the celebration, the affirmation, the approval. The flames of zeal were fully ablaze, fanned by the encouragement and pride of my church family.

In the first century, the Roman Empire was at peak strength and influence. The power and influence of Rome's culture, religion, and philosophy dominated the Western world. In each place it conquered, the empire established colonies, insisting that citizens participate not only in the political practices of Rome but in the religious practices as well. These included emperor veneration, which quickly evolved into worship. Local religious practices in the colonies began blending into Roman ones, blurring the lines between them.

Unlike their pagan neighbors, who seemed unruffled by the syncretism between their traditional religious practices and those instituted by Rome, the Jewish community resisted. They insisted on the unique lordship of the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In this cultural and religious melting pot, a boy was born to a devout Jewish family in Tarsus, and they named him Saul. Saul's family was not just any Jewish family, but a family of Pharisees. For anyone who has stepped foot in a church and heard at least a sermon or two, the word Pharisee conjures up a host of connotations: hypocrites, legalists, violent accusers of Jesus. And as the Gospels make clear, many Pharisees were all these things. But at the heart of Pharisaism was a deep love for God and a longing for purity of the people of God through enfleshed faithfulness. By keeping the Torah and guiding the people of Israel to do the same, often through zealous and occasionally violent means, Pharisees hoped to hasten the coming of the kingdom of God.

I imagine young Saul sitting at the feet of his father as he debated the Torah and its interpretations with other Jews. He would have participated in the sacred celebrations and feasts like Passover, asking the traditional questions assigned to children: Why on this night do we only eat unleavened bread? Why on this night do we eat only bitter herbs? Over and over, Saul would hear the story of God's great rescue, the deliverance of God's people, Israel, from slavery in Egypt.

As he grew, Saul joined his peers at the local synagogue, repeating the Torah until it was not just tucked into his mind but rooted deeply in his heart. By the time he was ten, Saul would have had the Torah memorized verbatim. This seems like a remarkable feat to us, although at the time, that much was quite ordinary. But Saul's own testimony in the New Testament makes clear that he was in no way ordinary, but rather went beyond his peers in his studies of the Torah and "advanced in Judaism beyond many ... people of the same age" (Galatians 1:14). When other young men left formal schooling, Saul continued by studying under a famous rabbi, Gamaliel, in Jerusalem.

It is impossible to know all that swirled in young Saul's heart, but it's not hard to guess. Saul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a devoted Jew, a Pharisee, committed in mind, body, and soul to...