In the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime,” the refrain repeats over and over: “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was….” Whether the refrain is meant to reflect the constancy of sameness or the inevitability of change is an open question. There is in life a tension between the predictability of change and growth and the permanence and stability of reality. The Easter experience of the apostles reveals to us to a number of ancient examples that bear witness to the tension between permanence and change.

We know that God is the same as God ever was, unchanging and eternal, revealed to Moses as “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). At the heart of God’s unchanging being are unity and love. Yet the way in which God’s unity and love were revealed to the apostles and the disciples of the earliest church shattered expectations about the nature of God. By the sending of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, to save us through the conquest of death and sin, and then in the giving of the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide the church, something had changed about how we knew and experienced God’s being and love.

It is not that the love of God was new to the Jews. As the first letter of John expresses it, “Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” God’s love had been made manifest throughout Israel’s history. Yet “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” In the manifestation of God’s son, something new had happened.

The newness is found in the growth of the post-Easter church as it tried to make sense of what Jesus had wrought not just for his small group of disciples but for all humanity. There was not a clear-cut path for the church, a blueprint or manual that laid out a five-year plan for church growth. What the apostles had was the gift of the Holy Spirit to help them make sense of their mission and to discover what the church was to be.

There is an inherent wildness in the Holy Spirit, a sort of untameability or unmanageableness, and the work of the Holy Spirit can challenge old ways of thinking and acting. It certainly challenged the early church, as we see in the extended encounter between Peter and Cornelius in the Acts of the Apostles.

By means of visions, prayer and the experience of the Holy Spirit, Peter is brought to a new realization: God has given the Holy Spirit even to the Gentiles. If this does not seem shocking, it is because we have lost the sense of wonder shared by Peter and the apostles that even the Gentiles can be saved. But Peter’s shock registers throughout Acts 10.

The newness of Gentile inclusion resonates throughout Peter’s proclamation: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” This is new, something radically new, head-spinning even, for a new path is being cleared for the universal mission of the church. Peter does not wait to consult with the other apostles, but acts on the experience of the Holy Spirit in their midst. “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Peter definitely could not. He did it. He baptized them.

One cannot deny the shocking change that came upon the disciples of Jesus through the Holy Spirit and the newness of Gentile inclusion, although Peter’s quick decision would need to be ratified by the church in the council at Jerusalem. But this newness also found its resting place in the state of permanence, that is, the unchanging love of God. For what the church was called to do was to bring to the whole world the call to keep God’s commandment, something old, made new in the revelation of the Son and the Holy Spirit. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”—this love of God and neighbor, the same as it ever was and made completely new.

This article appears in May 4 2015.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.