And they continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” Acts 2:12

“What Does This Mean?” – Sometimes a culturally significant expression goes right by us because we read it with different eyes.  You’ve probably read this verse dozens of times, but you probably never considered why these men asked such a strange question.  They don’t ask the question we would ask.  They don’t ask, “What’s happening?”  They ask something else.

You’re part of the Jerusalem news team.  You’re on the scene for the festival at the temple.  Suddenly more than 100 people begin praising God in the languages of foreign visitors.  Swinging the camera toward the talking-head reporter, you hear him say, “But what does this mean?”  Ah, the question is perfectly legitimate, but it’s not very Greek.  Our questions are about what happens.  We want to know who, what, where and how.  Jewish questions in the first century had a different focus.  The questions these men asked were not about who was speaking, what they were saying, how this happened or where they came from.  The question they asked was about the meaning of the event.  The Jews thought about why.  Why did they think this way?  Why was their perspective so different?  Neusner explains:

“. . . in Midrash compilations the past takes place in the present.  The present embodies the past.  And there is no indeterminate future over the horizon, only a clear and present path to be chosen if people will it.  With distinctions between past, present and future time found to make no difference, and in their stead, different categories of meaning and social order deemed self-evident, the Midrash transforms ancient Israel’s history into the categorical structure of eternal Israel’s society, so that past, present, and future meet in the here and now.”[1]

Yeshua has the same orientation in the incident with the man born blind (John 9).  The disciples want to know who was responsible.  Yeshua points them toward why the blindness happened.  This distinction marks a huge difference between our view of history and the Jewish view of history.  What matters for us is the correct order of events, the cause and effect relationships, the accurate reporting of the situation.  What matters for the rabbis is God’s perspective.  “What does this mean?”  In order to ask this question, we must have a different perspective on life.  What actually happens is not nearly as important as what God is doing in the midst of our events.  Our focus must shift from chronos to kairos.  The most important answer is not the explanation of the event.   It is the meaning of the event.  That meaning can only be understood when we connect God’s hand with our lives.  If we don’t know what God reveals in an event, then we don’t know anything about the event.

Do you suppose your view of life would change if you started looking for the meaning of events and stopped trying to find cause and effect explanations?

Topical Index:  ask, meaning, Acts 2:12, why?, Neusner