Becky Sargent/The Falcon

This quarter concludes my 30th year at Seattle Pacific University. And during my generation of service here, I have seen it all. I am witness to this university's forward movement into a place of modest distinction, where competent, faithful faculty members love their students and seek to teach them well.

But I have not yet witnessed a campus-wide spiritual revival. Many among us now, and many alumni who have gone out from us, continue to pray earnestly for our own SPU Pentecost. Our petition is that the living Lord will pour out his Spirit afresh to encourage and empower us for a ministry of reconciliation.

This week, my UFDN class is studying the rise and fall of national Israel, a story plotted in 1 Samuel through 2 Kings that concludes in 2 Kings 22-23. It tells the haunting story of King Josiah's reformation project of Judah, the southern kingdom of a divided people.

Tentative and short-lived, Josiah's attempt to revive the people's interest in Israel's God establishes a biblical typology of spiritual revival.

Here is a catalogue of revival practices, set out in 2 Kings 23, which believers might appropriate and embody as a community. They help outline what needs to happen for God's word to take root within us, and so forge on this campus a scriptural way of salvation among us and between us.

First, there must be a public reading of scripture and daily prayers (2 Kings 23:1-3). Ideally, this practice should be led by the community's leaders, who then enjoin the entire community to obey the words read aloud. Martin Square might be consecrated as a place where each day begins with prayer, reading and priestly exhortation.

Second, the worship of God must become the community's galvanizing practice (2 Kings 23:4-20). Every other practice that takes place on this campus must be interpreted and purified by worship. Whatever activities do not serve a holy purpose should be removed from the campus. And any academic, professional, or institutional idol that subverts a singular loyalty to God's ways should be set aside as work without spiritual profit.

Third, the celebration of Passover (2 Kings 23:21-23; cf. Deut. 16:1-8) is a sacred way of counting time (see Exodus 12:2). Our academic calendar should be calibrated by the church's calendar. This would remind us that our work as students, as scholars, as teachers, and as administrators and staff serves God's interests and is marked out by an experience of God's grace.

To frame our learning by Advent and Christmas (rather than fall quarter), Epiphany and Lent (rather than winter quarter) and Easter and Pentecost (rather than spring quarter) is a way of participating in the sacred, in a liturgy of salvation.

Fourth, evil media is exorcised (2 Kings 23:24). I'm not sure what to make of this scary practice, but it is something that persists in the Bible's narrative of God's salvation, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Jesus engages in it, as do his apostles. May I suggest that the reference to the "teraphim" might be a clue to the importance of this revival practice? These are the pint-size idols that often were found in households and guided a family's or even an individual's private worship. Single-minded devotion to the Lord begins with the spiritual renewal of one person at a time, to reclaim those private practices for God's end.

This is one of many typologies of spiritual revival found in the Bible. The strategic placement of this story within the biblical canon is significant. It is placed immediately prior to the dismantling of Judah and its Babylonian exile, which should alert us to its importance. In any case, my prayer continues to be for revival, and perhaps this sacred text proffers God's instruction toward that end.