During my first summer in
ordained ministry back in 1997 there was a week-long continuing
education event that Presbytery required me to attend on the topic of
the first year of ministry. One of the things that we talked about
was maintaining our devotional lives. Pastors of all people should
do that and you would be amazed the number of us who let it go. In
one of the seminars they called in a man whom I shall refer to as the
Synod guru to talk to us about spirituality. I arrived in the
classroom to find books on meditation, candles, CD’s with relaxing
music, and the lights had been dimmed. And then he arrived, the
“Maharishi of the Synod of the Trinity” from Camphill, PA. He
was in his mid-50’s, dressed all in white, and had somehow managed
to achieve flowing white hair. If he had a golden sash and scepter,
he could easily have passed for the Apostle John’s vision of the
heavenly Jesus at the beginning of the Book of Revelation. I can’t
explain precisely why, but I got really angry, an anger that needless
to say kept me from fully appreciating the guided meditation he led
us through. I wanted to grab the man’s neck like Homer Simpson
getting a hold on Bart and scream at him, “Don’t give me none of
them Baby Boomer, narcissistic, self-indulgent, feel good, candles
and voodoo tricks. If you want to know about spirituality then go
feed the poor.” I didn’t though. I saved it for the whole class
later that day when we talked about what the man had said and done.
He really made me mad.
I have to be careful of
what I say here. I don’t want to be misunderstood as dismissing
the spiritual life of another human being and especially the
Maharishi of the Synod of the Trinity, PCUSA. But I would like
simply to highlight that we must be careful with our definition of
spirituality. What he was teaching us was coming dangerously close
to confusing the Spirit of God with getting in touch with our human
ability to have “numinous” experience. We live in a highly
stressed, pragmatic, scientific, and technological culture that does
not have much room for the intuitive, mystical, or dare I say psychic
side of being human. What the Maharishi guy was doing was teaching
us how to open those doors. That’s not a bad thing. It can help
us experience this life more fully and can help us to hear Christ
speak to us. The problem is that it is dangerously individualistic
and too often a person can let their intuitive experiences supplant
the role of reason, reality and community which are crucial elements
of a truly Christian definition of spirituality.
As I read my Bible there
is no call for us to get more “spiritual” meaning more
“numinous”. Rather, the Gospel call is for us to live the new
life that the Father has freely given to us with and in Jesus Christ
through the Holy Spirit – the life of laying aside any rights or
claims we might have to the power to serve ourselves and give
ourselves to Christ Jesus for the love and service of others not
ourselves. Truly Christian spirituality is living in conformity to the cross within the community of faith. Christian spirituality is community oriented over and above being an simply an individual practice. The quintessential passage of Scripture for us as
disciples of Jesus the crucified and risen One is Galatians 2:20-21:
“ I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life
I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me.”
Living the risen life with Jesus in this fallen world is living a
life of conformity to Jesus' way of the cross and in that giving of
the self, indeed dying of the self in the practice of being for others, we discover the risen
life which is truly his presence with us. This way of life certainly will
involve such things as contemplative prayer and sitting in the
Trinity's presence meditating on Scripture the result of which will be our being reoriented, indeed recreated, around Jesus' resurrected
life which he gives to us in the Holy Spirit which is life laid down for others in a community that reflects the image of the self-emptying, self-giving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Christian life
doesn’t involve simply the “spiritual” side of life. It
involves the whole life – mind, body, spirit, purpose, effort. We
disciples of Jesus do not simply awaken our “spiritual” dimension
and call that the Christian faith. Rather, we welcome the Trinity’s
gracious life giving presence and friendship into our lives as he has
welcomed is into his and it is a relationship with himself to which he has welcomed us. Jesus breathes the
Holy Spirit into us, upon us, and indeed into the very air we breath
uniting us to himself so that we share with him his relational bond
with God the Father in the Holy Spirit. The transformational effect
of our new union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit as partakers of
the divine life is the continual cleansing or removal from our lives
of the brokenness we feel in ourselves and our relationships and our
experience of alienation or being separated from God. He gives us
peace, a new communion with the the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
among a new community of people, a community distinguished by
forgiveness that leads to reconciliation. For the disciples of Jesus, the “spiritual life” is
no private matter. It is primarily an effort to live in community
with others in a cruciform way – in the image of Christ reflecting
the self-emptying, self-giving love of the relational communion of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Let us back off the
theology for a minute and visit our passage from John. We find the
disciples are behind closed doors and afraid. Jesus comes to them to
give them peace, to prove that he the resurrected One is still the same
One who was crucified, to breathe the Holy Spirit upon them, and to
commission them to go forth into the world to spread his peace
through the real work of reconciliation. I would step out on a limb
here and say that John is using an experience the disciples jointly
had of the resurrected Jesus to describe what it is like when we
gather together as Christ’s body. We will not see him for he’s
ascended but he has given us his peace to sit in together and to rest
in together, a peace who is the Holy Spirit, and a peace that
manifests itself within our worship and fellowship.
This act of Jesus
breathing the Holy Spirit upon his disciples is him breathing the
breath, the very life of God onto, into, and around his disciples to
bring forth the fulfillment of the Word God the Father has spoken
through the incarnation of the Son as Jesus the Christ in the power
of the Holy Spirit. It is a very Trinitarian act. The Father speaks
the Word as Christ Jesus and the breath of God, the Holy Spirit,
creates the Word in us, the Word of reconciliation and new humanity.
Just as the Trinity and humanity are united in the physical body of
Christ, so are we joined together in him and into his union with the
Father, into his resurrected and ascended life by in-breathing his
breath, receiving his Spirit, and accepting his mission of
reconciliation.
There’s a lot of talk
today about spiritual experience. A question many people ask is what
does God feel like. The generation that came of age in the 60’s
and ever since has been hungry for a God that can be really
experienced. The underlying though is that if God cannot be
experienced, then God is not real. I think John here gives us an
indication as to what we should feel in our experience of God whom we
know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and it is the peace of Christ,
the assurance of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Trinity
towards us. It goes beyond a simple peace of mind that some find in
simply knowing they are forgiven. Pentecostals talk about the
anointing or the blessing. St. Augustine and many of the mystics of
the church talk about simply being overwhelmed with a feeling of
being loved by God and having a love for God. It is something that
is not part of everyday life. It comes from beyond us but undergirds
every bit of life as we know it in the whole of creation. Yet, we
must always stand back and humbly admit that “me” talking about
“my” feelings or experience of God is simply talk of my
experience of God and in all humility and respect my experience of
God is not God. It is just how I experience him.
A true experience of the
Trinity will lead us firstly to want to be part of Christian
community because it is in the gathering of two or three that we find
Christ. Jesus said “where two or three are gathered in my name
there I will be in their midst.” The Holy Spirit calls us to
Christian community because it is in the cruciform relationships of
the community of faith that God is most clearly at work to heal human
brokenness with his love, indeed his very self. As God is the loving
communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so is the church to be
a communion of self-emptying healing love and support, a communion of
true friendship.
Secondly, the
distinguishing mark of the Holy Spirit’s presence in people is the
desire to forgive and be forgiven and to be reconciled and indeed working towards that end. To
forgive those who’ve hurt us and to seek forgiveness from those we
have hurt is the one key spiritual discipline in the Christian life.
When we do that we experience the work of reconciliation that Jesus
was sent here to do. If you truly want to experience God then begin
to ask yourself whom you need to forgive and who needs to forgive you
and then work at reconciling. Ask how you can in all humility give yourself to and for one who is your enemy. Do that and you for certain will be
experiencing Christ and will come to know him most fully, the Crucified and Risen One. Moreover
begin to build all your friendships on the sure foundation of
Christ's peace, the unconditional love by which he welcomes you into
his life. You will find that the Holy Spirit, who is the grace of
God and the peace of Christ is very present with you and in you when
you work towards these things. Amen.
