Abiding…5 – Of his Spirit

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. [I John 4:13]

Last week we were considering what Jesus calls the fruits of abiding.  He used the analogy of the vine.   If the branch does not “abide” in the vine it withers.  If the branch “abides” in the vine it is nourished and “bears much fruit”.  Sarah Bachelard says that one of the most important fruits of abiding is discernment.  Discernment is a quiet gift more than ever needing to be recovered and understood in our confusing and perilous world, and in our divided, disintegrating church. 

So what is discernment?  She makes a difference between, on the one hand, activism, good works… that is, seeing a need or an injustice and doing something about it if we can… what we do may be hands-on help, or protest, giving money, defying the law, or writing a report…  This is action.  It comes partly from our need to do something, when our sense of rightness is offended by what we see or hear.  But also, she says, we have discernment, and – this is the interesting thing -- she teaches that discernment has priority.  Discernment is to do with the quality and depth of our perception of things.  When we practise disciplines of silence and stillness, we are making space and freedom to be open to a better understanding, and to what is not us, what is not simply a product of our fears and needs and beliefs.   Discernment is to touch the fringes of God’s view of the matter, and in our world and our church it is up to contemplative believers to learn discernment.

We are free to learn discernment to the extent that, in prayer and in all of life, we are becoming more able to set self aside.  You see Jesus practising discernment in his response to the woman caught in adultery [John 8].  To the religious leaders this was a simple matter.  The woman had offended and was liable for punishment, and the penalty was stoning.  They see no problem in publicly parading and humiliating this guilty woman; they see no problem in not naming and shaming the man involved… Moses commanded us to stone such women…   I may point out that much of this attitude thrives in our day… public exposure and denial of dignity, the need people have to see punishment done and more suffering imposed – and we can even have stoning of women, not here admittedly, but in some lands, in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful.  Jesus doesn’t answer them immediately.  He crouches down and writes with his finger in the dust... it may be, disgusted by their cruel sanctimony, but needing to discern God’s view of this.  Alright, he says, let the one without sin throw the first stone.  The point about this response is that Jesus opens up a new space, a space for their discernment about themselves… a space for truth, inseparable from mercy, which supersedes the letter of the law… and a future for the woman.  It is typical of true discernment that it opens up space and the future.

Sarah Bachelard rushes to add:  Yes, but we are not Jesus.  We have a struggle to create this kind of space and discernment even in our own families at times, she says.  Yes… but it is a goal to which we are open in the silence and stillness of our prayer.  I think it is increasingly the prior requirement for any Christian action on justice and peace issues.  Our activism will be unsustainable without the fruit of the Spirit of the Risen Christ, encountered and welcomed in prayer – and without which we may be simply, in St Paul’s words, noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. 

(Next week: Learning to live then with uncertainty and unresolvedness…)