The wind – 26 May 2017

Language struggles to express lucidly what Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit are all about.  We end up with a list of analogies and word pictures.  Each one no doubt sheds light on some aspect of what God gives us in the Holy Spirit of Christ – what Jesus’s promise means when he said, When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father… he will testify on my behalf [John 15:26].    So it is that we have “tongues of fire” and an alleged “gift” of ecstatic speech – both of which I find less than helpful.  But Paul lists for us a range of “fruits” (καρποι) [Gal 5:22] – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – and also a range of “gifts” (χαρισματα),– wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits… [I Cor 12]  Later he lists these “gifts” as offices in the church – apostles, prophets, teachers, deeds of power, healing, forms of assistance, leadership…

However after all that, in declining years, I find my favourite depiction of the Spirit has not changed in 50 years.  It is back in John 3, the encounter with Nicodemus.  Jesus speaks to this pharisee of the wind.  As a pharisee, Nicodemus had a structured, orderly, prescripted life.  But of the wind, Jesus says:  It blows where it chooses... you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [John 3:8].  Luke in the Book of Acts tells us that the coming of the Spirit was like the rush of a violent wind [Acts 2:2].  James K Baxter gave this analogy a special Kiwi flavour when he wrote about the wind blowing across the paddocks, both inside and outside the fences.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, Jesus tells Nicodemus. 

I remember, from long ago, a ferocious lecture from a visiting cleric, on what he saw as the “perils of private inspiration”.  And indeed, we did know about what can follow when someone claims to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit while the rest of us remain uninspired in darkness.  Private inspiration was deeply suspect.  Chaos could ensue.  Tried and tested rules could be transgressed, the church’s vast collective wisdom set aside.  This man had evidently not read the yearning prophecy in Joel, which Peter quoted on the Day of Pentecost:  I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit [Joel 2:28]… 

This gift of the risen Jesus to his followers is the same wind of the creation story, the ruach, the breath of God, that blew over the abyss, separating light from darkness, bringing newness to life, making new worlds, initiating meaning and purpose – and all in love.  Nicodemus needs to stand in the wind, says Jesus.  Outside somewhere.  Discipleship does mean feeling a draught or two, it entails being uncomfortable in places and at times.  It does mean making friends with change.   Prayer is out in the wind, where we are still and silent, with listening hearts, and paying attention. 

The Spirit of Truth – Easter VI, 19 May 2017

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  [John 14:17]

First, let’s divest ourselves of this perennial bother that normally surrounds the word “truth”.  If you say that what you claim is the truth, there will be someone who thinks otherwise.  You may be not so sure yourself.  If any church claims to be the one true church, the one with the truth, they needn’t expect a flood of conversions, except perhaps in parts of the USA.  “Truth” has become a relative and negotiable term these days, claims are regarded as suspect and liable to be disproved in the next issue of The Listener -- and as you know we even have something called alternative truth, alternative facts… whatever that is. 

…so that, having what Jesus calls here the Spirit of Truth is not going to make us somehow seem right or infallible.  Neither should we feel it does.

Jesus laid down one or two serious markers about truth and falsity, it seems to me.  One of them is the question… Is it loving?  The Samaritan was loving, even though he was of the wrong religion.  When people ask how they know whether Christian Meditation, contemplative life and prayer, is actually getting them anywhere, doing anything for me… the response is a question:  Are you becoming more loving?  Love and truth are inseparable.  Moreover, whatever it is being propounded, if it excludes and alienates it is unlikely to be very true.

Another marker is the question:  Is it practicable?  It is not a matter of how I feel, or what I say I believe.  It is a matter of what I am, and am becoming, and what I do.  I am reminded of that marvellous Maori woman, Eva Rickard, who said we need “less of the hui-hui[1], and more of the do-ie, do-ie”.  So… am I changing under the work of grace?  Am I finding Self, its image and its needs, to be decreasingly important and increasingly disposable?  Am I finding myself less afraid of life, death and the future?  

A third marker might be humility.  As Benedict and plenty of others have seen, truth and humility are inseparable.  When some demagogue rants and roars, threatens and promises the earth, feasting all the time on adoring fans and sycophants, it is time to watch how truth is suffering.  Truth usually doesn’t make a noise.   The Spirit of Truth, who is the Spirit of Jesus, quietly occupies our hearts.  Our discernment of truth may be more in spotting and noting untruth.  The first task is to become friends with silence and stillness, attention, and quiet consent to the coming of the Spirit of Truth.  He abides with you, said Jesus, and he will be in you. 

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[1] In New Zealand, a “hui” is in Maori terms a meeting to discuss some issue at great length with speeches.

Untroubled hearts – Easter V, 14. May 2017

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. [John 14:1]

Don’t let your hearts be troubled…  Isn’t it a bit like someone saying to you: Now don’t worry about… whatever it is…?  Or the favourite saying of the late Joh Bjelke Petersen, Premier of Queensland: Now, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that!  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus cautions:  Don’t be anxious about tomorrow…[Matthew 6:25f].  Paul advises the Philippian church:  Do not worry about anything [4:6].   Jesus says to Martha:  You worry and fret over so many things.  Plenty of people do seem to enjoy worrying.  It can seem a normal healthy reaction to looming events.  A person who doesn’t worry can seem irresponsible, or to have a flimsy hold on reality. 

Well, I am intrigued by the Greek verb John uses here.  It normally means not so much sitting around frightened, as simply being in a muddle.  The noun belonging to this verb does mean disorder or a mess, like some adolescent bedrooms.  The picture here in John is not of someone who floats serenely through life, never feeling anxious – but rather of the muddled, directionless heart, the heart afraid of pain or adversity, always one way or another a victim, building protective fences, yet still always feeling a draft. 

The point of our stillness and silence in prayer is emphatically not to build up our defences against the cruel world.  One of our fine contemporary teachers, Cynthia Bourgeault, writes about how useless it is to spend the precious time of silence on what she calls our chaotic wanting and needing.  I would add, it is also not the time for all our noisy internal puzzling over questions and issues, memories and fantasies…  All of that is the muddle.  Our minds can sort that out some other time, maybe. 

Meditation is not for that.  Rather, it is a gift of time for what Jesus called purity of heart – Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God [Matt. 5:8].  Meditation is when the mind steps aside in favour of the heart – as all contemplatives, mystics, friends of silence, understand that word heart.  The mind may have endless questions – the heart has a single direction.  It is not confused.  So it is that the practice of Meditation in all great religious traditions has two great pillars.

The first is attention.  That is the point of the mantra.  It is a simple discipline.  Each time we realise we have become distracted, we gently return to the humility and poverty of the mantra.  We are asking for nothing, simply being as fully present as we can right now.  The second is consent.  It is our mature, heart-felt consent, our “Yes”, to life and death, to love and truth… accompanied ever by Jesus.  And, promises St Paul in that quotation from Philippians:  The peace (“shalom” = health, order) of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

No other name – Easter IV, 7 May 2017

Once again the lectionary takes us to John’s Gospel, and we encounter this little surprise from Jesus:  I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved… [John 10:9]  He has just finished saying: …all who came before me were thieves and bandits…  If you turn over to chapter 14 you find the saying everyone knows, where Jesus says, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me [14:6].  Peter later testifies in Jerusalem:  There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among mortals, by which we must be saved. [Acts 4:12]

…and of course it doesn’t fit at all well with our pluralistic liberal attitudes and needs in the 21^st century.  All the old questions arise – I recall confronting them 50 years ago:  What about people of other faiths?  What about people who never heard about Jesus?  What about conscientious atheists and agnostics?  More cogently, I would have thought:  What about many 21^st century sons and daughters and their offspring who have neither time nor space nor interest for church or Christian faith? 

From the outset the church has maintained what it calls the finality, the uniqueness, or the primacy of Jesus.  No other name…  Moreover, most of us have a question about being “saved” – saved from what?  And do I wish to be saved if better people than I are not, because they don’t believe in Jesus?   My irascible Scottish grandmother had issues with all this.  She said, You’re going to be surprised who you find in heaven… but I know some who won’t be there…  She had the situation under control.  I think it’s time to re-set the matter.  Jesus was not excluding anyone, even if those who reported his sayings may have tended to think otherwise.  It is clear from what we know about Jesus that no one is lost. 

Needing a better brain than I have to explore this issue, I turned again to Archbishop Rowan Williams, and to a lecture he gave quite recently entitled The Finality of Christ in a Pluralistic Society.  He reminds us that there are in fact no barriers around Jesus, no matter how some Christians try to erect them – what Jesus does and teaches is that God our Father’s love and grace is there unconditionally to every person, believer or not.  Dr Williams utterly disclaims all Christian imperialism, arrogance, bullying, proselytism, exclusivism, dogmatism, moralism.  The relationship we have with Jesus is marked by his marks – humility, reverence for mystery, willingness always to set ego aside.  Dr Williams describes movingly how we must approach people of other faiths than ours, and people of no religious faith – we approach them, he says, in the spirit of learning and understanding.  I have always come away humbler and more thoughtful, Dr Williams says. 

In our silence and solitude of prayer it is Jesus’s company we are keeping, not because we are some elect, or qualify in some way, but because we are present, as fully present as we can manage.  It is Jesus who leads us to be open and hospitable to all, of other faiths or none.  He shows us the art of living deeply and meaningfully in a secular world of much confusion and pain.  As we consent, he continues the task of conforming us to his likeness.