Discerning the Presence of the Spirit
Reflections for the Third Sunday after Pentecost
RCL Proper 13C
30 June 2019
Holy Trinity Cathedral
New Westminster BC
All of my best days, most of my good days and few of my bad days begin with morning prayer. Morning prayer connects me with my sisters and brothers, lay and ordained, all over the world as we recite the psalms, read the scriptures and spend time in reflection and prayer for the needs and concerns of others as well as our own.
Here in North America Anglicans share a common two-year lectionary for morning and evening prayer with a psalm or psalms for every day of the year as well as readings from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. With a few exceptions the scriptural readings are continuous, beginning with the first chapter of a given book of the Bible and then moving on, passage by passage until the end.
Over the past few weeks one of the readings has come from the Acts of the Apostles, the stories of the early Christian community with its home base in Jerusalem and then spreading throughout the Roman Empire. Just recently we’ve been following the story of the arrest of Peter and John by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem after the apostles had cured a man in the name of Jesus.
I sympathize with the Jewish authorities. They are responsible to the Romans for the maintenance of peace and good order. They are responsible to the Jewish people for worship in the Temple and interpretation of the Law of Moses. They are split into several factions, each claiming to have a better understanding of the Law than the others. And now they have to deal with the disciples of Jesus who claim that the man executed by the Romans at the request of the Jewish authorities was the Messiah, the Promised One who was to lead Israel out of its bondage to Rome.
To make matters even worse, these disciples of Jesus are healing the sick, caring for the poor and widowed and living faithfully as Jews by worshipping in the Temple and in the prayers. How will the authorities know if they are right and that the message of the apostles is not a faithful response to the Covenant God established with Israel through Noah, Abraham and Moses?
Some want to imprison the apostles, while others probably want to hand them over to the Romans for punishment. They don’t dare send them into exile because the disciples of Jesus are already showing themselves very skilled at bringing others into their community. As they debate the matter, Gamaliel, a respected member of the Council from a faction more sympathetic to the teachings of the Jesus movement, stands up and says something that continues to be true to this day: “35bFellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men . . . . 38[In] the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; 39but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them — in that case you may even be found fighting against God!” [1]
In some ways this is the debate that Paul enters into when he writes to the Christians in Galatia. They were among the first non-Jews to hear the preaching of Paul and others who encouraged them to put their confidence in the reconciliation of the world to God achieved in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. They were told that they were not required to follow all the ritual requirements of the Jewish law. But now other missionaries have come who are telling the Galatians that they cannot be disciples of Jesus unless they become Jews first. How are these new converts to discern the presence of the Spirit? How are they to recognize genuine teaching from false teaching?
In words that have been quoted innumerable times throughout the history of the Christian movement, Paul tells the Christian community that we know the presence of the Spirit where we find “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” [2] Eight hundred years after Paul wrote this, a Latin poet penned a hymn that we still sing today:
Where charity and love prevail,
there God is ever found;
brought here together by Christ’s love,
by love are we thus bound.
Let strife among us be unknown,
let all contention cease;
be his the glory that we seek,
be ours his holy peace.
Love can exclude no race or creed
if honoured be God’s name;
our common life embraces all
All of us here today have lived through a tumultuous time in contemporary Christian history. Since I was ordained in 1981, we have wrestled with issues that have caused congregations and denominations to split into warring camps and with the changing religious and social make-up of our communities. Even families have been rent asunder. In two weeks’ time our own church will gather to discuss how to respect the indigenous communities that are within the Anglican Church of Canada and how we are to respect the dignity of every human person that seeks the pastoral ministry of our church.
Many of us may find ourselves asking the same question that the Jewish authorities and the Christian disciples in Galatia asked: How do we know when we are in the presence of the Spirit? How do we discern God’s wisdom from human foolishness?
If we find ourselves experiencing love, joy and peace, whether with families, friends or other disciples of Jesus, then the odds are pretty good that we are in the presence of the Spirit. If we find ourselves hearing or reading words and ideas that encourage us and strengthen our resolve to live with patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness and gentleness, then it’s likely we are being touched by God’s wisdom rather than the world’s foolishness. If we find ourselves in the midst of a community that chooses its words carefully, that works hard to listen to all the voices within it, that is committed to conversation rather than monologue, to loving and honest expression of hopes rather than stirring up our fears, then we’re probably among people who are guided by the self-control the Spirit offers to those who seek God.
Just this week we opened a new door into the life of this community. Our re-designed website went ‘live’ so that we can gather people into this beloved community to experience the transformation that the Spirit offers to every one who draws near to God and to be sent forth into the world as agents of God’s healing and reconciling purpose. May this new door open on to a community of love, joy and peace. May this new door reveal a patient, kind, generous, faithful and gentle community. May this new door show us to be a people of self-control for the sake of our neighbours. For surely God is in this place and in the people gathered here in the name of Jesus and in the grace, power and wisdom of the Spirit.
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