Gentile Lives Matter (Gal 3:23-29)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 26, 2016, Proper 8)

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The Task of Reforming Paul’s Image

Jesus is an almost universally applauded figure. Even among non-Christians, he is well liked and respected.

Paul, on the other hand, draws a tepid applause from among his readers. Not everyone likes Paul. These days especially, he gets a bad rap. Some see Paul as a fiery preacher of predestination and a disciplinarian more concerned with “don’ts” than “do’s.” Others see him as a bureaucrat concerned with church hierarchy or—and this is a very common image of Paul—a sexist patriarch.

These pictures of Paul are understandable. But they’re also unfortunate. Because they’re uninformed impressions, like the impression you might get of a stranger if you happened to have a single snapshot of him but knew none of his story. Part of what I hope to do today is to help reform Paul’s image, just a bit. Because I think that once we appreciate Paul’s story and the world he lives in, we will find that he is actually nothing like those unfortunate pictures. He is instead a most incredible character, a man after Jesus’ heart, which is to say, a man with a heart for others.

Unlikely Allies: Today’s Philosophers

Curiously enough, some of Paul’s staunchest defenders today are not theologians but philosophers. In the last several decades, these philosophers have snatched Paul out from under the nose of the church and turned him into their poster boy for “universalism”—meaning that truth is universal, it’s for everyone. For these philosophers, Paul completely rewrites the story of his day, liberating truth and beauty and goodness from the grasp of a privileged few.[1]

At the time of Paul, the story according to the world is that some people are better than others, that some folks stand closer to the truth. There is a prayer among Paul’s own people that says, “Blessed are you, God, who has not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” Among the Greeks and the Romans, there is a similar prayer attributed to Socrates that thanks the God of Fortune for being born a human and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian.[2]

Everyone around Paul believes in this natural order of better and worse people, superior and inferior. But Paul stands up, shakes his head, and says, “You’ve got it all wrong.” In just a few words, he crosses out the entire story of the world and writes a new one. In just a couple of lines, he topples the distinctions that both the Jewish people and the Roman people were making: “There is no longer Jew or Gentile….slave or free…male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). For Paul, the truth and beauty and goodness of life are not the privilege of a few; they are not the natural property of certain groups. They are universally on offer. The truth and beauty and goodness of life are on tap at your local diner, wherever you are.

Paul and the Biggest of Bear Hugs

This is a far cry from the less-than-flattering pictures of Paul we sometimes see. This is not a picture of Paul the taskmaster, Paul the bureaucrat, or Paul the patriarch. This is a picture of Paul with his arms open wide for the biggest of bear hugs. This is a snapshot of Paul gathering everyone in for a universal embrace. This is an image of Paul that, if we’re not wearing our glasses or contact lenses, almost looks like a picture of Jesus, the Jesus who would hang out around Samaritans and centurions, children and women, tax collectors and other less-than-reputable types.

And so it’s tempting to stop reading right here, to preserve the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from Paul’s declaration of God’s universal welcome, from Paul’s “all means all.” Because isn’t that what church is all about? Welcoming everyone, red and yellow, black and white, Jew and Greek, male and female?

When All Doesn’t Mean All

Welcoming everyone is what our own tradition, the Disciples of Christ, has been about ever since it emerged in the 1800s. The early leaders of the Disciples, Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, both opposed slavery. Even before the Civil War, our tradition could boast mixed race congregations. “No longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free…”

And yet, that is the history of our church told from the perspective of the church leaders, who happened to be white. Listen now to the voice of another early Disciple, Samuel Robert Cassius, who happened to be black: “Let [‘the colored man’] presume to know something beyond an occasional prayer or a short talk at some mid-week social…meeting, and he soon finds out that he is a Negro, and a relic of an inferior race, and that his presence can only be tolerated as long as he is willing to keep still.”[3] Cassius complains that although black folks could step inside the church door, they could never receive the full blessing of their fellow members. In fact, it was quite common that they were forced to sit either in the balcony or in the back pews.

We have come a long way since then. I look out on a church full of people sitting wherever they want—which, most of the time, is the same exact seat! Our bulletin proclaims, “Gayton Road Christian Church—Where everyone is welcome!” And I have trouble imagining the person whose hand Carl would not shake.

And yet…I know the story is much more complicated than this. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s in the world, even today, others who do not feel the full embrace of God’s universal love when they step inside the church doors. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s today who feel that they must segregate their own personhood, their own self, that they must keep part of themselves silent or absent, in order that they might receive the full embrace of a church. I was recently told the story of a young woman who had attended church all her life, loved it like she loved her family, and yet as she became aware of her homosexual identity, she also became aware that this integral part of who she was would never be accepted inside her church’s doors. Like Samuel Cassius’ skin color, it might be tolerated if she kept quiet. But it would never be embraced.

Universalism with a Particularist Twist

The philosophers, I believe, are onto something when they point out Paul’s universalism. But we as readers of the Bible must take it one step further. Because Paul isn’t making the simple claim that we are all the same. He is making the claim that we in our many colorful differences are all loved the same by God in Christ. And he is taking this message specifically to the people who have experienced rejection, who have never received the full embrace of fellowship.

In my mind, the most important point of today’s scripture isn’t what’s in the words themselves but what’s around them. The most important point to remember is that Paul isn’t writing these words of universal welcome to the universe. He’s writing these words to a group of Gentiles, telling them that God loves and blesses them as they are, begging them not to forfeit their freedom in Christ, not to cut off a part of themselves in order to please the people around them.

Paul, remember, identifies himself not as the apostle to everyone, but as the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Gal 1:16; 2:8; Rom 1:5; 11:13; 1 Tim 2:7). He is a universalist, yes, but he is also a particularist. He preaches particularly to the people who need the message most, the people who have been told that their lives don’t matter. God loves everyone, Paul knows that, but Paul also sees the reality that Gentiles are still treated like second-class believers. When they go to the Temple, they are restricted to the outer chambers. When they want to join with other Christ-followers, they are told that they have to change themselves; that they have to make their body like a Jewish body, circumcised and nourished by a Jewish diet.

Paul’s brand of universalism is neither passive nor apolitical. It’s not a kum-ba-ya universalism that says “everybody’s good” in order to deflect difficult questions and avoid controversy. If anything, it’s the opposite. Paul’s universalism is passionate and political. It points fingers and names names. It believes that all lives matter, yes, but it proclaims a particular gospel to the people who feel like their lives don’t matter. It says a blessing especially for them. Not the standard blessing, “Thank God I’m not a Gentile,” but the opposite: “Gentile lives matter.” It is the cause of Christianity’s first great controversy. It is the reason that Peter and James and all the leaders of the movement convene in Jerusalem for the first “General Assembly,” if you will, to figure out what they are going to do about the Gentiles.

The Heart of Paul

And this is where I love Paul the most. Despite his patriarchal blind spots, despite his occasionally heavy-handed manner, he has a heart full of love for the least and the last and the left-out, just like Jesus. He has a heart for the people whose entire history is one of toleration at best, rejection at worst. And so he dedicates his entire life to naming them and blessing them. Just a few verses earlier, he quotes scripture from Genesis that says, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed…” (3:8; cf. Gen 12:3). And then in today’s scripture he calls them “children of God” (3:26).

Paul had a heart for the Gentiles. I’m not here to proclaim whom you have a heart for. I’m only here to point out that there are people who have been marginalized their entire lives, who have grown up with the message that their lives are not as important as others; people who do not feel or know the blessing of God’s love and welcome in their lives, who would quake with fear and worry to walk through the doors of a church—perhaps people who are sitting here today. I’m only here to point out that there are still folks who need an apostle like Paul, a messenger who will name them and bless them and tell them that God loves them.

Gayton Road is a wonderfully open and friendly and diverse church. Just look around at the different ages and energy levels and colors and life backgrounds. May the heart of faith that beats among us, continue to beat and inspire us to proclaim God’s universal love to the particular people who need it most.

Prayer

God whose embrace
We know most fully in Christ,
Who embraces us all:
Make us apostles of your love,
Messengers of your mercy,
To the people who need it most.
Amen.

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[1] For more on this move among contemporary philosophers, see St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

[2] Yehudah Mirsky, “Three Blessings,” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/three-blessings/#, accessed June 24, 2016.

[3] Douglas A. Foster, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 204), 619.

The Gospel of What Is Unaccountable (Gal 2:15-21)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 12, 2016, Proper 6)

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Two Sides of the Same Coin

Recently I finished reading Cannery Row, a novel by John Steinbeck, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. With many books, I have trouble getting past the first fifty pages. Not with Steinbeck. He paints the setting of his stories with broad, colorful strokes, filling the canvas with contradictions, with a rich diversity of compelling characters. Over here, he introduces us to the rich and well-to-do. And opposite to them, he makes our acquaintance with the bums and the beggars. Next he leads us to the darker corners of town, where we find the local “sporting house” and other less-than-reputable places. And then afterward, he shines a light on the households of virtue and stability. Rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy, good and bad—Steinbeck fills his story with characters from both sides of life.

Many readers have remarked that Steinbeck had a better sense than most what it means to be American. And I have to agree. Drive through just about any town and you’re bound to see contradictions sitting side-by-side: a tobacco shop right next to a yoga studio, a fitness center right across from a fast food chain where you can super-size any item. Find me an adult bookstore, and within a block or two I’ll find you a church.

It’s tempting to see these many opposites as competitors. But as Steinbeck skillfully illustrates over the course of his novels, these contradictory people and places are often two sides of the same coin. The one side is necessary for the other; the one keeps the other in business. What appeal would fitness centers and yoga studios have if there were no establishments promoting the sedentary life? What else is a church for, but to clean up the folks who have slipped into less reputable habits?

The “Law”: Sin vs. Virtue 

In his own way, Steinbeck is addressing what Paul addresses in today’s scripture. When Steinbeck shows us virtuous characters and sinful characters, honorable places and places of ill repute, he is showing us a pattern of life that Paul, I think, is protesting.

Of course, Paul writes with very different words than Steinbeck. In Paul’s language, the pattern of life that he is protesting is “the law.” In today’s scripture, Paul addresses a group of Christ-followers who believe that in order to follow Christ, you must also follow “the law.” In other words, these Christ-followers believe that following Christ means doing virtuous things. For them, the world is an arena where good fights evil, and the law oversees this ethical competition.

But Paul sees things differently. Yes, he believes that the law identifies what is good and holy and from God;[1] and yes, he believes that the law distinguishes virtue from sin. But he also believes that virtue and sin are two sides of the same coin, that they turn life into nothing more than a marketplace where virtue and sin are always keeping each other in business. And for Paul, the gospel of Christ is revolutionary because it does not trade in the coin of virtue and sin. It does not live by the law. It does not find life in the law.

The Law of Our Lives

It's worth taking a moment to untangle just what “the law” is. On the surface, it would appear that Paul is talking about the Jewish law. That’s probably what the Galatians would have heard. But Paul, I think, means much more than just a single set of laws. When he refers to the law, we might imagine him referring to it as the Uppercase “L” Law. He is talking about a capital “L” Law that extends across all parts of life: economy, politics, religion, relationships. He is talking about the Law that accounts for every little thing in life. If someone borrows money from you, then they must pay you back. If someone commits a crime, then they must endure a proportionate punishment.[2] If someone treats you rudely, then there must be a reason: perhaps they underslept; perhaps they were upset by something you said.

The Law determines the order of life. It balances the accounts; it accounts for every decision, every consequence. It is the “ought” or the “should” that directs the traffic of life, whether that “ought” or “should” comes from the government or your parents or your teacher or your pride. If you think about it like a computer program, the Law is the code that ensures life will run smoothly.

Or if you think about it like a game, such as baseball or Monopoly, the Law is the rules to the game. The rules, of course, are essential to the game. Without rules, you wouldn’t have teams or time limits or out-of-bounds or goals or fouls. Without rules, there wouldn’t be a game. Just as without code, there wouldn’t be a computer program. So, without the Law, there wouldn’t be life.

But here’s where Paul jumps in so passionately. The Law may be essential for life, but according to Paul, it is also insufficient for life. To live by the Law is to miss out on life. If Paul lived today, I imagine that he would say, to live by the Law is to be nothing more than a robot. In order to live, one must actually, as Paul says, “die to the law” (2:19).

If Paul lived in the twenty-first century and had a working knowledge of modern-day sports and board games, I imagine that he would put it like this. Can you remember the last time you really enjoyed a game? When you laughed? When you forgot about the world around you because you were having so much fun? At that moment of supreme joy, you were not thinking about the rules. You were not accounting for what was what in the game. Sure, you were playing by the rules—you were taking turns, heeding the boundaries—but you were not thinking about the rules. There’s only one person on a playing field always thinking about the rules, always accounting for every move of the game, and that’s the referee or the umpire. And while these officials may enjoy what they do, it’s a safe bet that they never experience the full joy of the game. They do not know the breathless wonder of sinking a last-second shot or flawlessly executing an overhead kick. They do not know the miracle of making a move that even you didn’t know you would make before you made it.

The Unaccountable Faith of Christ

The joy of a game, the wonder and the miracle and the breathless laughter—that, Paul says, does not come about because of the Law. It comes about, rather, by “the faith of Christ” (2:16; cf. 2:20). Our translation today still reads “faith in Christ,” which implies that faith begins with us, with our trusting Christ…but the original Greek literally reads “faith of Christ,” which means that it is actually Christ’s trust in us and his affirmation of us that gives us life.

We all know the difference between prescribed, law-determined kindness and unaccountable kindness, between someone treating us nicely because they “ought” to and someone who does it unaccountably, for no other reason than us ourselves. A good deed is a good deed, and yet unaccountable goodness breathes new life into us whereas prescribed goodness leaves us feeling like an object or an opportunity for someone else. I think this is what Paul is getting at when he says that real life comes through “the faith of the son of God who loved [us] and gave himself for [us].” When someone else loves us unaccountably and gives themselves unaccountably for us, we are inspired to live in an infinitely more colorful and joyful way than the Law could ever imagine. This unaccountable love of Christ is the heart of a heartless world, the flesh and blood that invites us out of our automatic, robotic, law-determined lives into a new and strange and different life.[3]

From Law to Life

Not long ago, I was checking out at the supermarket. Even now, at an age that must surely qualify as “adult,” I still feel a tinge of anxiety when I check out. Forced into a face-to-face encounter with plenty of dead time, I debate the length of eye contact to make with this complete stranger, whether or not to venture a conversational word—and if so, what could I possibly say beyond the weather? Anyway, on this occasion, I took a survey of my cashier’s face and saw a frosty distance. Deciding to keep quiet, I looked this way and that. Checked my phone. But then when I looked up to receive my receipt, I was inexplicably confronted with a pair of eyes looking into mine, a genuine smile, and a warm, “Take it easy.”

I know that such a moment probably seems inconsequential. But I count it as something divinely unaccountable. It confounded all reason and expectation. It was a glitch that the code of life could not account for, a moment of life that the Law could not explain. It was a tiny moment, a mustard-seed moment of grace. In it I encountered the faith of Christ, the love and self-giving of Christ.

It was but a “fleeting and fragile” moment.[4] And yet, the gospel that Paul proclaims is the good news that moments such as this one, moments of love that are unaccountable by any law, are what lead us into newness and strangeness and difference—which are all words for a much simpler gospel word: Life.

Prayer

God of grace,
Incognito Christ,
Still walking in the world,
Loving us and giving yourself for us—
Point us beyond our lifeless account of the world,
Beyond debt and payment, crime and punishment, cause and effect;
Live within us;
Inspire us to a love
That is unaccountable and real and alive.
Amen.

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[1] John D. Caputo, “Postcards from Paul: Subtraction versus Grafting,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 5.

[2] Shame and guilt are an important part of the Law, because they are signals that the Law has been transgressed and that something must be made right.

[3] The inspiration behind the figure of “what is unaccountable” comes from Caputo’s essay, “Postcards from Paul,” which reviews Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek’s appropriation of Paul as a revolutionary. Both Badiou and Žižek treat Paul as someone who points us beyond the negative prohibitions of the law, which keep us mired within a false self, to love, which is the life-giving affirmation of the other.

[4] Caputo, “Postcards from Paul,” 11.

A Faith Untaught: The "Apocalypse" of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:11-24)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 5, 2016, Proper 5)

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A Faith That Jumps off the Page

When I was little, I spent a great deal of time with our neighbors across the street. They were a friendly family. And also a little bit odd. I think the kind way to put it, would be to say that their heads were in the clouds much of the time. I would regularly come home from their house with pocketfuls of coins, which concerned my parents. But I could hardly help it; loose change was practically growing on their couches and floors. I remember dinner with them one night. We had pizza, and it was piping hot. Their son, who was my age——I’ll call him Christopher—simply could not wait for it to cool off a little. And so what other choice did he have? Without a second’s hesitation, he emptied his glass of milk on his slice. And then happily began eating.

Christopher grew up with many of the same stories that I did. His parents had read him the Narnia series as well as The Hobbit. He had seen the Star Wars trilogy. And so quite naturally, when we played together, our imaginations would run wild in tandem. Sometimes we would be hobbits or elves or talking creatures fighting the White Witch. Sometimes we would create our own stories. In either case, we would take on the lead roles in a living story of universal significance, in a story that would decide the very fate of the world.

When Jesus said that the kingdom of God belonged to children and people like them, I think that part of what he was saying was that faith jumps off the page. It is not confined to what lies between two hardbound covers. It is not merely something that is taught, or something that is memorized and recited, like a multiplication table or the Declaration of Independence. It is a living story—one that we are caught up in, one that we are written into, one that we are writing.

From a Faith of the Word to a Faith of the Event

Paul, the man who writes today’s scripture, had lived almost his entire life thinking that faith was a closed book. He had treated faith like a final word. For him, faith had been the kind of thing that could be taught and passed on from generation to generation. Faith was what he had memorized and recited as a student of famous rabbis. It was the security and certainty of a word that never changes.

But then one day, Paul says, he has a “revelation” of Jesus Christ. In the Greek, he has “an apokalupsis of Jesus Christ,” or as we would say today, “apocalypse.” The word itself means unveiling or uncovering. For many of us it conjures up a dramatic event, an event of earthquakes and fires and floods. And that’s what the “apocalypse” of Jesus Christ is for Paul. Not fire or flood—but a moment of great change, a moment when everything he had read jumped off the page. Suddenly the closed hardbound covers of his faith were wrenched open. Suddenly all the words he had been taught, all the words he had memorized and recited—they were caught up in a live event, an encounter with the living God, a new twist in the story.

And so there’s this delicious irony: the Paul who grew up thinking that faith was a closed book, is the same Paul who writes another page in that very book. His letters have become a crucial part of the Bible, a book dear to our faith.

Repeating Paul’s Mistake

Of course, Paul didn’t know that his words would become a part of our scripture. At the time, his only interest was defending himself from certain opponents. Remember, he is facing criticism for suggesting that some of the old laws no longer apply to following Christ, laws like circumcision and the dietary restrictions. His defense is revolutionary. Rather than searching for justification in the precedent of scripture or what Jesus had said, he simply shares his personal experience. His defense is to say that faith is not a word but an event, not an account of God but an encounter with God, not a teaching of Christ but an “apocalypse” of the living Christ.

In the end, Paul’s words won the day. Faith was freed from its hardcover binding; it jumped off the page once more. But ironically enough, today when we read Paul’s words—words that point toward an event of faith, a personal “apocalypse”—we are tempted to shut them away between two covers of their own, to turn them into a new closed canon of faith. To do so is to make the exact mistake that Paul’s words warn against, the mistake that he had made earlier in his life. It is to treat faith as a final word rather than as a living event, as what is memorizable and recitable rather than as the “apocalypse” that reveals something new and different. Like Paul before his encounter with Christ, we treat faith as a finished story rather than as a story that jumps off the page.

The Apocalypse of Christ: 

Not a Learned Word but a Lived Event

Consider your own faith. What is its substance? If you’re like me, if you’ve grown up in the church, then it is tempting to say that our faith is what we learned, what was taught to us in Sunday School and church camps and countless sermons (like this one!). But listen again to what Paul says about his newfound faith: “I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it”!

I think we’re all a little bit like Paul. We have grown up in a tradition of faith. We have often confined our faith to the safe and secure space between the hardcover binding of a closed book. We have often confused our faith with what is familiar, so that sometimes “faith” is actually code for my understanding and my desires, what I want God to do, how I think God should act.

But the good and unsettling news of today’s message is that faith is never a closed book; it is always jumping off the page. We encounter Christ not merely in words but in the flesh of our lives. Paul’s life is a perfect example of this. He grew up thinking faith was a final word, one that conveniently matched his own understanding—and who among us has not thought the same at one time or another? But then one day his world was turned upside down. He had an apocalypse, a revelation, of Jesus Christ. Faith was no longer a learned word but a lived event, an event that changed things, complicated things, kept things alive.

In this way, faith bears a close resemblance to the inspired play of children, for whom the story does not end at the end of a book. The good and scary news of today’s scripture is that whether we grow up in the Jewish tradition like Paul, or the Christian tradition, or any other tradition, the event—the apocalypse—of God in our lives will break open the closed book of faith and invite us to write ourselves into it.

“You Have Heard, No Doubt, of My Earlier Life in Christianity…”

Bearing that gospel in mind, I invite us to explore our own lives, to listen to them, in order to discover the event—the apocalypse of Christ—that inspires our faith. With the help of Paul’s words in today’s scripture, I share with you now my own faith, which is not a word that I was taught word-for-word but rather an event. I share with you the apocalypse of Christ in my life:

“For I want you to know, sisters and brothers, that the gospel that is proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Christianity. I was going to church every Sunday and Wednesday, memorizing scripture, reading books by inspired Christian thinkers, learning how to speak the Christian language. I advanced in Christianity and gained the recognition of my peers and the approval of my elders, for I was dedicated to their traditions.

“But when I encountered Christ, it was not through my own understanding or even through the understanding of the church, but rather through an apocalypse; through the grace of God that practically threw itself at me, that uncovered Christ in the world, often in unexpected people and unfamiliar places. Christ was uncovered for me in a Burmese refugee boy in whom I heard Jesus call out to me, ‘I’m lonely, don’t leave’; Christ was revealed to me through my parents and my brother—not through their ‘Christian’ words or deeds, but through their sacrificial gifts of love that inspired me to love; and Christ showed himself to me in an unlikely, ragtag group of housemates who lifted me out of loneliness and unwittingly demonstrated a Christ-like belief in the goodness of this world and the holiness of life.”

That is part of the apocalypse of Christ in my own life. And it is my faith that such apocalypses are breaking open the closed bindings and writing a fresh faith in all our lives, in all our stories.

Prayer

Christ of apocalypse,
Who breaks open closed books of faith,
Who flusters final words of faith,
Who encounters us in the flesh:
Be known among us today
Beyond the words we learn;
Jump off the page
And sweep us into God’s living story of love.
Amen.

The Faith of Our Father (Gal 1:1-12)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on May 29, 2016, Proper 4)

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Word for Word, Deed for Deed 

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day of remembrance, a day when many in our nation will acknowledge and honor the shadows of fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The shadows of our ancestors loom large over us this weekend.

So too the shadows of fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers loom large over Paul as he writes the beginning of his letter to the Galatians. Over the next several weeks, we will walk through Paul’s message to the Galatians, and we will see that he never quite escapes the shadows of his ancestors. Paul is a man of tradition—a man torn by tradition, torn between the old and the new. He goes back and forth, on one page showing respect for his forefathers, on the next rejecting them. I imagine that as he wrote his letter, he paused frequently to contemplate his relationship with his ancestors: “On the one hand…. But on the other hand….”

Paul, remember, is a part of the Jewish tradition. He had grown up his entire life studying the stories of his ancestors, living according to their teachings as closely as he could. By his own admission, he was an unbelievably enthusiastic follower of his tradition. So much so—I imagine—that if he had read Elijah preferred to wear green tunics, he would have worn only green tunics, even to sleep; or if he had heard David ate standing up, he would have only taken his meals standing up, as awkward as that might have made family dinners. Paul wanted to be his heroes. He wanted to replicate their faith. For him, tradition was replication. It was emulating—copying—his forefathers word for word, deed for deed.[1]

Betraying the Tradition 

Paul’s predicament with tradition reminds me of a parable.

There once was a great teacher who lay on his deathbed. Beside him was his closest follower, a student who had diligently followed every instruction he had given. On the last day of his life, the old wise teacher praised his student: “You have done everything I have taught.” But then he gave him a curious warning: “I sense, however, that you are in danger of betraying my teaching.”

The student was hurt. “Never,” he said. “I have given my life entirely to your words and deeds. I repeat them every day. I will never betray your teaching.”

The old wise man shook his head. “You misunderstand. If you promise only to repeat what I have done, then you have betrayed me already.”[2]

The Good News (Inside Tradition) 

Most of his life, Paul had been like the faithful student. He had repeated the words and deeds of his tradition. But then one day he encountered the living Christ, and he realized that the gospel—the good news—was not about reliving a past life but about receiving new life. He saw that his faith tradition was not about reproducing the words and deeds of his forefathers, but rather about encountering the God that those words and deeds point to, the God who inspired those words and deeds in the first place. The whole reason that Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians is to remind them of this gospel: the good news that new life comes not from replicating tradition but from encountering the living Spirit within it.

In fact, Paul has already preached this to the Galatians in person. But after he left them, some other Christ-followers came and told the Galatians that they were abandoning too much of the Jewish tradition. These other Christ-followers told the Galatians that in order to enjoy the full embrace of God, they needed to keep the old customs like circumcision and the dietary laws. But Paul takes great exception to this. From his impassioned words in today’s scripture, we can almost see the steam rising from his red ears. At first he refers to this mistaken teaching as “different good news”—but then he shakes his head and says, no, we can’t even call it “good news” (cf. 1:7)! Indeed, one might ask, how is it good news to be told that to receive God’s love you must be circumcised and lay off the bacon?

As we will discover later in his letter, Paul is not ready to relinquish the tradition of faith. By no means. He only worries that the old laws and customs have gotten in the way of what they originally proclaimed. He only worries that they have hidden God rather than revealed God. He only worries that a counterfeit gospel of replication has gotten in the way of Christ’s gospel of grace. What matters most, he says, is not repeating a certain set of words or replicating a certain set of rituals but receiving new life through the grace of Christ, which is to say, receiving new life not because of anything we’ve done but because of what God has done for us. That has been the story all along, and that, in a word, is the gospel of Christ.[3]

A Faithful Betrayal? “Unheard of! Absurd!” 

All this talk of tradition—and it’s almost impossible for me not to hear echoes of Fiddler on the Roof. I’m reminded, for instance, of the way that Tevye responds to the news that his daughter has rejected the husband that he has chosen and has instead resolved to marry her childhood sweetheart. In characteristic fashion, he struggles with what he initially perceives as a challenge to tradition. “On the one hand,” he thinks, I’m the father, and I get to choose whom my daughter marries. “But on the other hand,” he realizes, my daughter and her sweetheart love each other. And isn’t that what matters most for a marriage?

In other words, Tevye realizes that in the case of his daughter, the most faithful response to tradition is not to repeat the past custom of arranged marriage but rather to honor the spirit of love that inspired marriage in the very first place. In order to be faithful to tradition, he must tweak it. Some might even say, he must betray it.

Similarly, I think of last Sunday, when our children and youth led us through a wonderfully colorful worship service. At communion, they offered not only bread but also cookies. “Cookies for communion?” As Tevye would say: “Unheard of! Absurd!” But in fact, it might be said that they were honoring the tradition even more faithfully than if they had eaten bread. In ancient Judea, Jesus proclaimed that he was “the bread of life,” because bread was a daily and important part of his listeners’ diet. But if Jesus were speaking to a group of 21st-century children, if he were trying to get his message across to them, it’s not inconceivable that he would say something like, “I am the cookie of life. Whoever comes to me will never want for a satisfying snacktime ever again.”

Beyond Mere Repetition 

Our faith, Paul says today, is not merely a repetition of the faith of our fathers and mothers. That, of course, is what Paul thought earlier in his life. But when he encounters the grace of Christ, he sees beyond the words and deeds of his fathers and mothers. He sees the God of love who inspired them. And that, I believe, is why the only “father” or “mother” that finds mention in today’s scripture is God. Three times, Paul refers to the “Father,” and each time he is referring not to the human ancestors of his faith tradition but to the God who inspired them.

When Paul says “Father,” I wonder if there’s not also an echo of Jesus, who also addressed God as abba, Father, Daddy. Jesus does not use “father” in the old, conventional sense of “head of the household,” final authority, the strong arm that gets things done. In the mouth of Jesus, “Father” means forgiveness. “Father, forgive them,” he says from the cross. So too in the mind of Paul: “Father” means a love that releases us from the closed patterns that imprison us “in this evil present age” (cf. 1:4), whether those patterns be the brokenness and hurt of sin or the meaningless demands of lifeless tradition.

The most faithful response to tradition for Paul is not to repeat what his fathers and mothers did, but in fact to relinquish those words and deeds in order to honor the God who inspired them in the first place. It is a pattern that we see throughout scripture. We see it in the prophets, who come along and remind the people of Israel: God desires not that you merely repeat the sacrifices that your ancestors did, but that you make the sacrifice that really matters, the sacrifice of your own hearts to God and to each other. We see it in Jesus, who says: “You heard it said among your fathers and mothers…but I say to you….”

The gospel of Christ is not mere repetition. Our faith is not merely the faith of our fathers and mothers. It is the faith of God—a faith that we mirror. It is the good news of a God who is always doing a new thing, a God who sets us free from the closed patterns of “the present evil age,” from patterns of sin as well as patterns of lifeless tradition. The gospel of Christ is not the God of replication. The gospel of Christ is the God of resuscitation, rejuvenation, revival. It is the God of new life.

Prayer 

Holy Father and Mother of our faith:
You are the one who breathes new life
Into the present stagnant age.
You are the promise of a kingdom
Where outsiders are welcomed,
Where closed patterns are broken open by love.
When we confuse the good news with mere repetition,
Confound us again with the gospel of Christ.

In the name of our freedom, Jesus Christ: Amen.

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[1] See the field of discourse that C. Wess Daniels draws from in “The New Quakers: A Faithful Betrayal?” Quaker Life (Jan/Feb 2010): 27-29.

[2] Adapted from Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic And Other Impossible Tales (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2009), 117-118.

[3] And this gospel is not contrary to tradition. As Christ himself would say, this gospel is the fulfillment of tradition: it is what has been inside it all along.

"The Works Themselves" (John 14:8-17)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on May 15, 2016, Pentecost)

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“Are You Seeing what I’m Doing?”

You probably know the story. In 2007, Joshua Bell, a Grammy-winning violinist, put on street clothes and performed some of the world’s classics in a Washington Metro station. Very few in the rush-hour crowd stopped to listen. Hardly a handful could appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime concert that serenaded them as they hurried through the halls.

When Philip asks Jesus, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied,” I imagine that Jesus must feel a little bit like Joshua Bell felt in the Metro. Just as Joshua might well have asked the droves of people who passed him by, “Are you even hearing this?”, so Jesus asks Philip, “Are you seeing what I’m doing, are you hearing what I’m saying? How can you say, ‘Show us God,’ when God is in everything I do and say?”[1]

“Who Looks at the Wick?”

Annie Dillard, a writer who glories in the mysteries of the natural world, asks a question that I find particularly illuminating: “When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick?”[2] If the stories of Joshua Bell and Jesus are anything to go by, then the answer is, “Most of the world.” In the Metro, droves of people saw nothing more than the wick. They saw a man in street clothes. They did not see the flames around him, the music pealing off his violin this way and that. In Galilee and Jerusalem, plenty of people saw a homeless man wandering among the poor and the tax collectors and the prostitutes. But they did not see the holy flames around him. They might as well all have been making the same request that Philip made: “Jesus, if you really want us to believe what you’re saying, show us God.”[3]

In my paraphrase, Jesus responds, “What more could I show you? Do you not see the holy flames around me? Have you not heard the music I’ve been playing? Can’t you see that I am the wick and God is the flame? Can’t you see that I am an instrument and God is who plays me?” Jesus says that whenever he speaks, it is actually God speaking through him. And whenever he does something, it is actually God doing something through him (14:10). God is the Spirit who stirs within him. God is the call, and he is the response.

The Agnostic Heart of Belief?

Like a lot of us, Philip thinks that belief is a matter of being in the know, having the right connection, knowing the right name. For him, belief was about joining the winning side, being on the right side of power, ensuring his own salvation.

But in a flash, Jesus’ fiery words reduce this kind of belief to ashes. Listen again to what he says: “If you do not [believe], then believe me because of the works themselves” (14:11). Here in just a few words, Jesus burns through dogma and doctrine and confessions and creeds, and gets to the heart of belief. The heart of belief has very little to do with names and identities, with boundaries or borders, and everything to do with the works themselves. The heart of belief may even be said to be agnostic, in the sense that its passion is for the deeds themselves rather than comprehensively identifying the doer. Identifying the doer, I suspect, would be like trying to capture a flame in an airtight container. Ultimately the flame would vanish. Better to recognize the flame for what it is, the gift of goodness without which we cannot live, the gift of a God who is as loving as mysterious. Better to let this flame set our lives on fire, and the world around us.

“The Works Themselves”

But what is this flame? What are “the works themselves”? I think the works are the gospel that Jesus lives and proclaims. They are serving others. Healing them with a touch of compassion and a word of hope. Welcoming them when the world says they are unwelcome. Forgiving them whether or not they say “sorry.”

I cannot speak for anyone else. But the stories of Jesus touch my heart and inspire belief not because of his claim to authority, but because of his works. A man who welcomes tax collectors and prostitutes, who touches people where they hurt deepest and brings healing, who cries with the grieving, who forgives his enemies? How can I not believe in such life-changing works? How can I not believe in such a man?

And isn’t it the same in our world today? I see “the works themselves” around me all the time. It could be as simple as strangers keeping each other company in a hospital waiting room, as plain as a tearful reconciliation, as straightforward as the sacrifices that parents make for their children every day. And in each case, I am compelled in that instant to believe. I am compelled somewhere deep within to say, “Yes, that is the way. And the truth. And the life. That is how I am to live.”

To Catch Fire

And it’s like fire. It’s like a flame. Contagious. Catching. Infectious. Spreading. Believing in those works is inseparable from doing them. It’s just like Jesus says: “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do” (14:12). And then he makes the promise that he will do whatever a believer asks. Which I think is just another way of saying, when the fire catches hold of you, the spirit of God will be in you just as it was in Jesus, and you will welcome and heal and forgive and love just as he did.

To believe because of “the works themselves,” to catch fire from their holy sparks is what matters most, according to Jesus. Remember his story about the king who separates people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (Matt 25:31-46)? The king welcomes into his kingdom the people who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the needy, cared for the sick, visited the imprisoned. Their response to the king is both the most interesting and most overlooked part of the story. They say, “When did we do that?” In other words, they did all those things not because God told them to and not because they were looking for a reward. They fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, and cared for the sick “just because.” They did those things because they had faith not in a password or the winning side or a set of boundaries. They had faith in the works themselves—in the way and the truth and the life, which found flesh to the fullest in Jesus.

The Gospel of Pentecost

And that’s the gospel of Pentecost. Not that at one particular time God invested a set group of people with power. Not that God drew the boundaries around the church and said, “Now get in here if you want salvation.” The gospel of Pentecost is the good news that the fire never goes out. The followers of Jesus were worried that when he left, they would be nothing more than a group of helpless and wayward individuals. And truth be told, that same worry creeps in on us too from time to time, when we feel cold and alone, when we wonder if God is with us. But Christ promises in today’s story that we will never be alone, just as he himself was never alone. Christ promises that his followers will always have within them the Spirit of God speaking through them and working through them (cf. 14:10), a Spirit that plays not according to the rules of boundaries or memberships but rather like a wildfire that spreads through “the works themselves.”

On Pentecost, we as a church witness not to a creed or a to a confession, but to a way and truth and life, which is to say, to “the works themselves” that we see most fully in the flesh of Jesus Christ.

Two years ago, when Gayton Road sat down to reflect on its sense of calling, it concluded that it was to “love and care for one another and…the community.” What else is that but the calling to a way of life? What else is that but a calling of “the works themselves”? As I’ve talked with you individually, I’ve learned that Gayton Road feels a particular calling to welcome folks on the fringes of society, including the LGBT community, the autistic community, the community of internationals and refugees. Why? For no other reason than that the Spirit has caught fire in our hearts for these people. We don’t serve them because we’re seeking a reward or because we’re merely doing what someone else—the proverbial “man upstairs”—tells us to do. We’re doing it because the belief in “the works themselves” is inseparable from doing the works themselves. We are caught up in a holy wind, a sacred fire, not merely in our own interests but in other interests that through some divine twist have kindled the fire in our hearts.

Pentecost is about much more than celebrating something that happened long ago. It is about celebrating the mysteriously divine way that “the works themselves” seize our hearts today and spread the Spirit of God in the world like wildfire.

Prayer

Invisible God, whose beauty burns bright
In “the works themselves,”
Whose goodness compels us,
Whether we know it as God or as “just because”:
Might your wind fan the holy flames within
And lead us to do your works,
Drawing us along the way and the truth and the life.
In the name of Christ, who leaves us a Helper, your Holy Spirit:
Amen.

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[1] Paraphrased from 14:9-10.

[2] Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Harper, 1977), 71-72.

[3] Paraphrased from 14:10.

Clothed with Possibility (Luke 24:44-53)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on May 8, 2016, Ascension Sunday)

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“Clothed with Power”

“Until you have been clothed with power…” (24:49). As I read these words on Mother’s Day, I can think of only one thing. When I was little, I loved to imagine myself as a superhero. From time to time, my mom would indulge my imagination. She would draw emblems of superheroes so that I could pin them on my clothes. And just like that, I would be clothed with power. Bearing the badges of Flash and Superman and Batman, I would be clothed with super-speed or supreme strength, or fitted with whatever expensive technological gadgets would ensure victory.

Now it’s safe to say, I think, that Jesus had something different in mind when he promised his followers that they would be “clothed with power.” He was not envisioning the transformation of his disciples into a bunch of superheroes. The Holy Spirit does not transform us the way that a radioactive spider transformed Spiderman. But if not that way, then how?

Or perhaps we should begin with an even simpler question. Did Christ make good on his promise? Were his followers “clothed with power” at all? The short answer is, yes. As a matter of fact, that’s what we celebrate next Sunday: Pentecost. This Sunday, we remember the ascension of Christ, when he spoke his last words—no ordinary words like, “See you later,” or, “Until next time,” or “That’s all folks,” but rather unforgettable words of promise. On Pentecost, we celebrate the apparent fulfillment of that promise, when the Holy Spirit swirled around like a violent wind and descended on the followers of Christ (cf. Acts 2:2).

But perhaps you caught my ambivalence just a moment before. Jesus promised his followers that they would be “clothed with power,” and the short answer is that, yes, they were. But there’s a long answer, too, as long as the time from then until now. And that long answer has everything to do with one word: power.

“If Power Were a Person, You Could Bet He’d Be Christian”

From the moment of its birth, the church has played a dangerous game with power. For a few centuries, it was on the underside of power, a minority religion that faced discrimination and even persecution from the powers-that-be. But everything changed with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine. Christianity soon became the official religion of the Roman Empire. And it hasn’t looked back since. From the time of Constantine, Christianity has predominantly allied itself with the powers-that-be. If power were a person, you could bet that he’d be a Christian.[1] From pop idols who casually sport crosses on their skin and around their necks, to presidents who recite scripture and go to great pains to demonstrate their faith, to businessmen who broker high-money deals through the moral leverage of church leaders—one could argue that the church has become not the bride of Christ but the bride of power.

But why, one might ask, is a marriage between church and power such a bad thing? Isn’t that what Jesus promised? That his followers would be clothed with power? In our world, the clothing of power looks like a costly business suit, or a military uniform, or perhaps the glitz and glamour of a pop icon. If Jesus promised that his followers would be clothed in power, is it any wonder that we commonly see Christianity putting on this sort of dress?

Power or Possibility?

But is this really what Jesus promised? That his followers would usher in the kingdom of God through the sword, the coin of Caesar, and pop culture fame? Aren’t these the sorts of temptations that Jesus resists in the wilderness?[2] Isn’t this idea of being “clothed with power” just as crazy as the idea of us running around with superhero powers?

If your own suspicions have been raised at this point, then you would be most curious to learn that, in the Greek, Christ promises his followers they will be clothed with dunamis—which is a word with two different meanings: power and possibility.[3] It is clear how the word has traditionally been understood. People tend to hear what they want to hear, and what the world wants to hear is the promise of a power that builds us up and gratifies our desires. What the world desires is a power of the hand, a power that can accomplish what it wants through muscle or money or image.

But let’s listen anew to this promise. What if Christ is promising that his followers will be clothed with possibility? Possibility is very different from the power of the hand. The power of the hand severely limits possibility. Imagine a person clothed with the power of a military uniform. Such an outfit, such a power, knows only two possibilities: fight or surrender, win or lose, overcome or be overcome. Possibility is not the power of the hand, but the power of the heart. It is not the power of domination but the power of transformation. It is the kind of power that opens doors rather than closes them, that surprises rather than finalizes. Possibility is not the power of what exists but rather of what insists. It is not the power of being but of becoming. Possibility is the power of dreams and memories, of promises and invitations.

The Clothes of Possibility

I think back again to my four-year-old self, running around with a superhero’s emblem plastered on my chest. Was it really power that I had been clothed with? Or was it possibility? Wearing those emblems transformed my world. They opened my eyes not to what was but to what could be. Reality gave way to dreams. Suddenly sofas became forts, slides became paths of flight, trees became buildings begging to be scaled. With those emblems, my mom clothed me not with power but with possibility.

Of course, I think the clothes of possibility that Christ promises look a little different than a superhero’s outfit. After all, superheroes operate according to the power of the hand rather than the power of the heart. So what, then, might these clothes of possibility actually look like?

Only moments earlier in today’s scripture, Jesus urges his followers to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins…to all nations.” What are “repentance and forgiveness of sins” if not the clothes of possibility, the power of the heart? “Repentance” and “forgiveness” are church words, and sometimes we forget that they have very earthy, very immediate meanings. If we were to translate literally from the Greek, “repentance” means simply a change of heart and “forgiveness” means letting go. These are the things of real power, the things of the heart, the things that open the door of possibility.

Our AA sisters and brothers next door would attest to this. For them, repentance—a change of heart—truly opens the door to a new life. And anyone among us who enjoys a meaningful friendship must surely have learned the power of forgiveness—of letting go, of clearing the accounts. How else would we step beyond the inevitable hurt of spiteful words or betrayal, if not for second chances?

Power or Possibility? (Part II)

When Jesus promised his followers that they would be clothed with dunamis, much of the church heard a promise of power. They envisioned triumphant armies and lucrative business ventures and a spotless, marketable image to plaster on magazines and roadside billboards. They began to put their trust not in the way of the cross, not in the power of transformation, but in the power of domination—in things like national security and militarism, which are a project of death; in things like unchecked capitalism, which prizes profits over people and is a project of poverty; in things like a “selfie” culture that reduces people to bodies and possessions and is a project of narcissism and hopelessness.

But what if Jesus was promising something radically different? What if he was promising the clothes of possibility? What if he was promising the clothes of repentance and forgiveness, which are a powerless power, a power unlike any the world knows. Not a power that puts bodies into the ground, but a power that raises them up. Not a power that strips some people of what little they have, but a power that dresses them with dignity. Not a power of privilege, but a power of blessing.

The power of repentance and forgiveness is a power that does not close down possibilities but opens them up, a power not of what is but of what could be, a power not of the high and mighty but a power of what might be, if only we would relinquish our hearts to a change of heart, if only we would let go of the wrongs of others. The powerless power of possibility is the power of a mustard seed, a small pearl, a single lost coin, an infant, the “least of these.”

The Possibility of the Kingdom

When my mother put a superhero’s emblem on my chest, she was performing a miracle of sorts. A small miracle. For suddenly my ordinary surroundings became transformed. Suddenly I could do what before was impossible. When God clothes us with repentance and forgiveness, with the clothes of possibility, it is a similar miracle, but much bigger. For suddenly the kingdom of God, which is but a dream, an invitation, a whisper in the wind—suddenly it is a real possibility; suddenly the door is open for us to step into it. This, Jesus says, is what was written from the very beginning (24:44), and this, Jesus says, is what now stands right in front of us, if we would only put on these clothes—not just in front of our good friends or our neighbors, but in front of all the nations (24:46-49).

Prayer

God of changing hearts,
Lord of letting go,
Strip us of the power we seek,
And clothe us with possibility;
May your Spirit of repentance and forgiveness
Cover us before our neighbors and before all the nations,
May it shape us in the way of the cross,
Until everything is reconciled in your love. Amen.

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[1] You could also bet that he would be a “he.”

[2] Luke 4:1-13; the temptation to turn the stone into bread mirrors the temptation to trust in money, which promises material satisfaction; the temptation to rule over the kingdoms of the world mirrors the temptation to trust in power, which promises security and the accomplishment of personal desires; the temptation to have angels catch him mirrors the temptation to popularity, which promises status and personal influence. All three temptations point to the power of the hand, a power of domination rather than of transformation, a power that finalizes life rather than opens the door to new life.

[3] For a thoughtful exploration of the word dunamis and its different meanings, see Richard Kearney, “The Kingdom: Possible and Impossible,” ebook loc. 2677-3188 in Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (eds. Marko Zlomislić and Neal DeRoo; Postmodern Ethics 1; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010).

The Stranger Within (John 14:23-29)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on May 1, 2016, Easter VI)

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Are We Unacquainted with the Holy Spirit?

When is the last time the Holy Spirit moved you? Spoke to you? Spoke through you?

If these questions bring a lump to your throat or a clammy coldness to your hands—then welcome to the club. You’re not alone. Almost every Protestant diet suffers from a malnutrition of the Holy Spirit. We know about God, we know about Jesus…those two are all over the Bible. But who exactly is this Holy Spirit?

As a child, I remember hearing its alternative name, “Holy Ghost,” and for years, I half-thought of the Holy Spirit as a ghost that might one day be hovering over my bed when I awoke. The thought terrified me. Which is a bit ironic, because in today’s scripture Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as a parakletos—“advocate” in our translation, but the word more generally means “helper.” The Holy Spirit is here not to terrify us but to help us.

Conventional “Pneumatology”

That’s a simple enough point: the Holy Spirit is a “helper.” But say anything further, and we’re stepping into a fiercely contested territory of belief. For centuries, theology has policed this territory. For centuries, its long beards and longer robes have made the rounds, systematizing what—if Scripture is anything to go by—must surely be unsystematizable.

You’re probably familiar with the conventional theology of the Holy Spirit. It goes something like this: the Holy Spirit is the exclusive property and privilege of Christians. Which means that some people have it, and others don’t. This image of the Holy Spirit contributes, I think, to the dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit that we see in some churches. In other words, if the Holy Spirit only belongs to certain people, then there should be a visible difference in these people. They should seem more spirited.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking about the Holy Spirit leaves a lot of Christ-followers in doubt. If they haven’t spoken in tongues, or fainted, or encountered a blinding light—well then, how can they be sure that they have the Holy Spirit? Perhaps you felt this doubt a few moments ago, when you tried to remember the last time you felt the Holy Spirit.

Revisiting the Scene

But perhaps we’ve listened a bit too gullibly to what theology has told us. Remember—theology always arrives late at the scene, a little bit like detectives on the scene of a crime. Someone reports a God-sighting or a God-feeling, and the long beards and robes of theology jump in their cars and rush to the incident. When theology arrives on the scene, it tries to piece together what happened. It gathers witness reports, confers, speculates. But—and it is crucial to remember this—anything theology says is always after the fact, always a human attempt to put the unspeakable into words.

So today, I’d invite us to assume the role of Sherlock, or Columbo, or another eccentric detective of your choice. And rather than accept the standard story that theology has drawn up, let’s go back to the scene of the crime ourselves. Let’s search for evidence of the Holy Spirit ourselves, and see if we come up with anything different.

A Character Sketch of Our Suspect

First, a character sketch of our suspect. In the Greek, “Holy Spirit” literally means “holy breath” or “holy wind.” That important detail leads our investigation back to the very beginning—to creation itself, where we are told that “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). This wind of God, or spirit of God, appears time and time again throughout the Old Testament, which might suggest that the Holy Spirit is not limited to the hearts of card-carrying Christians, that the Holy Spirit is in fact a sacred breeze that blows through unsuspecting open windows all over the world.[1]

According to this character sketch, then, the Holy Spirit—or holy Wind—blows beyond the boundaries we draw. It sweeps over all the earth. And therefore we should expect to see it in more places and people than only those who self-assuredly proclaim its presence.[2]

A Holy Hijacker of Hearts?

Now I suspect—and this is me speaking from my own faith—that the Holy Spirit is more down-to-earth than theology would have us believe. I believe in a world full of divine wonder, where the sacred springs from the smallest and most mundane of things. To limit the Holy Spirit only to the most conspicuous and dramatic acts would sap the world of its wonder, would overlook the tiny miracles of the Spirit that happen in hearts as ordinary as yours and mine, as ordinary as the hearts of strangers we will encounter throughout our life.

What, exactly, are these miracles though? How is it that our hearts experience the Holy Spirit? Can we really give an honest, personal answer to that initial question: When is the last time you felt the Holy Spirit?

Jesus puts it simply in today’s scripture: the Holy Spirit is the helping Spirit of God that dwells in our hearts.[3] In plain language, this means that there is someone else, someone not us, living inside us. There is a stranger, a holy stranger, inside our hearts. We generally like to think that we’re in control of our lives. But if this Holy Spirit stuff is real, then that means that there’s someone else inside who seizes control on occasion. There’s a holy hijacker within.

The Feelings That “Take Over”:

Where Do They Come From?

Not long ago, I read a little anecdote from a small-town pastor that describes this holy hijacker in a wonderfully real and earthy way:

I passed two young fellows on the street the other day…. [T]hey work at the garage. They’re not churchgoing...just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They’re always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don’t know why they don’t catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you’re done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent. [4]

Reading this got me thinking. There are certain things we do, like laughing and crying, that we do not do—not consciously or voluntarily. When I laugh, who is it really that’s laughing? Is it me? Did I decide to start laughing? When I cry, am I the one who decided to start crying? Or is there a mysterious movement within me, something inside that bubbles up through me, that reaches the surface in laughter and tears? Perhaps those tears and that laughter are not entirely mine. Perhaps they belong to a stranger inside me, a holy stranger. Perhaps these emotions that seize us are evidence of the Holy Spirit; perhaps our feelings are fingerprints of the Holy Spirit, still fresh on the scene.

I’m not talking about feelings that we’re supposed to feel: not the obligatory smiles or the sympathetic grimaces that we use to show we’re listening. I’m talking about what surprises us from within, what hits us out of the blue, so that we ask ourselves, “Where did that come from?” To talk about the Holy Spirit this way is not to reduce it to emotion, but rather to infuse emotion with wonder, to reveal the miracle of the Holy Spirit that is within emotion, bubbling up through it. To talk about the Holy Spirit is to talk about more than a psychology of emotions. Psychology only tries to explain and predict emotions. Just like the weather channel tries to predict the weather. But as we know all too well, the weather is unpredictable. And so is the Holy Spirit, the holy Wind, the holy stranger within us that hijacks us and leads us to feel what we ourselves did not intend to feel, inspires us to think what we would never have thought on our own.

Much Holier Than We Think

Our lives are much holier than we think. The Holy Spirit has its fingerprints all over us—in our spontaneous laughter and smiles, our unprompted tears and grimaces, the unsolicited pangs of regret and reflection that seize hold of our willful selves. And according to Jesus, these feelings that the Holy Spirit prompts, remind us of Christ’s words. I’d imagine we all experience this from time to time. When we act vengefully, and afterward remorse washes over us, reminding us of Christ’s call to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies. Or when we witness another person’s ache, and an uninvited tear finds its way out of our eye, reminding us of how Christ himself weeps, how he urges us to look after the sick and welcome the lonely. Or when we hear good news, and a pure smile seizes the corners of our lips, infusing our hearts with hope, reminding us of the gospel of Christ’s redeeming love that will one day reconcile all creation.

So let us have no doubts when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Let that lump in our throats be gone. Instead, let us be filled with the peace of Christ, let our hearts be untroubled and unafraid (14:27). It has never been a question of whether we have the Holy Spirit.  It is the assurance, rather, that the Holy Spirit has us all caught up in its currents. Yes—if we examine our hearts, we will find countless footprints of that holy hijacker, innumerable smudges and traces of its surprising residence within.

When was the last time you felt the Holy Spirit? If your memory fails you, then look ahead, be alert, expect the unexpected. It happens more often that we give it credit for. It happens every day, in the strange stirrings that are within us, that come over us and seize us. The Holy Spirit is not the property of the holy rollers, nor is it the privilege of the pious. As Jesus himself says, it “blows where it pleases” (John 3:8). And thank God, this holy wind that sweeps over the face of all the earth—it is pleased to blow in our hearts.

Prayer

Christ, we love you
And try to keep your word,
But the promise of the Holy Spirit
Is a scary one.
We like being in control.
Even so, we open ourselves to you:
Hijack our hearts, again,
Holy stranger within,
Helping us to become more fully
Ourselves,
And the world to become more fully
Your good creation.
Amen.

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[1] Or as Jesus puts it earlier in the gospel of today’s text, the sacred shepherd calls to sheep in other folds (John 10:16).

[2] In today’s scripture, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to those who “keep his word” (14:23-26)—or more colloquially, treasure and trust and do his word. Passages like this one—and Jesus’ famous proclamation, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6)—are less narrow than they are commonly read. Jesus displaces discipleship from a literal self-identification with his name to the figures of “following a way” and “keeping a word,” tropes that emphasize what we do over what name or flag or label we identify with.

[3] The promise of the parakletos, the “Helper,” (14:26) appears to be a restatement of the promise of God’s indwelling (14:23).


[4] Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004), 5-6. Emphasis mine.