On being led by the Holy Spirit: last Sunday's Thought

How do respond to an advertisement such as the above? The scene depicts the Last Supper, with the light shining on the one disciple who has no halo (Judas Iscariot). The punchline is: ‘the right lighting changes everything’. Do we respond with nonchalance? After all, all publicity is good publicity; at least the message brings the Christian story into the market place. Are we offended? How can the Last Supper be mocked publicly? Or do we respond with regret? The problem is that very few young people have now heard the Christian story and therefore many may not understand what is happening at all... 

‘In some sense,’ it has been argued, ‘the current times are not unlike the pagan world in which the apostles first proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is true, that the West is more an “angry divorcee,” and the ancient Gentile world which was more like a virgin awaiting her groom. But there are still some parallels, and our presumption that most people heard the basics of Scripture, and the gospel is generally a poor presumption today. Most have not heard Christ, or the Scriptures authentically proclaimed. And to the degree that they have, it has been proclaimed to them with hostility and cynicism by a world and a culture that scoffs at the claims of Christ, his Church, the Christian tradition.’

If this argument is correct, then a great deal depends on who we think brought about the growth of the early Church and the  way in which it was done. Here there is a basic contradiction between the accounts of the eastern Orthodox Church and the western Catholic Church, which led to the historic split in the year 1054. 

Let us take the Orthodox account first. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles reveals to us that the Holy Spirit was at the heart of the growth of the Church from the outset. He encouraged the early churches and found leaders for the new congregations. The Church existed and grew only through the Spirit working in the hearts of believers. Our task is not just, as Paul tells us, not to put out the Spirit’s fire, not to quench or stifle it (1 Thessalonians 5:19). It is about igniting it to illuminate all our actions and decisions as a Church community. The true mark of the Church is that it prays and worships in the Spirit (Philippians 3:3). At its best, worship is thus a Spirit-led movement, giving praise to God, proclaiming what He has done and is doing, and what our human response should be (T. Page, ‘Holy Spirit’, in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 412). We are not left as ‘orphans’ by a Christ who we can no longer see (cf. John 14:18) if all our ministry in the church and beyond its walls is done in the Holy Spirit. The people of God walk in the comfort of the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:31). They rejoice in the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21), resolve and decide things in the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28), have their conscience bear witness in the Holy Spirit (Romans 9:2), have access to God in the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:18), pray in the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26, Jude 1:20), and love in the Holy Spirit (Colossians 1:8). 

For all these reasons, the Orthodox Church regards the Holy Spirit as the ‘creator’ of the Church and rejects the formulation in the Creed known as the filioque, namely that the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Father and Son and not directly from the Father. In the Western Church after the year 589, the Son submits to the Father, while the Holy Spirit submits to both the Son and the Father. The Eastern (later, Orthodox) Church, however, never accepted this further definition and contended then and still contends today that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father: this issue ‘remains the primary theological difference between the Eastern and Western churches’ (Stanley M. Burgess, ‘Holy Spirit’, in The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, ed. G. T. Kurian, ii.1146; the term filioque means in Latin ‘and the son’). In Eastern Christendom, Basil the Great, known as a ‘Doctor of the Holy Spirit’, went further than anyone in the west in a treatise On the Holy Spirit, proclaiming that the Spirit is the creator of the Church (Burgess, ‘Holy Spirit’, 1147).


In the western church, the emphasis was rather on the Church being led by Jesus himself through his appointed disciples and then through the apostolic succession. Instead of being lost and reduced to silence, the disciples are ‘sent’ and the Spirit is to be sent to them so that they may have the ‘truth’ continually revealed to them and its significance instilled in them. The Holy Spirit will therefore be their ‘teacher’ and ‘revealer’, perhaps even ‘exhorter’, the means by which they will ‘understand’ the gospel and the presence and guidance of God the Father and the Son, thus creating the ‘Spirit of mission’ (M. M. B. Turner, ‘Holy Spirit’, in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 350). The initial proclamation sought to get right to the point. In effect, this kerygmatic approach was seen more as a proclamation addressed directly to the hearer, and is a call to conversion, rather than as an extended appeal to the reason or to motives of credibility. Jesus is the chosen Messiah of God, the one who was promised. And though he was crucified, He rose gloriously from the dead, appearing to his disciples, and having been exulted at the right hand of the Father through his ascension, now summons all to him, through the ministry of the Church. This proclamation (kerygma) requires a response from us, that we should repent of our sins accept baptism and live in the new life which Christ is offering. This alone will prepare us for the coming judgment that is to come upon all humanity.

Is it possible to reconcile the different accounts of the early Church? Perhaps we can do so through the writings of St Paul, for whom the Spirit is the only means to know God and to accept the gospel. There is a ‘Jesus character’ to Paul’s view of the Holy Spirit, referred to as ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (Romans 8:9) or ‘the Spirit of God’s son’ (Galatians 4:6). The Spirit promotes the confession of Jesus as Lord in the church: ‘no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 12:3). The reverse is also true: ‘if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His’ (Romans 8:9). For Paul, the Holy Spirit is the guarantor and hope of the coming kingdom of Christ: when you trusted in the Lord Jesus, he tells us in Ephesians, you were ‘sealed with the Spirit of promise’ (Ephesians 1:13). The promise includes freedom for the believer (‘The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’: 2 Corinthians 3:17).

Moreover, there is an additional promise of no condemnation: ‘…there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit’ (Romans 8:1). Since we are God’s temple, if God’s Spirit lives in us (1 Corinthians 3:16), it is the Holy Spirit which renews and enriches our worship. The Spirit empowers all believers with various gifts according to need and inspires the faithful to use their gifts correctly: this is an important link to both the spirituality and good governance of the Church. Paul tells us in Romans 8:14 that ‘all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God’ (or, in another translation, his sons and daughters). This means that we are led by the Holy Spirit externally, to understand the Word of God in scripture: ‘This is why the Holy Spirit says, “Today you must listen to his voice…”’ We are led internally by the Holy Spirit ‘indwelling’ or strengthening us: ‘not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength’, a ‘mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit’ (Ephesians 3:16. By his power working in us, God through the Holy Spirit ‘is able to do far beyond anything we can ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20). If we believe that God is telling us to do something, then we need to do it. We need to respond to the Holy Spirit for him to lead us. ‘If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25) – let us follow the Holy Spirit’s lead in every part of our lives. We need to work out its implications in every detail of our lives. ‘Since it is through the Spirit that we have Life, let it also be through the Spirit that we order our lives day by day’ (Galatians 5:25, Complete Jewish Bible).

         If we do indeed heed the call of the Holy Spirit to order our lives in a different way, there are radical consequences for our lives as individuals, and our collective life together as a Church. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:15: ‘He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live to please themselves. Instead, they will live to please Christ, who died and was raised for them’ (New Living Translation, Italics mine). We receive true refreshment in our surrender to Christ. Matthew 11:28 is often misunderstood when translated as ‘I will give you rest’: ‘Come to me all you that labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.’ God’s service is not about taking a vacation, however. It is about true rest, that is, receiving refreshment from fulfilling God’s will: ‘Come to me all you that labour and are burdened, and I shall refresh you (or fulfil you).’ ‘…come to me and I shall fulfil you’, the Wycliffe Bible translates the phrase and by so doing conveys its true meaning.

         

Last Sunday's thought: On Seeing, Touching and Believing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpg

Our theme is a central concern for our society: it is the contrast between faith and doubt (or religious belief and ‘scientific-based’ scepticism). ‘Have you believed because you have seen me?’, Jesus asks Thomas. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John 20:29). In the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews, possibly written by Barnabas, we hear the words: ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1). But this was not the view of the disciples in the immediate aftermath of the Resurrection.

The artist Caravaggio in a great painting dating from 1602-3 shows ‘Doubting’ Thomas placing his finger in the wound of the risen Christ. This is a depiction of believing and touching: because Thomas touched Jesus’ wounds he is depicted as coming to believe in the risen Christ. But did Thomas actually touch Jesus? The gospel of John does not tell us that this is what happened. Jesus invites Thomas to do so (John 20:27) but the gospel account does not actually confirm that he did do so. Even St Augustine admitted ‘it is not written “and Thomas touched”’, yet virtually all the Christian fathers until the Reformation assumed that, because Jesus had invited him to do so, Thomas actually did touch the Risen Christ. 

         Did Thomas behave any differently than the other disciples? If we turn to Luke’s account, we hear Jesus inviting them to touch him in order to believe: ‘“Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence’ (Luke 24:38-43).

Neither Luke nor the other synoptic gospel writers (Matthew and Mark) distinguish Thomas’s conduct as being any different from that of the other disciples, which leads one to conclude that John does so because of his overall Christological design: it is Thomas, who once convinced that the apparition is indeed Jesus, pronounces ‘my Lord and my God!’ (John 20:28). John intended this statement to form the climax of his gospel. Jesus can only be understood as Messiah, as Son of God, and as the Word (logos). ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:30-31).
At issue for us today is the centrality of the Christian belief in the Resurrection but also how we, as Christians, can live a life of faith in a world of doubt. Thomas is an emblematic figure for us today: his doubts are our doubts and his inconsistencies are our inconsistencies: ‘Thomas stands for us’ (Glenn W. Most, Doubting Thomas, 2005, repr. 2007). 

Peter Paul Rubens on the same theme, just a few years later. The drama is conventional instead of extraordinary: 

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‘See how they love one another’: a thought for Easter Sunday

Image by Taffy Davies from Michael Green, Evangelism Now and Then

‘Evangelism is not the same as mission’, Michael Green wrote over thirty years ago in Evangelism Now and Then (original edn 1979; repr. 1992). ‘Mission is a much broader term than evangelism... It is the calling of the whole Church to reach out, in whatever ways seems most natural and appropriate, with the good news of Jesus.’ It is Green’s firm conviction that we do indeed have a number of very important things to learn from the first Christians.

         At no other time in the history of Christianity did love so characterize the entire church as it did in the first three centuries. And Roman society took note. Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160 – c. 225 AD) reported that the Romans would exclaim, ‘See how they love one another!’ (Apology [39.7]) – ‘for they themselves (i.e. the Romans) hate one another’, he added. The Christians were also ‘ready to die for each other’. It’s no wonder that Christianity spread rapidly throughout the ancient world, even though there were few organized missionary or evangelism programmes. The love they practised drew the attention of the world, just as Jesus said it would.

         Another early Christian, Justin Martyr (AD 100–ca.165) sketched out Christian love this way: ‘We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.’ Jesus had said, ‘Love your enemies ... and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44). The early Christians accepted this statement as a command from their Lord, rather than as an ideal that couldn’t be actually practised in real life.

         Lactantius (ca. 240 – ca. 320) asserts the unity of the human family, Christian and non-Christian: ‘if we all derive our origin from one man, whom God created, we are plainly all of one family. Therefore it must be considered an abomination to hate another human, no matter how guilty he may be. For this reason, God has decreed that we should hate no one, but that we should eliminate hatred. So we can comfort our enemies by reminding them of our mutual relationship. For if we have all been given life from the same God, what else are we but brothers? ... Because we are all brothers, God teaches us to never do evil to one another, but only good – giving aid to those who are oppressed and experiencing hardship, and giving food to the hungry.’ ‘A person who does not do what God has commanded shows he really does not believe God,’ Clement of Alexandria (c.150 – c. 215) declares. To the early Christians, to claim to trust God while refusing to obey Him was a contradiction (1 John 2:4). Their Christianity was more than verbal. As another early Christian expressed it, ‘We don’t speak great things – we live them!’

         When the inevitable persecution of the early Christians came, there was no panic. On the contrary, there was a sense that ‘things had to be like this’ (Norbert Brox, A history of the early church, 44). Jesus ideal of a discipleship which shared his fate in suffering violent death on the way to new life, his forecasts of persecution in the gospels (Mark 13:9-13; Matthew 10: 16–25), the conscious expectation of the woes marking the end of the world, and joyful expectation of his Second Coming, all these things provided an explanation for the early Church community for their suffering. The fact that Christians were willing to suffer unspeakable horrors and to die rather than disown their God was, next to their lifestyle, their single most effective evangelistic tool. There had to be some substance to Christianity if it meant so much to those who practised it. In fact, the Greek word for ‘witness’ is the same as for ‘martyr’. In many places where our New Testament translations use the word ‘witness’, the early Christians would have understood the term as ‘martyr’. For example, where Revelation 2:13 refers in some translations to ‘Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city’ the early Christians would have understood the passage as ‘Antipas, my faithful martyr.’

         Origen of Alexandria (184/185 – 253/254), who lost his father to persecution while a teenager, told the Romans: ‘When God gives the Tempter permission to persecute us, we suffer persecution. And when God wishes us to be free from suffering, even though surrounded by a world that hates us, we enjoy a wonderful peace. We trust in the protection of the One who said, “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” And truly He has overcome the world. Therefore, the world prevails only as long as it is permitted to by Him who received power from the Father to overcome the world. From His victory we take courage. Even if He should again wish us to suffer and contend for our faith, let the enemy come against us. We will say to them, “I can do all things through Christ Jesus our Lord who strengthens me.”’

         Commenting on the endurance of the early Christians, Michael Green writes: ‘think of Paul and Silas lying in prison with their feet in the stocks and their backs lacerated from a gratuitous whipping. And what were they doing? Singing praises to God at midnight [Acts 16:25], if you please! That to me is a greater miracle than the timing of the earthquake which released them from jail and led to the conversion of the jailer… The ancient world knew all about stoicism, keeping a stiff upper lip in hard times. But it did not begin to understand a man who could suffer and die with radiant joy and exultation… Where it shown, the church grows. As ever, the blood of the martyrs is the seed.’

         In our own society, we talk rather feebly about the need to rebuild Christian leadership and Christian confidence. There is no doubt that materialism is deeply corrosive of faith and that a ‘new evangelization’, as the Roman Catholic Church calls it, is required for those have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization. The new Pope Francis I used the term evangelization in his brief address following his election. St Paul tells us that ‘necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!’ (1 Corinthians 9:16). But what about the three things that we learn most rapidly about the early Christians: their love for each other, their love for their neighbour and the willingness to suffer for their faith, even unto death, with joy and jubilation? Origen eventually died from torture and imprisonment at the hands of the Romans. Yet, with unshakable confidence he told them: ‘eventually, every form of worship will be destroyed except the religion of Christ, which alone will stand. In fact, it will one day triumph, for its teachings take hold of men’s minds more and more each day.’ We need not only more endurance and enthusiasm but more love for another if we are to succeed today in the way that Origen envisaged, for the teachings of our faith to ‘take hold of men’s minds more and more each day’.