Category Archives: The Holy Spirit Alive and Well Today
Pentecost: the Beginning, but Not the End
Pentecost is the Birthday of the Church. Here are some Scriptures that describe our call to be the People of God. John 10:27 Jesus says: “My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.” How do we hear his voice? 1st, By taking time to listen. 2nd, Asking the questions on our hearts. 3rd, Reading New Testament scriptures either randomly or from the lectionary of that day. 4th, Examining the events of our days for signposts or connections that can guide us. 5th, Respond appropriately to what we hear. God is in the timing: listen and respond. John 13:34 Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” How did Jesus love his disciples? Only when they were perfect? Only when they were humble and didn’t want to one up one another, when they didn’t doubt, when they were ready to suffer and die with him, when they understood and agreed with everything he said, when they loved the unlovable, When they were able to do everything he told them to do, when they recognized him in the stranger, when they didn’t want political power more than spiritual grace ? Did he abandon them because of their failures to love? Did he not forgive those that killed him? Did he stop loving God when he felt God had abandoned him? It’s a spiritual journey that takes a lifetime of challenges and grace to become able to love as Jesus loved. John14:23 Jesus says: Jesus says: “Those who love me will keep my word and we will come and make our home with them.” Jesus asks us to keep HIS word. HIS word, is fleshed out by his actions; His journey from thinking He was only sent for the Jews, to hearing God challenge him to love the lepers of his time, to love even the traitorous Tax Collectors, the adulterous woman, a heretic Samaritan, the man possessed by demons, the Roman soldier, even his disciples that abandoned him when they got scared, and the Religious Leaders who killed him, and ultimately even God when he felt abandoned by Him. This is the spiritual journey Jesus call us to make with him. He promises” “WE will come and make our home with them. The WE is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Pentecost did not stop with the first Apostles. It stopped when Christians decided they needed something easier to follow: The law of the minimum ten rather than the beatitudes fleshed out in the life of Jesus. A church hierarchy without accountability from the balance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in all the followers of Jesus. John 17:20 Jesus prays to the Father “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on the behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. Does being one mean we never disagree? There were plenty of disagreements from the beginning. They were a work in progress just as we are. Just as a family is. We are the family, the descendants, of those first Christians. And when you read enough of Paul, you realize it was the same then, just like herding cats! We are not made with a cookie cutter, we are different from birth and the call of Jesus isn’t about agreeing, it’s about loving. John 14.12 Jesus says: Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Many of us have been turned off by the gifts of the Spirit being used for personal fame and profit. Sometimes it is witnessing insensitivity by people who do not hear the Spirit’s leading about when God is or is not calling us to receive or use the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have both experienced and witnessed miracles of healing and other gifts of the Holy Spirit. I think the key is first growing spiritually enough to have the fruits of the Spirit. Those take time spent in both prayer and study in a community open to the Holy Spirit. But most of all learning to Love as Jesus loved is the heart and soul of our spiritual journey.
Sidewalk Spirituality
Richard Rohr identifies mysticism as a way of knowing accessible to all:
While most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I’m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word “mysticism” simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, in contrast to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.
Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.
Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit! Contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole” (see Matthew 8:13; Mark 5:34; Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” and often did not belong to the “correct” group! They were people who affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it!
Pentecostals and charismatics are significant modern-era exceptions to this avoidance of experience; I believe their “baptism in the Spirit” is a true and valid example of initial mystical encounter.
Richard praises the Franciscan approach to mysticism:
In my experience, Franciscan mysticism is a trustworthy and simple path precisely because it refuses to be “mystified” by, or beholden to, doctrinal abstractions, moralism, or false asceticism (although some Franciscans have gone this route). The Franciscan way is truly a sidewalk spirituality for the streets of the world, a path highly possible and attractive for all would-be seekers. It doesn’t insist every person must be celibate, isolated from others, highly educated, or in any way superior to our neighbors. In fact, those kinds of paths might well get in the way of the experience itself. A celibate monk or nun may have a totally dualistic mind and live a tortured inner life—and thus torture others too. Everyday workers and caregivers with mystical hearts and minds can enlighten other individuals, their families, and all they touch, without talking “religiously” at all.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 