For You are All One in Christ

The Holy Spirit preserves the presence of Christ in our midst as our community’s faith is restored and renewed by His love in us and through us for one another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love. (John 20:19-23) 

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words that The Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate openness and “listen”, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which allows us to know God within.

In our Creed we proclaim our faith when we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’ the divine aliveness within our innermost life. This is the very core of our faith.

In his epistle (1 Corinthians 12:3-13) Paul reminds us that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to each of us for the good of the entire community. We recognize these gifts as talents that are inherited, honed or acquired but nevertheless inspired and “activated” in us as tools by which God’s love can be shared with the whole community/body. Who is our community; who is our neighbor ?

Paul’s words are as relevant today as they were in his time. In these stressful times of Covid 19 confinement, without any precedent in our experience, grief, fear and resentment are a myriad of emotions that can overshadow our desire or willingness to get on with our lives and return to “normal,” whatever normal is or will be again? For some it is easy to externalize emotions and discharge their latent energy and find fault when looking for answers that are yet to be revealed as they yet to unfold? It’s all too easy to subordinate the interest of the community to our own self-interests, after all it’s part of our humanity. We are no different from the people of Corinth. Yet it is in the “dark night” of the unknown that personal transformation begins to seed and take root. And when, by God’s grace, our talents are redirected away from our own self-interests, they flourish and become vehicles for God’s love. This process is dynamic and ongoing.

Paul tells us that we are all interconnected parts of a single body. He was critical of those in Corinth who advanced the use of the metaphorical “body” image to strengthen the hierarchy of society. Philosophers and politicians said that human society, like a body, had to have a head that told everyone else what to do. Of course, the elite got to be the head and the poor needed to keep working as their hands and feet. Paul overturns the notion that some members are more important than any others:

There is no longer Jew or Gentile slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
Galatians 3:28-29

In the Body of Christ, behavior is not be determined by concern for honor and status, but by what nourishes the whole body though inter-connectedness and love. The work of the Spirit will result in a unified body eventually empowering us to “renew the face of the earth.”

The Great Commission

Let’s face it when many of us hear the "Great Commission" in (Matthew 28:16-20), we may not feel inspired or encouraged but instead, just a little guilty. Why? We somehow do not perceive ourselves as being called or sent to bear witness to our faith and perhaps,  feel ill-equipped to do so. So when we hear Jesus' instructions we are reminded of one more thing we should, do regurlarly, but often do not … a sure recipe for guilt.

As adults, much of our identity is related to our areas of competence -- at work, at home, in volunteer activities or hobbies. When we find ourselves in situations where we do not feel competent, our anxiety levels escalate. (Psychologists tell us, that this is why adults have a hard time learning a new language or musical instrument; it's not that our brains are too old or incapable of learning something new; it's that we don’t like feeling incompetent and quit before we even make any progress.)

How often have we been invited to make connections between our faith and our daily lives or to share that faith with others? Perhaps it’s because we’ve rarely have been asked to do this even within the safe confines of church let alone in a more “threatening” setting, outside the church walls. It’s just that we don't feel competent to fulfill anything remotely resembling Jesus' Commission.

These few short verses in today’s readings summarize our “Great Commission” and are an important text as it relates to our faith. Unfortunately, they are often assigned as readings on Trinity Sunday and often get lost in the mystery of “dogma.” While the readings proclaim the supreme authority of Jesus, as being one with the Father and having no earthly equal, they remind us that we are “commissioned” to love one another as Jesus did and assure that God, through the life of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, is with us until the end of time.

So how do we go about developing competence in living the Word and grow in our confidence to share our faith? Perhaps it starts with moving to a more participatory style of Christian formation in which we reach out to one another, inviting our hearers to do more than just hear but to respond to the word proclaimed and revealed in our daily lives. With time and practice our competence and confidence will grow and we will be inspired to share and proclaim the Word with our own by our actions.

We can't afford to wait until we are perfect and conditions are optimal to become disciples. Perfection is not consistent with our humanity and the enemy of the good. Our journey begins with one single step and with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we, in time, we will become the Word in all that we are and do. “For each tree is known by its own fruit…Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.” (Matthew 7: 16)

Come Holy Spirit

We are constantly reminded that reading John’s Gospels defies literal translation and that if we suspend our literal inclination and allow the words to become flesh in us we might intuitively feel their presence and know their meaning. This is easier said than done, in that, I have found over the years that it often requires sitting with the words for a while and continue to mull them over. In time this contemplative exercise enables us to pull back the veil and somewhere within the words begin to resonate with meaning. How many times do these same readings read year in and year out, begin to reveal new meanings…as if the words are fading in and out from literal to palpable and back?

Padovano tells us that Jesus words will never be completely understood by those who reduce faith to words or doctrines or by those who reduce faith to static religious exercises. In John 14: 15-21, Jesus says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” How well the words neither sees him nor knows him illustrate the need to suspend our literal tendencies.

Have we ever seen the Holy Spirit? This is not a trick question. Let’s think for a moment. The best descriptive images we see in readings associated with the Holy Spirit are tongues of flame or a freely blowing breeze. However, in this week's reading we get two helpful hints that offer a pretty good image of just what the Holy Spirit looks like.

The Holy Spirit looks like an Advocate --the one who stands up for us when we need it; the one who speaks on our behalf; the one who lends a helping hand, takes your side, and won't leave us while you're down. The Holy Spirit looks like Jesus. The Spirit is "another advocate" because Jesus is the first. The Spirit, Jesus goes on to say, will abide with us and is sent in his name to remind us of his will for us. In a very real way, the Spirit affirms Jesus presence in us and through us, and helps to keep his promise that he will not leave us orphaned. You know him, because he abides with you, and lives with us.

John’s Gospel is as relevant today as it was when it was written two thousand years ago. There are advocates for the love and presence of God in our midst…and there are adversaries. It’s especially poignant now as we continue to be challenged with this awesome plague that has changed our lives forever. We see the , the Spirit of God in advocates who hold the hands of the sick and dying, in advocates who step out of their comfort zone to help the infirmed and advocates who protect us from ourselves. Just what inspires them to defy their own natural instincts to retreat? Perhaps the answer can be found in the word “inspire,” to inhale, to impel, to move, to feel, to know…Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your divine love. Amen

Do Not Let Your Heart Be Troubled

We are taught to read literature as though it is newspaper. Time is sequential and one–dimensional, in which the words on the page are an assemblage of letters to communicate information in real time. What you see on the surface is literal and is in black and white. This is not the case with the Gospel, especially John’s.

Brother David Steindl-Rast writes: “to understand John’s word images in the way they were intended, we need to develop a sense for poetic language. These images speak to us through an intuitive dimension beyond the literal…Tuning in to this language requires an acquired ability to read between the lines.’” Marcus Borg writes “John invites his hearers to know in a radically new and different way. He appeals to the imagination, to a place deep within, which invokes a palpable sense of knowing outside the bounds of any anatomical natural human sense.

When John writes In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God (verse 1)…And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he announces the incarnation of God in all his humanity in Jesus. By extension, he informs us that that the Word becomes flesh in us too. “The Word speaks to us in a place deep within that we intuitively sense and know.

So in John’s Gospel (John 14:1-12) Jesus comforts his apostles and says: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. Trust me. Trust God— you have seen God in me. I am enough. Trust that you will find me in the community as we come to see God in one another.

Andrew Prior writes: “I do not think we can overstate the love and the intimacy of the household of God and our place in it. What we can miss, however, is that it is not a geographical place at a certain time. It is a relationship in eternity into which we can enter; in which we can place our trust. We will not be left alone, or orphaned.”

We know that Jesus was killed for political reasons: he violated the “status quo” of the prevailing Jewish law that caused the Judeans, not all Jews, to want him removed. The Judeans were those who aligned themselves with Rome to maintain “control” of their “religion” and maintain their “status quo.” As such, their religious leaders collaborated with Imperial Rome to have Jesus “removed.”

Throughout his life, Jesus made it clear that he resisted the man-made rules of “organized religion” as they existed. I wonder what he would think about the religions of today.  How different are some of its members from the Pharisees who resisted change. History reminds us that Jesus was not the last to be persecuted for bucking the “status quo.” Leave things alone I’m comfortable with the way things are; hey, I read the scripture and preach the Gospel; isn’t that enough?  But where is the Love that was Jesus?

Gary Wills tells us that “Jesus opposed any religion that is self-righteous, quick to judge, wallows in gossip that destroys and divides the community in order to serve its own purpose and not God’s.” And how do we relate to hear Jesus’s words in our Gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled…I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.