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May 23, l999 John 7:39 Sometimes when I read the Bible, a phrase jumps out at me and I react: Does that mean what I think it means? So it was when I came across verse 39 of John 7 and the phrase: AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT. The phrase is not from Jesus; it is John's comment on what Jesus was saying. But could either Jesus or John have meant literally that there was ever a time when there was no Spirit?
That would be a dreadful time INDEED: AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT? Then the Spirit of God would not have moved across the void and the waters and brought creation out of nothing. AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT, the prophets Isaiah, Amos, Ezekiel and so many others would not have had their voices inspired and raised in courageous insistence of the justice and mercy of the Lord Almighty.
No, it is too awful to speculate a time when the Spirit of God was not actively engaged in creating, sustaining and reclaiming our world.
So we go to the context and see that Jesus was not making a universal claim about the absence of the Spirit in the aeons before his own earthly life; rather he was declaring a special blessing upon his followers. In this episode from the Gospel of John we are on the threshold where the Divine Spirit, always active in creation and always caring for all peoples, is about to express herself in a unique way and through a new people of faith. The Spirit is about to acquire the name lifted up in Christian praise and experience: THE HOLY SPIRIT.
It's Pentecost Sunday so I added to our church advertisement in the SCMP yesterday this phrase: REJOICE WITH US…IT IS PENTECOST. We are the only congregation which noted that today is Pentecost Sunday. Odd! Because so many of the churches which are advertise are either more Christian calendar oriented than we, or are pentecostal in doctrine, and for both Pentecost is their great day!
But then in my research for today I discovered that the early churches also took scant notice of Pentecost as such; of course, the church calendar really wasn't invented until well into the second century. This was generations after the great Pentecost event recorded Acts 2 but the Holy Spirit did not cease encouraging the church after Jerusalem. The letters of the Apostle Paul inform us that many gifts of The Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues, were regular features at early Christian worship.
Paul approved all these gifts though several times he admonished congregations to keep their tongues under the control and discernment of the gift of interpretation of the unknown tongues; otherwise, confusion and gibberish.
Maybe these congregations did not begin to celebrate Pentecost as such for a long while because the same congregations were wholly busy doing what the Spirit came to urge them to do: they were witnessing to the ends of the Roman empire, planting churches everywhere, staking our their Christian faith in contrast with Judaism and paganism, and, then, when circumstances demanded, happily going to their martyrs' deaths singing praises to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Whenever you are living intimately with a blessing, you have less need to acknowledge it formally. You live it. I hope that is the case with the congregations who do not take time to tell the world that it's Pentecost Sunday.
When a couple are still in their honeymoon, they do not need to take time to remember and celebrate ananniversary of their marriage. When the honeymoon period ends, then anniversaries become natural and needful to remind us of what we had in the first place.
In this century there is a revival of The Holy Spirit. We see it not only in the renewal of gifts especially of tongues, but in the greater Christian desire for unity. In the TV sit com Ally MacBeal recently fended off a rabbi's attention by saying: I'M A METHODIST. But there isn't much heart in these identities any long; we are Christians. Most wonderful there is a growing holiness in worship across the entire spectrum of Christian traditions. In these current circumstances it seems to me helpful to remember both that it is Pentecost Sunday and to welcome the Holy Spirit to enliven us in our honoring of the Spirit.
The understanding of the Spirit and The Holy Spirit which I like is simply this: The Divine Spirit is God's outpouring of love for his whole creation; The Holy Spirit is the outpouring of the love and compassion of God and the Son, Jesus Christ, for their whole creation and particularly for the Church. Because the Church is the primary discerner of the saving grace which Father and Son show and confirm through The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is linked with Jesus Christ in particular ways that the Divine Spirit, available to all persons, is not. The Holy Spirit, thus, is how Christians believe and experience God's continuous support and help to us.
Jesus said: AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT because he was anticipating the coming of that Counsellor and Friend whom elsewhere in John's Gospel he promised to his friends. The Holy Spirit is intimately linked with and sequential to the life of Jesus. The Holy Spirit could come after Jesus was glorified. The work of Jesus on earth needed to finish so that the work of The Holy Spirit on Earth could begin.First Corinthians states: NO ONE CAN SAY 'JESUS IS LORD' EXCEPT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. The Holy Spirit always confirms and strengthens the light and magnetism of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit could not come until Jesus was glorified. That means not until the work of Jesus on earth was done could the Holy Spirit take up its primary function of confirming and affirming that Jesus is the Saviour..
In our reading from First Corinthians Paul summarizes some of the ways the Spirit was experienced in the churches he guided. The diverse gifts which Paul noted were: wisdom, knowledge, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment of good and bad, and various kinds of tongues, and their interpretation. The Holy Spirit is very practical, as we see, and the Holy Spirit is the guide for the whole Church, for the collective body of Jesus Christ.
While the Holy Spirit comes and goes according to divine decision, there are times in the life of the church when it may blow with greater intensity. Times of persecution and suffering have brought the Holy Spirit to the Church in force. That may be why there is the pattern of so much Holy Spirit activity in the first century; and on our threshold in China in this century we have seen remarkable evidence of the Holy Spirit blessing a persecuted Christian people.
Paradoxically, the Holy Spirit seems to go into high gear at times when the Church becomes utterly dry, arid and indifferent to its Lord, Jesus. All great revivals have occured precisely at that nadir of faith. A disgruntled coach challenged his indifferent player with the query: "Are you ignorant of the game or just apathetic about your play? The player replied: "I don't know. And I don't care." When the Church is both ignorant of its faith and indifferent about Jesus, WHAM and WOW - the Holy Spirit arises.
Whatever the occasion, when the Holy Spirit is in high gear … these conditions will be present in the church:
….The Holy Spirit exalts the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the Church
….The Holy Spirit confirms the truth of the scriptures, either explicitly or implicitly
,…The Holy Spirit enables right, clear and courageous speech whether through preaching and teaching, the interpretation of tongues, bible study, and social witness.
….The Holy Spirit produces spiritual fruit which strengthens the body of Christ and rejects within and without the Church the forces of ignorance, darkness and evil.
AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT. There are those times when no matter what great things are going on within the general body of Christ, the individual can feel alone and astray from the presence of God. Believers can experience periods when Jesus phrase:AS YET THERE IS NO SPIRIT falls like a heavy word about their spiritual loneliness. Our lesson of today invites us to the living waters. It's self-defeating and spirit-denying to separate oneself from the living waters by turning away from the scriptures, from worship, from fellowship in Christ. When we are thirsty we need to go to the living waters.
It is also unhelpful to insist that The Holy Spirit will function in the lives of others and of the congregation only according to one's personal spirituality agenda. Agent 007, James Bond always insisted that his very dry martini be stirred, nor shaken. That is human ambition seeking to control every last detail of our lives. But the Spirit is not under human control. The Spirit may shake someone, it may stir up someone, it may effect person and peoples in unusual ways or in ordinary ways. The Holy Spirit may excite; it may quiet; it may disturb. The Holy Spirit often asks us to wait in patient faith. We simply can't mix and pour God's Spirit as we like.
We know that many persons from other faith traditions thirst for the Spirit. They like us are within the outreaching love of God shown in the Divine Spirit. But in Jesus we are within the influence of The Holy Spirit who has birthed a new community, unlike any other on earth. A community knit together not by a family tree but by the Jesus tree, and the blood which He shed for us. A community, mystically bound, by a love which the world cannot understand and the gates of Hell cannot defeat. A community which will continue to testify to the Heavenly Father, the Saving Son, and the Sustaining Spirit until that same Jesus returns to bring that community as His bride to heaven. And the warm breadth of The Holy Spirit comes to nurture us and on the wings of The Holy Spirit we shall travel. .
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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