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Prologue: And Dedication
This writing brought me to tears. No writing of mine has ever done that. Possibly, part of the reason is I am coming out of the theological closet more and speaking against, and in the love of God for all peoples, the prideful exclusion of the majority of humankind by many in the churches. ~ But, mark, this is not a Christian problem: this is a human tendency.
This entails confessing Christians damning to some forever damnation all persons who experience the being and love of Christ in any way other than prescribed by some form of claimed~official Christianity. I am calling this vanity and unloving ~ indeed, an horrific belief that no longer deserves recognition as worthy of personhood or the name Jesus Christ. Thus, it is un~Christlike, so, too, un~Christian ~ this equating the way of Christian faith with the Way, Who is Jesus Christ, the living Word of all true words.
Possibly, another reason for the tears ... A year ago I was still undergoing many months of extensive scrutiny, aggressive opposition, deplorable lies, and a smear campaign that spilled outside the church I served into the larger community. This was against my Christian experience and right to serve as a clergyperson in the Christian denomination I serve in. A group of persons, who claimed to follow the Christ I dearly love and worship, did all they could to ruin my career and name. Likewise, they treated in like severity and ostracism anyone who gave open and strong support of me, even calling for a church hearing within the larger denomination to seek to remove from all positions of church leadership two of the finest Christian persons I know. Likewise, they resisted the efforts of our Bishop and District Superintendent at peacemaking, defying their rightful authority, granted them by the larger United Methodist Church.
Ironically, at this same time I was undergoing a deepening of my relationship with Jesus Christ, and a deeper commitment to both my Christian faith and the United Methodist Church. Also, ironically, I was experiencing what the historic Church calls Intellectual Visions of the very Jesus that I was being called into question concerning.
In some ways, though not originally intended, this writing is a celebratory response to those who opposed me and those who stood with me ~these groups either opposed the Spirit of Christ or stood for and with Jesus Christ (I was just an instrument on the stage of the ongoing drama of the Grace of Pentecost) ~ , many months after ~ my saying "I still serve and love my best Friend, Jesus Christ, I still speak truth in His name. Nothing can vanquish the Truth, and honored are we if opposed for speaking and living It." I praise the Mystery of God, Who allowed others and this pastor and writer to be opposed by persons who refuse to bow before the vision of the living Christ that is the Way, Truth, and Life for all peoples.
I dedicate this writing, saying thanks to all those dear saints who stood beside me ~ my Bishop, my District Superintendents, friends, family, ... ~ but more so, stood for Christ, a Christ others cannot understand, for they refuse to consent to the all-inclusive, ever-unfolding, eternally-living Grace of the Holy Spirit, the Revelation of Pentecost. And I pray for the Grace to grow beyond the horizons that I myself seek to confine God within, too. Why? For I continue to struggle to let God be God. And may my courage and openness to Love and Truth be an example and encouragement to others in Christ and seeking the Boundless All-Love Who Is God. Amen.
Wisdom Sayings
The Spirit is the stream of living water which wells up in those who believe. It is the same Spirit that causes our hearts to rejoice because of the confidence the Spirit inspires in God as Father. Abba, the word that spontaneously wells up in us, sums up our intimacy with God and our awareness of being not only with God as friend to friend, but in God. We are penetrated by God and penetrating God, through the mysterious, all-enveloping, all-absorbing and all-embracing Spirit.
*Thomas Keating. The Mystery of Christ.
The Spirit is always present, yet always coming. That is because the Divine-actuality becomes present in a new way each time we move to a new level of spiritual awareness. The Spirit has been given; yet the Spirit is always waiting to be received so that That One can give Itself again, and more completely.
The Spirit, then, is not given only once. Spirit is an ongoing promise, an endless promise ~ a promise that is always fulfilled and always being fulfilled, because the Spirit is infinite and boundless and can never be fully plumbed.
*Thomas Keating. The Mystery of Christ. Inclusive Adaptation.
Scriptures for Today
Gospel of John 7.37-39 (NLV)
37 It was the last and great day of the religious gathering. Jesus stood up and spoke with a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 The Holy Writings say that rivers of living water will flow from the heart of the one who puts his trust in Me." 39 Jesus said this about the Holy Spirit Who would come to those who put their trust in Him. The Holy Spirit had not yet been given. Jesus had not yet been raised to the place of honor.
Acts 2.14-21 (WE)
14Peter stood up with the eleven apostles. He shouted, `You men of Judea and all who stay in Jerusalem, listen to me! I will tell you the truth. 15You think that these men are drunk. That is not so. It is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16The thing that has happened is what the prophet Joel told about.
17He said, "God says, `In the last days I will send my Spirit on all people. I will speak through your sons and daughters. Your young men will see visions and your old men will have dreams.
18In those days I will send my Spirit on the men and women who serve me and I will speak through them.
19In the sky above and on the earth below I will show wonderful signs with blood and fire and clouds of smoke.
20The sun will be dark and the moon will be like blood. These things will happen before the day of the Lord comes. It will be a great day that will be remembered always.
21And anyone who calls out to the Lord will be saved.' "
Comments
The struggle of my life is to let God be God ~ as though I can do anything about it. Possibly, I struggle with God being God for I, in human weakness, vanity, and fear find to follow Christ means the Holy Spirit opens horizon after horizon. That disturbs me or, better, the Spirit keeps interrupting my human propensity to seek comfort over faithfulness. So, I choose adventure and, once settled in that new space of discovery, want to turn the place of momentary discovery into a dead end.
What do horizons have to do with Pentecost? Well, let us explore horizons more.
Horizons are spoken of in geology. Geologists call a horizon a level of soil or rock identified by physical characteristics, particular fossils, and other matters.
Horizons are central to archaeology. Archaeologists use the word horizon for a layer of a mound in which artifacts indicate the time and culture or people that once occupied the site.
Horizons are important in astronomy. In astronomy a horizon is the great circle on the celestial sphere perpendicular to the line from the observer's zenith to the nadir. Now, I am no astronomer, but I will attempt to translate ~ the great circle in the sky, or heavens, at right angles to the line which is from directly above the observer to directly below the observer.
In ordinary usage we refer to the horizon as the line where the sky seems to meet the earth. And, therefore, we use horizon for the limits of one’s experience, outlook, beliefs, knowledge, …
What is alike in all these meanings of the word horizon? The horizon is not a limit; rather, horizon refers to a boundary that opens to another boundary. A horizon is in scientific terms a holon that is part of another holon. That is, a whole in itself that is part of a whole in itself, and this other whole does not exclude the previous whole but includes it in a larger horizon. Every whole becomes part of the next whole, which becomes part of the next whole … from and to Infinity ~ God in Whom all wholes flow and return in ceaseless potency, for God is All-Potency.
The Grace of Pentecost connects to the Ascension of Christ in our liturgical year. We enter this Gospel Mystery by personally participating in the ever-unfolding and always-evolving of the Mystery of God in history and our communal and personal lives.
Therefore, we, to follow Christ, follow the Holy Spirit disturbing our lives, world, families, and communities. We follow the unsettling Spirit. We follow the Spirit that has more yet unseen behind the veil of our shadowy show, to which we erroneously give so much substance ~ as errant as a pagan attributing divine powers to a rock ~ than we have yet to imagine possible.
Following this Spirit, we, like those on Pentecost, face a question each time God leads us into a new level of awareness, experience, love, and living. The question will not go away, regardless of how many times we turn away from it. The question will haunt our lives until we turn to it and seek the answer, honestly, “What does all this mean?” We cannot move on with God until we delve into the meaning of the new work God is doing in our lives.
To this question of meaning, we can respond in at least three ways. First, we can remain incredulous: showing disbelief, doubt, or skepticism. This is the response of many on Pentecost in the Book of Acts, attributing the speaking in languages to drunkenness. They sought an apparently obvious explanation. We, likewise, can seek refuge from what God is newly doing by scurrying back into the cave of our simple theories or provable experiments. But there is a problem with that? In the words of Marty G. Bell, a Professor or Religion, Belmont University:
Like the cynics who scoffed at what was happening on the day of Pentecost, we too are prone to seek an easy explanation for that which makes us uncomfortable. … The problem, however, is that the Spirit of God can’t be reduced to a simple theory or a provable experiment.
*The Upper Room Disciplines 2007. Sunday, May 27.
Now, is it not true that we Christians can be very scientifically unscientific in response to the ongoing revelation of the Mystery of Christ, which is the Grace of Pentecost? Yes, we can seek an escape behind, for example, our comfortable traditions and customs. We can hide behind quoting our favorite Bible passages or doctrines or creed. These are wonderful sources the Holy Spirit uses to inspire us to open to what God is doing and will do, but they are misused when they are treated as containers holding all God can do and in the way we have understood them in the past. With each new horizon comes a whole new depth of understanding.
For example, the Apostle's Creed is not invalidated; the creed is given a deeper, broader meaning. This applies to the Scripture, too. Why? We see with new eyes. We hear with new ears. We feel with a new heart. We enter a new loving. The creeds, Scripture, customs, traditions, rites, … of the Church evolve, then, out of a growing relationship with the Triune God and among those in the Body of Christ, and serve to deepen that relationship, while the relationship shapes our enriched experience of and attribution of meaning to these inspired means of experiencing Grace. Again, note ~ the relationship is with the Triune God within the Body of Christ.
A second way of responding to the Grace of Pentecost entails defending ourselves against God’s ongoing newness of self-revelation ~ for all Revelation is Divine Self-Revelation ~ among us in a group conformity. Bell states the innate tendency of the Holy Spirit to defy and eliminate conformity:
The activity of the Spirit is anything but business as usual. Young and old, men and women, slave and free are included in Joel’s vision that Peter quotes. The Spirit includes all ~ a radical inclusion that by its very nature topples structures of conformity.
Observe that this radical inclusion is the “activity of the Spirit.” We do not create spiritual fellowship, or it would not be spiritual. We never get ourselves ready for radical, Christ-centered inclusion. Neither the Church nor others at Pentecost in Acts were ready for this new revelation. This was a new political~social~spiritual holon in history. Like them, we never get ready for the next step in what God is doing; rather, we are acclimated by our consent to what God is already doing when God intrudes into our stasis and disrupts our status quo. And, usually, we do not catch on that God is doing a new thing right away. Often, too, we only consent after we exhaust our resistance to Grace. And in spiritual community there is always a faction that seeks to kill the new movement of the Spirit and discredit those who are the prophets of it. Sometimes, these persons may be the very persons set forth by the community to be spiritual leaders.
We cannot hide in our group and follow Christ who refused to be confined in any group while on earth and refuses to be defined by any group even now. The Spirit is inside and outside the group, and our seeking to protect ourselves within the group is our prideful turning from following Christ where the Holy Spirit is leading from horizon to horizon. Rather, true, spiritual Christianity, like Christ while on earth, follows the Ascended Christ beyond all boundaries into the world, into all groups, and stands with Him at the intersection of time and eternity, rooted and grounded in Love, at all costs.
This vision of ultimate inclusion was recited by the apostolic Church, affirming what would be fully realized by the Holy Spirit, and it still challenges the Church today to repent of exclusionary ways and open arms to all persons in the name of the Christ. We cannot participate in the fulfillment of this affirmation of the apostolic Church and fulfill the purpose of the Incarnation of the Word as long as we shut out those who do not experience the Christ in the same way we do. Now to that Scripture and apostolic confession, in Philippians 2.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (NLT)
Possibly the greatest sin of the Church has been this seeking to make the earthly form of the Church the sole means through which the Holy Spirit offers persons the living, ascended Christ: that is, make the religion Christianity to contain all those who follow the Ascended Christ, to reduce faith in Christ to faith in the Christian faith. Who better to quote on this matter than the esteemed evangelical Christian C. S. Lewis? In God in the Dock, Lewis writes:
Of course it should be pointed out that, though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life. And it should (at least in my judgement) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected. But, on the other hand, I think we must attack wherever we meet it the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.
*C. S. Lewis. Words to Live By. A Guide for the Merely Christian.
The Grace of Pentecost is leading us to repent of our tribal conformity: and this Grace offer applies to all religions and our politics, also. The Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, is leading us beyond the horizon of what many of us have called Christianity. We are to follow Jesus Christ beyond the belief in a Christ confined like a captive within our one historic religion, or faith. This is not, as noted by Lewis, abdication of true, spiritual Christianity or the Church, both of which Jesus Christ is the source of for the inclusion of all peoples. This is not a cop-out radical pluralism where whatever anyone sincerely believes is okay. Rather, it is a release of our faith in Christ as confined by our belief and our intellectual confession, allowing ourselves to see and know Christ as the Holy Spirit revealing the love, joy, and peace of God in new ways to our spirits, ways we have before refused to acknowledge in our making a final horizon out of our way; thus, identifying the Christian religion as the way, all the while contradicting ourselves by saying Christ Himself is the Way. Rather, the whole validity of the Christian faith issues from the fact that One, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is the Way, Truth, and Life: no religion, no faith, no creed, … is the Way.
Therefore, how shall we respond this Pentecost to the Grace of the Holy Spirit and the Triune God leading us from horizon to horizon? Shall we seek an explanation that seems to guarantee an escape from what is not comfortable for us? Will we hide away in our group consensus, justifying our doing so with our slogans and clichés and scriptures and tradition …?
Or, will we say “Yes” ~ even if a tremulous and uncertain “Yes.” If we say “Yes,” then, we say “Christ Jesus, my Lord, Savior, and Friend, I follow You.” And we know that Christ will always lead us rightly and supply all our needs of insight, faith, courage, and love to travel the Way from horizon to horizon.
And why would God lead us from horizon to horizon? To give us more of God Godself. In the words of Keating, “We are penetrated by God and penetrating God, through the mysterious, all-enveloping, all-absorbing and all-embracing Spirit.” And, “The Spirit has been given; yet the Spirit is always waiting to be received so that That One can give Itself again, and more completely.”
Therefore, let us say “Yes” to the ongoing movements and revelations of the Holy Spirit this Pentecost, and always. For to say “Yes” is to say “Yes” to more of the One who longs only to give more of Himself, of Herself, to us and receive more of us into Himself, into Herself, in a union of love, joy, and peace that is heavenly and eternal. This is the intimacy we are designed for and called to, and what could be more intimate than rivers of living water flowing from our belly, as spoken of by the Gospel of John. Amen.
Suggested Spiritual Exercise
How might God be leading you into a new horizon of experience in following Jesus Christ? Pray about this matter. Resolve to accept the Grace of the Holy Spirit to follow faithfully and joyfully. Remember, the Spirit of Christ will never lead you where God will not supply whatever you need to fulfill that calling.
Now, take time to pray as you are led. …
Look up and read the words to the old hymn “Where He Leads Me.” Read and prayerfully reflect on the Gospel of Mark 8.34.
Now, take time to pray as you are led. …
If you have made a renewed commitment or resolution to accept where you are to follow Christ, call or write a friend, sharing your commitment and asking him or her for prayer. If you call the person or meet with him or her, pray together, holding hands if physically present with each other.
If you journal, then, write your reflections and commitment down.
The Grace of the Lord Jesus, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you. Amen.
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