Preaching helps

The Holy Trinity--Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Series B

Moving Right Along

Early in his book Why Religion Matters (HarperCollins 2001) Huston Smith cites with approval Rainer Maria Rilke's suggestion "that we think of God as a direction rather than an object." That's a new one on me, I thought. But then I began to recall various passages of the New Testament speaking of the Spirit of God. Maybe thinking of God as a direction is not so new after all. Maybe I have just not been paying attention.

To Nicodemus in their nighttime conversation Jesus said that the Spirit resembles the wind. "Spirit" and "wind" are both pneuma in Greek, so Jesus plays with the word. "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes" (John 3:8). Today I suppose we could make the case that meteorologists have become extraordinarily clever in tracking and even predicting the course of the jet steam and of huge windy events like hurricanes and tornadoes. But it is still true today that the whence and whither of the wind remain outside of our control.

Again linking wind and Spirit, Luke opens his description of Pentecost in Acts 2 with the following words: "Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind" (Luke here uses the Greek word pnoe).

The wind of the Spirit blows from heaven, from above, from God. That's where it is coming from, but where is it going? In what direction is it traveling? Jesus in John 3 speaks of the goal as the surprise of rebirth, the astonishing breakthrough to new life. And as John's Gospel unfolds, we see that what is new about that "new" life is oneness with Christ in his self-giving love. It is new in seeing the glory of God in the agape of God and in the agape practiced in the community of believers.

Paul struggled in his congregations with believers who had strong convictions about the direction in which the Spirit of God was moving. For many at Corinth and other Pauline cities, being moved by the Spirit meant having the gift of tongues or miracles or healing or prophecy. And possession of those gifts became the basis for laying claim to a position of high leadership in the community. The spirit-filled boasted of their gifts and traded on them in a quest for status. Paul had no wish to quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19), but he wanted very much to reorganize the community's thinking about the Spirit, so he talked about the direction in which God is moving.

Paul's great "hymn to love" in 1 Corinthians exalts love (agape) as "a still more excellent way." Paul is not trying to eliminate the varied gifts present in the community. He will not throw cold water on them, but he is anxious that the use of all spiritual gifts be guided by the exercise of love. "Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts," Paul writes at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 14. I think he means that Christians should keep two things in view: (1) "pursue love (agape)" and (2) "strive for the spiritual gifts (pneumatika)." Too many craved spiritual gifts and wanted to use them without having agape as their end or aim.

In fact, "God is agape," as the Elder reminds us in 1 John 4:16. He makes that assertion in the context of a discussion about the "spirits," the spiritual winds blowing in his communities, the inspired ("windy"?) prophets on the move in his part of the world. "Test the spirits," he says, "to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1). Some are, and some are not. He recommends two tests: one is "christological" and the other is "ethical," we are told. Those are probably not the best words to describe what he suggests. What are the tests to be applied? (1) Does the inspired prophet teach and live in accord with what you know of God and God's direction when you remember the earthly life ("the flesh") of Jesus Christ? (2) Do the prophet's life and teaching accord with the fundamental conviction that "God is love"? The Elder says, "Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them" (1 John 4:16). Both of these tests (if indeed these are two and not one) are simultaneously christological and ethical.

So God's Spirit not only pushes and propels us in the direction of agape; God "is" agape. God is that movement, that wind, that trend, that subterranean river, that transcendent and restless energy always on the go, filling all things, sustaining all of us, forgiving and freeing us, coming down from above, welling up from below as the power of new life, the power of agape.

Elizabeth Johnson writes of the Spirit and love in She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (1994). She says that "while love characterizes God as a whole, it is an especially apt term for that distinct manner of divine subsistence which is actually present and active in the world and which people call Spirit." Naming the Spirit as "love" and "gift" points to "both the inmost nature of divine mystery and the outermost reach of God's power freely streaming around creation to quicken and renew," empowering all creatures "to birth and rebirth in the midst of the antagonistic structures of reality" (142-43).