The Holy Spirit in the world today (2)

Godpod with Graham Tomlin, David Ford, Jane Williams, Miroslav Volf and Mike Lloyd

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Charlie Mackesy

I arrived late for the second day which meant that I unfortunately a Messaien meditation and also the Bible Reading given by Jane Williams who, I was told, gave an alternative and profound take on a difficult passage - the sin against the Holy Spirit.

Fortunately I arrived just in time to hear David Ford speak on 'In the Spirit: Learning Wisdom, Giving Signs', a talk that was variously described after it had been heard as 'magisterial' and 'full of riches.'

Ford began by demonstrating that the Spirit cannot be boxed or labelled as the Spirit of Jesus has been shared with millions of Christians who have expressed that Spirit without simply repeating what Jesus said and did. The Spirit stretches us in our thinking and imagining but as Seraphim of Sarov said, "The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God."

Being in the Spirit involves understanding the Spirit firstly as, in David Kelsey's phrase, God's circumambient Spirit which is both freely present as our ultimate evironment and yet also within us. Secondly, we are in the shared Spirit of God's family. It is the Spirit who enables us to cry 'Abba Father', as does Jesus, and the Spirit who creates koinonia or fellowship. Finally, it is the Spirit who draws into the future that is God's global drama. The Spirit is the first fruits of that future and enables us to create tastes and signs of that future in the present.

As a result, we learn wisdom in the Spirit by: praying to our Father from within a family which is potentially universal; loving God for who He is and no other reason; hearing the cries of our world and discerning responses which are signs of new life. Ford ended with three examples of such signs which included speaking in tongues, dancing and weeping in Rwanda; and the work of the L'Arche Community as initiated by Jean Vanier. He ended by reading 'Flight Line', a poem by Micheal O’Siadhail about jazz improvisation which is, for Ford, a parallel to life in the Spirit.

A live Godpod featuring Graham Tomlin, Ford, Williams, Miroslav Volf and Mike Lloyd which included: Williams saying that, like the Medieval mystics, she prefers to use feminine pronouns of Jesus rather than of the Spirit; Volf stating that the idea of a Christian nation is not biblically sound; Lloyd arguing that Christians should influence by persuasion and not legislative force; Volf commending Nicholas Wolterstorff's 'dialogical pluralism'; Lloyd suggesting that true human flourishing will never conflict with the well-being of creation; and Williams noting that forgiveness is about self-defiition, whether we wish to be defined by what has harmed us or what will free us.

Tomlin then rounded off the morning by arguing that pneumatology answers the fundamental questions of identity and vocation. He did so by suggesting that Charlie Mackesy's sculpture The Return of the Prodigal Son (see above) can also be read in terms of God the Father catching up and bringing back to life his dead Son after his offering of himself on the cross. Augustine identified the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, so by uniting us with Christ the Spirit draws us into the embrace seen in the sculpture; the embrace of love between the Father and the Son.

The Spirit therefore answers the question of our identity by enabling us to know ourselves as the beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the Spirit has united us with Christ to know the love of the Father for the Son. This then leads into our vocation because the Spirit's ultimate role is to draw creation into that same embrace by healing and perfecting the broken creation. Colin Gunton wrote that, "the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables all things to become that which they were created to be." We, therefore, become caught up in this divine mission, which is cross-shaped because it is the power of love which through suffering brings joy. As Seraphim of Sarov wrote, "the Holy Spirit turns to joy whatever he touches."

The conference ended with Tom Smail reflecting further on the shared life with God and others into which the Spirit draws us and with this togetherness being expressed through worship of God and prayer for each other.

This was a conference of real depth and inspiration where those involved seemed genuinely open to listening and learning from those whose thinking may have stretched or challenged the views and understanding with which people may have come. This sense of stretch was there in the presentation of biblically based arguments for diversity, human rights, political pluralism, universalism understood in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit, set within primarily charismatic worship and an openness to the theological riches of the various Christian traditions.

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Olivier Messiaen: Louange a l'Immortalité de Jésus.