Coming alive to the Spirit

Here's the reflection I shared during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Yesterday, in the Inspired to Follow group, we were looking at an early Florentine image of God as creator depicted as an elderly white man with a long beard, which led us into a discussion as whether God is more accurately depicted as abstract essence, rather than a person with a gender and ethnicity.

Those two strands of thought can also be found here, too, in the distinction Jesus makes between flesh and Spirit (John 3. 1-8). His description of Spirit as being like the wind makes it clear that he is making a distinction between what is tangible, visible and known – the flesh – and what is intangible, invisible and unknown – the Spirit. It is easy to hear that distinction being made and assume that Jesus is saying there is a dualistic division between flesh and Spirit and we have to choose one over the other. Many people in the history of the Church have made just that assumption.

Yet that is to forgot the way in which John’s Gospel begins; ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’ (John 1.1, 14), Through the incarnation of Jesus, flesh and Spirit are united and made one. Jesus came into the world to unify flesh and Spirit, to show that the human and the divine can be held together and combined in one; the divine can be human and the human divine.

God was revealed in our humanity in order that we recognise divinity – the image of God - within us. That is what we see here in the distinction between our first birth from our mothers’ womb through which we begin to have experience of the tangible, the visible and the known, and a second birth through water and the Spirit by means of which we begin to acknowledge and recognise our experience of the intangible, the invisible and the unknown. Both are life experiences; the first is immediately apparent to us through our physical birth; the second is an awareness that has to be awakened in us – an awakening that comes unpredictably in line with the unpredictable movements of the Spirit, which blows where it chooses.

The distinctions made by Jesus in the Gospel of John between flesh and Spirit, below and above, darkness and light etc can help, however, in understanding what it is in us that prevents our coming alive to the Spirit. Stephen Verney, in his wonderful commentary of John’s Gospel called ‘Water into Wine,’ say that, when he makes these distinctions, Jesus is speaking about two different levels or orders to reality. What he means by this are different patterns of society, each with a different centre or ruling power. In the first, ‘the ruling principle is the dictator ME, my ego-centric ego, and the pattern of society is people competing with, manipulating and trying to control each other.’ In the second, ‘the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.’

These two orders or patterns for society are at war with each other and we are caught up in the struggle that results. Choosing our side in this struggle is a key question for us as human beings, the question being ‘so urgent that our survival depends on finding the answer.’ Verney writes that: ‘we can see in our world order the terrible consequences of our ego-centricity. We have projected it into our institutions, where it has swollen up into a positive force of evil. We are all imprisoned together, in a system of competing nation states, on the edge of a catastrophe which could destroy all life on our planet.’ He was writing in the 1980s, but could have been describing today’s nationalism.

It is that ego-centricity and self-centredness which prevents us from coming alive to the Spirit. It is a pre-condition of coming alive to the Spirit that we look away from ourselves in order to see God and others. Beyond this, there is a degree of unpredictability in our awakening to the Spirit which means that we may only be able to tell our personal stories of coming alive to that which is invisible, intangible and beyond our comprehension.

Here is my personal story of resurrection in the form of a meditation. I wonder what features in your story?

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,
I come alive.
When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,
I come alive.
When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,
I come alive.
When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,
I come alive.
When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,
I come alive.
When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,
I come alive.
When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,
I come alive.
When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,
I come alive.

I come alive to endurance
when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.
I come alive to pain
when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.
I come alive to patience
when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.
I come alive to injustice
when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.
I come alive to suffering
when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.
I come alive to grief
when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive
when I am touched and see and hear
the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.
The mystery or madness
of the Other in which God
meets and greets me
and calls forth the response
that is love.

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King's X - It's Love.

We are those who do not touch and yet are blessed in not so doing

Here's the reflection I shared today in the Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields: 

Christianity is a touchy-feely faith. That is because of the incarnation, in which God became flesh and blood and moved into our neighbourhood. Touch was a key part of Jesus’ work as a carpenter, just as it was, too, of his healing ministry. Jesus was himself touched by the woman who was healed of a flow of blood and touched, as brutally as one can be touched, when he was arrested, tortured and crucified.

Touch is a key part of his life prior to his resurrection and here (Luke 24: 35-48) we read of his saying to his disciples, ‘Touch me and see.’ He did the same for Thomas, who had said unless I touch I will not believe, but, in this same period, he also said to Mary, ‘Touch me not’ and used his encounter with Thomas to bless those who believe without touching or seeing. In the story of the encounter on the Emmaus Road, as soon as he was recognised, and before his disciples could touch him, he disappeared from their presence. In the resurrection stories we read often of his suddenly appearing to and then disappearing from his disciples.

The visible Christ was shortly to become, following his Ascension, the invisible Christ. Those who believe in him, after the disciples, would be those who believe without touching or seeing him. Just as he prepared his disciples for his crucifixion, although they struggled to understand, so, in this period, he was preparing his disciples, who again struggled to understand, for his Ascension and a life in which they could not touch and see him physically.

This mirrors our experience in this time of lockdown. We have gone, almost overnight, from an experience of daily life in which shaking hands, hugging and kissing were all ordinary, everyday, acceptable forms of face-to-face, in-person encounter to a world in which we are isolated one from the other, only able to see each other virtually and where touch is the most dangerous action for one and all. We are like the disciples in suddenly transitioning from communing with the visible Christ to communing with the invisible Christ.

One thing is clear, though, from the Emmaus story and from the wider experience of the disciples: as the visible Christ became the invisible Christ, he was no less present to them. The invisible took shape in the disciples, as it does in us, the death and resurrection of Christ becoming the DNA of the Christian; by this shall everyone know that you are my disciples. It is what is called grace, the God-shaping of us by the invisible divine goodness.

I would suggest, therefore, that our experience of virtual church is similar; in that it is different but no less valid. There is much that we have lost, but also much that we have gained. We are separated one from the other and we are physically isolated, but, in many respects we are more in touch with one another than we were previously and are, for many of us, able to be part of more at St Martin’s than was previously the case. The nature of our experience and gathering has changed but its meaning and value have not. We continue to support and shape one another as we did previously, but have found different ways in which to do so.

That was the experience of the disciples after Christ’s Ascension but it has also been the experience of the Church at other times and in other places. The Stations of the Cross, that we experienced so powerfully in a virtual presentation on Good Friday, are an example; being devised by St Francis of Assisi for all who could not physically walk the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.

The disciples needed to touch and see Jesus in order to be witnesses to the reality of his resurrection. We do not need to touch and see in order to believe and Jesus, himself, tells us that we are blessed as a result. Our experience of the invisible Jesus, our relationship with him, is different from that of the disciples with the visible Jesus, able to touch and see, but is no less valid, no less deep, no less life-changing for that difference. Our experience as the body of Christ at St Martin-in-the-Fields is different from what it was when we could touch and see each other and our building, but is no less valid, no less deep, no less life-changing for that difference. We are those who do not touch and yet are blessed in not so doing. Amen.

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Deacon Blue - Keeping My Faith Alive.