Tag: The Holy Spirit

Acts 6:1-7 The First Order of Ministry

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

Already there were two social identities at odd with each other within the community of the disciples, those who identify as Hebrews and those who identify as Hellenists. Both these groups were entirely comprised of Jews, but the Hellenists came from other places than Israel. They, or their parents, had been living in the diaspora, in Alexandria or Antioch or Rome, or lesser known and far flung places. They didn’t have the same community ties as the Jews who were living in the Roman province of Judea. The difference in identity between the Hebrews and Hellenists seems small to our eyes, but it was obviously large enough to them to cause difficulties. They knew which group they belonged to, and they watched carefully to see if their group was slighted or supported. They knew that all of the important people, the people in positions of power, came from the Hebrews. The uneven distribution of food may not have been intentional, which may have made the tensions worse. A person who has friends and family surrounding them is likely to see to their needs first. It’s very hard for us to be as aware of the needs of strangers as we are of the needs of those we love. And our pride often causes us to take the most offense at someone pointing out our unintended offenses. Given all of this, we can imagine how the cycles of suspicion and incrimination grew between these groups.

The disciples response was to create the nascent church’s first order of ministry, the deacons. It is easy to be critical of religious hierarchies, and I often have been critical of them while writing this blog. Yet this is the story of why we have them. The needs of community are great and the labor is broad, and no one person, or group of people, can do everything. The funny thing about these deacons is that they will soon overspill their original mission, and concern themselves with much more than a fair distribution of food. They will become the teachers and converters, the ones who are walking the roads and byroads, meeting with strangers and teaching them about the Way of Christ. Stephen and Philip, especially, will set the model of what Christian ministry is like. It starts with very specific goals and roles, but, like grace, it is always expanding beyond any boundaries that are set on it.

In Bible study, we spend some time considering what Jesus means in Luke 12 when he says that “everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” If the Holy Spirit it the energetic, creative manifestation of God in the midst of us, then blaspheming against it involves trying to limit its reach and power to move us. If the early church had been too strict in its definition of roles, then it would have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. After all, if the Holy Spirit prompted Stephen to preach and Philip to go wandering, who were they to get in its way? We sometimes forget that the Holy Spirit pushes the limits of our institutionalism. We sometimes blaspheme against it by limiting the ministry of our fellow Christians. But the Beloved Community of the disciples didn’t do that. They understood that the growth of their movement meant a need for certain ministries and certain roles, but they never stopped people from answering the call to something new within those roles.

 

Acts 1:1-11 The Big Heart

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

At the end of Luke’s Gospel, it seems that Jesus ascends into heaven very soon after he appears to the frightened disciples in the Upper Room. But at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke is willing to be more expansive, to linger over the time that Jesus was with his followers, those incredible forty days when they lived the resurrection life completely and without reserve. I’ve mentioned that Teresa of Avila thought that one could only stay in a state of suspended grace for about twenty minutes. But I imagine that the disciples were in that state for the entire forty days of Easter. This is perhaps an overstatement. They must have come down from their spiritual high enough to worry a little about current political concerns, because they asked him if this was the time when he would restore the kingdom of Israel. He refused to promise them political restoration. As with prayer, they weren’t offered the fulfillment of their temporal wishes. Instead, they were given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And it is now that the Holy Spirit truly comes into its own. For the past two months, I have been meeting weekly with a wonderful group of parishioners at St. John’s in Worthington. They are the primary community with whom I’ve studied the Gospel of Luke. At our very first meeting, we held a Wisdom Circle (I’ll present a format for leading circles with a post in March) and I asked them what arose them when they heard the words “Holy Spirit.” Our collective answer became this beautiful prayer:

The still small voice asks for our attention –
the angelic, made present to us, invokes our thankfulness –
for a moment, we are the same played note that God plays –
an unknown note chiming, ceaselessly, within the ear –
we are guided by what we hear,
and the spirit listens when we cry for help.
We look, for a moment, through the spirit’s eyes,
eyes of compassion and change –
we feel the spirit like a ligament, linking us to each other,
bone to bone.
The spirit doesn’t mind if we rebel,
but will always remind us of what’s right.
It’s rightness is in the air, it’s an atmosphere
– calm all around us, love in our hearts,
we are guided, compelled to act,
to open our eyes to little moments of observed beauty,
to love.

As we read the Acts of the Apostles, my main focus will be community, because I believe that this is also Luke’s focus, that he, along with the Apostle Paul, his friend, is asking the question of community – how can it teach us, form us, and how can we serve it? Because after the resurrection, Christ becomes visible in the world through the work of community. And, like any individual person, community can reject Christ, even when it’s claiming to love Him.

As I think about and ask these questions of community, I will turn from the Spanish mystics who have so informed my reading of Luke, and invite other voices into the conversation (although I doubt that I’ll be able to keep from mentioning John and Teresa from time to time). I want to include contemporary creators of community processes, such as Parker Palmer and Mary Pierce Brosmer in our conversation. And, thanks to my spiritual director, who recommended Marilyn Sewell wonderful anthology “Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality,” we will be joined by the voices of some amazing poets. In fact, let me end this post with one of those poets, Anne Sexton, whose poem The Big Heartis a kind of hymn to the spiritual gift of community to a person’s life.

The Big Heart
Anne Sexton

‘Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.’ – From an essay by W. B. Yeats

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.

They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.

Luke 11:1-13 The Holy Spirit will be given to you

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

When my mother was in the hospital, I disliked the chaplains who came to pray beside her bed. Some of them were friends, and they only meant to do good, to be loving and kind.But they kept asking God for things. For her healing, for guidance for the doctors – all practical and needful things. Still, I had a bad feeling. Although there were constant spikes of hope, I guessed that she was going to die. Hope was timorously held onto, but every day there were new setbacks, and she slipped away from us more.

What should the chaplains have asked for? Doesn’t Jesus tell us to ask, and it will be given unto you, to seek and ye shall find? Aren’t we supposed to approach prayer like a man in the night, knocking for bread at a friend’s door? Yes, we are. But, curiously, Jesus doesn’t say that we will get the things we ask for. In response to prayer, we are promised the Holy Spirit, and little else.

This is the same thing that Paul is saying in Philippians chapter 4, verses 4-7.  

Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ.

We are told, very clearly, to present our petitions to God, but again, we will not be answered by a fulfillment of our wishes. Instead of getting the things we ask for, we’ll get the peace of God, which transcends all understanding. We’ll get a sense of the Holy Spirit abiding with us, and filling us, and quieting the raging of our hearts.

So why do we pray, and pray for specific things? We pray to lay our own desires bare, to be entirely honest about what we want and think we need. Voicing our prayers is a form of self knowledge, a clearing away of the anxieties of the self so that we can stand quietly and experience the peace that God provides as an answer to our prayers.  

My friends the chaplains were not wrong to ask for my mother’s healing, or guidance for her doctors and nurses. They were simply stating what we clearly wanted. It was hard, there in the ICU, with machines beeping and the susurrus gasp of her labored breath, to sense the Holy Spirit, and to find peace with what was happening to my mother. But the prayers were answered. Not in the moment, and not because of a miraculous recovery, but in the months and years since, when peace and a sense of the Holy Spirit have become more and more present in my life.

 

Luke 1:1-56 Suddenly the Spirit is Talking to Everybody

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

The Holy Spirit pours into the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, embodied by angels and the singing, leaping responses that human beings make to them.  When the angels arrive its with a wildness and strangeness that has mutating effects on the people who encounter them. An old man falls silent, an old woman becomes pregnant, a virgin conceives and sings a song that anticipates the reordering of the entire world.  Luke is telling us that encounters with the divine will transform our lives, and that people with transformed lives eventually end up participating in the transformation of existence itself. This is the opening trumpet blast announcing Luke’s spirituality, which is about divine encounter, surrendered conventionality, and the remaking of human existence.

Elizabeth and Zechariah are both old when an angel appears with its revelations.  They are both Levites, descendants of Aaron, born into the priestly cast, their position in society assured since birth. They do their duty, get along with their neighbors, and act rightly in all circumstances. The only thing about them that could cause anyone to talk behind their backs is the fact that they have no children. Elizabeth feels this keenly. She refers to it as a disgrace, and maybe she thinks about Sarah, that great matriarch of her people, who also reached old age in a childless condition.

So where is the note of unconventionality that could lead them to raise an iconoclast like John the Baptist?  Maybe there is some wildness inside of them, carefully repressed through all their long years. But I suspect that John’s wildness is the result of Zechariah’s encounter with the angel. It’s hard to find a good image of this encounter. Baroque and Rococo paintings show very human looking angels, naked and floating suspended in swaths of cloth, descending on a startled looking old man who is, somehow, surrounded by onlookers, even though the Gospel tells us that Zechariah was alone in the Holy of Holies. Angels in art are rarely weird enough for the story that’s being conveyed in scripture. Contemporary art does a better job at capturing their essence. In paintings by Alexander Roitburd and Wassily Kandinsky they are riots of color, deeply abstract, and there’s nothing quiet or restful about looking at them. The angel of the Lord who appears to Zechariah is terrifying, and not very patient.  Poor Zechariah gets struck dumb for voicing only the tiniest of doubts, and really its a doubt that’s more about his own unsuitability than it is about God’s intentions.

We’re not told if Elizabeth learns about her husband’s encounter with the angel. He certainly can’t tell her about it. But she gets pregnant pretty quickly, and she has no trouble believing that its happening. In fact, both women in this first chapter of Luke’s Gospel fare better than the men. When the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary, she questions divine revelation, just like Zechariah did. But Gabriel is a more patient divine messenger, explains things more thoroughly, and doesn’t strike her dumb. Instead, she gets to sing, and gives us the words of the lovely and challenging Magnificat, which we can sing, also. It’s through the words of this hymn that we come to understand that a transformation is about to take place, that the world is about to be remade.