Sermon at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland; 17 March 2002
A few days ago I had a surprise visit from a friend of a friend from 35 years ago. It took me back to the mid-60s when I was first ordained and curate at Papakura. It was a time in my life when I was very depressed as I wrestled with faith, ministry, future, life.
The charismatic movement was strong, and I sought a pentecostal experience of the Spirit to help me, but never received one. My unexpected visitor had had such an experience and left the Anglican Church to set up a pentecostal fellowship which he and his wife have run to good effect for the years since.
He came to share his experience with me and to express his concern that the Anglican bishops seemed to lack any passion in their ministry. He saw them as kind and loving people but not drenched with the Spirit so as to inspire their flock. He said he would like to pray for the bishops.
I was a little taken aback. It reminded me of 35 years ago when there was a distinct feeling that there were some who had received the Spirit and had a true relationship with God, while others were hovering around the edge and needed the pentecostal experience to be truly Christian.
I shared with my friend my own pilgrimage in faith since that time, especially my time in New York (‘68-’70) which had brought me face to face with many of the key issues of life in a global community : racism, poverty, justice, peace. I was forced to rethink my theology and my concepts of the Church, mission, ministry, and my own personal vocation.
Those two years laid the foundation for everything I have done in ministry ever since. In retrospect, had I been drenched with the Spirit at Papakura in the mid-60s I never would have been forced to wrestle with the questions that changed my life and ministry. A pentecostal experience would have diverted me from that task, and I believe that God denied me that in order to drive me on to much larger visions of the divine purpose in the world, and the role God wanted me to play within it. I am profoundly grateful for the way my life and ministry has been shaped.
What I have learned in a lifetime’s pilgrimage is that God calls each of us in different ways, gifts us with different gifts and experiences, and sets us down in different patches of the vineyard to exercise the vocation which is uniquely shaped for each individual. On this basis my friend and I prayed together, and hopefully rejoiced equally in the way God has worked in our lives
I was glad my friend visited. It is always good for us to be challenged about our faith, and how closely we walk with God in daily life. It is easy for the Church to be no more than just another organisation we belong to. Far from seeing ourselves as members of the Body of Christ whose lives are driven by the desire to serve God in every encounter and moment, we rank the Church along with the golf club, Rotary, office social club, or the graduates association. We may not be drenched with pentecostal passion, but if we are not deep down passionate about our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ we will be no more than salt that has lost its saltiness, no longer able to make a difference for God.
The Presbyterian Church has the best logo of any church I have ever seen. It is the image of the burning bush that Moses encountered at Sinai, with the words in Latin : nec tamen consumebatur, “it was not consumed”. Exodus 3.2 : “The Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush; and Moses looked and saw that the bush was burning but was not consumed” – a powerful image of the energy of God which is never exhausted, and that all of us as we are filled with that energy gain the spiritual strength to go out and change the world.
An American Franciscan woman, Sister Joan Puls, uses that image to make the point that every bush in life is burning since God shines through the smallest and simplest of human experiences. All of life is sacrament. Sister Joan writes : “Spirituality embraces all of life, breathes through its homely details and its noble intentions. It is at the heart of our efforts to be human….It is the voice of our prayer and the progress of our pilgrimage towards peace. It is the silence of our struggles and the echo of our cry for justice.”
Many will know the words of Dag Hammarskjold, second Secretary-General of the United Nations:
I don’t know who or what put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone, or Something, and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.[1]
Filled with that power Moses went to Pharaoh to struggle for justice and for the liberation of his people from slavery in Egypt. In the same power he led them for 40 years in the desert with no other guide than his God who was to them as fire by night and light by day. Spirituality is directly linked with the quest for freedom for the enslaved and justice for the oppressed.
Today’s first reading from Ezekiel 37 has the equally powerful story of Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones, and hearing the voice of God asking : “Mortal man, can these bones live?” Sometimes we look around at the Church and it seems like a valley of dry bones from which the life of God has departed. But God says “I will cause my breath/spirit to enter you and you shall live.” And as Ezekiel prophesied there was a rattling sound, bone came together with bone. God covered them with flesh and put skin upon them, but there was no breath in them. So Ezekiel prophesied again and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, and there were enough of them to form an army.
Is it too much to say that this is increasingly the experience of this congregation in recent months? In place of a spirit of complaint I detect a different spirit – the spirit of God at work bringing reconciliation and a new attitude of working together for the common good, and the building of God’s kingdom. As we come up to Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter we might use this time for deepening our walk with Christ and with each other, so that filled with God’s spirit we may do mighty things for God.
“Spirituality”, as Sister Joan Puls says, “is the degree of our harmony with all that is within and without us… We become spiritual when we discern the sounds of the earth, recognise signs of pending destruction, speak the words of blessing and reconciliation. We become spiritual when we know ourselves as potential sisters and brothers of everything and everyone who has lived.”
Such spirituality is a goal worthy of our best endeavours.
[1] Markings, Faber & Faber, 1963.
