Discerning With Spirit - Scott Wall

[Music]

welcome to the commons cast we're glad

to have you here we hope you find

something meaningful in our teaching

this week head to commons dot church for

more information

today we are logging back into this

conversation that we are having about

the holy spirit

which if we're honest is really just an

exploration of what we mean

of what we say when we're talking about

god

as jeremy referenced in week one a

christian imagination sees god as

trinity as a divine community as an

endless dance of gift

and reception father son spirit source

savior and storyteller and christians

have formed these images because of what

we see in scripture of who god is and

how god acts and what god says showing

us that imagination just might be the

most significant spiritual practice that

we have at our disposal i mean think

about it this way the scriptures present

the divine through a series of striking

literary forms but those are forms that

the church continues to journey with and

grapple with

and create with as we compose new and

brilliant words and songs and art and

justice to make the world better

which

is just another way of acknowledging

that the title of this series forgotten

god it's a reminder to not neglect

our imagination of god

to not push the idea of a creative and

sustaining force behind all things into

the background of our lives

to never stop picturing god or

conceiving god

because the holy spirit is a kind of

muse for the art of living that we

compose each and every day i think

and

i have loved the practical ways that

this series has stretched my thinking so

far in

part because i found it really helpful

to think of faith less as a noun

less like a briefcase that i carry

because i mean let's be honest nobody

carries briefcases anymore right the

point is is that i like imagining faith

as something that i do

like

exercise

like art like

intimacy

all of these practices that require and

develop transformation in me

as i do them and i have loved thinking

about the holy spirit how this idea has

these practical implications for

this work and i'm still

bawling over this idea from last week

that to find and to listen to the most

gentle voice i can hear

there under all of the noise and all of

the chaos and all of the criticism

to hear that gentle voice is to hear the

same spirit that stirred over and

through and out of the cosmos before all

things

to hear that voice is to hear the sound

of easter morning which coincidentally

is the same sound we all make when we

wake up

as we take a breath in

and we breathe it out

to hear that voice is to encounter the

divine in all of its wondrous mystery

and today we are going to take another

tentative step down this road of

encounter together and as we do i'm

gonna invite you for just a moment here

to send ourselves

let's pray together now

god of all

all creation that flourishes

and of the universe that continues to

expand away from us

all of our human experience and our

memory and our hoped four days

all of our energy and our breath and

each heartbeat ringing now

we pause

and we choose to maybe shift our

attention from

all that aches

and all the distracts and from all the

things that we bring with us we carry

today

and we turn in whatever way we can

toward you

asking that you would help us in the

mystery of grace to be holy here

and to be truly with each other

to turn our eyes with kindness to your

presence that we can see in those around

us and

maybe we can feel in our fragile hearts

and bodies too

we pray that you give us strength to

receive

the grace of

shared welcome and warmth

your spirit leading us now even as we

take up ancient words trusting that ever

and always you make them new

we pray this in the name of christ

our hope

amen

okay so today

we're going to dive into a little bit

this idea of spirit and community and to

do that we need to talk through

imminence and real time and what seems

good

because in part what we're going to do

is wade through a well-established

theological relationship between the

ideas we have about the holy spirit and

our ideas of the church

see the christian scriptures offer a

clear picture of how jesus's earliest

friends and followers drew a direct

connection between the idea of god as

spirit and their identity as a community

pulled together and animated by the

spirit

and when we look at the book of acts

which we're going to spend some time in

together today

we see the earliest christians forming

communities around the message of jesus

and this is a message that they told

again and again in personal accounts of

transformation

examples like peter and paul and

uh stephen that's the other one that i

was thinking of

point is this

is that i don't think it's right for us

to talk about spirit without telling

stories

and seeing as i'm in the spot today i

guess it's my turn right

see because like jeremy my earliest

faith was shaped by a tradition of

christian practice and spirituality that

hadn't forgotten god as spirit in fact

spirit was their main selling point my

earliest imagination of god was shaped

by pentecostal christians and

communities that talked about the book

of acts as though it was still

happening

and i experienced this dynamism in the

socioeconomic and cultural diversity of

the churches that i was taken to

i experienced it in the authentic

emotive liturgy that was for the most

part more genuine than coercive

where sorrow and joy alike were led out

into the world as part of communal life

sometimes people would cry openly

sometimes they would shout in

celebration

and all the time the spirit was

regularly referred to as the source of

what was shared

and this left many including me feeling

like i belonged to something that seemed

spontaneously alive and growing and

accessible to everybody

and you know what to this day i'm still

okay with most of that

because i've come to see how it formed a

strong sense in me of what theologians

refer to as divine imminence

this sense

that while god is transcendent beyond us

as creator and other and source of all

god is also around

and mysteriously present

and maybe

maybe god is good

jump ahead to my early 20s where as an

undergrad student

carrying all my angst and my questions

alongside of these religious memories

and i found myself standing in a small

monastery chapel on a greek island

listening to two orthodox monks seeing

the vespers service in a language

that i couldn't understand

and late afternoon light is waning and

incense is billowing and filling the air

and i could feel that same

imminent presence

from my childhood

in the priest's

cadence and their melody aware that

somehow i belonged there even though i

clearly didn't

feeling something unfamiliar and yet

somehow commonly held in the shaping of

sacred space and time

and that's just a snapshot of how i've

sensed the spirit in these kind of

imminent moments

and christian tradition teaches us all

that regardless of how connected we feel

to this tradition

it's so important to look for and name

our own moments like this because

individual experiences have always been

vital to the story of faith perhaps

and even most especially if you have had

different experiences than me

because some of us sense the spirit in

quiet reverence

some of us in emotive and an expressive

liturgy

some of us find it in the plural

pronouns of the creeds that invite us to

say even when we don't know we can

we

believe

and i'm not so sure that these kinds of

experiences are exclusive to our

religious community encounters because i

think that probably here today there are

some of us who have sensed spirit in the

shared work of a justice cause

or a local community council that might

be dysfunctional but it gets the job

done

or in a neighborhood gardening project

some of us in the playful laughter of

our closest friends

are in their holding of our deepest

sorrow

because i really do think that divine

eminence

is refound in and through

those around us

the spirit at work and all the moments

and places and places that we choose

each other

now

people have noted this communal aspect

of human experience

renowned social theorist emil durkheim

is just one of them he coins this term

collective effervescence to describe the

kind of enchanting encounters that he

observed in rural tribal groups that he

studied and that term has actually been

applied to all kinds of other groups

in a recent new york times article

psychologist adam grant suggested that

these kinds of effervescent experiences

where we feel like we're syncing with a

group of people

just think like live performances or

sporting events or celebratory

gatherings like convocations and

weddings

but this is what we've been missing out

on these past two years with social

distance restrictions in play because

that sense of being connected with

others isn't something that you can get

by binging episodes that are trending

now

or watching a video that has 34 million

views or even talking about bruno which

anybody else in the room watched in

kanto six times in the last week anyways

here we go grant suggests

that we are at a loss

because of the way that groups can

impact our emotions sometimes for the

better

exemplified in such facts as you being

five times more likely to laugh with

other people than by yourself

and that might all be true

but it's not really what i'm getting at

because i'm not suggesting that every

group we're part of makes room for

spirit

or helps us to be aware of the spirit's

nearness i'm more intrigued today by how

the christian theology of spirit might

help us in the work of community

i'm curious how practical this theology

can be and to find some hints i want to

look quickly at a couple stories from

the book of acts because that whole book

focuses on how the spirit sparked and

sustained the early christian

communities

okay so the first story is in acts 10.

and here we see the apostle peter who is

one of jesus's most faithful followers

we see him on the mediterranean coast

he's chilling for a few days i guess and

he has this dreamlike vision while he's

napping on the roof one day

where he sees a sheet descend from

heaven

and it's holding a bunch of animals that

were considered impure and unfit to eat

by jewish dietary standards

and in this trance he's having he hears

a divine voice tell him to get up and to

eat one of these animals which

he adamantly refuses because he is an

observant jew

but this voice speaks to him again do

not call anything impure

that god has made clean

and the vision ends

and then we jump into the story ahead to

the next day we find peter in the house

of a gentile somebody who isn't jewish a

roman centurion named cornelius and he's

there with his family and his servants

and we learn that cornelius is aware of

the jewish god that he's devout and

faithful in his religious observance and

i love it because as peter and cornelius

start talking peter is clearly still

working through

this weird vision that he had the day

before

because he tells the group he says look

you guys are probably aware that jewish

law doesn't really allow me to be here

and visit with you which is super

awkward right telling your friends that

you're not supposed to be there but then

he says this he says but god has shown

me that i shouldn't call anyone impure

or unclean

and then a little later

after learning some more of cornelius's

story he continues he says this i now

realize how true it is that god does not

show favoritism

but accepts from every nation the one

who fears god and does what is right

there's a couple interesting things here

first the greek noun that describes god

as not picking favorites

prosopolemtes besides being a great

tongue twister it's built on the noun

prosopa which refers to the masks

that actors wore in ancient greco-roman

theater performances

and by using this word peter's making

this profound observation for him

and for us

that the divine doesn't play favorites

with the masks of socioeconomic status

or hierarchy or power that we don during

our day to day

god doesn't play favorites with the

masks of culture or gender or purity

that are imposed on our bodies

and others as well

the second thing to note here too though

is that peter seems to be coming to

these conclusions

in the moment

these shifts of perspective happening

with a kind of surreal slow motion pan

across the room because yeah he had had

a vision

but now he's standing in the room

with real gentiles

and he's trading stories of god's

goodness with those that he had always

been taught to avoid those he assumed

were outsiders

and the text tells us that while he's

still talking to them the spirit comes

upon everybody in the house

jews and gentiles alike swept up in this

ecstatic communal experience of grace

that's so profound that peter

immediately baptizes cornelius and the

entire house

and the tremors of this boundary lifting

event

shot out

into the early christian community and

we're going to talk more about that in a

second

because before we move on i want to say

that i think there's something here for

every single one of us who's ever

changed our minds when we realized that

an idea or a system was impacting some

other people

those of us who have ever moved like

peter from one position to another

sometimes

at greater cost than we thought we would

have to pay

some of us who have found our

perspective shifting as we learn and we

really start to see the raw humanity of

another person or another group

and that's this realization that the

voice

inviting you

to open your heart in forgiveness or in

acceptance

that little intuition you sometimes have

that keeps you curious about another

person's experience underneath their

mask that they try to keep on

that quiet whisper that nudges you

for your own good or someone else's

it nudges you from opinions or from

boundaries that used to feel so

non-negotiable

that voice

is always the spirit

teaching you to trust in real time

embodied experiences that are moving you

towards god's best

now

to be clear these boundary bending

events in acts 10 and in our lives they

those ones are next hands they were

really hard for early christian

communities because many of them were

trying to form across this ethnic divide

of gentiles and jews across the

separations of social rank and status

and as we move in the story ahead five

chapters in acts 15 we get this curious

look

at how they did this work

at this point in the story some time has

passed since peter has been in cornelius

house

and in the intervening period the

apostle paul has come on to the scene

paul who was a defender and a teacher of

the jewish law

he had become a follower of jesus

through a series of startling events but

because he had been pretty mean to early

christians he kind of had to go quiet go

off grid for a while only to emerge more

than a decade later

with a bunch of ideas about jesus

and the desire to tell the gentile world

about them

which is what him and his associates

start to do and eventually they go to

jerusalem to share what's been happening

in the christian communities across the

mediterranean and unsurprisingly

there's some diversity in the community

and not everybody agrees with his method

and his message

in fact some of the early christians who

were also pharisees really buckled down

on this idea that male gentile converts

had to be circumcised like all observant

jews they had to obey jewish law in all

of its entirety in order to join

christian churches

so

the apostles and the elders they have

this meeting

they hear from and they listen to many

individuals

they have an extended discussion the

text says which i think just means it

went far too long

and james says this james is jesus's

brother he's the leader of the jerusalem

church he stands up at the end of this

gathering and he says

it is my judgment therefore

that we should not make it difficult

for gentiles who are turning to god

let's write a letter he goes on that can

be distributed to all kinds of places

and so that's what they do they write to

the gentile believers in antioch syria

and silesia

it seemed good to the holy spirit and to

us not to burden you with anything

beyond the following requirements

you are to abstain from food sacrifice

to idols from blood from the meat of

strangled animals

and from sexual immorality you will do

well to avoid these things

farewell it's very it's very formal

unless i sort of chuckle because this

seems like such a random list right

these instructions just sort of cobbled

together but here's the deal you may not

be able to see this but these

instructions are basic in that they

encourage gentile believers to stay away

from the rituals of civic in imperial

temples

practices that often reinforced strict

social role descriptions

and exploitative power dynamics

which were things that didn't align with

how jesus's followers were attempting to

build community across the divides of

ethnicity and across the divides of

gender and across the divides of status

which is great but i want to focus in on

that interesting line it seemed good

to the holy spirit and to us because

that seems a little haphazard right

like these are major decisions that

shape the christian story and it sounds

like ax is saying that the church

expanded because of a boardroom decision

where a bunch of guys just sort of

rolled the dice and went with their gut

except i don't know if that's how we

should read it

what's

curious is that the greek verb

which is translated here as it seemed

good

it has all these other adjacent meanings

things like to think or to suppose or my

favorite

to imagine

and taken that way it's easy for me to

see what the author of acts was going

for here

it's easier for me to get my head around

their theology of the holy spirit

because this is actually a lovely

practical theology

for how the spirit shapes

good community

spirit shapes it through people

committed to working through

complex issues

people committed to hearing one

another's perspective people building a

healthy sense of consensus

people who are committed to not making

things difficult

for each other

and you know what

the thing i love most

that it's so easy to forget that this

decision and this language that they

come up with it came after years

years of cultivating distance or

difference

it came after years of listening to each

other it came after years of coming to

the same table years of allowing

christians of different stripes to tell

their stories

shaping a theology that believed the

spirit was the spark of social change

that jesus had dreamed of but then also

a theology that trusted the spirit as

the source

of the holy patience they needed for

themselves

and for others

because real change is hard

and it seems so

long in coming

and in that light

their open and creative language of it

seemed to us isn't casual at all

it's not arrived at without grit and

tenacity

instead we can see it as the product of

a group that had let go of faith as a

thing to be owned and possessed and

wielded a community that had accepted

truth as something to be found

over and over again

together

spirit as their

guide spirit

as our

guide to

as you

make us better

by humbly sharing your story

and pursuing your wisdom and naming what

you see

as you listen with

radical bravery and generosity at times

joining together in our desire here at

commons to become a community that

offers more diverse voices in more

diverse places

and as we welcome

and we embrace each other here and in a

bunch of spaces in this community making

connection

less difficult for those left out

labeled different

or overlooked

imagining

with all of the creativity we can muster

a way toward life

that seems good

let us pray

loving god

perhaps in this moment we're

so to find ourselves with images that

come to mind of the life that we lead

the ways in which you

have stepped close to us in the presence

of meaningful connection

your great imminent presence in the

world an adjoining

sort of knock on the door of our life

day after day in good friendships and

meaningful connections and intimacy

and today we want to name that we also

want to name our for some of us the

great longing we have for that

we ask that you give us courage to live

in the world as we seek it

we thank you too for the gift of

community that helps us to see

and rediscover your presence

day after day week after week and we ask

that you would give us courage to trust

the way that you always change our lives

in real time

with people who are different

with people who ask and call us towards

difference

where ideas and convictions that can

seem so hard

and we hold them so tightly

with those things fade and loosen in the

light of grace that invites us into

newness and to flourishing

and we pray too would you guide us

as we commit ourselves to doing what we

feel is best

with your tender presence guiding us

in the name of christ

we pray

amen

you