After all these years we are discovering that we have it backwards. We stand with those first people gathered on Pentecost day and proclaim that God has gifted the church with the Holy Spirit....with God's very presence. And it is really the other way around.
I've just finished reading 11 books for the class I am taking for my Doctor of Ministry class. The class focuses on the Holy Spirit and the church's call to mission. As we read and read and read....we discover a tiny flip flop of words that make an enormous difference. Instead of God giving the Spirit to the church.....God gave the church to the Spirit.
Think about it a little while. This makes a huge difference in our thinking and our eternal ecclesiastical busy work.
If the church is given to the Spirit....it seems the church should spend more time discerning, listening to the Spirit rather than our own agendas.
How many more words can we speak? Haven't we said enough, argued enough, debated enough? Maybe we are experiencing the Job story. When we finally fall exhausted from all our talking and writing then perhaps we will be quiet long enough to hear what God's Spirit has been whispering.
Where is God? Can we be quiet long enough to find out?
2 comments:
You're right, that little turn on words is a whole paradigm shift. We think that the Spirit has been given to the church, somehow we interpret that to mean that in someway the Spirit is at our disposal. But when we realize that the Church has been given to the Spirit, we become the possession of the Spirit - meaning that the Spirit can do with the Church whatever the Spirit desires. The big question is - are we ready to be used in ways that the Spirit desires to use us? Are we ready to take the risk of going where the Spirit leads, rather than putting up barriers to the work of the Spirit?
No wonder I fit in the church it is as dislexic as I am, we always turn things around without even knowing it.
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