R is for Re-creating, Re-formation--Spirit-ed, and Spirit-led

Hoy: Let's stay with that point. What is the Spirit's meaning for us today?

Schultz: For me today, the question is not one of presence but of meaning: What does the story of the crucifixion mean for me today? How does it intersect with my life in 2006?

It seems to me that we need to find the terminology that is useful to us today. My analogy is based on a very simple understanding of the life of institutions and organizations which I have found useful. It seems to me that application of this analogy is - with a major caveat to be discussed later - compatible with Paul's discussion of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. I read these chapters as a single unit.

In any human group or institution, two kinds of processes are at work. One process uses the resources of the group to achieve the task unique to that institution or group in contrast to any other. The other possibility uses the resources of the institution to advance the private agenda(s) of any or all of the members. Any such effort to use those resources for this latter kind of purpose rather than the unique task of the organization corrupts the institution.

Hoy: So the Spirit re-creates and re-forms the church-gifts the church-for the church's unique task of sharing God's love for the whole world. This surely is timely for us today when there is so much intolerance and bigotry in the name of Chistianity. It so often happens that Christians abuse the gifts of the Spirit in a kind of private or ecclesiastical individualism that misses the mark of the Spirit's inclusive outreach, sometimes even denying those gifts to others.

Schultz: All of us - including Paul and certainly myself - fall into these traps. For example, Paul all too easily assumes and reinforces views on the role of women both in- and out-side the church and compounds his error by citing a Biblical reference that - even in Paul's rather creative interpretation - has nothing to do with the presence of the Christ. It seems to me that Paul thereby sets a pattern for the church which has not been helpful. Quoting Scriptural precedents rather than analyzing actual social dynamics is of no help in any argument for or against a standard of social morality, whether it focuses on women speaking in the church, on slavery, or on social attitudes toward homosexual behavior.

Many readers of this piece know that too close an association with the ecclesiastical machinery may be damaging to faith and worship. This reality has long been acknowledged in the principle that the churches and the church are always in need of reformation [ecclesia semper reformanda] - just as sinners are always in need of forgiveness. The church's most difficult problem is our tendency - more accurately the absolute certainty of trying - to project our own corruption on to God either by acting or speaking in ways that contradict God's love for the world.

Assuming that the church has some role to play in God's purpose not to condemn the world but rather to love it and redeem it, the church's corruption represents the highest form of an ungodly misuse of God's love and an attack on God's godliness. As Luther once admonished, we should attempt to let God be God. I understand this as letting God love and concentrating our efforts on participating in God's ongoing love. I am aware of experiencing this participation in my own life both when I experience love and when I struggle to participate in God's loving work for others.

Bob Schultz: Spirit-ed & Spirit-led

As I see it, we deny the presence of the Holy Spirit when we assume, for example: that God loves the church more than the world; that we are called to discipleship to preserve some form of ecclesiastical organization or even the church itself; that God's forgiveness of the sinner depends on either preserving or changing society's standards of morality - as though morality (the keeping of any law or rule) were in and of itself less sinful than immorality; when we assume that it is easier for God to love some of us than some others, even various "sons of perdition"; when we assume that God's love is limited by our ability to convince or even contact some people; when we equate our loveless rejection of others with God's condemnation; when we suggest that the church's love for anyone is ever unselfish and purely motivated, as though the limits of the church's love define similar limits of God's love.

These are some of the ways in which I think that we deny the work of the Holy Spirit. And that means also that we deny the meaning of the crucifixion and deny that God is God. It is not only easier to give our love than to receive God's love for us; it is also easier to be fascinated by the supposed quality of our own love for others than to receive God's love for ourselves and accept that God loves others more than we do. Our love takes on the radical character of love only when God uses and assimilates it into his loving work.

Outside of this context, human love at its best and its worst always derives its meaning from its self-seeking and selfishness that are always present. Our love becomes part of the Holy presence of God when God uses it to achieve the purpose for which God sent the Christ. At that point, we and others may experience in our time and place the presence of the Christ as Lord and of the Holy Spirit. Such experience changes the meaning of life. For me those changes in the meaning of life and work are my clue to what the disciples may have meant when they spoke of receiving the Holy Spirit.

Hoy: So faithfulness, for Christ's church today as in ages past, means following the Spirit's lead. And as the Spirit leads, so Christ's good news gifts us all. Thank you, Bob, for sharing these promising reflections with us!

mhoy