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May 23, l999
AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT
John 7:39
Sometimes when I read the Bible, a phrase jumps out
at me and I react: Does that mean what I think it means?
So it was when I came across verse 39 of John 7 and the
phrase: AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT. The phrase is not
from Jesus; it is John's comment on what Jesus was
saying. But could either Jesus or John have meant
literally that there was ever a time when there was no
Spirit?
That would be a dreadful time INDEED: AS YET THERE
WAS NO SPIRIT? Then the Spirit of God would not have
moved across the void and the waters and brought creation
out of nothing. AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT, the prophets
Isaiah, Amos, Ezekiel and so many others would not have
had their voices inspired and raised in courageous
insistence of the justice and mercy of the Lord
Almighty.
No, it is too awful to speculate a time when the
Spirit of God was not actively engaged in creating,
sustaining and reclaiming our world.
So we go to the context and see that Jesus was not
making a universal claim about the absence of the Spirit
in the aeons before his own earthly life; rather he was
declaring a special blessing upon his followers. In this
episode from the Gospel of John we are on the threshold
where the Divine Spirit, always active in creation and
always caring for all peoples, is about to express
herself in a unique way and through a new people of
faith. The Spirit is about to acquire the name lifted up
in Christian praise and experience: THE HOLY SPIRIT.
******
It's Pentecost Sunday so I added to our church
advertisement in the SCMP yesterday this phrase: REJOICE
WITH US…IT IS PENTECOST. We are the only
congregation which noted that today is Pentecost Sunday.
Odd! Because so many of the churches which are advertise
are either more Christian calendar oriented than we, or
are pentecostal in doctrine, and for both Pentecost is
their great day!
But then in my research for today I discovered that
the early churches also took scant notice of Pentecost as
such; of course, the church calendar really wasn't
invented until well into the second century. This was
generations after the great Pentecost event recorded Acts
2 but the Holy Spirit did not cease encouraging the
church after Jerusalem. The letters of the Apostle Paul
inform us that many gifts of The Holy Spirit, including
speaking in tongues, were regular features at early
Christian worship.
Paul approved all these gifts though several times he
admonished congregations to keep their tongues under the
control and discernment of the gift of interpretation of
the unknown tongues; otherwise, confusion and
gibberish.
Maybe these congregations did not begin to celebrate
Pentecost as such for a long while because the same
congregations were wholly busy doing what the Spirit
came to urge them to do: they were witnessing to the ends
of the Roman empire, planting churches everywhere,
staking our their Christian faith in contrast with
Judaism and paganism, and, then, when circumstances
demanded, happily going to their martyrs' deaths singing
praises to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Whenever you are living intimately with a blessing,
you have less need to acknowledge it formally. You live
it. I hope that is the case with the congregations who
do not take time to tell the world that it's Pentecost
Sunday.
When a couple are still in their honeymoon, they do
not need to take time to remember and celebrate
ananniversary of their marriage. When the honeymoon
period ends, then anniversaries become natural and
needful to remind us of what we had in the first place.
In this century there is a revival of The Holy Spirit.
We see it not only in the renewal of gifts especially of
tongues, but in the greater Christian desire for unity.
In the TV sit com Ally MacBeal recently fended off a
rabbi's attention by saying: I'M A METHODIST. But there
isn't much heart in these identities any long; we are
Christians. Most wonderful there is a growing holiness
in worship across the entire spectrum of Christian
traditions. In these current circumstances it seems to me
helpful to remember both that it is Pentecost Sunday and
to welcome the Holy Spirit to enliven us in our honoring
of the Spirit.
*****
The understanding of the Spirit and The Holy Spirit
which I like is simply this: The Divine Spirit is God's
outpouring of love for his whole creation; The Holy
Spirit is the outpouring of the love and compassion of
God and the Son, Jesus Christ, for their whole creation
and particularly for the Church. Because the Church is
the primary discerner of the saving grace which Father
and Son show and confirm through The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is linked with Jesus Christ in
particular ways that the Divine Spirit, available to all
persons, is not. The Holy Spirit, thus, is how
Christians believe and experience God's continuous
support and help to us.
Jesus said: AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT because he was
anticipating the coming of that Counsellor and Friend
whom elsewhere in John's Gospel he promised to his
friends. The Holy Spirit is intimately linked with and
sequential to the life of Jesus. The Holy Spirit could
come after Jesus was glorified. The work of Jesus on
earth needed to finish so that the work of The Holy
Spirit on Earth could begin.First Corinthians states: NO
ONE CAN SAY 'JESUS IS LORD' EXCEPT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT.
The Holy Spirit always confirms and strengthens the light
and magnetism of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit could not come until Jesus was
glorified. That means not until the work of Jesus on
earth was done could the Holy Spirit take up its primary
function of confirming and affirming that Jesus is the
Saviour..
In our reading from First Corinthians Paul summarizes
some of the ways the Spirit was experienced in the
churches he guided. The diverse gifts which Paul noted
were: wisdom, knowledge, healing, working of miracles,
prophecy, discernment of good and bad, and various kinds
of tongues, and their interpretation. The Holy Spirit is
very practical, as we see, and the Holy Spirit is the
guide for the whole Church, for the collective body of
Jesus Christ.
While the Holy Spirit comes and goes according to
divine decision, there are times in the life of the
church when it may blow with greater intensity. Times of
persecution and suffering have brought the Holy Spirit to
the Church in force. That may be why there is the pattern
of so much Holy Spirit activity in the first century; and
on our threshold in China in this century we have seen
remarkable evidence of the Holy Spirit blessing a
persecuted Christian people.
Paradoxically, the Holy Spirit seems to go into high
gear at times when the Church becomes utterly dry, arid
and indifferent to its Lord, Jesus. All great revivals
have occured precisely at that nadir of faith. A
disgruntled coach challenged his indifferent player with
the query: "Are you ignorant of the game or just
apathetic about your play? The player replied: "I don't
know. And I don't care." When the Church is both ignorant
of its faith and indifferent about Jesus, WHAM and WOW -
the Holy Spirit arises.
Whatever the occasion, when the Holy Spirit is in high
gear … these conditions will be present in the
church:
….The Holy Spirit exalts the Lordship of Jesus
Christ in the Church
….The Holy Spirit confirms the truth of the
scriptures, either explicitly or implicitly
,…The Holy Spirit enables right, clear and
courageous speech whether through preaching and teaching,
the interpretation of tongues, bible study, and social
witness.
….The Holy Spirit produces spiritual fruit which
strengthens the body of Christ and rejects within and
without the Church the forces of ignorance, darkness and
evil.
********
AS YET THERE WAS NO SPIRIT. There are those times when
no matter what great things are going on within the
general body of Christ, the individual can feel alone and
astray from the presence of God. Believers can
experience periods when Jesus phrase:AS YET THERE IS NO
SPIRIT falls like a heavy word about their spiritual
loneliness. Our lesson of today invites us to the living
waters. It's self-defeating and spirit-denying to
separate oneself from the living waters by turning away
from the scriptures, from worship, from fellowship in
Christ. When we are thirsty we need to go to the living
waters.
It is also unhelpful to insist that The Holy Spirit
will function in the lives of others and of the
congregation only according to one's personal
spirituality agenda. Agent 007, James Bond always
insisted that his very dry martini be stirred, nor
shaken. That is human ambition seeking to control every
last detail of our lives. But the Spirit is not under
human control. The Spirit may shake someone, it may stir
up someone, it may effect person and peoples in unusual
ways or in ordinary ways. The Holy Spirit may excite; it
may quiet; it may disturb. The Holy Spirit often asks us
to wait in patient faith. We simply can't mix and pour
God's Spirit as we like.
We know that many persons from other faith traditions
thirst for the Spirit. They like us are within the
outreaching love of God shown in the Divine Spirit. But
in Jesus we are within the influence of The Holy Spirit
who has birthed a new community, unlike any other on
earth. A community knit together not by a family tree but
by the Jesus tree, and the blood which He shed for us. A
community, mystically bound, by a love which the world
cannot understand and the gates of Hell cannot defeat. A
community which will continue to testify to the Heavenly
Father, the Saving Son, and the Sustaining Spirit until
that same Jesus returns to bring that community as His
bride to heaven. And the warm breadth of The Holy Spirit
comes to nurture us and on the wings of The Holy Spirit
we shall travel. .
Pastor Gene Preston
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