Transformation or Osmosis

I’m still thinking about a sermon I heard two weeks ago. Even with its ordinary title it began to throb with life – much appreciated by yours truly and seemingly many others on that Sunday after Easter. Holy Spirit was the topic at hand; yes Holy Spirit even though we have not yet reached the ascribed fifty day marker when the Church Year recognizes that outpouring on Pentecost Sunday. It is this pre-Pentecostal address which still has my intrigue.

Holy Spirit is God among us, said the preacher. Holy Spirit is God! Hmm, I thought to myself, we may now get into another round or repeat of Trinitarian dogma which has been the favorite fare of Protestantism for about five hundred years or so. But it was not, the main point of this sermon being transformation, an experience certainly beyond correctly designated seasons or descriptions of the godhead; an invitation to allow transformation to happen. It was an invitation to faith! Faith with a beginning as well as ongoing rediscovery. Quite refreshing; this was a nice variation from the ‘keep working at it’ type sermons quite common these days.

This became the trigger now producing the further thought.😏 Here goes. My Christian faith has come about, has been nurtured and weeded among the Anabaptists, those unruly ‘again baptizers’ of the 16^th century, those who challenged the rite of infant baptism, saying it must be upon confession of faith. Needless to say I knew nothing about that history until AFTER I was baptized upon confession of my faith near end of my teenage years. This interesting history I discovered just a couple years later as a young adult in college. Anabaptism had been the context of my growing up. It had been there among the farms, the villages and the lure of the big city nearby. Unbeknownst to me, this was a modern version of those early rebels, already splintered and organized and reorganized by many schisms and wars. I was (or more accurately my parents were) members of the most conservative of the Russian version of those Anabaptists. With some Old Colony folkways my brothers and sisters and I were part of an old history yet fully incorporated into the 1950s and 60s of mid twentieth century. These humble Old Colony farm beginnings included full engagement with fellow colonists as well as colonialists, all of us in that part of Saskatchewan beneficiaries of Treaty 6 which had been signed in 1876. I grew up, yes, in a rather pluralistic community, always a nehsheah often driving my dad crazy with questions and opinions about all this (which ironically he also found interesting). Full credit to my parents; they encouraged education even if their church did not. I was in a world of friends including born again evangelicals as well as ‘others’ especially Lutherans and some Catholic friends. By now my large extended family includes some of all of these. We were the good, the bad, and the ugly[i]. I was a farm boy learning many things.

“I am a part of all that I have met,”[ii] was a line I still recall from a high school literature class, thanks to an excellent teacher, Mr Hildebrand. That early line comes to mind now having listened to this Holy Spirit sermon. The sermon happens alongside a book by Phyllis Tickle which I'm reading [Rereading actually. Turns out I have read it before; can tell by a few margin notes which I make occasionally; apologies to our church librarian][iii] Tickle has prickled a goodly number of conservatives as well as liberals both inside and outside churches and even other faith practitioners. Writing from her vantage as a religion expert and an editor, she spells out her thesis of history moving in 500 year cycles, zeroing in on us now five hundred years after the Reformation. We are now in a Great Emergence says she, and hardly any can disagree with her description of this present digital/media driven world. 

So given these anthropological or sociological insights, is there a change in God, in the Great I AM, or Jehovah, or Creator, or Allah? No! Or at least she does not go there, writing only about how we have historically interpreted, appointed some popes and fought some wars, created Church and then churches and carved out some territory (British Commonwealth of Nations anybody?). She writes as a religion expert; not a theologian.

My thoughts however cannot ignore the theological, especially given this sermon just heard. Tickle describes present make-up of churches as a Quadrilateral: Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists and Conservatives. Given this postmodern descript I find myself even more grateful for this Holy Spirit presence. God still the One over all, the ever constant and eternally available to anyone, everyone, even among us churches, among indigenous, colonialist and every color, Catholic, Protestant, Reform, Anabaptist - hundreds of denominations and independents, available and present as promised by Jesus even before his crucifixion, “it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the [Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Denominations and descriptions of present emergences are still a testimony of an eternal everlasting God. Romans 11:33 also comes to mind, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!"

All these changes taking place everywhere – including people not coming to church much - is not evidence of the inadequacy of the One above. This is rather an evidence of the great adequacy! God (by whatever name, as the Alcoholics Anonymous people will say) is beyond times and seasons, is abundantly available for all (John 10:10). To me the slightly limited scope of Tickle's book also hints at limited scope of some of our efforts these days trying hard to 'address things.' Analyses and explanations usually lead to books and speaking engagements and seminars. So we do seminars both within and beyond our denominations, and before you know it we have catchphrases like “Encountering, Embracing, Embodying Christ in life, in community, in the world.” We even post them in our sanctuaries so that all may know about it - posters which suggest at least somebody is doing something.

My question, does this encounter, this embrace, this embodiment actually include some new discovery? My wife and I enjoyed today’s morning devotional written by a young lady, a university student, telling us about the mantis shrimp found in the warmer Indian and Pacific Oceans. They have 12 color channels for vision, she tells us, rather than us humans with only three. Her main point beautifully presented: God’s presence often limited by our understanding, “God’s peace is like all the colors that a mantis shrimp can sense: more lovely and wonderful than I could ever imagine!”[iv] Her youthful creativity is an invitation for some deep thinking about the Almighty. Perhaps, in addition to posting some phraseology, we need some deeper discoveries, perhaps even some old things like ‘deeper life services’, meaning commitments or re-commitments to become followers of Jesus the Christ. Perhaps we need some new quiet mindfulness, perhaps followed by old-fashioned speaking with one another and with the neighbors. We might even confess our sins and need for some inner transformation, an actual experience of Christ including the invitation for our children to be baptized upon confession of their faith – yes the original-never-been-changed biblical way of ‘joining in faith.’ Matthew 11:28-29 says something about that. [I resist the urge to cut and paste for you. Check it out in your Bible.] 

A faith community is not a faith community if others are not invited in. Joining faith communities does not happen by osmosis; it happens by the holy nudge (invitation or request). They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. …⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:46-47). It’s the early church. It’s biblical. It’s awesome. It’s transformative and available still. It can be a personal discovery and a community recovery.

Still reading, still thinking, I recognize these thoughts still quite similar to the faith confession of that farm boy back there, and some new discoveries (or recoveries?) still ongoing. Thanks be to God.

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 [i] Epic Western movie by that name directed by Sergio Leone, 1966.

 [ii] Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses,” 1842.

 [iii] Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018).

 [iv] Melia Hawthorne Klingler, Rejoice! (MennoMedia, Vol 58, no 2), p.78.