ReDiscovery #4: The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things

Review of the ReDiscovery series…

The five ReDiscoveries are:

A bigger Gospel - saved into a community under Jesus called to live the life of the future now

Jesus the Word - Reading Scripture through a Jesus lens - God looks like Jesus and so all Scripture is properly read through a Jesus lens.

The power of love: Our relationship with power - Evil overcome by the power of suffering & self-giving love

The Holy Spirit: A clarified purpose and empowerment - joining God in the reconciling of all things

Belonging: A new approach to disagreement - shared centre vs the lines we draw

Next week, we’ll finish up this series and then on Nov 12th, we’ll have a Q&A Sunday - a chance for us to explore some of the questions that this series may have raised, or that you are just carrying with you and might be willing to voice in our midst. (So start thinking of your questions!)

But for today, we get to explore the clarified purpose and empowerment that the Holy Spirit brings into the our lives, as we are invited to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things.

How do we recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or in the world around us?

What are the tells? How do you know the Spirit is at work? What are the giveaways?

[pause]

I wonder… can you tell whether these are ...

moth vs butterfly

lizard vs salamander

leopard vs jaguar

dove vs pigeon

Did you know that doves and pigeons are the same species?

This was somewhat upsetting to me. Not really sure why. But they just feel like very different animals to me.

After all.. haven’t you imagined the Spirit descending like a dove… looking more like this?

What if the Holy Spirit has been showing up in my life all this time, looking more like THIS?

How do we recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or in the world around us?

What if we’ve been on the lookout for this? … (dove)

And the Spirit is actually showing up all over the place looking more like this? (pigeon)

What if ...

The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things.

What if we’re actually being empowered by the Holy Spirit to join God in the reconciliation of all things?

The problem:

We don’t know what to do with the Holy Spirit. Or we’re not sure. Or we’ve been burned by “God told me” people and stories.

We like neat categories. And control. And the Holy Spirit is God. We’re okay with that part mostly. (Though sometimes, we might relegate the Spirit to being not God exactly, but the “force” or the part of God that does the bidding of God. (Hierarchy within the Trinity… a long standing issue.

heresies may include:

God the Father is the “real God”, Jesus as the “soft human side” and the Holy Spirit as the woo-woo part that we can’t totally understand or see.

correction:

Trinity - God is one and God is three. When we lose the tension between these two realities, the mystery collapses.

How does Scripture describe the Holy Spirit - I was trying to succinctly summarize some of the big ideas of how the big Story of scripture portrays the Holy Spirit, and I stumbled across this video which does more than what I had hoped to do - and all in 4 minutes!

[Bible Project Holy Spirit VIDEO]

The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things. The new creation.

And so, if we have been uncomfortable with God the Holy Spirit it’s entirely possible that our default posture has been to avoid speaking about the Spirit, or thinking about the Spirit, and just hope that either the Spirit will leave us alone because it’s all a little “too much”/’too woo woo” - or that the Spirit will just work that spiritual magic without us having to actually do anything.

But instead of ignoring or avoiding the Holy Spirit, what if we could pay attention?

What if instead of mistrusting and trying to avoid the Holy Spirit, we could ask for the Spirit to help us see Jesus to us?

And what if we took seriously the idea that God isn’t just “making all things new” over there somewhere - but inviting us to participate in the divine mission? What if, instead of shrinking back, or waiting passively for God or someone to do something, we could actually join God in reconciling all things by moving closer?

Invitations…

Come, Holy Spirit and help us to pay attention ?

Gordon T. Smith writes in his book The Voice of Love that the inner witness has two anchors: scripture and community. And so we listen for the voice of the Spirit, but we do so while also listening to the Scripture and to the community.

This means, we have to actually read the scripture. And I know that none of us likely reads it as much as we think we should or feel we ought, or have been trained to assume… but what if we just kept plugging along at opening the Bible, and reading what it says? (Thursday night plug!)

This also means we have to work on making sure that we’re in community - not just community-adjacent, but actually in relationships where the person across from us might actually ask us a question we didn’t have a prepared answer for, where we might share our struggles and our triumphs, where we get to be ourselves. And where we not only put up with the other people being themselves, but where we insist on holding space for that, and celebrate those who show up there.

And this means we have to actually pay attention to what is happening IN us. What we are feeling and thinking and experiencing. Some of us have been taught that paying attention to these things is dangerous or selfish. But learning to pay attention to our own lives is a crucial part of listening to God and learning to love others.

Pay attention. To ourselves. To scripture. And to the community.

Come, Holy Spirit and continue to help us see Jesus - reveal Jesus to us.

And when you do, we will make sure we are pointing towards Him, moving closer, realigning ourselves (and repenting to make that possible).

The Spirit is helping to make us like the One being revealed. As the Spirit reveals Jesus to us, we are also being made more and more like Jesus. Made into “little Christs” - which is what the term “Christian” means.

We recognize the Spirit’s work, because the Spirit reveals Jesus.

And when the Spirit points us to Jesus, we experience Christ being formed in us. We are changed.

Fruit and gifts.

Fruit is grown. Gifts are given.

Rich Villodas reminds us that the gifts of the Spirit are not a shortcut to the maturity of fruit grown in us, a “slower than we want it to be” process.

But we can recognize the work of the Spirit by the fruit… and Galatians reminds us that the fruit will look like:

Galatians 5:22–23 (CEB)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.

Come, Holy Spirit and move us closer to others

Jonny Morrison & Paul Eddy put it this way:

“In the opening chapters of Acts, the Spirit grants the disciples new languages to challenge their own nationalism and to help them experience and participate in reconciliation. This trend continues throughout the book of Acts. Each time the Spirit arrives unexpectedly, diverse people are made into family.”

When the Spirit is at work, we don’t just watch reconciliation from a safe distance, we’re drawn into it, moving closer to the people we may once have thought we had nothing in common.

Where is a place in your life, where you can sense the Spirit’s invitation to “move closer” … to speak a new word, to listen to someone else’s story, to show up and pay attention? And maybe to catch a glimpse of God already present where you are?

God has told us, from the very beginning, that the plan is reconcile everything.

In Jesus, we see this begun. But it’s not done yet.

And while God can continue on working away at bringing about the reconciliation of all things, it is somehow part of God’s plan to include us in the project.

So where are you being invited to pay attention? (inner witness, scripture & community)

Where do you see Jesus being revealed? And how can you participate in that, allowing the Spirit to not only reveal Jesus to you, but also make you more like Jesus in the process, filling your life with the fruit that comes from the Spirit’s presence in your life?

And where are you being invited to move closer?

Quiet

Prayer - Barb

Song