Walking in the Spirit,

Part 4

20 May 2007

Sunday in Ascensiontide

The last several weeks we have been talking about the normal Christian life.  Instead of looking at the different gifts with which the Spirit equips us for ministry, we have been looking at the commonalities, the normal equipment that each Christian receives in virtue of his or her baptism—what we have to work with as Spirit-filled people, and the ways in which our work is done.  But we have not talked much about what we do with these capacities.  Today we begin our discussion of the Christian Duty—how all of these capacities come into play in real activities.

But first I want to try to deal with one other issue.  We hear a lot about charismatic Christians these days, Pentecostal spirituality.  It seems as if every day another report comes in which says that most of the world’s Christians are charismatic.  The word usually refers to energetic worship, a focus on miracles and extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, such as speaking in tongues and healing.  There are places in Scripture where these things are mentioned, of course.  When the original apostles preached to Gentile audiences and the Holy Spirit was given to them as well as to Jewish believers, ecstatic manifestations were an easy way to tell that the Spirit was at work in an unexpected place.  But, is the possession of those charismatic gifts the normal way to tell if someone has the Spirit?  I think not. 

The normal way to manifest the Spirit is through living a life that corresponds to the life of Jesus in us.  This Christ-like life is what the Spirit makes possible.  The life of virtue is a solid proof of the Spirit in you, more than ecstatic experiences and religious enthusiasm.  It is too easy to be carried away by group enthusiasm and attribute it to the Holy Spirit.  It is much more difficult to live a Spirit-directed life incarnated in the virtuous living of life’s little details.  The problem with us non-charismatic types—that is, we catholic and evangelical and liturgical churches with a long history behind us—is that we haven’t taken the virtuous living part of our spirituality all that seriously, either.  We haven’t consistently tried to follow the ways of the Spirit in faithful living.  And so we have sometimes experienced a worship that is more formal and routine than full of spiritual energy, lived lives that are rather empty of spiritual reality, and have drifted along with the current cultural fashions.  Spirit-directed living is counter-cultural and intense.  It takes everything we have.

So, if we are equipped by the Spirit actually to live as Jesus would live if He were incarnate as you or me, what would that life look like?  What would He do?  What is our duty?  There are several ways of talking about this.  We could talk about the Ten Commandments.  From our catechism there is another definition: To follow Christ, to come together week by week for corporate worship, and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God.  The simplest definition of all is that we are to love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves.  Another almost as simple is: pray, fast, give alms.

I want to do something a little different: I want to make a distinction for you between two similar things: good work and good works.  Good works are what God calls us to in many places in the Bible.  In Ephesians 2, St Paul says:  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”    Jesus talked about abiding in him as the vine and then bearing fruit in him.  Fruit means the good works of a life of active loving.  Christians are expected to produce a life that is rich in good works.  We are not to lay up treasures for ourselves in this world, but to lay up treasures in heaven, which means that our center of gravity is doing good and not making money.

But most of us also spend the greater share of our lives doing a job, pursuing a vocation, working.  How is a life of work related to our calling to do good works?  Good works are simply a part of the good life.  Beneath all of the good works we may do, there is the good work of a life directed towards a large purpose.  In this larger sense, the project of our life is the great work of our existence.  We organize all of the parts of our life into a comprehensive whole which we offer to God as the gift of ourselves.   The nature of that good work is our topic next week.

Within this major project of what we are becoming in the totality of our lives, we must have some understanding of doing good works.  Some people have more opportunities than others.  Some have jobs mostly composed of good works.  Others do not.  But almost all of us have co-workers and neighbors we could care about and find opportunities to serve if we had in mind to seek those opportunities.  And that is the issue: if we are to do good works as well as good work, we must plan for them and balance off the time we need for them against other obligations.  This balance is not an easy task. 

But whatever our circumstances, good works are our calling, our way of life.  These good works are not random things, either.  That is, there is a rationale for them:  it is the way the life of the world to come is manifested.  This is the way life is lived in the Kingdom.  It refers to an active looking out for the other person, anticipating that others will need your help, and being prepared to offer it.  Good works are outgoings of ourselves, just as creation and providence and all of the blessings of God are outgoings of Himself toward us. 

It is really a simple idea:  we are given neighbors and we must love them in the way they need us to love them, not necessarily in the ways we are most competent.  And we must actively seek out our neighbors in order to love them.  If we do this, all of the virtues will come to our aid—we shall find that the Spirit has equipped us for just such a life of good works.  Prudence shows us how much good work is proper and when to quit and rest and when to leave off resting for the good of the neighbor.  Courage keeps us going even when it seems that our best efforts are productive of little results.  Temperance helps us control the amount of energy we expend on our own needs so that we have something left over for others.  Justice gives us clarity to discern what others need.  Faith grasps hold of Christ as the inspiration for our good works; hope assures us that we can become Christ-like and that the Kingdom will come; love takes us deep into the lives of others as we learn to care for them as Christ does himself. 

The kind of good works we do will probably fall into two main categories: corporal and spiritual, and the tradition lists seven kinds of good works, or works of mercy, in each category.  I think the word “mercy” here is important.  Christians are those who know God’s Mercy, they live in it, have received it, and so desire to share it.  The only qualification a person must show to receive merciful treatment from us is to be a person and to need our mercy, just as the only qualification we had to show to God was that we were human and needed His mercy.  Good works create a “climate of mercy” in which people feel accepted and valued. 

Corporal works of mercy relate to the body, and that is where our charity is often directed.  The seven are: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the stranger, visiting the sick, helping prisoners, burying the dead, and visiting the widows and orphans.  These are not options for us; these are simply normal.  These are the things Christians, and many others as well, simply do.  Food, clothing, and shelter are the main objects of our corporal charity.  The need for these things is endless.  The Rector’s Discretionary Fund continually operates on your behalf in this way.  Care and Share is a new community program trying to provide a way for those in need to get help; we have the Neighborhood Center, too.  Our developing project, the Yellow River Café, is an attempt to do good works in this sense.  Modern people in their haste (and also in their consumerism) tend to be more impatient with the poor than past generations.  But serving them is still our Christian duty—and the source of our greatest treasure.  Our real dividends do not come from the stocks we own, but from the people we serve—this is our treasure in heaven.

Most of us will probably not be asked to bury the dead but the mercy of caring for widows and orphans still is important.  In traditional societies, when there was no longer a husband to provide, wives and children slipped into poverty.  They were the marginalized.  Abandoned wives and children are still a serious social problem.  But there are other marginalized people these days and we need to be sensitive in our attempts to seek them out in order to relieve their necessity.  The poor are, almost by definition, marginalized.  So are many immigrants, especially those without documents.  Whatever we might think of their illegal status, most of them came in good faith, driven by dire necessity. Marginalization means living with a sense that you are not worthy of inclusion in the community.  It is immensely degrading over a period of time.  Throughout the past 2000 years, Christians have most clearly manifested the mind of Christ when they cared for those who had no importance in the eyes of the world—but still had importance in the eyes of God.

Helping prisoners is something we may miss, too.  In the old days, if a prisoner did not have someone on the outside to provide food and clothing, he would starve or go naked.  Nowadays, the overwhelming need of prisoners is for someone to help them find a job when they get out.  We put more people in prison than ever before and make it harder for them, when they have paid their debt, to live and work in our communities again.  

Now, as important as these corporal works of mercy are, there are other works that are even more important—the spiritual works of mercy.  We do not perform these works in the same way as we do the corporal works—though, of course, we can do both at the same time, the corporal work often allowing the spiritual work to take place.  If someone needs food and I have it I can give it to him—the one who has gives to the one who has not.  Spiritual works of mercy don’t quite work that way.  The spiritual help required from us is often more than we can do, because we cannot simply provide spiritual or emotional relief for someone who needs it.  What we can do is to come alongside that person and be with them in their problem.  What we give in the spiritual works of mercy, then, is our own selves.  This is what makes them more difficult than the corporal works, because we may have to open up and reveal ourselves to someone else and get involved in their life. 

The spiritual works are also considered to be seven in number.  They are: instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, admonishing sinners or correcting offenders, bearing wrongs patiently or enduring injury, forgiving the wrongs done to us, praying for both the living and the dead, and comforting the sorrowful.

The aim in all the spiritual works is to help another person understand the direction in which the Holy Spirit is leading and to learn how to rely on the mercy of God available to them.  If we are to help here, we must be deeply attuned to the Spirit ourselves.  If we are tuned in to God’s desire to reach out to people, to draw them into unity with himself in Christ, we will find ways to cooperate with His Spirit.  One of the reasons we strive to attain to our own maturity in Christ is for the sake of those who need us to get involved in their lives and walk with them in discerning God’s will. 

In all these things, the greatest difficulty, I think, is that risk of getting involved in someone else’s life.  It takes time, it takes serious willingness to be vulnerable with each other, it takes patience, and endurance.  Nothing ever quite works out like we think it will or how it ought to.  You never know when an innocent loving act will result in messy complications.  But we need these things from each other and it is our duty to give them.  As God in his loving goes outside of Himself in order to give Himself to us, so our likeness to God requires us to go out of ourselves towards other people.  In this way we learn to walk worthy of the One who has called us to life in Christ.  We become, I think, the true charismatics—led and directed by the Spirit.

Let us pray.  Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church; open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.