Christchurch Parish News, July 2015
A short reflection on discerning the Spirit based on ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’, John 16.13
It is the night before his execution. Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples. Judas, one of this hitherto tight-knit fellowship, has already left the gathering to betray Jesus, and the atmosphere is becoming progressively sombre. The general banter of good friends round a dinner table has faded away and all eyes are now on Jesus as he starkly warns them of what lies ahead. It is not what they had hoped for. Not only is Jesus to be persecuted, the disciples learn once again, but they too are to be persecuted. ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you … If they persecuted me, they will persecute you‘. After holding such high expectations just a few days earlier with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem at the time of the Passover celebrations, the disciples sit bewildered at the prospect of what is about to happen with an increasing sense of fear. All the while, the power that lies behind the temple authorities cozying up to the brutal might of the Roman empire waits silently for Jesus and his disciples to leave the upper room and make their way to the garden of Gethsemane.
It is into this situation full of fear and trepidation that Jesus tells his followers the most wonderful news. He tells them that whilst in a little while they will no longer see him, and in the context of the impending confrontation with the authorities they would have clear ideas about what that meant, after Jesus has gone, they will not be left on their own. Jesus is going to send them the Advocate. He will send them the Spirit of truth from the Father. This Spirit of truth will do many things, including proving the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement, vindicating Jesus in who he is, what he has said and what he has done in every way. Not only that, ‘when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’ (Jn 16.13). What encouraging words for these fearful disciples to hear. Not only are they not going to be on their own but the one who Jesus is going to send to them from the Father is going to be an active force, guiding them into all the truth. They won’t be left where they were. They will be taken beyond their current understanding of the truth and led into all the truth.
As followers of Jesus ourselves we too can be comforted and encouraged by these words. Firstly, we too are not left on our own. God being with us does not come to an end with Jesus’ ascension. Quite the opposite. When Jesus returns to the right hand of the Father, He then sends the Spirit, unconstrained by time and place, to be with us all, whenever, wherever. And the Holy Spirit being with us means that we are not on our own when it comes to figuring out what we are called to do. We can see that this guiding of the first disciples took some very dramatic turns, which we find recorded in the Book of Acts, including the pivotal revelation that the good news of Jesus was not to be limited solely to the Jews; rather, it was, and is, good news for everyone.
But what about today? Is the Holy Spirit still really guiding the followers of Jesus into all the truth or is that just something we tell the children? Do we truly believe it, in the sense that we trust it to be really the case in the warp and weave of our lives? Or was it in fact only the case for the first disciples? Indeed, over the centuries, some have come to the conclusion that this guiding of the Holy Spirit only applied to the early disciples, leading to the events that occurred shortly after Jesus’ ascension and culminating in their witness to these events in Holy Scripture. But in the main, most have maintained that in the church this guiding of the Holy Spirit continues to this day. The verse from John, ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’ has become a key phrase for those of us who trust that God remains as active in His creation as ever before.
However, if it is the case that the Holy Spirit continues to guide us into all the truth, why do so many of us as Christians, both individually and corporately, have so many different understandings and opinions as to what shape that truth takes? Just consider any of the key questions that have been facing the church over the last fifty years. Devout and sincere opinions have been held on all sides of every argument, sadly often expressed in very heated ways, be it do with the ordination of women priests, the consecration of women bishops, or the validity of same-sex relationships, to take but three examples.
So lurking at the back of our minds will be the question, by what criteria are we to discern what the truth is that the Holy Spirit is leading us into? How are we to be sure that we are not being led by a false spirit opposed to the good intentions of God our Creator? These are not trivial questions and they admit of no easy answers. The Anglican approach is to hold such matters in prayer and worship whilst appealing to tradition and reason but above all to Holy Scripture. It’s an appealing approach that seeks to encompass much of human experience down the ages. But looking to tradition doesn’t necessarily give us clear answers as in the past, from our perspective, our predecessors got some things right and they got some things wrong. No period of Church history has a monopoly on getting it all sorted, living in harmony and serving the Lord without disagreement. One only has to look at the very early pastoral letters in the New Testament written by Paul. It has proven to be tricky from the get-go. To take a secular example, tradition was until relatively very recently that most people in England didn’t have the right to vote. Even today, it’s not even yet been 100 years since women were able to vote. The changing role of women in our society is the broader context for all the debates that we have had over the last 40 years about women priests and women bishops. So simply to say that things should stay as they are because that’s the way we’ve always done it, doesn’t resolve matters (admittedly it depends on what we mean by tradition and maybe on another occasion, I will have the chance to go into more detail about what we might mean by a living tradition).
Appealing to reason likewise doesn’t solve matters in a simple way either. After all, we know that we can’t trust our reason because it has a tendency to lead us astray. One generation looks back on the reasons and justifications of a previous generation often with surprise and a quiet sense of smug superiority, as if to say, Back then they used to think like that whereas we enlightened people now know they were wrong and we have arrived at the peak of all human knowledge and insight. Well, of course we haven’t. In 100 years time, people will look back at our own time and will be surprised and shocked at some of the things that we now think are unquestionable givens. So appealing to reason doesn’t make discerning where the Spirit is leading us any easier either.
Finally, what about Scripture? Richard Hooker, the 16 century theologian to whom we owe this threefold appeal to tradition, reason and Holy Scripture, held that the Bible was to be the benchmark by which we judge the other two, tradition and reason, all the while recognising that they mutually inform one another. However, that is not totally straight forward either because both over the years and in our own time there have been so many different interpretations of almost every passage from the Bible, themselves rooted in different reasonings and traditions, being employed to justify one opinion or another on where the Spirit is leading us.
So are we devoid of certainty as to what to do and where the Spirit is calling us? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that we do not know for sure with regards to the rightness or otherwise of every single step we take and decision we make, be it personally or corporately, for the simple reason that we are not God. We do not have God’s perspective and so we cannot know for certain which way the Spirit is leading us. We only have our own partial, provisional, fractured perspectives that we share and discuss and on the basis of which, we then prayerfully decide what seems to be good to us and, we trust, to the Holy Spirit. Our insistent desire for certainty is simply a form of idolatry where we become like God in our self-deluding omniscience and thereby get to be in control with no need of God. We want to know for sure because then we don’t have to trust anyone other than ourselves. Once we no longer have to trust in God, the embarrassing, and these days often socially awkward act of faith can go be put back in the filing cabinet and certain in our own knowledge and insight, we become our own gods and effectively our own saviours.
So, not absolute certainty. Yet, on the other hand, and with Hooker’s appeal to Holy Scripture in mind, we can say that yes, we do have some certainty as to the truth the Spirt is leading us into. For this passage from John does offer us an indication of one of the measures by which we can judge with some confidence whether we are being led by the Holy Spirit or by a false spirit. As I said at the beginning, these words of Jesus were spoken the night before he died and they come towards the end of a very long speech which included what was about to happen to Jesus, his suffering, their suffering, the nature of the disciples’ relationship to Jesus, Jesus’ relationship to the Father, and the sending of the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, to testify, guide and comfort. But before saying any of these words, Jesus ‘got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him‘ (Jn 13:4-5).
You will know that even in that day, this was a most demeaning, humbling act of hospitality that only the most menial servant would be expected to perform. And yet the Son of God abases himself and serves those whom he loves. As with the simplicity of the sharing of bread and wine, this simple act of humbling service I would suggest offers us a clear measure, which resists any clever manipulative interpretation, by which we can test whether we are being led by the Spirit. If where we are heading makes us feel superior or puts us in a superior position in any way, be it for example with regards to our relationship to God, our status in the community, our manner or place of worship, then we should be on our guard and re-examine our hearts and minds. But if where we are being led is taking us to a place where we serve those whom we are called to love (and here remember that the limits of that love that the society around us might ordinarily expect to apply simply don’t feature in the Kingdom of God that is both now and not yet – think of the parable of the Good Samaritan (the point being that the Samaritan was the enemy of the Jew), or ‘love your enemies’ from Jesus’ sermon on the mount, to give but two examples which turn ordinary, ‘natural’ reasoning upside down!), then we can proceed with a fair amount of confidence; all the while aware that such is our tendency to twist things to our own ends, to ‘serve’, too, can become a slippery word. We can dress up all sorts of things as service, when in fact they can be quite self-serving at heart. That’s why it’s so important that we note how self-abasing and humiliating and yet at the same time tender and loving, Jesus’ act of foot-washing was. It was this act which provides the context for what He then proceeded to teach his followers the night he was betrayed. As such, we too as his followers should expect the truth into which the Spirit of God is leading us to bear all the same characteristics. And therein awaits our joy.