The Table of the Cross-Shaped Life

John Turner's sermon from Thanksgiving Sunday, November 21, 2010

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Old Corinth had been destroyed, but because Rome needed a city in this strategic transportation and commerce hub, they had sent freed slaves to found a new city. There were opportunities for rapid advancement, and several generations into the development of the new city, self-made stature was the great emphasis of Corinthian culture. Social life was designed to display economic and social advancement. Prosperous homes typically had dining rooms that could serve 9 to 12 people and a courtyard that could handle another 30 to 60. For large banquets, those of highest status were invited to the dining room. Others had to make do in the courtyard. The quality and quantity of food and wine was much greater in the dining room than in the courtyard. Some gorged and got drunk in the dining room while others observing from the courtyard had less or even nothing. There are a number of complaints about this practice in the Greco-Roman literature of the time.

The practices and the attitudes of the culture crept over into the church. Corinthian house church worship meetings tended to resemble secular banquets, complete with status distinctions and unequal provisioning of the guests; this was true even of the Lord’s Supper. Paul saw that this was completely contrary to Jesus’ purposes for his world, for his church, and for this table.

The Bible does not say how often the early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper. Where fellowship meals were a daily affair, as may have been the case in Jerusalem, some scholars believe that they opened each meal with the bread representing Jesus’ body and closed it with the cup representing his blood. Probably in Corinth and most mission churches, the Lord’s Supper was observe d at least on the evening of the first day of each week. However often it was celebrated, and by whatever means, Paul wanted to talk about the right attitude in which to celebrate it.

1. Paul understood that this meal is a Thanksgiving meal, a table of gratitude for the blessings that are ours in Christ. Our high church Christian friends have long called this meal the eucharist, which is simply a form of the Greek word eucharistia meaning thanksgiving. Right at the center of that word is the Greek word charis, meaning grace or unearned gift. This is the table where we receive and make grateful response to the unearned gift that is ours through Jesus Christ, the gift of his incarnation, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection, his ascension, his coming again, and his eternal new creation; AND the gift to us of forgiveness, of being clothed in his righteousness, of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, of being called and gifted as children and servants of God, of being assured that we are co-heirs with Christ of the new heaven and new earth. We have abundant reasons to give thanks at this table.

2. Paul asserted that this is a meal of proclamation. He said that, whenever we come to this table, we are proclaiming a message about the significance of Jesus’ death, and, by implication, the subsequent resurrection, ascension, and coming again. That fits with Paul’s overall message in the entire First Letter to the Corinthians where, focusing on Christ’s self-giving love on the cross, Paul then draws out theological, moral, spiritual, social, and missional implications for the church. Because our salvation is rooted in an incredible act of costly grace displayed by God the Father through God the Son, every part of our lives is to show our deep appreciation of this fact. On the basis of his message of the cross, Paul says to us, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” In other words, let everything in your life be a proclamation of the amazing grace we know through Jesus Christ. That proclamation is in focus at this table.

3. At the heart of Paul’s thinking was that the meal offered at this table defines a covenant community of those whose lives have been and continue to be primarily shaped by the gracious, saving, self-giving love of Jesus Christ. When we were baptized, we were symbolically and sacramentally dying with Christ to the power of sin to dominate our lives and coming alive with Christ to the power of the Holy Spirit to renew our lives in the image of God. That was our start on the Christian life, but that business of dying to sin and coming alive to God needs regular maintenance. Here at the table we are invited to check up on whether we are letting any wrong attitudes and practices, things not consistent with our baptism into Christ, creep into our hearts and minds. If we find things that don’t fit with being shaped by the cross of Christ, we repent, we get our signals straight and head in a new and better direction. We are in covenant with all who have been baptized into Christ, with all who share this supper with us, a covenant that together we are on a journey of renewal in self-giving love through our relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Since this table defines a covenant community, we need to recognize that our intentionally choosing to treat each other as beloved fellow pilgrims toward the cross-shaped, Christ-like life is a key test of whether we are ourselves on the path of renewal for which this table provides the spiritual food.

4. In writing to the Corinthian Christians, Paul was teaching them that status distinctions were to be left at the foot of the cross, that each believer’s significance in the church was to be measured by their moving toward Christ-like character and by their mutual loving service to one another. Nowhere should this be more evident than in their covenant meal which proclaimed the self-giving love of Jesus Christ on the cross as the foundation of their community life.

Paul’s message is not about the obligation of the prosperous to be tolerant and generous to the poor. The message is that the actions of the church should indicate that all believers were together on an adventure in cross-shaped living, that they were to help one another on that journey. The message is about mutuality, learning from one another, helping one another. Paul himself knew that he had a ways to go on his own journey. Paul later wrote to the Philippians about his goal of becoming like Jesus in his self-giving, loving death, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” And he thanked the Philippians for the ways they helped him on his journey and in his calling. We are a covenant community of people on the journey toward the cross-shaped life. Not one of us is yet perfected. Every one of us is in need of the help of our faithful friends. We must learn to treat one another as beloved fellow pilgrims and covenant partners. We help one another with the understanding that one day, indeed at any moment, any help we offer will be returned many times over.

But the Corinthian Christians were unthinkingly carrying worldly status into their Christian gatherings. Paul said, “When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.” Why not? They had the right elements. They said the right words. It was not the Lord’s Supper because it was not advancing the cause for which the Lord died. It was not the Lord’s Supper; it was a meal upholding the cultural traditions and social rankings within their community rather than supporting the redeeming mission of their Lord.

5. Paul asserted that it is dangerous to partake of this meal without submitting to its life-changing force. Paul tells the Corinthians, “When you come together, it is not for the better but for the worse.” And again, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.” That is pretty strong language. How are we to understand it?

Paul’s warning does not mean that you have to hold to the right sacramental theory, whether transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or real presence. Paul taught that we really are participating in Christ’s body and blood through our participation in this meal, but there is no evidence that he insisted on any one theory about how that worked.

Paul’s warning does not mean that, if you are not sufficiently gloomy about the suffering Jesus did for you, if you are not acting like you are mourning at Jesus’ funeral, you will be punished. The Paul who said, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, Rejoice!” would hardly commend gloominess!

Paul’s warning does not mean that, if you fail to make yourself worthy before coming to the table, then you may be punished for your presumption. Paul did not believe that even one of us is worthy or that we can make ourselves so. Paul did not say, “You have to be worthy to take the Supper.” Paul did say, in effect, “You have to receive it in a worthy manner.” That is very different. Receiving it in a worthy manner is precisely receiving it with full awareness that we are not worthy, that it is indeed amazing grace at the heart of what is represented at this table.

Paul’s warning did not say that everyone who receives it unworthily will become ill and die. He did not say that those who receive it worthily will never become ill or die. Paul himself had some persistent affliction which was not removed through his earnest prayers, and he certainly expected that, if Jesus did not return sooner, he would one day die.

Paul’s warning does, however, mean that there is a built-in divine judgment when we fail to receive the benefits God offers us, and that sometimes we will experience, in the area of our physical health, the consequences of our failure to line our lives up with Jesus. If we think that our lives are all about us, our desires, our feelings, our agendas, then we will suffer the consequences of our improper, out-of-balance living, sometimes in our health. If we are hypocrites when we come to this table, not coming for the right reasons of deepening our cross-shaped, Christ-like living, then our coming will place an extra burden on our lives; double-mindedness is a stress factor that ultimately wears us down. If we will not allow Jesus to deepen our spiritual roots, then our lives will not unfold as they were designed to unfold. It is only by following Jesus that we will eventually become all that we were created to be. Basically, I believe that Paul meant, “If your life is not being a shaped by the self-giving love of the cross, then you are missing the vital benefit of this meal. You will miss the transforming, vitalizing power of the gospel. Your life will be out of balance, and you will suffer in every area of your life. In that case, this meal will be of no benefit to you and may actually deepen your problems, including physical problems.”

The good news—and this is very important--is that every one of us can partake worthily:

1. coming with thanksgiving for the grace we know through our Lord Jesus Christ

2. proclaiming the death, resurrection and ultimate victory of Jesus Christ and seeking to live the cross-shaped life,

3. knowing that we are part of a covenant community of pilgrims journeying together toward our Christ-like destiny,

4. understanding that, with the support of our faithful friends, we can gradually learn to recognize and repent of any values and practices that are not compatible with Jesus’ saving, transforming purposes,

5. approaching this table with hearts sincerely and humbly open to what Christ would do this day to move us forward on our journey.

This church is a fellowship of this table, a covenant community of faith in Jesus Christ, being transformed from one degree of glory to another into his likeness. If that sounds like a good deal to you, receive it, share it, show it.

Bringing the Streams Together

John 17:20-26; Colossians 3:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24

I decided to do a fourteenth and concluding sermon in the Six Streams of Living Water series. Let’s assess what we have learned and how we can apply it in the life of our church.

We have learned that in the early nineteenth century founding days of our Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and in our period of most rapid growth in the early and mid-19^th Century, all Six Streams were operating within our movement. This was true in the other mainline Protestant churches such as Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian. Most mainline churches were built (1) on the authority of inspired Scripture and the compelling Great Commission characteristic of the Evangelical Stream, (2) on the focus on personal transformation into Christlikeness characteristic of the Holiness Stream, and (3) on the guiding and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit characteristic of the Charismatic Stream. The other three streams were present also. Then, settled middle class spiritual complacency and the influence of skeptical higher education on the training of clergy caused mainline churches to become less friendly to the streams on which they had been built, causing the less comfortable and less educated members of mainline churches to withdraw and start their own denominations. These new denominations tended to be primarily One Stream denominations, either Evangelical or Holiness or Charismatic. Without the checks and balances of the other streams, they fell into excesses and abuses, but they still had a dynamism that caused them to thrive better than the old mainline churches.

Meanwhile the old mainline churches focused at the congregational levels on respectability and at the leadership levels on the Social Justice Stream which they eventually overly politicized and inadequately grounded in personal morality, driving even more believers from their folds. The result of all this is that the old mainline churches in this country are in precipitous decline. Is there hope for recovery? Perhaps, but it will take bold action.

While Judy and I were in Indianapolis, we became acquainted with a United Methodist congregation in Ginghamsburg, Ohio, a bedroom community outside Dayton. About 15 years before we became aware of it, the congregation was in rapid decline and down to 90 members. We were told that the Methodist hierarchy wanted to close the church and so sent them the pastor that they thought least equipped to renew the congregation and most likely to alienate their members. The bishop appointed Michael Slaughter. At first, it looked like the hierarchy had it figured right. Slaughter arrived and announced his program for attempting to renew the church. The membership dropped to down to 45. But then it started to grow. In a few years it reached 300. In a few more years it reached 2,000. According to its website, the congregation is now 4,500 strong in weekend worship attendance, the largest United Methodist Church in Ohio.

Don’t worry, that won’t happen here. We are not sitting in the path of urban sprawl. In our setting, topping 300 combined in two or three worship services by 2020 is a plenty big goal. But the principles on which Slaughter renewed a mainline church are still valid for us.

More than on any other Stream, Slaughter built on the Evangelical Stream with its focus on the authority of the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the bringing of people to faith in Christ. Slaughter announced that the first principle of growth would be to move from the vague theism that was being taught in the church before his arrival to clear proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Further, he asserted that telling people about Jesus was the business and purpose of the church and that this purpose would govern everything the church did, even how it worshiped. He wanted to be clear from the beginning with every person to whom the church presented the gospel that following Jesus costs us everything that we might want to claim as our own rights. In other words, a believer in Jesus Christ holds no area of his or her life back from Jesus’ command, from dedication to Jesus’ mission.

Also in line with the Evangelical Stream, Slaughter announced that scriptural truth would be the primary source for everything they preached and taught, for everything they believed and did.

Going beyond the Evangelical Stream to the Holiness Stream, Slaughter insisted that their scriptural foundation was not just for information, but for transformation. To support this transformation he asked new members to covenant to follow certain practices that are typical of disciples of Jesus Christ, things very similar to our 9 ways, including belonging to a small group that incorporated accountability to the covenant and to spiritual honesty.

In line with the Charismatic Stream, Slaughter saw a major function of the church as helping members identify their spiritual gifts and to respond to the callings, leading, and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

He insisted that strong spiritual leaders were part of the Holy Spirit’s work, that they were not managers, but Spirit-led visionaries who must hear and articulate the vision and mission of the church and then embody and model important aspects of that mission and vision. In other words, the leader must tie together the Contemplative, Charismatic, and Incarnational Streams… listening to God in prayer, discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit, and living it out in daily life, and that the pattern set by the adventurous leaders was then to characterize the whole membership.

Slaughter did not neglect the Social Justice Stream, but moved it beyond ideals, positions, and stands and moved it into tangible commitments. Slaughter insisted that the mission of the church included serving the least and the last. For starters, he asked each church family to consider connecting to one underprivileged inner city Dayton child and buying the same kinds of gifts, clothing, and school supplies for that child that they bought for their own children. That’s where the rubber (of expensive athletic shoes) met the road. He then used these connections to inner city life as the foundation for building vision for all sorts of missions to address the underlying problems. He encouraged members to find their individual callings to social service and to pursue them. In short, Slaughter led his church to a well-rounded approach that brought together every one of the Six Streams, and it was very fruitful. I don’t know if he even knew about the Six Streams concept. He just did them, and it worked.

Does that mean that we should imitate the Ginghamsburg church? Not in the details. God led Slaughter and the members of his church to do what was right for Ginghamsburg and Dayton, Ohio. God will lead us to do what is right for Berryville and Carroll County, Arkansas. But I believe that the healthiest of churches anywhere will have all six streams flowing together, with appropriate checks and balances.

I began by talking about the fact that what led to success for the early Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement was lost, fragmented in mainline churches. I am suggesting the Six Streams as the corrective for that decline. The great thing is that it is not only a moving forward, but also a return to what made our movement (and the other mainline churches) strong in the first place.

How do we bring the Six Streams back together? We do it with a combination of openness and caution. We drop our prejudices against the best parts of each stream. We guard against the worst parts of each stream. For instance, for the Evangelical Stream, we develop an enthusiasm for the richness of inspired Scripture and for obeying the Great Commission to go and make disciples, but we guard against angry crusades against those we identify as sinners. For the Holiness Stream, we take very seriously the purpose of God to restore our lifestyles to fit with the image of God, but we guard against legalistic self-righteousness. For the Charismatic Stream, we welcome the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit in all its Scriptural actions, but we guard against undiscerning fascination with all things supernatural and spectacular and speculative. And so on.

The Apostle Paul demonstrates this open and cautious pattern with regard to the Charismatic Stream in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24. Paul establishes two guidelines for openness: do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies (that is, Spirit-given messages). He establishes a basic rule for how we evaluate prophecies: test everything; hold fast what is good; abstain from every form of evil. He puts the measuring rod before us, our wholeness and maturity in Christ: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely (or make you totally holy), and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He makes clear that this is the work of God: He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

That kind of sane balance is what we are aiming for with all Six Streams, and we are aiming for the result of wholeness in our church life and wholeness in our personal lives. May it be so. Amen.

Experiencing the Charismatic Tradition and the Spirit-Empowered Life: Wisdom for Unity

Isaiah 11:1-9; Ephesians 4:1-7; 1 Corinthians 12:1-13

We are in our tenth of twelve weeks of looking at the Six Streams of Living Water, the various traditions of Christian spirituality that have periodically renewed the church through the ages. We have looked at the Contemplative, the Evangelical, the Holiness, and the Social Justice traditions; we are in the midst of looking at the Charismatic tradition, and, in the next two weeks, we will look at the Incarnational tradition. If you have missed some of the sermons, or have let your mind wander or doze, as happens to all of us at times, all the sermons appear on this blog, just keep scrolling and clicking your way back until you can review all of them. One of the most important concepts to keep in mind is that the negative stereotypes associated with some of these traditions came about after they were split off from and isolated from other parts of the body of Christ that could have helped keep them in productive balance. Many of these splits took place in the mid-19^th through the early 20th centuries, and those splits have weakened the church ever since. We need to recover the wholeness of the church and the wholeness of Christian spirituality.

Last week, in examining the Charismatic tradition we looked at a wide array of essential works that the Holy Spirit does in and for the church. Today our focus is narrower, on a part of the work of the Holy Spirit that is often overlooked, his giving wisdom to his church to find the path of unity in fellowship and vitality in mission.

A. In Isaiah 11, the prophet gives six characteristics of the Spirit-Filled Royal Son, the Messiah King: supernatural wisdom, understanding, and counsel are practically synonyms; and backed by supernatural might, knowledge, and the fear (or reverent awe) of the Lord, they provide the foundations for the peaceable kingdom. It is hard to avoid seeing that God’s wisdom imparted to his Royal Son is the core of the matter. The good news is that this same wisdom is available to us as we believe in Jesus and claim the promised Holy Spirit, so that we may view matters with the mind of God. Some people always act based on their heart. Some people always act based on their head. Some people always act based on tradition. Some people always act in rebellion against tradition. Some people always act based on their woundedness, trying to find comfort or consolation for what hurts. Some people always act on the basis of fear or anger or greed or ambition. None of those bases for action lead consistently to good results. Some of them lead pretty consistently to bad results. For our long run good, for the good of people around us, for the good of the fellowship and mission of Christ’s church, we need to get beyond our human habits, beyond what Paul calls setting our minds on the flesh, and, instead, we need to act on the basis of God’s wisdom, what Paul calls setting our mind on the Spirit. We need to take time to hear from God who always offers us the best approach for the long run. God doesn’t promise that his way will always be painless; there are costs to the fact that we live in a sinful world, and sometimes the sin comes against us not only from outside, but also from inside, and complicates our best efforts to hear and follow God’s wisdom. Sometimes, perhaps usually, because of the human complications, sacrifice is required. Nevertheless, God’s way will always be good, God’s way will always make us better, and God’s way will always give those around us opportunities to get better too. God’s wisdom is not worldly wisdom about how to get ahead and win, but God’s wisdom is always focused on opening up opportunities for redeeming and healing all that is broken. I am not saying that God’s wisdom leaves us as pushovers for every manipulative sad story that a human weasel or a human leech can dream up. Not at all. God’s wisdom can be tough and demanding. God’s wisdom can and does set boundaries. But God’s wisdom aims at offering real new beginnings for all who are truly open to them. Among all who share the focus of God’s wisdom, there is an opportunity for the work of peacemaking to be effective. Where God’s righteous faithful, redeeming, and reconciling wisdom is not the focus, unity is harder to come by. If our energies are organized around the wrong causes, God may not even desire unity for us until we get our priorities straightened out. There is no use in uniting around human folly. So, Isaiah’s point is that real peace is based on divine wisdom that comes from the Holy Spirit.

B. In his Letter to the Ephesians Paul shows two more ways that the Spirit brings peace: (1) giving us spiritual fruit and (2) anchoring us in gospel truth. Let’s look at those in turn:

(1) Giving us spiritual fruit. Paul specifically mentions humility, gentleness, patience and loving forbearance. When qualities such as these are increasing in our lives, it is a sign that the Spirit of God is at work within us. Sinful human beings are not naturally like that. Elsewhere Paul lists some examples of the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He contrasts these to the works of the flesh, that is, the products of sinful human thinking. The works of the sinful human thinking include moral faults, spiritual faults, relational faults, and other behaviors that are harmful to ourselves and to others. The Holy Spirit leads us away from destructive behavior and into constructive behavior.

(2) Anchoring us in gospel truth: one God, one Lord, one Spirit, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one body (the church). A church cannot be united unless it knows what holds it together. If we think that it is our church culture and traditions that hold us together, how we do things, then we will always be fighting for control with people who have different ideas of how we do things or of how we ought to do things, but if what holds us together is a living faith in one God, one Lord, one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, one church, and might we add, one mission of representing the redeeming and reconciling love of Jesus Christ offering hope for new beginnings to the people of the world, then there is a chance that we might get our minds on things that count, things that actually make a difference in the world and in the lives of people around us, things that make a difference for Jesus and his mission, and we might not care so much about who wins the preference contests. In fact, the preference contests might just disappear because we will be too busy trying to make positive differences in the lives of people to focus on trivia that has very little to do with Jesus.

So, while Isaiah speaks of divine wisdom, Paul speaks of spiritual fruit and solid faith, all from the Holy Spirit.

C. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us two tests for discerning whether the spirits that offer to move us are from the Holy Spirit: (1) Is it consistent with the fact the Jesus the crucified is reigning Lord? (2) Does it help build up the church with love and mutuality in both fellowship and mission? Let’s read:

1 Corinthians 12:1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Paul begins by saying that we do not have to be Christians to have strong spiritual experiences. Non-Christians have what they take to be ecstatic experiences, revelatory experiences, miraculous experiences, and so forth. Spiritual experiences prove nothing. Paul believes that there are deceptive spirits at work in the world capable of encouraging much counterfeit spirituality, of pulling the wool over the eyes of the naive. Paul implies that going through the motions of joining a Christian church does not free us from being influenced by demonic forces in the world. Even church members need methods of discerning the difference between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Deceiver.

Method One: Paul asserts that a person who truly believes and professes that Jesus the crucified is Lord of the universe is, at least that far, led by the Holy Spirit. No one can truly believe and profess that Jesus the crucified is the Lord of the universe unless the Holy Spirit helps him or her come to that conclusion. The best evidence that the Christian faith is true is that nothing about its central foundational events—the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ--appeals to a merely human mind-frame. If God through the Holy Spirit did not help us believe that, we simply would not, could not, believe it. Of course, we could just accept it because some trusted authority figure told us that it was true--a parent, a grandparent, a brother or sister, a teacher, a preacher, a friend, a celebrity—but that is not really believing it ourselves. Until we have faced with full force the questions raised by the dead, mutilated body of Jesus being taken down from the cross and have come to the foundational mind-blowing conviction that God reigns even over suffering, shame, and death, we are not yet Christian because we have not yet believed with our hearts that Jesus died for our sins and that God raised him from the dead. We are not yet Christian without that faith, because we have not yet seen that Jesus has defeated every evil power and principality that could otherwise influence us. We are not yet Christian without that faith because, until we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, we are driven by our own worldly convictions about what power is, our worldly desires, our worldly fears, our worldly securities, but, if Jesus has overcome the world and we know it, then we are free to be children of God living for the praise of his glory. Paul tells us that only the Holy Spirit can help us make that transition, to begin the process of setting us free from worldly thinking. And since the Holy Spirit is the only one who can convince is that a crucified man is the most powerful figure in the universe, and who can enable us to live in that conviction, becoming people of self-giving love in a way that only a person who believes in resurrection power can, then if we hold and live that faith, it is evidence that the Holy Spirit is indeed at work in us.

Method Two: Paul asserts that a person who truly has the Holy Spirit will show humble love within the fellowship of faith, will respect and participate in the mutuality of spiritual giftings that characterize the body of Christ, and will seek to build up the church in love. The Holy Spirit is not about ambition, self-importance, status games. The Holy Spirit is not about winning every contest. The Holy Spirit is about strengthening the church, its mission, its fellowship. Just one chapter over from today’s sermon text, right in the middle of three chapters about spiritual gifts and spiritual discernment, that Paul says, 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. Please be clear. Paul is not a romantic or a sentimentalist. The love he is talking about is the steadfast covenant love of God, a love that is committed, a love that gives of itself for the well-being of present and potential children of God. That foundational commitment to self-giving love in action marks the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. When that kind of love genuinely exists, the Holy Spirit is present, because that kind of love is not a natural product of unredeemed humanity.

So hen we are talking about the charismatic tradition, these are the things we most want to see: 1. God’s own wisdom that results in peace and unity, 2. solid, foundational faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, 3. spiritual fruit, especially self-giving, upbuilding love for Christ’s church and its mission of redeeming outreach to the world, 4. Christians being guided and empowered for redeeming missions that bring new hope for children of God and for would-be children of God. Those things cannot be without the Holy Spirit. Where those things are happening, the charismatic tradition is accomplishing its reason for being. May it be so among us!