Belonging to a Spirit of Life

Abstract

If you read in the ninth chapter of Luke, the account of Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan village on his way to Jerusalem, you find a story that is a microcosm of the challenge and critique of mission pneumatology, the Spirit in mission and the spirit which we bring to mission. The Samaritan village rejects Jesus' appeal for hospitality when its residents hear that his reason is not that he wants to see them, but that he wants to use them as a resting place on his way to Jerusalem. If we are unaware of the unresolved and ancient hostilities between Jews and Samaritans, they are made immediately apparent to us in the belligerent reaction of the disciples. Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? It is not so much a question but a devout desire, a prayer even. These disciples have lived with Jesus for months now, they have seen him cure a Roman centurion's servant, feed the hungry, they have heard him preach liberation, call women to be his followers and challenge the disciples to live mercifully and gently, loving their enemies; at what point did he ever mention calling fire down from heaven? An opportunity for grace and peace, companionship and celebration is missed as sectarian attitudes desire to exclude, hurt and harm both enemies and the earth. Jesus' instant rebuke in such a missed opportunity is clear, and some translations adopt this minority version of Luke's text, when Jesus turns to them and says: do not know to what Spirit you (Luke 9:55) (1) You do not know to what Spirit you belong. The indictment is clear. So, how is it that these disciples who live daily with Jesus don't know to what Spirit they belong? How can they want to scorch the earth and be the cause of death and damnation? How could they think that the Holy fire we associate with the Spirit should be in any way biddable to their dark desires? It seems ridiculous, but they do. Of course we are different. We are much better disciples than them. We don't feel the person of Jesus needs to be forcibly imposed, we don't scorch the earth or call down death on our rivals, we don't co-opt the divine to our dark desires ... Well, the Spirituality and Mission working group has constantly had to face up to this as something we have done. We have groaned over the hurt caused to Indigenous people and to women by the domineering attitudes prevalent in the imposition of Christianity. We have grieved for the many ways we have scorched the earth and her communities of life and cruelly rejoiced for the unequal and disproportionate harvest it has afforded some of us. And we have realized that many of these things have been the deep determined mission of the church over generations. You do not know to what Spirit you belong. This is such a painful allegation when the Spirit is the essence, soul and heart of ecumenism in its freest and fullest sense. None of us as individuals or traditions have any claim on the Spirit, or embody the Spirit's life fully. The Spirit is always within and beyond us and will always go where it wills rather than where we will. Thus the working group has felt challenged to discern the Spirit in creation's favour rather than our favour. We have sought also to articulate the Spirit as the agent of the life and mission of the Trinity, not of the church, and to refuse to co-opt her to any of our sectarian urges. Let us know to what Spirit we belong. She comes not as conqueror but as companion. The biblical witness opens with the Spirit as brooding companion to chaos, out of which God calls rather than imposes creation. (Gen.1:1ff) This chaos-charming Spirit is the companion of salvation history: the Israelites are led through the wilderness by holy fire, the prophets are called by the Spirit, the presence and absence of God conveyed by her life all move creation's life back in step with what God is doing, till we meet Christ the embodiment of the Spirit as companion. …