Spirit-Filled and Spirit-Led

Photo of The Rev. John Pumphrey by The Rev. John Pumphrey, Chaplain and Director of Spiritual Wellness at St. Luke's Hospital

Good Morning. The Scripture read today is for Saint Luke, whose calendar day it is, but whose Saint’s day the Church recognizes tomorrow. I am the Director of Spiritual Wellness for the Saint Luke’s Health System, a Health System affiliated with the Episcopal Church and whose flagship hospital was established by this Diocese. Thank you for my ministry. Thank you Dean White for this opportunity

I wrote a sermon and half this past week before giving up, at least the direction I was taking. Not typical for me. The text I hold here is rather good exegesis, if I do say; peppered with some fine one-liners, but ultimately as my good wife pointed out, rather heady and dry. How disappointing, because I so wanted something more. Margie reminded me that when I get into “working at” my sermons it is because I am trying to work out something for myself. She is right, of course. For many of us clergy, sermons become the vehicle by which we speak to ourselves as much to you, my brothers and sisters. Sermons are the means by which our faith seeks understanding. So, since I already made this about me, will you permit me to take it a few steps further? I hope that what I wrestled with in responding to the Gospel is something you can connect to. Let us see where we come out--you perhaps joining me or diverting to a place of different understanding, some angle of seeing into the Gospel’s truth for yourself.

You will need to trust my past week’s exegetical study when I tell you that Luke’s Gospel really wants us to understand that Jesus was Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. Jesus is baptized in the Spirit, led into the wilderness by the Spirit, overcomes temptation by the Spirit, and returns filled with the Spirit. Furthermore, Jesus says the Spirit anoints him to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed. This Spirit-filled and Spirit-led Jesus goes on to act in ways that assured what he said was true. Long before the development of the theology and doctrine of the Holy Spirit, its seeds are present in Luke and the other Gospels.

We Episcopalians do not talk much about the Spirit. We can benefit from closer attention. Luke tells us, as Jesus does, that what he does, he does because of the Spirit. This is consistent with his being a good Jew who fully and deeply understood his own tradition, participated in its rituals and practices, worship and study. Jesus, as did all those who heard him that day in the synagogue, knew that ruach -- spirit, breath or wind -- was just one of several metaphors for the active presence of God. The prophets did what they did and said what they said because of the Spirit. Leaders led because of the Spirit. Jesus stood in a long line of the faithful who affirmed that to carry out the covenantal mission of God was to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. By way of reminder, Luke in Acts asserts what we know to be the Church begins with the outpouring of the Spirit. We are in the season of Pentecost that affirms the truth of the Church as Spirit-filled and Spirit-led.

The implication, no, more than implication, the mission that arises from understanding the importance of Jesus as anointed, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led, and WE, the Church, you and I also, is frankly enormously important. Brothers and sisters, need I remind you that in Baptism you and I were sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever? Have you not stood, as I have, at many baptisms since your own, to affirm and renew your Baptismal covenant, and heard these words in prayer?

….Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart,
the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love you, OR

Renew in these your servants the covenant you made with them at their Baptism.
Send them forth in the power of that Spirit to perform the service you set before them…

When Jesus stood in that synagogue, read from the scroll and sat down to teach, he did not have to explain the Prophet’s words. What he said was “today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” perhaps more rightly translated as “is being fulfilled in your hearing,” — today, right now. It is not reading too much into the text to say that Jesus was not just speaking about himself, but to the gathered community saying, “This is what is happening. God is acting to bring about a new thing. Hear it, and not only hear but see, that the poor have a good word from God that they have not and do not hear otherwise, there is release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed.”

Imagine yourselves in that congregation; what part of this good news would you hear? The poor, to whom Jesus brought good news, were not just economically poor, but those whom by standards of the day were unacceptable, marginalized, cast out and away. Moreover, the captives were not only those in prisons, but also those bound by sin and shame, by law, tradition and fear. The blind among them could not see, did not see God’s glory and deeds, and failed their covenantal responsibility to be the light of God to the nations. Those oppressed were all the aforementioned and are those whom we today regard for example, as addicted, or in abusive relationships.

Now hear this: Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

I have a quote, the source of which is long forgotten, that is on pieces of paper taped above my computer, on the refrigerator, the dashboard of the car:

God is at the center of what appears as darkness and defeat, transforming it into victory.  The task of healing, whether for society or an individual, is the task of seeing suddenly and in startled amazement and gratitude, that which has always been there, taking heart and giving oneself over more deeply to the transforming presence of God.

It is this ability and willingness to see God’s hand at work in the world about us that is evidence of the Spirit dwelling in us. That same Spirit acts in our hearts permitting us to give ourselves over more deeply to the transforming presence of God. That presence, the Spirit, further enables us to be agents of transformation.

As I pondered and prayed about the passage, I felt convicted about my failure to act as one anointed by God, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. I started asking questions about when and how I proclaimed good news, served the poor, the captive, the blind, and quickly found I could go down the rabbit hole of guilt about such things.  There is little question I can benefit from performing a rigorous self-inventory of how it is that I do the work given me to do to love and serve the Lord. However, a subtle aspect more deeply embedded in the Scripture caught me. I think it is this trying to push its way further into my consciousness. Let me explain.

Every day at Saint Luke’s Hospital I experience the profound privilege of meeting numbers of persons who demonstrate a truth I assert, that courage is more ordinary than extraordinary! On reflection, I think what was stirring is a growing awareness arising from recent patient encounters that I have not been attending to the Spirit within. Let me tell you about Virginia. I have little idea about her service in the world, but she permitted me entry into her spiritual life, her deeply held belief, almost a visceral, bodily connection to the presence of God. Her body has experienced a number of insults and has aged with her, but it would seem that every step of the way she takes her wounds to God. Not only this, but her joyful body as well, the one that shows up in her laughter, rich and full, Sarah like, I imagine.

We use characterizations of pastoral diagnosis for our care and its documentation as chaplains. She falls in that category of “spiritual well-being enhanced.” Our goal for her care is at least not to get in the way of her spiritual well-being and in some small measure contribute to it. In my almost 37 years as priest and chaplain, she counts among the number of those who help me to grow my own spiritual well-being, she chaplains me by example.

As I met with her several times this past week, the Gospel for today rumbling around my insides, I began to recognize what was important. I could not resist asking Virginia to tell me something of her “secret,” her confident faith, her trust that God is with her, indeed as she says, whether she lives or dies, she is the Lord’s. What she told me was that it is no secret at all, but a matter of practice.

She did not use that word, but it is what spiritual directors would say. Virginia told me that long ago after losing a baby and working through her grief, she discovered Paul’s words: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me,” and they became a way she chose to live every day. She said that to live this way she would try to do at least one of three things each day: “pray with a grateful heart, look and listen [hear and see] for how God was acting in her life and in those around her, and try to love just a little better today then yesterday.”  A prescription for spiritual wellness if I ever heard one! Virginia creates space in her life for the Spirit to fill and to lead her. She is able to see suddenly and in startled amazement and gratitude the transforming presence of God.

Jesus did the same. Our Lord never took for granted that his mission, the way he lived everyday, was because the Spirit was in him and leading him. Like Virginia, he tended his spiritual life. He did this by being a good Jew, after all, it was his custom to keep the Sabbath day and go to synagogue. He learned from his parents the importance of going up to Jerusalem for the festivals. He took time to be alone. He prayed, broke bread in fellowship with others and was deeply familiar with the Torah, the readings and the Prophets.

I now understand what was working in me while grappling with the text for today is that it is not enough to do the ministry given me to do without attention to how it is I make room for the Spirit to fill and lead me. It is all too easy to forget that our baptismal ministry-- yours or mine-- to “love others in the power of the Spirit, seek and serve Christ in all persons, striving for justice and peace,” is at risk for becoming disconnected from its source, the source from which such active engagement in the world gains its true meaning and purpose. Make room for the Spirit!

If Virginia were here, I think she would tell you, and I will tell you on her behalf, never to forget that you can do all things through him who strengthens you. She would also say, as she did to me: “When Christ said you have me in you, you are a new being. My body is Christ’s body, broken as it is. It is something he and I share. It’s a Spirit thing really, I can’t explain it; it just is.” Yes, Virginia, it is. Yes, brothers and sisters, it is.