April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
WORD OF FAITH
The Spirit, causing confusion
'Jesus said to them, "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you"....He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit..."' -- John 20:21-22
During the Church's 2,000-year history, the Holy Spirit has often been an aggravation to the leaders of the institution. In some sense, the second-century movement to form a hierarchical Church structure as we know it was an attempt to get rid of that aggravation.
One of the difficulties of falling back on the Holy Spirit for guidance is that we're forced to deal with prophets.
Surfacing and listening to prophets was the normal pro-cess biblical people employed to understand what God wanted them to do. Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, there runs a belief that God always places a handful of especially-inspired people in our midst to point us in the direction God wishes us to go.
The late Scripture scholar Rev. Bruce Vawter labeled these individuals "the conscience of the people." German Protestant theologian Hans Walter Wolff referred to them as "people who supply us with the future implications of our present actions."
The only problem facing God's biblical disciples revolved around finding ways to separate false prophets from real pro-phets. Both claimed to have been sent by God.
Real vs. false
Though, as a Scripture teacher, Wolff faithfully outlined the five classic rules for distinguishing between real and fake, as one of the world's experts on biblical prophecy, he always added a sixth criterion: "Authentic pro-phets constantly cause confusion."
This is especially true when the prophets' words are triggered by the Holy Spirit. Luke warns of that disturbing situation in the way he describes the Jerusalem Pentecost event (Acts 2:1-11).
It's no accident that the Spirit's arrival is accompanied with noise, wind and fire -- all elements which take us out of our peaceful, secure environment and throw us into confusion. Yet it's only after such a disturbing experience that "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim."
Had they not first gone through that confusion, no one would have "heard them speaking in his or her own tongue." Such aggravation seems to be necessary when dealing with the Spirit.
Yet it's clear from Sunday's I Corinthians (12:3b-7,12-13) passage that, even after the Church receives the gift of tongues, there's still a lot of confusion. How does a community handle a situation in which some are gifted with tongues and others aren't?
Love is guide
Paul deals with this problem in chapters 12-14, outlining how a follower of Jesus and a recipient of the Spirit's gifts works through such confusion in order to employ his or her gifts "for some benefit." The Apostle's convinced that, if we let love guide us through the aggravation of everyone having different -- even, at times, conflicting -- gifts, we'll eventually discover we've morphed into the Body of Christ, each member working for the good of the whole body.
Of course, nothing brings more confusion than when we employ the Spirit's gift of forgiveness: the gift John's Jesus (John 20:19-23) shares with His disciples on Easter Sunday night.
We normally appreciate the security of knowing who our friends and who our enemies are. Yet, if we, like Jesus, actually forgive everyone's sins, we obliterate that secure dividing line. It's impossible to live in a black-and-white world when forgiveness is the outward sign we're being "sent" as the Father has sent Jesus. Carrying on Jesus' ministry opens the door to lots of confusion. It simply seems to go with the territory.
I've been amused at some of the recent criticism Pope Francis has received from several high-profile Church officials and commentators: They accuse him of "causing confusion among the faithful." How biblical can you get?[[In-content Ad]]
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