Fr Peter's Reflections

We in the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, Domestic, were encouraged to study clustering (living in closer proximity and more intense community), vocations (calling others to vocations, both domestic and monastic), and the renewal of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. What follows are my thoughts behind a presentation that I made to the St Clare Cell Group on 5/22/2018, or partly made, for we are not finished. Of course, it does not include the material I added in as I made the presentation, for I am always finding places where I have left something out. Given that context, here are my thoughts:

This is a brief discussion of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, which will lead into an ongong discussion of the gifts of the Spirit.

1. In the post-exilic period of the Hebrew Scriptures we start to get descriptions of the Holy Spirit indwelling an individual, usually a king. There is in fact a fear that the Holy Spirit will be taken from the king, which would be a disaster for him and for the people. That is the original sense of Ps 51:13, while Wisd 1:5 indicates that the Spirit flees deceit. It is also in Wisdom that the Spirit is equated with Wisdom/sophia(Wisd 9:17). The Psalms were originally a royal hymn book associated with the royal shrine in Jerusalem, and of course Wisdom is attributed to Solomon the King.
2. The last part of Isaiah also describes the Holy Spirit as being in the midst of the people as a whole, as being God’s unseen presence. This is the sense of Isa 57:15; 63:10-11. This collective sense of the Spirit also shows up in the New Testament.
3. The New Testament views the prophets as having prophesied via the Holy Spirit, but in the Hebrew Scriptures the term “Holy Spirit” is not associated with the prophets. The “spirit of the Lord” does come upon ecstatic individuals in the pre-monarchial period, including both “prophetic” individuals and Saul, but he is not associated with the articulate prophets of the monarchial period. Even in Daniel (which is one of the Writings, not one of the Prophets), while pagans attribute Daniel’s abilities to the “spirit of the holy gods” (Dan 4:5-6, 15, 5:11), Daniel only refers to God as being the revealer, not to God’s spirit. The closest one comes the possibility of the Holy Spirit being a revealer is in Susana (Dan 13:45), when it is said that the “holy spirit of a young boy” was stirred up, but this seems to indicate that the boy’s (Daniel’s) own spirit was holy.
4. In the New Testament it is promised that Jesus will baptize with “the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt 3:11 and parallels). Notice that this promise is made in the context of John’s baptism in water.
5. That promise, or at least part of it, is fulfilled when the Holy Spirit is given in John 20 as authority, and that authority is actualized as missional power in Acts 2. These 120 were men and women who had been part of the mission of Jesus and probably should be viewed as having been already baptized in John’s baptism, although in John 4 it indicates that Jesus’ disciples continued that practice, so it may have been Jesus’ baptism. In other words, the Spirit completes John’s baptism of repentance by adding the Spirit-reception that is part of Christian initiation. Also notice that the authority of the Spirit in John 20 is given to the Eleven, not generally to the 120 plus in Acts, as is also true in the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ giving the Twelve/Peter the authority of binding and loosing.
6. After Acts 2, the baptism in/ anointing with the Spirit is characteristic of Christian initiation and is associated with baptism in water. We do not know if oil was used in that period, but we do know that laying on of hands was used. When Paul finds people in Acts 19 who do not show signs of the Spirit, he inquires and finds that they had defective faith: they did not know about the fulfillment of John’s preaching in Jesus, they did not know about the Spirit at all, and so they needed baptism into Jesus as well as the laying on of hands for the reception of the Spirit. In Acts 8 baptism into Jesus takes place right after a confession of faith, but only when Peter and John later decide that the calling of Samaritans to faith is kosher do they lay on hands for the reception of the Spirit. They complete the initiation. In Acts 10 the initiation is started by the Spirit, for the Spirit falls on the new Gentile believers before there is any talk about baptism and that is the fact that persuades Peter to order their baptism without any other qualification (such as requiring them to become Jews). That is, the presence of the Spirit persuades him to accept them as true believers withouttheir becoming Jews, an issue that will be discussed in Acts 11 and Acts 15. Paul will in Rom 8 likewise describe the presence of Spirit as normative for all Christians – it is the Spirit who baptizes men and women into Christ, who makes them put on Christ. And this is associated with baptism in water in Rom 6. Likewise, in Heb 6 part of basic Christian initiation is teaching about baptisms (plural – one had to differentiate Jewish washings from Christian baptism) and then there is a reference to the Spirit (and the works he produces) as part of full Christian initiation. In other words, the New Testament views properly initiated Christians as having the Spirit from the beginning; it does not see any need for a second experience, a “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” subsequent to confession of faith/ baptism in water, unless Christian initiation was defective.
7. While glossolalia is a common experience in the initiation narratives, there are other phenomena associated with the Holy Spirit: joy, prophecy, boldness, peace, etc. None has an exclusive right of indicating the presence of the Spirit nor is any one of them absolutely required.
8. The purpose of the Holy Spirit’s coming is to make Jesus/God present to the world. This could be looked at in two ways theologically. One would be that it could be looked at as the fulfillment of the divine command, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . . and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The one side (love the Lord your God) is the unification of the believers with the Trinity, entering into the divine love-union, and the other side (love your neighbor as yourself) is the drawing of the peoples of the world into this love-union, starting with the unification of the church and continuing to the unification of the peoples of the world, which means extending the love of the Trinity to all people and drawing them into it.
9. The second way one could look at the Holy Spirit’s coming to make Jesus present to the world begins by noting that the Holy Spirit is the creative Spirit of God, creator spiritus, who was active in the first creation, and is now active in recreating the face of the earth. That, of course, is why in the Orthodox tradition the color of the Spirit (Pentecost) is usually green, for it is a creative color (rather than the red of fire in the Latin tradition). But to do this recreation the Spirit has to do two things: first, he has to enable human beings to overcome their passions (sanctification), which is what we see in Rom 8, building on the previous two chapters in Romans, where the Spirit brings freedom. Likewise, Gal 5 starts with freedom and indicates that there is a passions/ flesh – Spirit contrast, the passions being rooted in “the flesh,” in the uncontrolled limbic system (to use the language of Family Emotional Systems). The Spirit brings the virtues that limit the passions and block their control of the individual, which virtues open the individual to love. Second, the Spirit has to reach out in mission, a mission in which the followers of Jesus participate. Here the Spirit convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Proclamation in Acts is Spirit-driven.
10. The tools for this reaching out in mission are gifts of the Spirit, both those Jesus used in his mission (Isa 61:1ff quoted by Jesus in Luke 4 in Nazareth) and the those listed by Paul in 1 Cor 12 and elsewhere.

The announcement of Jesus is an announcement of the gathering of God’s people, the means of which are what would later be known as the corporal works of mercy:

Luke¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,/ because he has anointed me/ to bring glad tidings to the poor./ He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives/ and recovery of sight to the blind,/ to let the oppressed go free,/ ¹⁹ and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

But the Spirit is also the Spirit of Wisdom or sanctification, for without Wisdom the corporal works of mercy are corrupted

Isa 11: ² The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him:/ a spirit of wisdom and of understanding,/ A spirit of counsel and of strength,/ a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord,/ ³ and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.

That is why Paul in Galatians also lists some of the wisdom of the Spirit:

Gal. 5:²² In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. ²⁴ Now those who belong to Christ [Jesus] have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.

11. The Spirit, then, comes as part of bringing the Trinity. The Trinity brings its character as love that uses the various spiritual gifts and graces, but uses them out of virtue, out of love. Separate the two and one has corruption.

12. The more active tools given by the Spirit are listed in Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12, and in Eph 4 and 1 Peter 4

Rom 12: ⁶ Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them: if prophecy, in proportion to the faith; ⁷ if ministry, in ministering; if one is a teacher, in teaching; ⁸ if one exhorts, in exhortation; if one contributes, in generosity; if one is over others, with diligence; if one does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. [Notice that there is a mixture of the corporate and spiritual works of ministry and that none of the gifts are for the benefit of the individual exercising them – they are missional.]

1 Cor 12: ⁷ To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. ⁸ To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of knowledgeaccording to the same Spirit; ⁹ to another faithby the same Spirit; to another gifts of healingby the one Spirit; ¹⁰ to another mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes. [Again, the gifts are for the benefit of others, but in this case Paul’s point is not that of giving a complete list, but rather of showing that (1) no one exercises all the gifts and (2) that every gift is equally and expression of the Spirit – none is better than the other.]

Eph 4: ⁷ But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore, it says: “He ascended on high and took prisoners captive;/ he gave gifts to men.” [This is taken from the Greek version, not the Hebrew] ⁹ What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended into the lower [regions] of the earth? ¹⁰ The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. ¹¹ And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastorsand teachers, ¹² to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ. [The point here is that people are given to the church equipped by the Spirit to function in one of these ways, not for their own status or benefit, but for the benefit of the whole of the church.]

1 Pet 4: ⁷ The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and sober for prayers. ⁸ Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins. ⁹ Be hospitable to one another without complaining. ¹⁰ As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. ¹¹ Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God; whoever serves, let it be with the strength that God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. [Notice that this is in the context of a contrast to the deeds that the pagans do, which makes it similar to Gal 5. Furthermore, a list of virtues precedes the two categories of gifts, which rhetorically stresses the virtues over the gifts.]

Each of these lists is different, for each is shaped for a different context, used for a different purpose. That makes comparing the gifts difficult, for in each case examples are given that that fit the purpose of the author, and in no case does any author try to give a full listing. Furthermore, there is no sharp distinction between gifts: the attempt to define them in contrast to one another is bound to fail, for (1) they tend to be on continua (e.g. wisdom – knowledge – prophecy – preaching) and (2) the authors never define them, since that is not their point; they are illustrating rather than defining.

13. The tools/ gifts are means to an end, not the end in themselves. The end is the building up of the body of Christ, i.e. the unity of the Church and maturity of the Church. The end is love based in prayer. Therefore the gifts are not “merit badges” to be talked about, e.g. “I move in gift a, and gift b, and gift c,” but fluid tools that may come and go, although some seem to characterize a person, probably because they fit with how God has formed their personality.

14. There are times when there is revival, when the Spirit seems to take control, when there is repentance and renewal, etc. At such times the primary mark of the Spirit is holiness of life, total dedication to Christ, a living like Jesus. There are at times experiences that accompany such revival, as Jonathan Edwards pointed out (Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, but more importantly, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections) and as John Wesley experienced in his revivals, among many others. But the reality of the revival is to be judged, not by the phenomena (or, better, perhaps epiphenomena) but by the fruit in holiness of life and deepened devotion. Thus, Edwards defends the “religious affections,” as he calls them, and accepts them, but at the same time he does not view them as a mark of whether a work is or is not of God. In this connection it is important to recognize that the Pentecostal movement (as well as the Christian and Missionary Alliance) and, derivatively, the charismatic movement, grew out of a healing-holiness revival of the late 1800’s. Holiness was at the core, with healing as a manifestation. When any manifestation becomes central or becomes the validation that a given work or experience is of God, then there is corruption, either corruption already or corruption close at hand. The gift is being sought rather than the Giver. The passions are what are desired, rather than seeing them as an epiphenomenon of what often happens when the divine and the human come into contact. And in the end pride comes into play, bringing with it all types of other vices.

15. Most of the great saints, and especially those who were the greatest miracle working saints, simply sought the Lord. The usually preferred solitude to the crowd, humiliation to adulation. They preached and acted in the power of God, because they were obedient to the call of God. But they did not call attention to the phenomena, to the miracles. They called attention to God and called others to holiness, whether by preaching or through the corporal works of mercy. Indeed, they often tried to hide their spiritual experiences or miraculous acts. This is an attitude the modern spiritual movements should emulate.

16. There is not special experience needed for using the gifts of the Spirit other than prayer, both drawing close to God and listening to God. Often a person has been being urged by God to do this or that for years or has been receiving revelations and visions from God for years, but because they were quiet and inward and were not associated with outward phenomena, they have been discounted. Once one views oneself as a person whom God might use and starts paying closer attention in listening prayer, one simply starts to act (with a humble tentativeness at first, to be sure) on what one has always had. Or, as one Christian leader I know put it, “I now keep what I used to throw away.”

17. Therefore, in exploring the gifts of the Spirit there should be two foci. The first is a focus on what defeats the passions and brings the person closer to God. These are gifts (virtues) to be ardently longed for. The second is a focus stemming from the first, what makes the mission of God in the world more possible? That mission is a mission of love, the restoring of the creation, which means the building up of the church both internally and by increasing its gathering of the nations into the kingdom. If that is the mission, then we ask God for the tools to do his work, tools that may be temporary or permanent, tools that others may or may not see. Anything else is likely to become problematic.

In conclusion, I have no desire to revive the Pentecostal, neo-Charismatic, or other revival movements of the past. Their music is not sacred but temporal, their phenomena were those of that time that fit into that context, and their weaknesses do not need to be perpetuated. I do have a desire to seek revival in the present that makes a path, through repentance and ascetic practice, for the Spirit to work. I expect to see similar phenomena to the movements of the past, but at the same time new, for they are in a new context. Furthermore, biblical studies as well as theology has come a long way since 1880’s, the early 1900’s, and the 1960’s-1980’s. We want a fresh and freshly articulated work of the Spirit rather than the warmed-over work of the Spirit in the past. Francis of Assisi was not like the movements before him (e.g. Benedict) nor would the Carmelites of the 1500’s or later spiritual movements be like Francis of Assisi. God is always doing his same-new thing, same in principle, but new in outward form.

In the recent Leadership Gathering of the BSCD the members were encouraged towards clustering in one form or another. This was one of three themes of Leadership, the other two being an increase in vocations and the need to pass on the experience of the Holy Spirit. But clustering might seem to be the first and easiest to deal with.

In a sense clustering has been part of the church from the beginning. Acts pictures the church in Jerusalem as located within a small area, perhaps with a range as far as Bethlehem and Emmaus, or a couple of hours walk in various directions. The central location was in the city, even if the celebrated Eucharist (broke bread) in a number of houses. That is no surprise, since a room in a large house would not hold more than 30 individuals, even if they were jammed together. A double meal table setup would accommodate 18 unless it was crowded. Thus we could talk about a cluster of house communities that cared for one another, selling investments to support one another, as needed.

Once the church scattered from Jerusalem we find groups of house communities considered a single church. In Rome we can identify 7 or 8 such communities in Romans 15. In Corinth the one church seems to have included groups in the two port cities as well as in Corinth itself. Naturally, it was geography that made the groups, for it would have been difficult to walk from Corinth to either of the ports at night, which is when meetings tended to be held, and each of the ports and Corinth itself were centers of population, such as there were in those days.

Finally, one should note that Paul normally traveled in a team, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, but he always preferred to travel in a team, and there seem to have been clusters of people gathered around other leaders as well. The lone-ranger type of Christian was not one modeled by Jesus or by his followers after his death and resurrection.

But clustering is demanding. As envisioned in the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, it would be domestic members living in their own homes, whether owned or rented, within a short distance of other members who lived in their own homes, and meeting together in a single cell group. There might also be members who lived in the homes of other members, which would be especially true of singles, but might be true of a small family if another member family had enough room in their home. Ideally this would be in the context of a single parish, so that parish life would reinforce the cluster, and the cluster would reinforce the parish.

Now this is not all that was envisioned, for it is realized that not all members are in a situation in which they can be part of a cluster. Ideally clustering is the end of a continuum with the individual isolated member being at the other end, separated members meeting in virtual cell groups being the next step, physical cell groups (some of which might meet only once or twice per month given the distance members live apart, while others might meet weekly) coming next, and clustering with a much more intense community being the final step. The idea is that, as they are able, members move along the continuum ever closer. In fact, some might feel a call to full monastic community, but that is a separate step.

Such clustering has been part of church history, sometimes with a focus on full communalism, sometimes with more of a focus of living together in the same area. Without noting the cenobitic monastic communities, one should note that villages and even cities were smaller in pre-modern times, so if everyone was a member of the parish church, there would be something of the contact that is being talked about in the cluster. Anabaptist communities took the monastic ideal and made it part of the whole people of God, so often these communities would travel together as they were forced to migrate from one area to another due to prosecution in various forms. And then there are the communities of the revival of the 1970’s that were written about in Dave and Netta Jackson’s book, Living Together in a World Falling Apart. Some of these still exist, some do not. In other words, the clustering idea is not new, nor is it limited to monastic or Catholic groups.

Our own journey with this concept started in 1975, in our year of renewal, for we had been very interested in Christian community and it was because of a discussion about it with a visitor to Bibelschule Wiednest that we discovered the Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal) in Houston, Texas, and their communities. We visited that community, as well as the Sojourners community, the Bruderhof, and the like over the next few years. We were part of a different type of clustering in Langley British Columbia a decade and a half later, for there a group of us formed an association and built 19 townhomes so that we could live in proximity. There were 15 families, and the association purposely retained 4 townhomes to rent at reduced rates to families in need of housing or at a normal rate to families that needed to live in a supportive community but were fine financially.

So one sees that clustering is part of the history of the church and that it fulfills basic human needs for support and fellowship. But it also makes demands. Most of the clusters that I know about grew out of a type of revival. There was an intense encounter with the Holy Spirit that led to deeper commitment to Jesus resulting in a loosening of attachment to property, finances, and goods. This made the sharing involved in clustering possible, for without such Spirit-inspired shared the community will be short-lived. That also means the facilitating or praying for such life-changing revival come first and clustering is an after-effect.

A second demand is that the cluster must have mature and stable leadership. On the one hand, it would be best if it were seen as a ministry or arm of the local parish, for that would give mature oversight from the church hierarchy, if they shared the vision. On the other hand, mature leadership, well-formed leadership, and spiritually and psychologically aware leadership is needed to lead the cluster. This is usually hierarchal, and even a group of thinking-alike elders can act as hierarchal, for one-person-one-vote type of structures tend to break down more quickly. Yet such a group can turn into a TACO (totalist aberrant Christian organization) if there is not outside guidance and oversight. There is a significant literature on this as well.

Finally, the cluster needs to be in a place that is physically and financially viable. Are there enough jobs available to support the group, jobs of the right type? If the group is older, are there hospitals and medical specialists available in the area? If the group is younger, are there solid schools available? Sharing can go so far, and certainly one must encourage it – support the widow and the orphan, take in the immigrant (whatever the government says or does not say), care for the sick, for all of these are deeply biblical values. But for sharing to happen, there must be something to share, so someone must have income, enough someones, so to speak. And in some areas that would be difficult. Or the jobs available might not fit the skills or physical abilities of the potential members of the cluster. Thus clusters work best in urban areas unless, like the Hutterite communities, the members are involved in farming.

These are some of what comes to mind when one thinks about clustering in any of its various forms. More reflections will come later.