the Holy Spirit were coming out of this rather badly. But wait.
WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?
It is important to know. In another letter you may hear Paul saying, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ”; he is not a Christian. This can be a very disturbing thought. If it means (and there are people who will say this) that if I do not speak with tongues, making uncontrollable and unintelligible noises, I do not have the Spirit—then I for one do not have the Spirit and on Paul’s definition I am not a Christian. If having the Spirit means a constant state of excitement, of religious emotion, then I do not have it and am not a Christian. And I dare say the same will apply to many of you.
But is this what having the Spirit means? Let us be clear about this; there is nothing wrong, though there may be much that is inadequate, about these things. But listen to another epistle—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.” Not much excitement there. Even self-control, self-discipline. Precisely not letting yourself go, keeping your emotions in check. And the first item in the list is what I described a few minutes ago as the severest, strictest discipline there is—love.
I will repeat my question this day of Pentecost—What is the Holy Spirit? I am not silly enough to think that in five minutes I can tell you all there is to know about the third person of the Trinity. But I think I know where to begin. Over against the fruit of the Spirit, Paul gives a list of the works of the flesh—“sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and sorcery; enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, party spirit, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” Now it is clear at once that though sexual license comes into the list and will get no defense from me, these works of the flesh are not at all what we conventionally think about when we talk about “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” The flesh means I’m bound up in my own interests, concerns, desires. Of course this may mean plain lustful desire, Paul’s fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. But there are special kinds of self-centeredness. What do I care what happens to the other person? I know what I want—let her, let him look after the consequences.
It can lead to theft; it can lead to murder; it can lead to success in business; it can lead to the disruption of a Church; all because we insist on putting ourselves at the center of our own picture of life. I am what matters and everyone else look out. It is the opposite of love. “Use not your freedom as an occasion for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.”
How do you do it? Turn your life inside out and establish your life on a new center? If you do turn your coat inside out, the odds are you will find the old man, the old woman inside it. Life needs a new center. God supplies it. And God’s readiness himself to form the center of human life, is near enough what Paul means by the Spirit. Jesus put part of it in the odd little story about a man who had an evil spirit cast out of him. A splendid beginning, but negative. Back comes the evil spirit, finds a nice empty residence in excellent decorative condition, and he settles down again, bringing with him seven other spirits more than himself. What was the need was a new tenant. This is what God supplies; what God is—a new center and new foundation on which life can be based. So we will come back to spirit and mind.
SPIRIT AND MIND
Inspiration and discipline. I will sing with the Spirit, I will sing with the mind also. Come back to music, we can make the most of the analogy today, remembering that many of the greatest Christian thinkers have been musicians—Luther for one, Karl Barth for another. It is quite true that there are two elements in making music. If there is no inspiration, creative or derivative, there is no music; but if there is no discipline of harmony, counterpoint, technique there is little to distinguish our music from the squeaking of cats in the garden at night.
But how does a real musician work? Does he say—“we will now have five minutes of inspiration,” and then get out the textbook of harmony and work it out? Does he look at a piece of printed music and say, “Now I’ll put in some inspiration with the left hand and make sure I get the notes correct with the right?” Of course he doesn’t. And the better the musician the clearer it will be that he is one person and that the one person is producing out of inspiration and discipline the one music. Of course he does not get there at once. Before he does there will be God knows how many hours of study and practice. That is the difference between a real musician and a bad one. I sit at the piano trying hard to remember that I must get that third finger on the C#. You don’t see Ashkenazy doing that.
Back to where we belong. “I will sing with the Spirit, I will sing with my mind also.” I will put the best of my thoughts into sermon, prayer, hymn and I will remind myself that if God is not in it, it isn’t worth much. And in the real business of living I will with iron hand discipline the old selfishness out of my life, knowing that only the Holy Spirit can achieve the result, until someday I can live, as I know I may one day sing, with the free and loving spontaneity of heaven.
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“THE VICTORY OF EASTER”—1 Corinthians 15.54–57
[Preached four times from 4/4/99 at North Road, to 4/27/03 at Houghton-le-Spring]
All this week, these words have been in my mind for this morning’s sermon. I looked for others in the Easter story, but I could not find one. And all this time this theme has been accompanied by a counter-theme. Paul asks his rhetorical question—Death, where is your sting, implying that death has no sting. But the question has turned into a real question that has an answer. Death where is your sting? Answer: in Kosovo, and of course in dozens of other places, but today one name will do. And the answer was accompanied by a quotation that came unbidden to memory from a poem I have not looked at for decades. Do you know nowadays the name of Studdert-Kennedy? A great man, a great army chaplain in 1914–18, and a poet too, writing out of feelings stimulated by conflict and carnage. There is a poem entitled, “Missing—believed Killed” written with reference to a mother, whose son is so reported. He must be dead but no one can find the body. The poem ends:
She only asked to keep one thing, The joy light in his eyes: God has not even let her know Where his dead body lies. O grave, where is Thy victory? O death where is thy sting?Thy victory is everywhere, Thy sting’s in ev’rything.
That is where we start this Easter Day. What has the day, what has St. Paul to say to us? ‘Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Is it credible? Would you dare to go and say it to all these refugees? Of course it all starts with the fact—the story of Easter. That is indispensable. Don’t think that I am asking you to neglect it. We have heard John’s version of it in this service. When you get home, sometime today read Matthew’s, Mark’s and Luke’s version. But notice how, as Hoskyns long ago pointed out, 1 Corinthians 15 changes its style. It begins with the simple and story-telling style of the Gospels, Christ died, and he was buried, and he was raised and he appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve, then to more than 500, and so on. But as soon as the record is complete, Paul begins to argue, with all those argumentative particles that make it possible to argue in Greek as in no other language. And he is still arguing here at the end of the chapter.
He quotes the Old Testament. First he has Isaiah—“he has swallowed up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people will be taken away off all the earth.” Then he quotes Hosea, but no, he misquotes Hosea. “O death, where are thy plagues? O grave where is thy destruction?” That sounds alright, but study the context. Paul’s question, as I said, is rhetorical. He means “death you have lost your sting, your victory. You do not have them.” Hosea’s question is different. He is saying, “Come on death, bring out your plagues; grave produce your destruction. We are going to use them on this wicked, faithless people.”
Paul
