Have you ever had someone try to make a point, and it you are wholly distracted by either their imagery or overt narcissistic display of “knowledge”? For the most part, this was my Seminary experience, and sadly describes some of my engagements with other pastors and church leaders. Many making points…few sharing sacrificial, humble love.
I write these words not as a reaction from a particular interaction, but an observation on the posture of many in the church (even myself, at times). I pray it moves us all to repent and submit to the all powerful and loving God.
First, a little background. I currently serve in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It’s a relatively conservative church body that holds tightly to it’s traditions and doctrinal views. For the most part, this is refreshing, healthy, and reassuring…sometimes it’s harmful and distracting. I love my church body and the doctrine which it holds tightly to, but there has been some things troubling me lately.
Let me start with a recent afternoon I spent with my family. I ate a burrito…a delicious pork burrito at one of my favorite local places. Let’s just say that shortly after…it didn’t sit well. I’m not sure if it was something that I ate earlier or the burrito itself, but my stomach was not loving me. It made me think of a common illustration that gets thrown around from time to time amongst my brothers and sisters in the LCMS. It goes something like this. In regards to others who have a high view of the Holy Spirit, there is this joke that we can’t be sure that what we’re “feeling” or “experiencing” is the Holy Spirit speaking to us “or just a bad burrito”. Whenever I heard this, I always just assumed that it was coming from guys who didn’t like Mexican food, because I’ve never had a bad burrito in my life (not even the one that didn’t agree with me). They’re delicious and I’m pretty sure I’ll be eating them after the Lord returns. But the more I thought about it, I realized that there is a deeper fear happening hear than the fear of Carnitas.
What I realize now is that, other than some of my brethren having poor taste in food, there is a distinct fear of the Spirit of God and what He could actually pull off here in the world.
And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” -Matthew 17:14-20
We fear God’s Spirit so much that we try to minimize His importance, power, and work in our lives. Jesus says that if we have faith in Him (a gift of God’s Spirit), we can move mountains. This phrase is often reduced to metaphor…but what if it isn’t? What if God can move actual mountains through us? What if faith in Jesus can lead you and I to do such powerful things, that we once called them ridiculous? His power is made perfect in our weakness, after all. The God that exists in the Bible works in powerful yet peculiar ways. He speaks to people through a donkey and a burning bush, He sends angels to fight battles, becomes a man, forgives sins, raises the dead, heals the sick, casts out demons, and rescues men from a fiery furnace. His Holy Spirit leads mere men to plant churches, convert thousands at a time, become martyrs, heal diseases, and allow an elderly couple to not just start a family…but start a nation. All of these things were considered unfathomable…until God shows up in the story. When God shows up they not only become plausible…they become an odd sort of normal. It’s the sort of power that, may not lead a donkey to prophesy to us…but He may move us to forgive someone who deeply hurt us. God may move a racist to repent, or a teenager to love and respect their parents, or an addict to lose their craving for just one more. The Holy Spirit has the power to move the many mountains we face, and God likes for things to look impossible from our perspective…it’s so that he can remain God.
Before I get too far, I want to say this again…I really do love our church’s doctrine. I became LCMS because of it’s love for Scripture and for the sufficiency of the cross, but I’ve noticed that the implementation of that doctrine is quite poor. We always seem to begin the implementation with the premise that everyone else is an idiot. We change lines of hymns because there is the slightest chance that it could be misunderstood (not because the line contains falsehood). We correct people who speak of God because it doesn’t fit with our jargon. We write off God himself and claim that someone ate a bad burrito because it doesn’t look like the God which we have lovingly paper trained. The traditional church has attempted to castrate the Holy Spirit, and the modern church has attempted to Photoshop him just so that we can take and understand what He has to say. Either way…we have a hard time with God working outside of what we expect and have “always known”.
It all boils down to this…you and I…we’ve all got a low view of the Holy Spirit.
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” -John 3:8
God is up to something and it is always big and weird. There’s a reason why crowds often turned on Jesus. He works in ways that make us entirely uncomfortable. Are we ready for a God who does miracles? What about a God who converts a crowd with just one simple, poorly crafted witness of someone who isn’t clergy? What about a church that, instead of doing a capital campaign to expand ministry…they just pray…and that’s it…and it’s successful? What about a worship service that has no European roots? In a church that lifts high the mysteries of the sacraments, the significance of being “saved by grace through faith”, and the comforting beauty of Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, and Sola Scriptura…are we ready for a transcendent God to work in ways that are not our ways even though every single aspect of our theology suggests that He will? It’s time we see that reducing others’ interactions with God as a case of mistaken identity is really just the divisive work of Satan himself. Assuming that you’re the only one in the room who understands the Holy Spirit is really just an invitation to be humbled by the blowing wind of the Spirit who chooses to use someone else and not you.
So here’s my confession…I’ve actually used this illustration before, and, now…I repent. I was only trying to put others down, instead I should have been trying to lift them up in love. Let’s leave the burrito alone, because God’s ways are much better than my own, and His work is, though, weird at times…if it lead Jesus to Calvary…it’s exactly the sort of weird that I need.
todd niebling 