SPIRIT AND FORMS: FRIENDS OR FOES?

I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write in a book what you see…” (Rev. 1:10-11)

            Today is Trinity Sunday, traditionally the first Sunday after Pentecost when we give emphasis to the fact that we know God as Father, Son, and Spirit. That is a very simple statement, but the doctrine of the Trinity is very complex and is ultimately a mystery. It is also a doctrine which drives incoming Divinity School students crazy, some to drink, literally, and fosters the notion that perhaps they should have gone on for an MBA instead of an M.Div.

            Let me just give you a taste of this Trinitarian talk, clearly information without which you cannot live. From the earliest days of the church, the question was asked, “Was Christ really God?” And if Christ is God, then don’t you have two Gods? The answer of the Monarchians (from two Greek words meaning “single ruler,”) was that Jesus was a man given divine power at his baptism, which quickly became a heresy.  More appealing was the view of Sabellius, who taught that the Son and Holy Spirit were only temporary manifestations or “modes” of God, so that was known as Modalistic Monarchianism.  Along came Tertullian who was the first to introduce the word “Trinity” into the church’s vocabulary (it’s not a Biblical word), who said “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and that God is one substance (ousia) and three persons (persona)."  The question then became, are these substances all the same.  The “same” in Greek is homoousios.  “Similar” in Greek is homoiousios.  Along came Arius who said that the Son had come into being through a creative act of God, was not of the same substance as the Father, and therefore a secondary deity, thus pointing to the Holy Spirit as a god of still lower rank.

            Now, you may think all this is arid, academic, erudite stuff.  But as one historian has written: “The debate was conducted with the violence of a political convention. Everybody entered into it. Men who met to transact business neglected their bargaining to talk theology.  If one said to the baker, ‘How much is the loaf?’  He would answer, ‘The Son is subordinate to the Father.’  If one sent a servant on an errand, he would reply, ‘The Son arose out of nothing.’  Arius put his doctrine into verse, to popular tunes, and it was sung and whistled in the streets.  The arguments were punctuated with fists and clubs.”

            Well, the whole thing ended with several ecumenical councils, which produced among other creeds the Nicene Creed, so called because the council was held at Nicaea near Constantinople, which declared that Jesus is “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made…”  It took the church literally the first 500 years to reach such fundamental definitions of itself, doctrines which are still foundational to our thought.

            Well, you can file all that under the title, “things I want to forget.”

            Let me come now to a post-Pentecost question which insinuates itself on our times over and over again. What is the relationship between spirit and forms? This is not an exclusively religious question. It inserts itself into virtually every area of life; education, politics, art, music, to name but four. But for the church it is persistently urgent today. How do spirit and forms relate?

            The tendency in human affairs is to see spirit and forms as enemies, or at least as opposites. There is little doubt in my mind that if people were asked which they prefer, spirit would win hands down. And why not?  Spirit suggests vitality, spontaneity, creativity, exuberance, enthusiasm, excitement, motion, life, freedom.

            And forms? Well, forms suggest order, sameness, predictability, ritual, routine, discipline, ceremony, standards, tradition, habit, restraint.  I would go so far as to say that it is in the nature of things that spirit attracts and forms repel.   

            But spirit and forms are not enemies.  They are not even opposites. They are complementary realities that suffer when separated from each other.  To establish the point I should like to cite the experience of the beloved John on the Isle of Patmos, which, by the way, Pat and I have visited twice on tours we have hosted.  Just who this John was we do not know for sure.  But that hardly matters.  What we do know is that one who bore that name gave us the finest piece of apocalyptic writing ever known to humankind.  We call it the Book of Revelation.

            Notice how the vision came. “I was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”  John is telling us here that he was not on Patmos of his own volition.  He was there as a punishment for fidelity to Christ.  He had been banished.  Exiled.  The probability is that he was spared execution because of his advancing years.

            Let’s not romanticize Patmos. Patmos is a small, scrubby, treeless, and rocky island off the coast of Asia Minor, 60 miles southwest of Ephesus. It suffered from the inattention of Rome.  It was a repository for the unwanted.  It’s Zip Code was 00000 because Patmos stood on the edge of nowhere!

            But Patmos is more than a physical location. Patmos is a state of mind.  It stands for rejection.  It is the place where we are forced to live when we know ourselves to be rejected by humankind and think ourselves to have been rejected by God.  Patmos is that place where we are overcome with feelings of expendability, uselessness and self pity.  Patmos can be anywhere.  It has no physical limits.  There can be a Patmos in the wheatlands of Kansas or along the white powdery beaches of Florida. Patmos can be a hospital bed.  It can be a rocking chair in a nursing home. Patmos can be a lonely flat in some hi-rise apartment.  Patmos can be a prison cell or a penthouse suite.  In short, Patmos is anywhere that one feels used up and worthless, expendable and unneeded, after one has given it one’s best shot.

            Given such a setting how do you explain John’s masterpiece.  Why did he not give us a lament or a dirge?  Why did he become apocalyptic? Well, he was not only “on Patmos,” he was also “in the Spirit.”  Listen to him: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write what you see in a book…’”  His outer address was Patmos but his existential address was “in the Spirit.”  That’s where he lived.  And Spirit conquers place every time!

            What does it mean to be “in the Spirit?”  You know what it means. We can’t diagram this play.  We are “in the spirit” when we are in tune with God’s creative and redeeming love.  We are in the spirit when we are suffused with a sense of the Divine Presence, when we are open to the powers of the world unseen.  So, Abraham builds an altar to God while the Canaanites are in the land.  So, Isaiah sees God when Uzziah dies and the nation is plunged into grief.  So, out of unlikely Nazareth, Messiah is raised up.  So, Paul, in a Roman jail, writes his epistle of joy.  So, Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer reach their loftiest perceptions of the gospel in dank Nazi dungeons.

            When I am in the Spirit the Bible is alive.  When I am in the spirit worship engages my entire being.

            Now you are asking, “How did John on Patmos mange to find himself “in the spirit?”  Now, it’s a bit dangerous and presumptuous for a minister to try to track down the trackless Holy Spirit.  As the hymn has it, “His Spirit floweth free, high surging where it will…”  There is no classroom formula for it.  But we have one telling clue.  Listen: He was on Patmos, in the Spirit, ON THE LORD’S DAY!  Here is where form enters experience, for the Lord’s Day is an institution.  It is a form.

            Century after century, you see, faithful Jewish mothers and fathers had said to their children, “We don’t do this today.  It’s the Sabbath.”  And many, I’m sure, as in our time, replied, in so many words, “Why do you impose form on our spirits?  Why do you institutionalize us?”  But some of my Jewish brethren insist that the maintenance of the Sabbath over the years has been, humanly speaking, the salvation of the Jew!

            In all likelihood there was no church on Patmos.  But the Lord’s day, once remembered, can be celebrated anywhere.  When that day came John knew it.  Maybe he marked off the days on the rocks.  When that day came, his mind went back to his congregation, probably the one in Ephesus.  And, all the strength and vitality and unity and fellowship that he had with that church returned to bless his soul.

            I’m amazed at Luther’s confidence in form. If you would ever try to think of a major theologian in Christian history who would be for spirit and not form, it would be Luther.  He had a positively turbulent conversion.  It shook his whole being from inside out, not to mention shaking the whole continent of Europe and the church.  But when Luther was asked in later life how he knew that he was a Christian, he would reply, “Because I have been baptized!”  He trusted the form to be sure he was in the spirit.

            So Jesus to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  Spirit is the dynamic, water is the form, and both are necessary.

            There are those who insist these days that we need a new way of being church, new worship, new organization.   Maybe what we need in the body of Christ is to be “in the Spirit.”  It could well be a sign of spiritual malnutrition when we keep tampering with form instead of submitting to the Spirit!

            “I was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.  I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write what you see in a book…’”

            I don’t know what your Patmos is.  I do know that this is the Lord’s day, and that if you are “in the Spirit,” something wonderful could come your way.  My prayer for you is that it will.

Prayer

Eternal Father, loving Son, empowering spirit, help us to remember who we are and whose we are. And make us less a drain on others and more a blessing.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.