wfn.org | [ENS] Pentecost message from the Presiding Bishop (Daybook)

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

May 13, 2005 -- Friday Forum

Pentecost message from the Presiding Bishop

Growing in Truth

[ENS] -- Though we may hear much these days about division in the life
of
the church I am struck by the many instances in which the presence of
forces
that seek to divide have in fact moved us in the opposite direction and
have
obliged us to seek a deeper place of mutual encounter where together we
can
experience our being broken open in new ways by the power of the Spirit
and
the ever active reconciling love of Christ.

Our Spring meeting of the House of Bishops which produced a remarkable
convergence summed up in a Covenant Statement has been seen by many as
the
fruit of the Spirit's activity among us. The desire to meet at the level
of
the heart was strongly felt on all sides and what emerged is far more
than a
series of words on a page but a fundamental disposition rooted and
grounded
in a force that transcended us all and brought us together in ways that
few
could have imagined at the beginning of our meeting.

I have just returned from a meeting of the Executive Council during
which we
sought to discern how best to respond to the primates' request regarding
our
participation in the life of the Anglican Consultative Council. As I
left
the conference center where the meeting had been held one of their staff
told me she had felt the presence of the Spirit as Council worked and
prayed
together. I said that I most certainly agreed.

It is through the agency of the Holy Spirit that God's creative activity
continues in the world and Christ continues to unfold his truth.
Christ's
truth is not simply about religious truth but all truth however mediated
and
in whatever way it is encountered. Wherever there is a taste for truth
there
is God, says St. Augustine of Hippo. And again "every truth by whomever
uttered is by the Holy Spirit," observes St. Thomas Aquinas. The Holy
Spirit
whom Jesus in the Gospel of John calls the Spirit of Truth is always at
work
enlarging and deepening our vision and widening our embrace to encompass
the
many ways in which truth continues to unfold and at the same time
challenge
us. Each one of us structures our lives around what we perceive to be
true
for us. Such truth is severely limited by the various forces that have
shaped us and the context in which we have found ourselves. One of the
greatest gifts of being baptized into the risen body of Christ is that
our
several truths ar!
e brought together and reordered and refashioned under the aegis of the
Holy
Spirit who works within us over time the deep truth of Christ. That deep
truth is entered into largely as my perceptions of truth are challenged
and
stretched by the truth embodied in the other limbs and members of
Christ's
body. Because the Holy Spirit is sovereign and free it transcends all
the
limitations and can work in different ways within different cultures and
different expressions of religion. Here I find it instructive that in
the
story of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles the Spirit enables those
present to hear the good news each in their own language, each within
the
givenness of their own context and cultural reality. This ability of the
Spirit to speak in different languages is a sign that difference and
otherness are to be valued and affirmed. Such is God's sensitivity to
different ways of perceiving and making meaning, all of which are caught
up
in the mystery of God's own life.

It is the function and ministry of the Holy Spirit to reconcile
difference
not primarily on the level of opinion but on the level of what scripture
calls "the hear," namely the deep core and center of the human person
which
is the secret place where the love of God "poured into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit" most profoundly resides. Here I am struck by how much of
the
church's life is played out at a level of argumentation rather than
seeking
to discern the presence of the Spirit in one another at the level of the
heart. There are those within the body of Christ with whom I may
profoundly
disagree, yet at the same time embrace them as brother or sister because
we
are able to meet the level of the heart. If this seems far fetched, I
think
we can easily look at a number of families in which mutual affection
overrides widely differing points of view.

The fact that truth is continuously unfolding is borne witness to by our
increasing knowledge of the universe in which we live, and the mysteries
of
the human mind and body. Each year we learn new things, and unlearn some
things that were once undisputed. Cigarette advertisements come to mind,
and
I vividly remember the image of the physician in the white coat
extolling
the benefits for our throats of cigarettes. Centuries pass and we learn
that
the earth is not flat, that our planet is not the center of the solar
system
and that matter can be converted into energy. And wouldn't the
alchemists be
amazed at our ability to do what that always wanted to do, namely turn
one
element into another. Those ancients didn't have the cyclotron. This
learning, and unlearning I believe is all part of what Jesus meant when
he
said "I have many more things to say to you but you cannot bear them
now.
However, when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all
truth."
Is it not possibl!
e that some of the disagreements within the life of the church are part
of
the Spirit's unrelenting activity in leading us to new and deeper
understandings of things we have previously regarded as fully known.

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