“May you be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love . . . may be able to know the love of Christ.”  Paul in Ephesians 3

“The Spirit of Love is the Spirit of God.”

Who is Christ? 

That was the question I asked last week, not only in this blog, but also in my Sunday message.  One person summed it up better than I did by saying “The Embodiment of God’s Love.”  I LOVE that!

How can mere human beings fathom the immensity of God’s Love. . . . it’s pretty hard to do, isn’t it?  How does all of THAT eternal, unlimited, boundless love, or maybe even a portion of it, become “real” to us?

Paul gives us the answer in the above passage from Ephesians.  It is through the Holy Spirit.  But that leads to another question:  “Who is the Holy Spirit . . . to you?”

To be perfectly honest I would say that for a significant part of my life, especially during my pastoral “career”, the answer would be “I don’t know.”  Oh, I knew ABOUT the Spirit, what I had been taught and told.  Namely that the Spirit was the third person of the Holy Trinity whose main job was to bring us to faith in Jesus, working solely through the Word (Bible) and Sacraments (Baptism and Communion).  I could quote bible passages and recite theological dictums.  I had quite a bit of knowledge about The Spirit, but I really didn’t KNOW the Spirit.  I was like the people in the church in Corinth who knew something about The Spirit, but were WAY off track in personally experiencing The Spirit.[1]  I needed to be shown a “better way.”  And that way is LOVE.

If Christ is the unifying principal of God’s love, who is condensed for a time into the person of Jesus who embodies that love, then The Spirit is the means by which that Love of God is delivered to us.  To receive The Spirit is to be filled with the love of Christ in one’s “inner self”, which we call the heart. This is what Paul is saying in that passage quoted from Ephesians. 

• The Mystery of God is revealed in Christ;
• Christ is the eternal principal of God’s Love for all time and in all things;
• Jesus is the embodiment of God’s Love;
• That Love of God is “gifted” to us in the Holy Spirit;
• It is through the Spirit that the Love of God becomes personal and real in our lives;
• And that love drills down into our deepest self.

So those are all principals, but the question remains:  “How does the Loving work of the Holy Spirit become personal for you?”

I can’t answer that.  It is a question that only you can.  I can only be certain that there are no limits to how the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our inner being.  How foolish to believe that it is only through the Bible, Baptism, or Holy Communion.  If that were the case most, if not all, of the great men and women of faith, would not have been brought to faith at all!  I am positive that there are as many ways for The Spirit to pour out the Love of Christ upon us as there are people.  Jesus seemed to say as much in John 3:8.

Perhaps this is why the symbol of the Holy Spirit for the Iona Community is a wild goose.  The Spirit is wild and free, and works in delightfully surprising and unpredictable ways.  At the first Pentecost The Spirit fell upon the disciples in the form of fire and caused them to speak in other languages!  Who could’ve imagined?  For some The Spirit comes through experiencing a literal fire—I wonder how The Spirit has worked, or is working, in the lives of all those who lived through the horrible fires in LA?  For some The Spirit comes through loving contact with another person (summed up perhaps in the phrase “the laying on of hands”).  For some The Spirit comes as a sudden, blinding light in the midst of their deepest darkness.  For some The Spirit comes while digging in the dirt.  For some The Spirit comes while in prison.  For some The Spirit comes while caring for children.  For some The Spirit comes while washing clothes or cooking or cleaning floors.  For some . . . you fill in the blank.  How has or does The Spirit work in you?  How have you, or do you, experience the love of God in Christ Jesus?  Watch for it.  Wait for it.  Welcome it.

And may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit be yours now and forever!

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[1] I would invite you to pause here and read 1 Corinthians 12 and 13.