Fr. Jacob's April 2015 Newsletter Message

Come Holy Spirit

Thomas Jefferson infamously took a knife to Holy Scripture. He was accused throughout his life of being an atheist or a heathen. Such claims were obviously false, at least in his own mind. In part for his edification and in part to defend himself, Jefferson created his own versions of the Gospels. He used a knife to slice out of the Bible passages of the Gospels that he found repugnant to his morals or unacceptable to his reason. What remained after his careful slicing a dicing, he glued into a book. One scholar has called his method, "Scripture by subtraction". The cut and paste book survives in the Smithsonian and is a fascinating, if perplexing, summary of the life teaching of Jesus, as confidently interpreted by Thomas Jefferson.

Jesus, as Jefferson dices him up, is a teacher of moral truths that are sublime and universal. Yet Jefferson's Jesus is one from which all divine intimacy has been pared away. No Virgin Birth, no healings, no exorcisms and no Transfiguration. In fact, no miracles at all. Jefferson's Jesus dies on the cross but does not rise from the dead.

The boldness with which the surgeon cuts is extraordinary to see. It's not just that Jefferson is sure that he interprets Jesus better than the church and more faithfully than the old Creeds. He is fearlessly assured that he understands Jesus better than the authors of the Gospels. A Jesus from which every supernatural claim to authority, every extraordinary moment of divine intimacy, anything that might gesture to the Incarnation and everything that might whisper of the Trinity - has been carefully amputated.

Even as he wielded his knife, Jefferson seems, nevertheless, to have taken for granted that Jesus would keep an enduring and obvious place as a teacher of universal morality. It has turned out that this significance itself is parasitic upon the theology that Jefferson rejected. Once the authority to lop and chop has been taken, why not fell the whole tree?

Unsurprisingly, the Holy Spirit is almost entirely absent from Jefferson's version of the life of Jesus. The enlightened gentleman farmer evidently felt no need, and gave no place, to empowering breath of the Spirit in his moralized version of the spiritual life. One wonders whether his slaves felt quite the same way when they heard about what the Spirit might do, as the Apostle teaches, " Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Corinthians 3:17).

For in Holy Scripture the Spirit is manifest, visibly, even powerfully present, at those momemts when the character and identity of Jesus as Messiah is revealed. It is exactly Jesus' authority and character as to one who is the Father's Son to whom the Spirit bears witness: at the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin, at his Baptism, at the Temptation in the Wilderness, at the Transfiguration, in his ministry of deliverance and deeds of power.

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, 'I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire...Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.' Luke 2:15-16, 21-22

After the Resurrection, the same Spirit is poured our upon the whole church at Pentecost, empowering and drawing the church into God's plan. Through the life giving anointing of the Spirit, the church is to bear witness in its life, action and teaching to God's will and God's purpose.

St. Peter preaches so on the very Day of Pentecost

"In the last days it will be, God declares. that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy, And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

'You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know - this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. Acts 2:17-24

In other words, the same Spirit that manifested his empowering presence in the life of Jesus Christ, is at work within you as a member of his church, empowering you and leading you as member of the church to bear witness to God's will.

During the season of Easter, as we celebrate that Christ is alive and reigning, I invite you to open yourself again to the work of the Spirit. Pray that the Spirit might fill you anew, draw you more deeply into God's plan, into God's people, that you might share his life, receive his gifts and bear his fruit.

I intend to teach about the Holy Spirit every Sunday in our adult ed. Class (9:15am - 10:15am). Scripture tells us what are God's gifts through the Spirit, and what are the fruits of the Spirit, how the church exists in the power of the Spirit, how the Spirit transforms us and so much more.

I would love for our church, to open ourselves with faithful vulnerability to the empowering of the Holy Spirit. I pray that it is so.

Much love,

Fr. Jacob