Sunday 27th May 2007PENTECOST

Fr Robert Wiggs

Acts   2  :  1 – 13 ; Romans  8  :  14 – 17 ; John  14  :  8 – 17  &  25 - 27

May I share with you a piece of trusting naivety, which is certainly mine, but doesn’t originate with me. According to Anthony de Mello, a famous Indian Jesuit, all we have to do to experience the Holy Spirit, is simply to breath in. And like many exponents of Eastern spiritualities, he spent a lot of time in his teaching on prayer, simply helping people with how they breathed. What are we to make of this ? Well, you might at least notice what a generous teaching this is. God’s Spirit is everywhere. There is nothing that breathes that is not enlivened by God’s Spirit. What must we do to be saved ? Simply breath. When I was a lot younger than I am now I used to be terrified of the charismatic movement. In the late 1960s, when I was at university, I was terrified of the evangelicals, because they asked me if I had received Jesus into my heart, and I thought I had, but I wasn’t quite sure, and anyway someone so full of sexual desire as I was, couldn’t possibly have Jesus in my heart. Then in the 1970s along came the charismatics, and asked me if I had received the Holy Spirit, and I knew that they could just tell by looking at me that I hadn’t, and this dark secret dogged me even after I was ordained. What would happen if anyone found out that I was a priest without the Holy Spirit ? And then, at some unspecified point I just relaxed, and I gave myself permission to believe that I couldn’t help receiving the love and mercy and generosity of God into my life, it was simply on the air that I breathed.

All we have to do to experience the Holy Spirit, is simply to breath in.  (Anthony de Mello)

Now let me dignify this terribly lax and sloppy doctrine with some theology and perhaps even with a bit of sternness, perhaps even the Puritanism that my personality hasn’t completely escaped from. Even if you only know 3 words of Hebrew or Greek, you will probably know that in both languages the words for spirit, breath and wind are interchangeable – the Hebrew word is Ruach and the Greek word Pneuma. You will be conscious that in the Acts, when a ‘sound like a violent wind’ accompanies the Spirit falling on the disciples, it is more than a weak simile. Biblical similes aren’t similes. They really happen. In fact the Bible, both Jewish and Christian, is too earthy to speak of mere similes, mere metaphors, mere symbols. The symbols are, in a hidden kind of way, the thing itself. As we receive the bread and wine, we really receive Jesus in the Eucharist. Jesus really breathed on his disciples and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit’, God really sends forth his Spirit and creation and new creation happens and the face of the earth is renewed. (Psalm 104 v 30).

Look, I completely understand that I have said nothing that wouldn’t make Richard Dawkins or Jonathan Miller shriek with laughter, and indeed would probably horrify all my Protestant friends. If I stop now what I say is probably inadequate to the Scriptures, but what I am trying to do is approach the sheer generous simplicity of the way the Bible sees things. Sometimes I think the Bible is complicated and obscure only because we are complicated and obscure.

Let me go back to my statement, all we have to do to be saved is to simply breath. Actually I have proposed something difficult, even very costly, because what Anthony Mello is really inviting people to do is cultivate a consciousness of their breathing. Yes, you simply cannot stop God loving you any more than you can stop breathing without dying. But practically speaking, that is a kind of useless statement. What is the use of God’s love if it is completely secret and most people go on living in the normal kind of semi misery that passes for life ?
But I want to spin a fantasy. Let’s imagine that it really caught on among church goers to spend, let’s say, 10 minutes at the beginning and the end of the day, sitting quietly and paying attention to our breathing. That there was a whole army of ordinary Christians cultivating this kind of quietness. And let’s suppose they did it passionately, believing that it was the thing above all else that was going to renew the face of the earth ? Like the monk, Thomas Merton, who, in a lurid metaphor, which  for some reason I find moving, said ‘Let ravens eat my flesh if I forget thee contemplation.’ That is if we had the purity of heart that  wills just one thing, and that that one thing was for twice a day just to sit and breath for 10 minutes.

Let me tell you what I think would happen. Firstly we would discover that it is immensely difficult and and many would give up. Then we would discover that many of us would need friends, some kind of community to keep us to it. But let us also suppose that many of us did stick to it. What would happen ? Over time there would rise up little sanctuaries of freedom. Think of all the nonsense that swirls around in your brain – all the rubbish that is there simply because you are a member of a noisy non-stop society that is terrified of silence. Think of the accusing voices that you are forced to be in dialogue with. My son, whom I love dearly, and who I believe, loves me, nevertheless admits to me that I exist in his brain as a kind of accusing and disapproving voice whom he can’t appease. Do you have angry conversations in your head with your enemies and your accusers ? Or with the things and people who make you afraid ? Do you lie awake in the night in some unwelcome conversation with the spirit of the future, the spirit of how things might turn out, but is nevertheless a false and lying voice that is never quite so real during waking hours ?

What I am trying to draw attention to is the fact that our brains are never empty, that they are occupied by some kind of spirit, to use biblical language, and frequently by spirits that are not for our flourishing. So what would happen if we committed ourselves to this silent breathing. Not, absolutely not, instant transformation. But what would be beginning would be some kind of spiritual warfare. The dominance of the Spirit of the age would be beginning to be broken by the Holy Spirit.

As I understand it the Biblical word Satan literally means ‘the accuser’. And the Biblical word the Paraclete means the Counsel for the Defence.

It is as if both our brains and the whole world we live in is a kind of court, and there is an accusing voice abroad in the world that is  against our flourishing, that we might call Satan. But there really is also the Paraclete, the counsel for the defence, The Holy Spirit, who speaks up on our behalf, who battles with and silences the accusing voice and pours into our hearts and pours into our lives the his gifts, love, joy peace, gentleness, self control and the rest. These things are gifts, they are free gifts of grace, but they can only be received by those who would give their lives for them. And sitting quietly paying attention to your breathing is a wonderful place to start.

Incidentally, as part of my work as Bishop’s Adviser for Asylum and Refugees, I have dealings with real courts and real prisons. I am not talking about some fey spirituality but about how we might grow into real maturity and flourishing even in the enormous difficulties that everyone experiences sometimes and some people experience almost constantly. How  might we discover that the spirit of God is just there as we breath, at times of joy and flourishing but also in the court and the cancer ward.