The Spirit Conspiracy
Today, we continue our year-long study of We Make the Road by Walking by Brian McLaren.
Over the past several chapters and through the next several chapters in the book, McLaren has been drawing out specific qualities of the Holy Spirit and how each quality shapes us and the movement of the Spirit in the world around us.
But this week, the quality described is more about HOW the Spirit moves…
Let’s explore that a bit.
McLaren talks about the Spirit Conspiracy. Not the Spirit OF conspiracy, but the Spirit Conspiracy.
What does the word conspiracy mean to you?
I found it interesting that commonly held definitions of conspiracy have to do with plotting toward something harmful, something bad.
Make no mistake, McLaren uses some controversial language to describe God’s movement throughout this book. I know some were unsettled earlier when Jesus’ ministry was described as an “uprising.”
It is important to hang with some of these uncomfortable ideas. To ask why they might make us a little unsettled. To dig a little deeper and not just dismiss…because that is one way that we make the road by walking.
If we move deeper than the common usage of “conspiracy”, the roots of the word “conspire” are from Latin origins, root words that come together to mean something like “to breathe together.”
Ah…. Now this can be a helpful way to think about how the Spirit works with us. McLaren is suggesting that somehow the Spirit is working in the lives of others – and here’s the spoiler – by working with US.
Specifically, the Holy Spirit is at work to bring about God’s preferred future, the Kin-dom of God, and we are invited to be part of that work. To breathe together with the Spirit.
And McLaren specifically points to the relationships we all have in our lives, and how through those relationships, we can be partners or collaborators, breathing with the Spirit of God to touch the lives of the people in our lives.
Let’s frame this shared work with the Spirit today by taking a deeper look at the two texts you heard – both Epistles. Remember that the Epistles are communications – think letters, sermons, teachings - that emerged because of challenges communities faced. These were messages of counsel about how these communities should actually work, grow and behave in the world. Both the letter to the Hebrews and to Philemon offer practical insight and advice about how followers of Christ should move through the world.
It is in this spirit that these letters matter to our conversations today.
But how do we read the counsel in these letters, recognizing that they were written in a specific context, a society of norms and laws and economy that is so different from today, while also gleaning the deep truths these writings offer to us even now?
We have to set them in context and we have to consider our own context. Always. Each time.
Let’s begin with Philemon, the shortest of the letters believed to have been truly authored by Paul. In this letter, Paul is addressing a friend, Philemon, about a man named Onesimus. Onesimus had been a slave in Philemon’s household. He escaped or left, seemingly because of a falling out with Philemon as his master, and he has been spending time with Paul (who writes this letter from prison). Paul is asking Philemon to receive Onesimus with a renewed relationship AS IF Philemon were receiving Paul into his household.
To be clear, Paul is asking Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother and an equal, not as a slave. And if the economic status of “slave” must continue, Paul is asking Philemon to participate in the relationship with Onesimus as equals rather than in a hierarchy, as master and slave.
I want to be clear that historically, this letter has been problematic for us in the US. Let’s be very clear: In the history of the US, this text was used by supporters of slavery to justify enslaving black and brown bodies. But in these ancient times during which Paul wrote, slavery was not bound by race or skin color – a lot of different people were subject to slavery. Slavery was something that came about through war or through debt.
This historic difference is an example of why it is vitally important to read scripture with an eye toward its original context, to bring our rational minds to the work of interpretation. There were very specific reasons that Paul would not make this conversation about condemning slavery in HIS context – but instead he is addressing the relationship between two people.
What is of value here to us today is the root of Paul’s request – no matter how society defines the relationship, Philemon, I want you to receive Onesimus as your beloved sibling, an equal, a partner, a forgiven friend.
Paul is talking about something rather earth-shattering here – it is as if he is expressing the words of Jesus as reflected in John’s gospel – as I have loved you, you must also love one another – and he’s doing it decades before John’s gospel would record and pass along this teaching.
So out of Paul’s own experience of Jesus, out of his own experience of how these new communities of believers were seeking to live out Jesus’ message in the ancient world, he is asking his friend Philemon to receive someone of a different social status back into the arms of love – because that is the way we are reconciled to one another.
It is really important to understand how NEW this way of thinking would have been.
As N.T. Wright puts it, Paul is offering “a window on the new world that started through the ministry of Jesus…”.
Paul is doing a completely NEW thing – asking followers to live like Jesus lived in a time where witness and experience and community were all there was to offer teaching and examples of this – a very SMALL group of folks at that! He is proposing that to behave like Jesus is to be reconciled across wildly different class and social barriers.
Letting love define their relationship, and not all the trappings of social norms…that was the way of Jesus.
We cannot take the newness and the boldness of that away from what Paul is saying.
Forget how society defines your relationship – live as brothers in Christ.
That is an ideal to live into, isn’t it? Much easier said than actually enacted 24/7.
Moving then to the text from Hebrews, we have instruction and guidance not to an individual but to a community.
There are guideposts for how to move through life as believers in this text.
One guidepost is to extend hospitality as a demonstration of love, never knowing who it is you are welcoming in any situation.
One guidepost is to extend compassion to those in hard circumstances.
One guidepost is to stay true to our covenant promises like marriage.
One guidepost is to show loyalty and constancy to those have taught us well.
Or maybe it is more fruitful to think of being loyal to what CHRIST shows us in life.
Again, all of this is a remarkable ask of folks. Forget the norms of the social structures around you. Open your doors. Tend to those experiencing hardship even if it is hard for you. Stay true to your promises to one another.
And in doing so, in sharing this kind of love and commitment with others, the power of Jesus Christ is present in the past, in the present, and in the time to come.
By the work of your lives. By the work of living in reconciliation with those around you. No matter what. In that – in that the power of Christ will be present.
I think it is important to visit that word, reconcile, briefly. It can mean to coexist in harmony. It can mean to restore good relations between things. Again, going back to the Latin roots, it can mean to brings something back together.
To do the relational work it takes to be in whole and healthy relationships. Across all KINDS of relationships.
Woof. That is so very hard.
And these early communities didn’t do it perfectly.
And we’re not going to do it perfectly.
But it helps to focus on what we can do, and that is where Brian McLaren takes us in this chapter.
I want you to take a moment to think about the people in your life.
Think about your life partner or your children. Your grandchildren. Your whole family, those close and those more distant. Think about your friends. And maybe your co-workers. Your neighbors. Your clubs. Think about people right here in the community of Faith.
Now I want you to think about these people based your relationship with them organized in concentric circles around you. In other words, imagine yourself as the bullseye on a target. Now start placing people in the circles around you. Those close in will be those with whom you have the deepest connection. Those further out are just that – more distantly connected. Or maybe it is a web…a web of connections, some which are close in and some further out.
What if…
What if you have the opportunity to share God’s love with each of these circles moving out from the center?
And in fact, what if that – relationship with people like YOU who are disciples of Jesus - is the primary way that some of these people will experience God’s love?
How might their lives be impacted?
How would your life be impacted?
Now…McLaren also reminds us that there is a larger circle beyond all of those relationships. That circle encompasses creation itself. How is it that our actions and our choices and our behaviors impact that greater circle of all of creation?
Imagine the power of being in reconciled relationship throughout creation.
That feels like heaven on earth.
To conspire with the Holy Spirit is to bring God’s light and love into the work of reconciliation.
And there is so much work to do.
Will you join the conspiracy?
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