A Banquet of Peace

 We were made for peace.  We were made for joy!  We know this by our reaction to those fleeting moments of peace, of joy --- wherein we try desperately to hold on to the moment, not wishing it to melt from our grasp.  And then we try to recreate that moment, often without success.

In his famous biography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis traces those rare moments from his childhood, where joy took ahold of his spirit and called him out of himself, leading him forward in search of its reappearance.  Later in life, after having found the source of his joy, Lewis reflects on our natural instincts as pointing the way to our ultimate destination.  If our thirst is satisfied by a long, cold draft of water, for example, Lewis claims, then our thirst points the way to the thing which will ultimately satisfy it.   In the same way, that "something" we are born desiring, all the things that have deeply possessed our souls were tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught our ear....is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends, or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds....if we lose this, we lose all.

"You cannot give yourself joy," someone once told me....and those words hit me with their truth.  I had been seeking peace....and joy, but those things that I thought would satisfy my search helped for only a moment, and I had to keep on doing the thing that helped...yoga, transcendental meditation, positive thinking...or else anger, helplessness, and frustration returned as a sort of garment I could not take off.

When the Holy Spirit entered my life, I began to discover the truth of Jesus' words, "Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."  His words are truth; they are peace; they are joy.  I could not get enough of them.  Like a starving man, I began to devour them until peace began to reign in me as a permanent state.  Until my joy was overflowing like a stream that I did not have to fill myself.  It had another Source, an unending Source: there is a stream that gladdens the city of God, Psalm 46:5 tells us.

The reason I write is to pour out the water, to share with others the Stream, the Water of Life that Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman coming to the well to draw water for herself and her household.  I want everyone I love to share in the ultimate banquet that satisfies our hunger and thirst.  Jesus compared the idea of heaven to a banquet.  As the seven sons of Job invited one another in turn to a splendid feast, and "great must have been the reciprocal love of Job's sons when they placed all their riches in common....so in paradise, the children of God bid each other to the partaking of their felicities" Francois Rene Blot, In Heaven We'll Meet Again: The Saints and Scripture on our Heavenly Reunion, p. 110).

Once we begin to taste for ourselves the thing that satisfies our innermost cravings; once we begin to drink of the most refreshing and life-giving water, we can no longer be satisfied to eat and drink alone.. We find ourselves going out to the highways and byways, inviting all we meet along the way to share with us in the Banquet of Peace, the Draft of Joy!

Something New!

 "I baptize you with water," said John the Baptist, "but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!"  

We read or hear this at least once a year if we attend church, and we go on about our business as if nothing remarkable has been said.  Truly our ears must be stopped up if we do not hear, or if we do not think, that there is something remarkable here.

We know Jesus has come; we know He did miracles while on earth; we know He died and emerged from the tomb, having conquered death once and for all.  So, for most people, He is now a historical figure like other historical figures we have read about.  Except that unlike them, He still lives and continues His ministry on earth --- but now through his "partners," his disciples, who are gradually becoming like Him through the action of the Holy Spirit in them.

I wonder how many millions of people go to church all their lives without asking to "be baptized" by Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  It seems to me that if we have a desire to be in church, we must have a desire to have a relationship with God.  That relationship, however, seems barely possible and remote from the reality of our lives.

Throughout the Bible, fire has represented an epiphany, a manifestation of the divine presence.  It would be interesting to study just that -- the places where fire has appeared in the Old and New Testaments, and the effect it had on those present.  God appeared in fire to make a covenant with Abraham; He came in the burning bush to commission Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery; He led the people through the wilderness via a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day.  Psalm 97 says, "Fire goes before Him and consumes his foes roundabout."  And of course, we are all familiar with the fire of Pentecost, when the disciples were "baptized with the Holy Spirit and with [the] fire" that shook them to their souls and sent them forth on the mission they had been given.

If we desire at all a relationship with God, we must also desire the fire of the Holy Spirit that makes that relationship possible.  If Jesus is alive today (He is), and if His greatest desire is to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49), then shouldn't we be asking night and day to be "baptized" with that fire?  

In the Greek, the word "baptize" means to "dye." When cloth is dyed, it no longer resembles its former state; it has become something new.  We are all conscious of what we "are now."  What we don't know is what we will become when we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  But imagine the adventure of finding out!  I think we can trust Jesus not to harm us with that baptism, but only to renew and make us more like He is -- able to communicate with and to relate to the Divine presence in our lives.

A Great Gift

 The Holy Spirit enables us to pray and to enter into the same relationship with God that Jesus had  (Alan Schreck: Your Life in the Holy Spirit, 46).

What was Jesus' relationship to God while he was in the flesh?  It was the same relationship He has in heaven, before the beginning of time.  Jesus relates to God as "Father." 

His relationship to God was a scandal to the Jews and the Pharisees: "We want to stone you because you,  a mere man, make yourself equal to God." they said.  And how did He make himself "equal" to God, but that He called God "Father?"  

And how is it that we, mere mortals, can call God our Father?  Jesus Christ came in the flesh to make us children of God, giving us the ability, the power, to call God "Father."  We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into his grace in which we now stand....because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us (Romans 5).

...those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children (Romans 8).

At the Last Supper, Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit -- the Helper, the Advocate, the Paraclete. The word Paraclete is from the Latin "para" (alongside of) and "caleo," (called).  The Holy Spirit is "called" (by Jesus) to be beside us, as a companion, a Teacher, a Counselor, an Advocate for us.  He is the continuation of Jesus' earthly mission, a mission not just for 33 years on earth, but for all of us, for all time.  And Jesus' mission was to gather us in, to bring us to His Father, not in fear of retribution or punishment, but in a community of love for the Father and for one another.

Jesus called the Holy Spirit "the Gift of the Father" (Acts 1).  Surely Jesus meant for us to open the Gift, to ask for Him, to seek Him.  Our relationship with God should be the same as Adam's before the Fall -- walking with God "in the cool of the evening," as Friend and Companion.  But after sin, our relationship tends toward Adam's after the Fall --- hiding from God in fear.  How then is it possible for our fear to be overcome?  

Only if the Spirit of Jesus, who knows the Father so well, lives in us can fear be destroyed once and for all.  And He in a way begged us to seek the Gift -- Matthew 7 and Luke 11 both report Jesus saying, "Ask for the Holy Spirit.  If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask!"