An Embarcadero Epiphany

BART trains usually are spaced 20 minutes apart on Sundays, and as it turns out I arrived at the beginning of one of those spaces.  So I had 18 minutes to burn before the next train arrived.  I've also picked up the habit of bringing my iPad along, not to play SimCity Deluxe (which is the only game on the iPad, by the way) but because I have the free BibleGateway app.  The Embarcadero BART station also has the advantage of having free WiFi.  And so I did my "rounds" and checked my e-mails, and Facebook.  Lo and behold, Reinhold sent me a Facebook message.  "Henry," he writes, "I want to be baptized."

The last time I saw Reinhold was a year ago.  He rarely showed up at church.  Our youth and college group friends barely knew him.  All of a sudden, he e-mailed me asking for a recommendation to join the National Guard.  I was a bit hesitant since I really didn't know him very well, but he didn't have any more people he could ask.  So I agreed and asked him why he wanted to join the Guard (me being a Hauerwassian pacifist).  Apparently, school didn't go so well, and he got into a few fights with others, etc.  I did the best I could, trying to explain away every character flaw that might keep him away from being accepted for enlistment.  After all, with humanitarian violations like Abu Ghraib and all, Reinhold would've been a comparative saint in the Army!  (That was not what I wrote.)  He was accepted to boot camp, and that was that.  I sent a message or two (that were not responded to) but I figured he had his new friends in the Army, and that'll be good enough.

When I received the message, I was at a loss.  Wait, what?  Wha... wha...?  The request came out of nowhere.  I had not been praying especially for Reinhold. (It wasn't like I was on my knees, praying my tears out for Reinhold to "come to Jesus".)  In pure honesty, I assumed all was well at boot camp.  I allowed him to leave my general ministerial sights.  For all I know, I'm not even sure I was all that effective during my two years at the New York church.  And yet, even while I'm in San Francisco, Reinhold sent me that message.  "Henry, I want to be baptized."

But the key here is why I have embraced Reformed theology.  Reinhold may have left my ministerial sights, but he never left God's.  The Spirit was working, and was always working, despite me.  I, with my shortcomings, my only ministerial gift seeming to be the ability to sit still on my big butt, nod my head, and listen to others, was not an impediment to God's work.  All I could do is write recommendations and just say, "Well, hope all goes well."  Very unpastoral, in retrospect.  But yet, God still works.

The truth of the matter is that God is working in the world.  Oftentimes, in our Americanized, "Home Depot DIY" culture, we are tempted to go at it ourselves.  God, we truthinessly reason, needs our help.  Of course, God is all powerful... but God needs our help.  Or, time is short, God!  Giddyup for Jesus!  And with that error, we go forth doing foolish things in the name of God.  The history of colonialism in the Americas was precisely an exercise gone awry in "giddyup for Jesus."  Quite oppositely, the Reformed faith stresses that God is always hard at work.  It's not that God partners with us in God's ministry; no, in God's grace we are allowed to partner in God's ministry.  And so, God's work continues even when we're tired, when we're busy, when we sit on the sidelines a bit.  To put it starkly, God doesn't need us.  Rather, we need God.

I've been reflecting on the Presbyterian ying-yang of "order and freedom."  But what is order today is not necessarily order tomorrow.  What is freedom today is not freedom tomorrow.  The essentia of order and freedom must remain constant, yes, but its manifestation does not.  For that reason, John Calvin is right when he notes that the church is reformed and always reforming.  Thus, the danger for the life of the church comes when we think that we've "got it," when we've placed boundaries on the work of the Spirit and assume that the Spirit would gladly just stay put.  When that happens, we confuse manifestation with essence.  This degenerates into legalism, because if manifestation is essence, then why reflect on essence when all you need is to enforce manifestation?  As a result, the church becomes the bastion of ossified order.  That is why many mainline churches are dying, I think.  Not because they're "liberal" but because they simply keep doing what they've always been doing without really know why.

The Spirit is restless.  The Spirit elides human resistance.  And we would do well to humble ourselves and listen to the Spirit work in the world.  I wonder, perhaps, if we've become too American in our theology, too DIY, too reliant on human strength.  I want to sit back and see God work, like watching an artist paint - there is no sin in that.  "But Henry," you may ask, "then aren't we just sitting back and doing nothing?"  Says who?  Life is a balance of work and rest.  If we work all the time, we may end up messing up every other painting.  It is a worthy spiritual practice, I think, to sit back and watch God work.  And I trust that God will, at the right times, call us up to add our brush stroke here and there.  Sit, be still!  And know that God is God.

After all, has not God predestined us to be in the same studio as He?  Why work so hard to prove it when it was already the case?  Let us sit, be still, and know that He is God.  And in God is rest from the ills of this world.  In God is release from the structures of his world.  In God is Order and Freedom.