Gifts of the Spirit

Gifts of the Spirit

Rev. David Robins

May 18, 2008

Tonight I am preaching on the Trinity at All Saints Church’s Evensong service. Today is Trinity Sunday and it has given me an opportunity to ponder the three aspects of the Holy Trinity, and in particular, the Holy Spirit.

Unitarians and Universalists are not known for what we typically think of as having gifts of the Holy Spirit. Though as individuals, some of us may have belonged at one time to charismatic Christian churches, we usually leave behind practices such as speaking in tongues, handling poisonous snakes, frenzied prophecies, and faith healing or other miraculous powers. UU’s don’t seem to be possessed with this kind of Holy Spirit.

What Spirit do we possess, Holy or otherwise? I suspect that the Unitarian and Universalist Transcendentalists of the 1900’s and those Transcendentalists today, who believe in a theology of passionate engagement with life, are the closest that we have to religious folk among us guided by what is traditionally known as the Holy Spirit.

What else but a wild, unmanageable spirit could have infused Walt Whitman to announce, “I sing the body electric!” Or Margaret Fuller to exclaim, “I accept the universe!” Or the spirit filled Emerson, known as the “Oracle of Concord,” call himself a “professor of the joyous science.” The UU’s who I find to be most spirit filled today are the hymn writers such as Grace Lewis Mclaren and Carolyn McDade, Jim Scott, and others, who write our favorite hymns that bring us as close to an ecstasy of the spirit as we can get in worship.  

The rabbis of 2000 years ago described this Holy Spirit as the rushing wind, or as a blazing fire. When held within the human soul, a rushing wind or a blazing fire are overpowering experiences. If you have felt a rushing wind or a blazing fire within you, you will have an idea of what the ancient religious leaders were referring to. There is a fine line between being filled with the Holy Spirit and a kind of uncontrolled emotion, or even madness. Is righteous anger an expression of the Holy Spirit?

Last week at the peacemaking discussion we asked ourselves if righteous anger had a place in peacemaking, or does righteous anger do more harm than good? Anger is not considered to be one of the gifts of the spirit in classical theology. Rather, it is how we use our anger that becomes a gift of the spirit.

About ten years ago I found a letter that had been written in righteous anger. It was pinned to a bulletin board in one of the church’s religious education rooms. The room had bright posters and drawings of the children’s image of God. The UU principles were posted on the wall. The religious education rooms were rented out during the week to all sorts of self-help groups, non-church run classes and meetings, and an Indian Sunday School. The letter had been left by someone from one of these groups.

The letter that I found pinned to the bulletin board in that classroom was written on the back of a poster inviting young adults to attend a workshop on painting Islamic art tiles at the local arts center. The note said; “Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation---not by some sort of truth that someone comes to by themselves. I hope you all soon realize that for your own good.”

Had one of them found the note, I am sure that the religious education teacher or the nearest parent would have turned the situation into a moment of learning about topics such as Unitarian Universalism, the inherent worth and dignity in each child, the freedom of conscience in religious matters, and intolerance in some Christian churches in the community.

As for me, I decided to look in the gospels for what Jesus said. I knew that he had said that the only way to the father was through him, but that wasn’t the passage I was looking for. I found what I was looking for in Luke, chapter 9, verse 49, where Jesus says to his disciples, “You were mistaken to condemn people whose beliefs are different than yours, because they too heal and do good for others.”

I found what I was looking for also in Matthew, chapter 15, verses 21-28. A Canaanite woman asks Jesus for help with her daughter’s illness. Jesus rebukes her, using that now famous retort, ‘Why would I throw bread to the dogs?’ But this woman is not a wilting flower. She embodied an assertiveness that gave her a place in religious history. Probably trembling in speaking her truth, she gets in Jesus’ face and tells him, and whether she said in sarcasm or humility, we do not know, “Even a good person would share their food scraps with a dog.”  Jesus immediately realizes that he has made a mistake in judging her simply because she belongs to another religion. He heals her daughter.

We may want gifts of the spirit to come when we are serene and open and waiting, but the truth is that the gifts of the spirit come in moments of conflict, difficulty, grief, such as this one. In the creative interchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, pride went before the fall. In one brief interchange, Jesus learns all the gifts of the spirit:

  • Wisdom
  • Understanding
  • Counsel
  • Fortitude
  • Knowledge
  • Piety
  • Humility before the source of that which animates in us the true and good and the reverent.

These are the classical gifts of the spirit, found in the Hebrew scripture of Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 2. Isaiah tells people that their leader, their messiah, whoever it might be will have these virtues, these gifts. These are the gifts that the finest and best leaders have had.

In the Christian scripture, the apostle Paul writes that the fruit of the spirit is

  • Love
  • Joy
  • Peace
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • Goodness
  • Faithfulness
  • Gentleness
  • Self-control

As wonderful as these gifts lay themselves upon our souls, in both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures they are surrounded by some of the most unpleasant messages. Isaiah says that God is going to destroy the land and the trees and the people all around. And Paul includes his gifts of the spirit as the reward for denying the desires of the flesh.

No, I think that the gifts of the spirit come not from wishing death and destruction upon one’s enemies, nor from hating our bodies. The gifts of the spirit come when I fix my eye on the gifts rather than on revenge or hatred, or self-recrimination.

The gifts of the spirit come to us in two ways. The first is by seeking these virtues and the second is by deliberately contemplating these gifts.

Emerson wrote “Set out to study the truth in these gifts of the spirit. Read upon them. Walk to think upon them. Talk of them. Write about them. The gleams you do get, out they will flash!”