Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful…
One of the passages of Scripture for today as we look at call and commissioning is Mathew 28:18-20, “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
In this popular passage of Scripture, Jesus commissions everyone there in hearing of his voice to go and make disciples of the nations, and he promises them through the presence of the Holy Spirit, that he will always be withthem. All who hear his voice today are called to the same commission, to go and make disciples of the nations by and in the same continuous power and presence of the same Holy Spirit. I believe this calling has been neutered by the domesticated and “suburbanized” lenses through which I would guess almost all who have opened this link, read Scripture.
I love good coffee and I have become a sort of “coffee snob.” One morning a few months ago I was getting my Chemex glass pour-over coffee maker (like the one in the picture on this blog home page) down off the top of my stainless steel refrigerator to brew the perfect cup of coffee. It slipped out of my hands and fell on my travertine tile kitchen floor and shattered. What did I do? Why I took a picture of it of course and posted it on Facebook to let everyone know of the tragedy that had just happened in my life. One of my “compassionate” friends posted a comment, “Sounds like a middle-class, suburban, white–boy problem.” I think we all, I know I do, suffer from the problem of filtering what we read in Scripture and what the Holy Spirit is speaking to us through our middle-class, urban, western value lenses.
Frances Chan also deals with this problem in the short 10 minute video on the alling of the Holy Spirit. Take some time now to watch it. Then read Acts 1:4-8, Matt. 28:18-20; John 20:21-22. Please post your comments and reflections from my blog, the video, or the Scripture readings below.
Much love,
Gary