on God's breath of life

(as promised, here's the context of my previous post)

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   There was something puzzling to explain, alright. Jesus' followers were clearly as puzzled by his resurrection as they had been by much of what he had been saying to them. They were unsure what they were supposed to do next. They were unclear what God was going to do next. At one point, they went back to their fishing. At another point, when they saw Jesus before he disappeared from sight for the last time, they were still asking him about whether all these strange going-ons meant that the old dream of Israel was going to come true after all. Was this the time, they asked, when Israel would receive the kingdom, would be free at last in the sense they and their contemporaries had been hoping for?

   As so often, Jesus doesn't answer their question directly. Many of the questions we ask God can't be answered directly, not because God doesn't know the answers but because our questions don't make sense. As C.S. Lewis once pointed out, many of our questions are, from God's point of view, rather like someone asking, 'Is yellow square or round?' or, 'How many hours are there in a mile?'. Jesus gently puts off the question. 'It isn't for you,' he says, 'to know the times and periods which the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witness in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth' (Acts 1.6-8).

   The Holy Spirit and the task of the church. The two walk together, hand in hand. We can't talk about them apart. Despite what you might think from some excitement in the last generation about new spiritual experiences, God doesn't give people the Holy Spirit in order to let them enjoy the spiritual equivalent of a day in Disneyland. Of course, if you're downcast and gloomy (or even if you're not),  the fresh wind of God's Spirit can and often does gives you a fresh perspective on everything and, above all, a sense of God's presence, love, comfort, and even joy. But the point of the Spirit is to enable those who follow Jesus to take into all the world the news that he is Lord, that he has won the vic-tory over the forces of evil, that a new world has opened up and that we are to help make it happen.

   Equally, the task of the church cannot be attempted without the Spirit. I have sometimes heard Christian people talk as though, having done what he's done in Jesus, God now wants us to do our part by getting on with thing under our own steam. But that is a tragic misunderstanding. It leads either to arrogance or to burnout, or both. Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.

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