I just read this in Tom Wright’s book ‘Simply Christian’

…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 things 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.

He follows this up by pointing out people’s understandable misgivings about the church, resonating with those misgivings and pointing to something bigger. The point is the inseparable nature of God’s Spirit at work in the world and the church, where the church is, simply put, God’s people.

I have to confess that I know, due to the nature of my work, it would be easy to mistake me and the things I say as sitting in the camp of those who think that ‘having done what he’s done in Jesus, God now wants us to do our part by getting on with things under our own steam.’ If that’s how you’ve heard me, I apologise, for it is my total conviction that the transforming work of the Spirit in our own lives, the work of the Spirit throughout creation and the ongoing story of justice where God is wooing his creation towards complete redemption, reconciliation and renewal are inseparable.

The true work of justice cannot be done without us being open to the transforming nature of the Spirit because our activity within that story starts with reconciliation between us and the Divine, and then our participation in that story within creation flows from that. That reconciliation with the Divine within ourselves is ongoing and continuous and should prod, prompt and shape how/who we live, breathe and have our being in the world, ultimately reflecting the nature of Christ in the giving of ourselves for others and creation. Thus, through that transformation of ourselves we act as a catalyst for God’s continued transforming of all that is.

You see, and this is where, if looking at the surface, the paradox begins, my first pursuit is not actually making the world a better place. It’s not my chief concern. I can’t save anything and nor am I under any illusion that I can. My first and only concern is to be loved by God and to love Him back. This is not a romantic sort of love, but the love that gives life – that is devoted, committed and ultimately led to the Divine giving breath and life to humanity as reflected in that amazing story of God breathing into the first man in the Genesis story. I want the Divine to breathe into me and I know that without that, I am nothing but an empty shell, or to co-opt the words of Saint Paul, ‘I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.’

I stepped away from thinking I needed to change the world a while ago. When I did so I stepped into making my chief pursuit that union with God. The strange thing is that the pursuit is prompted by the Spirit, fueled by the Spirit and completed by the Spirit. I trip and stumble my way along and engage a number of practices to try and keep myself on that course, but it is God that is at work.

Here’s where the paradox is – by stepping away from the sense of need to change the world and the pursuit of it; by detaching from that and pursuing nothing but union with God we are placed back in that wide story of justice, loving all more effectively and more truly as our lives flow from the Spirit. You see, it’s not possible for that transformation within us to end with us. If it does, then it’s not the work of God, it’s just a self-absorbed, feel good exercise that might give us the warm fuzzies from time to time, but actually has no relevance to anything.

Let me give you an example – the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a sacrament that unites us with Christ and his real presence and we enter into it not because we want to change the world but because we wish to submit to God, worship him, and enter into that union – nothing more and nothing less, but then God does something else with us through it. Read this part of the liturgy from The Great Thanksgiving in A New Zealand Prayer Book from the Anglican church; it captures it:

Send your Holy Spirit that these gifts of bread and wine which we receive may be to us the body and blood of Christ, and that we, filled with the Spirit’s grace and power, may be renewed for the service of your kingdom.

The Eucharist, by its very nature, transforms and shapes us for the service of God’s kingdom, though it’s not the chief reason we participate in it. In the same way my regular practice of silence and other contemplative practices are not done in order to be a better person throughout the day, it’s done because I wish to engage a discipline of stripping everything else away and simply spending time in union with God, whatever that may or may not look like. It’s not the intent, but the natural outflow of that will be a participation in God’s story as my union with him grows.

Thus the story of justice and our participation in it go hand in hand with the transforming work of the Spirit. The two are inseparable. As we place ourselves before God, allow ourselves to be shaped by him and make union with the Spirit our pursuit, so that Spirit will place our lives in the service of others and creation.

May we be people pursuing that union and in so doing, may the Spirit of God that hovered over the waters of the deep in the opening of the Genesis story, being the presence of love over chaos, transform us from beings of chaos to beings of love. In so doing, may we, without thought or pride, be servants of he who is wooing his creation towards a complete reconciliation, redemption and renewal – justice. May our lives lived in that story then continue to shape our union with God.