The creation narrative of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures portrays the Spirit [ruach] “hovering over the water” (Genesis 1) like an eagle hanging in the air over its young in the nest. [Jerusalem Bible translation, ref. Deut.32:11].   The key Hebrew word ruach, invitingly ambiguous and multivalent,  is used in Hebrew scriptures offering a breadth of meanings including air, breeze, wind; breath; spirit, human soul; mind; divine spirit and more.  Escaping from the protective and creative presence of Ruach – the animating energy - is inconceivable and futile (Psalm 139).  

 

The Spirit brings humans to life and offers (“to each person”) gifts that have the potential of awakening the fullness of life for those who received them (1 Corinthians 12). These gifts include wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, and awe before the Holy One.  (Echoes of Isaiah 11:1-2a describing the messianic ruler to come.)   As humans appreciate and cherish these life-enhancing gifts of the divine Spirit, their lives bear fruit.   These fruits are summarized in the letter to the church in Galatia (5:22 ff.) as:    love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.  

Christian history shows ongoing attempts to corner these gifts by associating them primarily with the Christian Church and its sacramental activities. Theological faithfulness, however, requires that these gifts of the Spirit be understood to transcend the limitations the institutional church may seek to assert. The Spirit is free and beyond human control.  Ecclesiastical acts may provide opportunities to experience and discern the movement of the Spirit and her gifts, but the Church cannot and may not claim to limit or control the Spirit's work of showering gifts and generating spiritual fruits upon the entire human family. 

In its generation of life, the Spirit is not limited to humans alone. The divine Spirit is the source and giver of all life and nurtures networks of connectedness and community.  Scientist David Suzuki – a non-theist - acknowledges that “as spiritual beings, we [humans] have to know that there are forces in the cosmos beyond human understanding and control, that we are indissolubly part of the totality of life on Earth, caught up in an endless process.” (The Sacred Balance, Vancouver, Greystone Books, 1997. P. 213)  

German theologian Juergen Moltmann enables us to ground this grand perspective theologically by stating “… the community of creation, in which all created things exist with one another, for one another, and in one another, is also the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” (English translation. London, SCM Press, 1992. P. 10 of creation.”)

The fruits of the Spirit grace the lives of human as their lives are guided by the Spirit’s freely offered gifts. The Spirit is not contained by any human or institutional limitation, but is ubiquitous and free – global, universal, unlimited, available to all who attend to the paradoxically transcendent but always present gifts of the holy.  As the New Creed of The United Church of Canada proclaims:  the Spirit  "works in us and others” without limit.

In the stories which the Gospels tell about the life of Jesus, we get further help in understanding the Spirit’s action in the global human family.  In the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7), Matthew  recounts that Jesus taught crowds of people who gathered to hear him. The good news (Greek:  euaggelion  – Gospel) was proclaimed to any and all who came to listen. There was no price of admission; there were  no preconditions or disclaimers as to who is or is not eligible to hear, let alone to benefit from the occasion. The divine Word is  freely shared!

Leonhard Goppelt was my New Testament professor during a year of study at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in the University of Hamburg, Germany.  In his Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1. [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1981, p. 125], he observes that in the Beatitudes, blessings are freely given “for those who mercifully cared for people in distress, who walked a straight path, who were peacemakers, and who were persecuted for their part in the battle for justice.” “That is to say, the one who became merciful in the sense of the Beatitude was the person who expected [their] own future to come from the Beatitude’s promise, and not [however] the person who wished to attain recognition in return for humanitarian accomplishments.”  It is all a matter of grace.

The divine Spirit blesses “those” – anyone in the human family - who use their gifts of the Spirit as the means by which to bless and benefit any others in the Creator’s one human family. They need not be able or even willing to name “the Spirit”. Nor was the blessing “earned” or conditional upon a “profession of faith in the Spirit.”   Rather, it was experienced as the person participated in the pursuit of justice and wholeness – the abundant life, humanity in its fullness – to which Jesus committed his entire existence.  

 

The Beatitudes of Jesus were not intended simply for Jesus’ chosen or prescribed circle of friends, though these companions may be inclined to attribute their commitments to the gifts of the divine Spirit of Christ.  But the Beatitudes were directed to “the crowds” – so that anyone, anywhere might be led “into an existence that was blessed, i.e. upon which even now was conferred life-fulfilling significance.” (op. cit.)  Not imposing pre-conditions was Jesus’ Way, Goppelt concludes, “to show mercy to people in order to make them merciful.”

The same intent is obvious in the last judgement story in Matthew 25, in which the Judge welcomes into the kindom those who feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked.  They - the blessed - were unaware that every time they fed, visited, or clothed the “least of these”, they were doing it to the Holy One (v. 40).  The gifts of the Spirit evident in people’s kindness, gentleness, and love of the other are  marks of their being blessed as fully human beings.  This points, says Goppelt, to a kind of “latent Christianity of humanitarianism.” (ibid. p. 126)

I would differ with my kindly professor in describing this as “a latent Christianity”. These virtuous acts described in both the Beatitudes and in Matthew’s little Apocalypse can, by Christians, be associated with Jesus Christ. I would also acknowledge that my knowledge of this teaching is rooted in the life and work of Jesus. But the same divine Spirit, present at the commencement of Jesus' redemptive ministry, showers gifts, fruits, and blessings far and wide  on all in the Creator’s one human family who knowingly or unknowingly share in blessing others. 

Whether within or beyond the Christian faith tradition, we can acknowledge that the gifts and fruits and blessings, which enliven healing and wholeness to each and all in human family, find their source in the ubiquitous and restless Spirit pouring out the unconditional love of the Holy One.

In years past and in our time the Spirit’s generosity is evident still calling for and awaiting an explosion of benevolent, unconditional, and universal humanitarianism. It is always the right time for “people of goodwill” to bless others with love, justice, and peace and thereby experience being blessed. The Holy One yearns for that blessing to be experienced by the entire human family signalling that the reign of love, justice, and peace has come. 

 

The efficacity of this ministry doesn’t depend on conversion. The “minister” and the ministry is blessed because they are both called into being by the divine Spirit and, in doing it for one or more of the least of these, it is “done for” the Holy One. That suffices.

I have no doubt my father would want to be in conversation with me about this. He recognized that Carey was a diligent humanitarian in many of his ways with the people in West Bengal. But he felt constrained to maintain that Carey’s mandate was fundamentally centered on conversion because of the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20.  

The missionary centered not on unconditional love for the other because, for Carey,  the precondition for this redemptive love was baptism and profession of faith in Jesus Christ.  In upholding any pre-condition, I believe, he and other missionaries did not do full justice to the humanity of the others as they were, did not fully acknowledge the ubiquity of the Spirit and the Way of Jesus, and limited God’s freedom to include and bless whomever God chooses to favour. (See the story of the vineyard employer in Matthew 20:1-16). 

    

Caring for and loving others is not a method by which to entice people to convert - to proselytize, but is an end in itself. Proselytism is a transaction which does not fully respect the freedom of the both  other and of the Holy Other. True caring for and loving the human-other reflects and realizes the unconditional, indefatigable, persistent and generous love that the Holy Other has for the whole of Creation, including the human family and each of its members.   

The Spirit invites all people and blesses the work of respectfully relating to people of other faith backgrounds as a vitally important relational web into which the human family can  grow in love and  unity leading to God's  peace (Shalom, Salaam). The Spirit moves in mysterious ways to bless and accompany the one family towards the universal reign of God.

So, what does this all mean for the particularity of Christian faith and for our understanding of the community of faith & mission (ecclesiology)? Is this just syncretism, my father might ask?

More to come….