Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT

This week we continue our exploration of the spiritual disciplines with a look at the Charismatic Tradition – the Spirit-filled Life. Church historians consider April 3,1960, as the beginning of the Charismatic movement for mainline churches in our time. That Sunday morning, Father Dennis Bennett, Rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, spoke to his thriving congregation. He shared that he had received a personal Pentecost or Baptism by the Holy Spirit. And as with the original Pentecost in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, “They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). Fr. Bennett shared that he, and others of his congregation, had this experience. Weeks later he was asked to resign by some of the vestry. He believed that his experience was too valuable to fight over and left. His story was carried in the local newspapers, various wire services picked it up, and the news swept the country. Fr. Bennett did not enjoy being in the public eye…but he couldn’t escape it, especially when Time and Newsweek carried the story.

He was invited by the bishop of Olympia to be the Vicar of St. Luke’s – a dying parish in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The church had a handful of people, but soon some 2,000 people passed through its doors weekly. The church became the center for 150 area priests and ministers from every denomination who would gather for spirit-filled fellowship and prayer. Fr. Bennett’s experience and writings had an international impact – fueling other Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox movements that followed in the 60’s and 70’s.

Here’s what he wrote: “I had been trying hard to become more aware of God, but now all of a sudden He was with me without my having to seek Him. As the Scripture said, He had sought me and found me; and I knew it! I had no precedent for this experience….I had never attended a Pentecostal-type church, and had no notion what they taught or believed. Moreover I did not receive the baptism in the Spirit in any kind of church setting, but in the front room of a private home, praying with two Episcopal lay people.”

Charismatic – a word that conjures up all kinds of images that make many in mainline churches wary – speaking in tongues, worship in a state religious euphoria, biblical literalism….and yet it is a simple Greek word that means….gift…. CHARISMA…gifts given by the Spirit for a singular purpose…to build up the Body of Christ.

A close encounter with the Spirit can be life-giving, but it can also be dangerous. Truth becomes evident. Structures can be turned on their head, the status quo upset, systems challenged and a new order established. Like its root word pneuma—spirit is breath… the wind which blows where it will…not to be controlled.

Today’s gospel is a spirit-filled event. The truth is laid bare and the social order upset. Jesus has the unmitigated nerve to talk to a Samaritan woman in the middle of the day and ask for a drink of water. In this one scene all kinds of rules are broken. For starters, it was noon when they met at Jacob’s well. Water gathering was done by women in the morning and evening. Noontime is a clue that this woman was not accepted. Proper women did not go out at this time of day to collect water. Secondly, she was a Samaritan; for Jesus to sip water from her cup would have made him ritually unclean. The fact that they engaged in conversation was a complete taboo. And, yet, at the prompting of the spirit Jesus uses this moment to teach something about God’s kingdom. The old order is challenged. The debate between Jews and Samaritans of whether God is to be worshipped in the Temple or on the mountain of Sinai is cast aside. Jesus says to her… “The time is already here when real worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”

Worship is a spirit-filled experience in which gifts are given and put in service of the truth. What is the truth made manifest by the Spirit?….THAT GOD IS IN OUR MIDST, the proof of which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that infuses the community with LOVE.

As Paul tells us today in his letter to the Romans, “love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” When the Spirit infuses a community with Charisms…the fruits of those gifts are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, the charisms represented in the window in our baptistry.

The distinguishing mark of the early Church that made it so attractive was that they loved each other, regardless of rank, status, race, or gender. The distinguishing mark of the community of St. Luke’s in Seattle that grew from a handful of parishioners to some 2,000 was love….SEE HOW THESE CHRISTIANS LOVE EACH OTHER.

The Spirit-filled Charisms of tongues, prophecy, discernment, healing, teaching, exhorting, leading….are for one thing and one thing ONLY… the building up of the community….as a community of love.

This is what makes the Charismatic tradition so terribly attractive and so terribly frightening….when people fall in love they do the darndest things, and when the Spirit is present in the midst of that love-making, watch out.

In 1974, a teenage boy joined a small Charismatic prayer group. He watched people turn their lives around. Individuals who struggled with addictions were healed. People whose marriages were on the rocks found renewal. This small group rediscovered their faith, and used the gifts of the Spirit to build up the Body of Christ. A whole new experience of church opened up to him. It awakened in him his own gifts…and most importantly helped him realize that God truly loved him as he was. That teenage boy was me. The Spirit alive in my home church taught me about Christian love…and the power of that love to radically turn lives around.

Jesus could ask for water from an outcast woman because he loved her. And that love changed her. That same spirit-filled love experienced in community has the power to change us as the Body of Christ in Hartford… if we but call upon the spirit to shower her charisms upon us.

“The hour…is now here, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” AMEN.

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