November 30th, 2021
Matthew 21:12-22
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 He said to them, “It is written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
but you are making it a den of robbers.”
14 The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry 16 and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
17 He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
18 In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. 20 When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21 Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. 22 Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”
Real Presence
After claiming the temple as a house of prayer, after repartee with the temple authorities, after healing the blind and lame, Jesus pronounces withering to the fig tree. He tells us that our faith can do the same, and indeed, can move mountains.
Episcopalians and many others are understandably and appropriately uneasy with the ‘name it and claim it’ distortions of the success Gospel. A topic which can go off onto rabbit trails. In the midst of an Advent theme of waiting for Christ, we simultaneously practice our way into the already-realized and ever-new Real Presence which has been the experience for Christians in Eucharist for centuries.
For some decades Christians have sung the simple praise song:
He is here, He is here, He is moving among us;
He is here, He is here, as we gather in His Name.
He is here, He is here, and He wants to work a wonder;
He is here, He is Here, as we gather in His Name.
We await His second coming, while at the same time experientially and publicly know the Kingdom of God here and now, ever since the endowment of the living reality of Pentecost. Pentecost, the Holy Spirit’s continuing presence in the Church, is the overarching, new and eternal ‘new normal.’ In the twentieth century, what used to be called ‘extreme unction’ at the time of death, has been reclaimed as the anointing with oil, unction, in the ministry of healing: Now. Is ‘thy blessed unction from above, comfort, life and fire of love,’ pre-COVID, mid-COVID, or post-COVID?
LaDonna Osborn, who has witnessed thousands and thousands of healings all over the world since she was a child accompanying her mother and father on mass evangelism healing missions, has a simple proclamation of the Gospel: Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever; He is here, and he wants to heal you. T.L. Osborn—son of a dirt-poor Oklahoma dust bowl family—is not fictional, not bogus, not dishonest, nor exploitative. In 1947 Osborn experienced the Risen Christ walking into his bedroom early in the morning. Six decades of very real healings followed this vision, and continue with LaDonna.
In 1948 in Uganda Festo Kivengere was visited at his bedside by the Risen Christ, and decades of worldwide evangelism followed. I attended his evangelism appearances in Buffalo NY in 1979. When he blessed us in Swahili at the Cathedral at the end of the Eucharist, we all were holding hands, and a dramatic electric current of energy flowed through our hands and arms as we tried to keep holding on to each other. He taught us the simple prayer of inviting Jesus into our hearts. Two years later, at a renewal of baptism and confirmation at the Pecos Monastery, no sooner was this prayer on my lips, than the Risen Christ stood before me, flooding me with love. I realized for the next half hour, with joyful tears, that I didn’t know I had been ‘waiting for Him.’ But I also realized, even more deeply: He had been waiting for me.
Jesus, for His part, waits for us.
But sometimes, He does not wait. Canon Andrew White writes of Muslims in Baghdad repeatedly coming to him in secret to report that Jesus Christ had appeared to them, entirely unlooked for, in dreams. As a boy of seven, Abbot David Geraets was healed of years of nightmares when Jesus broke into his dreams one night.
Thomas a’ Kempis in the 15th century and Theophan the Recluse in the 19th, and many others, call them ‘visitations.’ Julian calls them revelations of divine love. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, twin Divine missionaries, are continuously sent. Agnes Sanford: Jesus did return, in His Holy Spirit, at Pentecost, and so He returns to each of us today.
Somewhere between the Second Coming and the here and now, God values us enough to invest us with the partnership of working with Him to help build the coming Kingdom.
We do so by practicing the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, manifestations of the inbreaking vitality of the Kingdom. We are not masters; we are practitioners. Jesus is the model charismatic for us. We wait, yes, but we practice, i.e., follow Him in active charismatic discipleship. Anticipatory practice. And we receive while we wait. We practice receptivity, like Mary. Symeon the New Theologian: The best is for all, If only you will accept it.
Evelyn Underhill: Only when our souls are filled to the brim can we presume to offer spiritual gifts to others. The name ‘Christian’ means Spirit-filled.
The gifts of the Magi are reciprocated by the Holy Spirit giving us the charismatic gifts. They are the gifts of baptism, to be discovered and released and practiced through confirmation, as we come to realize we are pregnant with the Real Presence of the Holy Spirit. Without the charismatic gifts, effectually, our social gospel activities remain bare memorials.
Do we mean to be Zwinglians? Is grace charismatic, God’s Real Presence which humans can experience, or is it merely another overly-conceptualized Christian idea to think about and discuss? What in fact, do Christians have to ‘give’—charizomai— to anyone? The mountain-moving faith Jesus invites us to practice is itself a charismatic gift, in its origins and, with the Holy Spirit’s liturgy, in its effects for our brothers and sisters. Being ‘practically Christian’ means practicing the charismatic gifts of the inbreaking Kimgdom. Medical doctors practice medicine. Confirmed Christians practice God-revealing charisms. Orthopraxis.
As one part of ‘waiting’—in regard to ministering to the world with the gifts of the Holy Spirit—there is the turn of phrase: what are we waiting for? Abbot David: The Red Sea didn’t part until Moses put his foot out.
The Rev. Clyde Glandon
Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma