Jesus once told His disciples, “The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” To which they gratefully replied, “Now you’re speaking plainly and not using any figurative language” (John 16:27 & 29).
The Father Himself still loves us, and Jesus still speaks plainly, albeit often with parabolic language, through the Holy Scriptures, the Sacraments and through the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The challenge for us 21st century Christians is that Jesus’ plain speaking comes from a foreign and ancient culture that can be shrouded in mystery since, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians, Jesus, in whom is hidden in all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:2-3), is both God’s mystery personified and the one in whom “the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9).
So the plain speaking of Jesus is far from facile, bland or trite. It is something much richer, multifaceted and powerful than that — think God’s Word Incarnate mixed with Hebrews 4:12-13. The irony is that we enlightened, rational 21st-century folk are often tempted to treat the plain words of Jesus as figurative or even mythological, because we’d rather not deal with the plain meaning.
For example, I believe that what Jesus, the Gospel writers and St. Paul wrote about the supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit is plain, still true, and I’d like to see more of it — so I have been praying accordingly for the last 40 or so years.
I’d like more Anglicans to see the 1 Corinthians 12 gifts of the Spirit in action and things like “those unable to speak talking, the crippled restored, the lame walking, and the blind seeing” (Matthew 15:31), so they might be amazed and give glory to God. But we seem to be living in an age like Samuel’s when he was a boy: In those days the word of the Lord was rare and prophetic visions were not widespread (1 Sam. 3:10).
Jesus Himself encountered something similar in His own hometown. As He taught in the synagogue, the townsfolk who knew Jesus and His family were so familiar with Him as part of their ordinary day-to-day life that they couldn’t get their minds around Him being who He really was. So, “he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief” (Mt. 12:8).
What if we have relaxed into our familiar Anglican parish worship routine so much that we just don’t expect Jesus to do anything special anymore, either? Our catechism defines a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace (BCP, p550).
What if, as we practise our Anglican rather introverted sacramentalism, we have become so focused on and immersed in the inward and spiritual graces in our liturgy, worship, practice and behaviour that the outward and visible — dare I say supernatural? — signs of our belief in what the Bible plainly says Jesus can do, have atrophied?
To be fair, personally, I’ve not been aware of having been blessed with obvious and spectacular supernatural signs and wonders in my life and ministry. But the LORD has blessed me with some more quiet and modest experiences that have been enough to whet my appetite for more.
For example, it was at a Wednesday evening Prayer and Praise service at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Calgary, in April 1986, when, after my praying with varying degrees of intensity for two years for the gift of tongues (1 Cor. 12:10), a woman prayed for inhibitions to be removed — not for me, in particular, but generally — and the gift was suddenly released in me.
I’d tried making noises before, but all at once something began flowing from my lips, sounding like some sort of language. It has humbled and blessed me ever since. I don’t know what I’m saying, but I believe I’m speaking “mysteries in the Spirit” (1 Cor. 14:2) and that whether I see or feel anything or not, what Paul wrote is happening:
In the same way, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26–27, CSB).
In my inexpressible groanings and half-baked theological understandings, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is building His Kingdom in my little life through the mysterious and supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. God will do the same through yours. After all,
Glory to God,
whose power, working in us,
can do infinitely more
than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to God from generation to generation,
in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
for ever and ever. Amen.
So why not keep asking?