Grace and Truth column

Alex’s eyes glistened. With his hand resting gently on Martin’s newborn head, he prayed: “Martin, may God bless you and keep you. May the very face of God shine upon you, and be gracious to you … ” His voice quivered. “May God’s presence embrace you and give you peace.” Now it was clear that his moist eyes weren’t the result of seasonal allergies. The corners of Alex’s eyes welled up with tears as he took Martin from Stacy and Jen’s arms and walked through the pews, introducing this new child to us, his family. Alex stopped at my pew. I looked down at Martin and couldn’t help but smile at such a beautiful gift from God. Then I shifted my gaze to eye-level and met Alex’s tearful eyes. My smile trembled and my vision blurred. Not wanting to lose control of my silly emotions, I quickly looked elsewhere. No reason to let my tears get the best of me. Alex walked back to the front and returned Martin to Jen and Stacy. Martin’s consecration taught me that when God shows up at church, we are no longer in control—we are caught up in the Spirit. We pray, “Come, Lord Jesus” with the saints (Revelation 22:20). And when he comes in the gentle caress of the Holy Spirit, we are drawn into the permeating embrace of God’s eternal love—which is the body of Christ, broken open for us. “The wind blows where it chooses … So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” Jesus says in John 3:8. Setting our sails to the winds of the Spirit isn’t always comfortable. To surrender our lives to the unknown is hard work: “You cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” Many Anabaptists spoke of Christian discipleship as Gelassenheit— “loving surrender” as Melchior Hoffman put it in the early 16th century. The trouble with “yielding” or “surrendering” our selves to God is that the Holy Spirit leads us into awkward intimacy and uncomfortable vulnerability. When God’s joy flowed into me with Alex’s tears, I looked away. When God moved among the pews with Alex and Martin, I resisted. When my heart wanted to jump out of my body, I closed my eyes and tensed my body. Yet despite my efforts, a piece of me—knocked unconscious by my desire for self-control—managed to awake and reach out through my eyes with tears. For a fleeting moment, we communed in the fellowship of joy shared with fugitive tears. Gelassenheit, loving surrender, is not merely emotionalism—although that’s not a bad step for some of us. Gelassenheit names how we surrender our lives to God and open our secured selves to the Holy Spirit who moves us into intimacy and companionship. This is how we give and receive the holy embrace of God, extended to us through Jesus’ nailed-open arms, and displayed in our fellowship of vulnerable, divine love. In worship we open our arms to receive the intimacy of God’s communion found when eyes meet—or when we shake hands, or share meals, or speak prayers, or exchange words. The eternal love of the Holy Spirit breathes through these gestures, knitting us together into the body of Christ. Jen and Stacy, their child Martin and Alex have all moved away. But sometimes, unexpectedly, my mind wanders back to Martin’s consecration and the friendships I found. And I wonder: Are memories also our communion? Are these fleeting memories a return of the whirling wind of the Spirit? In our remembering, is God at work re-membering us, stitching together again past fellowships of divine love?