The sharp end of holiness
by Gerry Angel
Spiritual themes have a fashion. 'Tongues' was once an avant-garde craze. Then came 'Being slain in the Spirit'. Over came the Kansas City prophets, and 'prophecy', defined as a spontaneous word spoken to a specific public or private situation, was for a time 'the latest'. There is an Athenian side to British spirituality which spends its time 'in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing' (Acts 17:21b). Holiness has been on the front burner in most recent years, primarily because the Lord has made it a theme among many prominent preachers, teachers and prophets. It has arrived into a Christian culture which has become friends with 'easy access' and 'user friendly' features of post-modernism; a Christian culture which has been embarrassed by obvious luxury, loose living and economy with the truth among ministers who delight in high financial yields and sensational revelations. I dare not mention names for we are all judged by our own measure, but both at local and international levels we know that this description is true. The re-entry of holiness into Christian culture has, in our situation, made it appear more mystical than disciplinary. Holiness as access to the transcendence of God, primarily through appropriate music or even by mantra-using spiritual techniques, has become acceptable. It incorporates elements or interests of religions other than the Christian faith, and so joins the list of the avant-garde in our multicultural society. This short article simply puts alongside this kind of 'holiness' the traditional core of holiness within Western Christian spirituality for 1500 years. I leave the reader to decide which sort accords most closely with the style of Jesus. Its centre is the question put to Jesus by the rich man, 'Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' The short answer he received was Detach and Pursue. The long answer reads like this, 'You know the commandments: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honour your father and mother'.
'Teacher, all these I have kept since I was a boy,' Jesus looked at him and loved him. 'One thing you lack. Go, sell everything that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' (Mark 10:17-21)
This passage became a core call to ascetic holiness. St Augustine of Hippo found it challenging in his personal search for peace with God. On the knife-edge of discovering Christ for himself Augustine was moved by St Anthony of Egypt's model of finding the call of Christ in the Scriptures.
Augustine heard voices saying 'Pick it up and read', to quote, 'For I had heard of Anthony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition as what was being read, was spoken to him; "Go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt receive treasure in heaven and come follow me," and by such an oracle he was immediately converted unto thee.(Confessions viii 12:29). St Francis of Assisi came to the same conclusion, though via a different biblical route.
Francis, while praying in church, heard Christ telling him to rebuild the wasted church. He started ministering to society's outcasts and sold his horse and his wealthy father's textiles to raise funds. His father complained to the bishop who required Francis to repay what he owed his father. So Francis stripped himself, gave all he had to his father and from then on called God alone 'Father'. Later he heard Matthew 10:7-19 being read, the commissioning of the disciples, received it personally and exchanged his hermit's clothes for those of a barefoot preacher. Later he issued the first rule of Franciscans 'to live in obedience, in chastity and without property, following the teaching and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ.'(Rule of 1221). This understanding of Christian life-style is not exclusively 'Catholic'. Protestant saints like Henry Martyn the evangelist to Persia; Allen Gardiner the evangelist to the indigenous tribes of South America; Hudson Taylor the evangelist to China's millions; and the Cambridge Seven are all in the same tradition of holiness.
In our own time David Shephard, outstanding English cricket captain and leader, became the pastor of a mission in the East End of London - at the time there was no guarantee of his becoming Lord Shephard as he is today.
This ideal, especially the vow of poverty which along with chastity and obedience became of the standard of authentic Christian discipleship in the West, presented the Church with the problem of a two-tier Christianity, the spiritual/religious versus the lay. The problem is still with us, institutionalised in the ordained/lay differential. So what do we who live a 'lay' life-style say to the passage of God's Word which revolutionised the life of Anthony of Egypt? Do we pass it by, as we do a long genealogy or list of tribes? Are we, as far as this understanding of holiness is concerned 'beyond the Pale'? How can we apply this to a person who has to live in the material world? The disciples who first heard this saying of Jesus were asking our type of question, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus replied, 'With man this is impossible, but all things are possible with God' (Mark l0:23-27).
In the tradition of John Wycliffe I maintain that there is no passage of God's Word that has no relevance to any of God's People. And this is what it says to me. DETACH. 'Sell and give all' is a call to abandon any proprietary rights to what we call 'mine'. 'All things come of Thee' we say as the sidespeople bring up the collection, and 'of Thine own do we give Thee'. When we say this in good faith, we are abandoning our rights to ownership. 'Know you not that ...you are not your own? For you are bought with a price' (l Cor 6:19-20), St Paul asked the Corinthians. We are better placed than they, since we have the point institutionalised in our liturgy, 'And of Thine own do we give Thee'. Point taken! We regard all that we have as owned by God, entrusted for our proper disposition and use, until that solemn moment when our friends and relatives hear the lament of Job over our coffin, 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord'. Conversion to such an approach to a layperson's 'property' is in this materialistic culture nothing short of repentance. Its meaning is 'change of orientation or mind-set' and how our hearts rejoice with our mind when we see at last that all that we have is really His not ours. This joy is funnelled into discipline. Anthony and Francis's renunciation of property was a scandal to their commercial friends; they could afford the 'luxury' of opting out of society; we still have to keep up our mortgage and utilities payments. But they did at least apply the teaching in a practical way. And so must I, if Gospel living has an ounce of integrity. An essential token expression of the truth 'Of Thine own do we give Thee' is the proportion of his trust to us that we let go each week or month into the needs of the kingdom of God and the poor. Helping the poor is not an option (Galatians 2:9-10). My own view is that the Jewish Christians and their Gentile converts who were taught the Old Testament as their Scriptures were not likely to determine in their hearts to give each week less than the expectation of a tenth which they had been taught to give when they were still in Judaism, not yet Christians. The hyper enthusiasm of the poor in Macedonia ( 2 Cor 8:1-5) suggests this interpretation. If it all belongs to the Lord anyway, then giving him the firstfruits - his special portion- is the only way of acknowledging that we really believe that it is all his. I commend this ancient practice, not as a way of making your local church more wealthy, but as a way of developing 'equality' between the rich and the not quite so rich 'in the miseries of this sinful world' (1662 BCP Funeral Service). First, then, give the Lord his due and you will feel free! Second, our layperson's 'vow of poverty' is to have a light hold on things. Evangelicals of a former generation were hot on this. Do you have a light hold on things? Here are three tests, there must be more. One, do not worry about losing goods, as Hyacinth Bucket( pronounced 'bouquet') does about her bone china with the periwinkle motif, and drives her friend Elizabeth into paranoia over it. Two, share with the needy. Three, don't complain when things are lost. Of course claim what the insurance company owes you, but don't go spare if it cannot be recovered or replaced, DETACH! A second guideline for holiness in Jesus' reply to the rich man is PURSUE, 'Then come, follow me,' (Mark 10:21). This is not an achievement but a way of doing things, a style of life, not a targeted product. Here are a few guidelines. First, see our life in Christ as a mixture of glory and suffering. If all our preachers preach is glory, we cannot cope with their messages when we go through a bad patch. If all our preachers preach is suffering, we lose any sense of the Gospel as good news.' Second, keep an active relationship with Father. My youngest son left a text message on my mobile, 'Good morning, father'. Its simplicity and freshness made me think of the way I relate to my Father. How He longs to spend time with us, His children, and we need, as 'the holy ones, the saints, the ones set apart for his possession and purposes' to give Him time to relate to us. A third element in the holiness displayed in Jesus is rectitude. When he threw over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple you could see the holiness of God, that wrath against all that is shady, come into life in his Son's passion. Our culture contains models that 'spin' justifications for activities which an earlier generation would have called culpably corrupt. We get so used to this culture that we are not fired up about what is wrong. We do not resist the 'spin'. If the holiness of God was let loose on our society in the way it was in the Temple at the beginning and end of Jesus' ministry (John 2; Mark 11), we would be criticised as bigots but at least be identified with the teaching of Jesus. Finally, the mystery of holiness is that the rectitude is combined, not stultified, with compassion. If only I could feel with His feelings. The one who threw the rogues out of the Temple was the one who rehabilitated the woman accused of adultery. The 'compassion' attributed to Jesus is a gutsy word - its root meaning is guts', displaying all the physical heat of the truly empathetic person. Tertullian, the second-century defender of Christians, reported a social comment on the Christians of his day, 'See how they love one another Their passion showed. Who knows, that could be a newspaper headline one day reporting you and me.