Discernment

            Our society loves a self-made person. Whether they are successful in business, or making an impact through some contribution to public life, we lionize those who ‘made it on their own.’  The truth is, there are very few instances of people who rise to prominence (or success of some kind) without some kind of external assistance. 

            Business ventures require customers. Politicians need votes. Philanthropists need good causes to support. Our efforts are always ALWAYS confirmed, appreciated, balanced or otherwise helped onward by the engagement of others.  “No [man] is an island...” wrote the poet John Donne and that principle applies to the kind of ‘up from the bottom’ stories that we hold up as examples to our children (and ourselves).

            I remember something from a session offered by the Rev Ian Victor, who was our minister at St Andrew’s (what else) in Petrolia when I decided to join the church by profession of faith.  The conversation was around the organization of the PCC - how the church is governed and so on. Ian told us that before anyone could lead a congregation - either as a ruling elder or a teaching elder - the church must first affirm that persons gifts for leadership.  If someone stands up and says “I have a word from the Lord!” The church is encouraged to say “Let’s all think about that word for a minute…” Preachers and leaders may well be empowered by gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we have made a holy habit of examining and nurturing and confirming the presence of those gifts together.

Our collective discernment is crucial. To borrow from the poet - ‘No prophet is an island.’ The Spirit is always speaking in the world, but the voice of the church’s recognition of the Spirit’s word is imperative. And we best recognize it (in the Presbyterian tradition) with a collective, whispered, holy yes rather than a singular, thunderous proclamation of “Thou Shall...”

            Isaiah - as are many of the prophets - sounds to us like one voice against a backdrop of chaotic silence. His words are a plea for attention: “LISTEN to ME, O coastlands, PAY ATTENTION, you peoples from far away...” The prophet tries to tell the people that his call is genuine, and that the voice he is listening to is the divine voice. at that rate, Isaiah would be easy to dismiss as one who simply decided that he had been called. The mark of this prophet, however, is his insistence that there will be confirmation.  He invites his audience to watch and listen. He offers evidence that there will be an external affirmation of his internal call.  His words are Scripture now because someone recognized that affirmation - the people of God agreed (though not without considerable resistance and the passage of time)

            In John’s gospel, we are privileged to hear that confirmation take place. John the baptizer is just another wilderness nutcase - prone to antagonizing the religious elite - until someone follows up on his suggestion that ‘that guy right there is the ONE - the (lamb of God)’.  Two of John’s disciples hare off after Jesus. They spend the day with him and come away convinced that John was on to something. The people confirm the suspicions of John the ‘prophet from nowhere’.

            You may want to argue that, with Jesus, it’s different - but it’s not. Heaven sent and spirit led though he was, his mission required affirmation on earth. People had to experience him, decide for themselves, and follow or not.

That became one of the principles of the Reformation...when trying to rescue the church from the absolute certainty that comes with authoritarian leadership, reformers developed patterns of collective decision making, and collective discernment that became the foundations of our particular Presbyterian way of dragging out decisions over generations.

            This denomination of ours is at a crucial juncture where spiritual discernment is concerned. The conversation (and movement towards a decision) about inclusion and marriage is currently the focal point of a larger (quieter) conversation about what the church might look like and how the church should relate to the world around us.

And I’m afraid to report that although our often maligned system of courts and referrals and overtures and remits is grinding away slowly but surely, within that system stand those who would rather we listened to the voices of ‘those who know.’

            We are tempted to listen, because our Scriptures seem to offer us these brilliant flashes of understanding - John the Baptist appears, proclaims and then is gone, but full of knowledge and wisdom and insight. But John’s certainty is the result of a literary device. The gospel cannot tell us the whole story of the journey from ignorance to suspicion to revelation in people like the baptizer - the goal of the gospel is to give us Jesus. Each encounter with Jesus (in the gospels) builds on another. The revelation of Jesus happens slowly - story by story; one experience after another. No one person gets the whole thing at once. Each one finds something particular to their needs. So it is that there are multiple gospel accounts and factions among the first believers and many hundreds of years before there is anything like an attempt to harmonize the story into something large and singular and unified.

            The unity of the Christian church begins and ends with Jesus. That there are hundreds of thousands of ways to experience that unity, or express it, of celebrate it, is down to the diverse and wonderful audience of humans that stands ready for the story of the Creator’s desire for relationship with the creation.

            And while there are those who are prone to shouting the gospel from the rooftops, or others (like me) who are privileged to have been invited to proclaim that same gospel from pulpits like this one, it is the audience who determines what effect that message will have. The community listens to the preachers, proclaimers and all the rest to see if there is indeed something of God at work. One voice is not enough, for the work of God is that those who listen and discern might ultimately proclaim together that Jesus is Lord, and that God is among us.