‘Does God confine the gift of his Spirit to authorised channels?’ is the question raised and answered in today’s Gospel. We read there how Our Lord’s disciples tried to stop someone casting out demons in his name because he was not an obvious, or should we say ‘legitimate’ follower of Jesus. ‘But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me’.
Our Lord in the Gospel, like Moses faced before him with the same question, disowns clerical arrogance which sees the Holy Spirit just flowing through the channels they have authorised. God is bigger than the institutions he sets up to help his people function right. God is bigger than the church and can make exceptions we should go along with, but - and it's a contentious ‘but’ - we are bound as a rule to expect the Holy Spirit to flow primarily through the channels he authorises.
For us Anglicans the Holy Spirit is known as God’s grace and comes primarily through the church. ‘In what ways do you receive… God’s grace?’ Our Catechism asks and it gives this reply. ‘I receive… grace within the fellowship of the Church, when I worship and pray, when I read the Bible, when I receive the Sacraments, and as I live my daily life to his glory’.
Without bishops and priests we cannot have sacramental grace, making my visit this morning to cover for Fr Christopher a necessity. We need apostolic order, as today’s feast of St Polycarp reminds us - he worked within the 2nd century in immediate succession to the apostles - but apostolic order is no use without apostolic vitality. Through bishops and priests in apostolic succession we have authority to break Bread this morning pleading Christ’s Sacrifice for our community and our world and receiving the grace of Holy Communion in Christ’s body and blood.
The eucharist is vital and vitalising, helping Christ dwell in us, but today’s Gospel invites us to keep on the look out for Christ’s presence and action outside the orbit of his Church. Though God commits to work through channels he has authorised like the eucharist - how wonderful to find him here as he has promised - we have surprises of the Spirit outside this orbit and need to be open to these.
The God we worship is deep in all things, working wherever goodness, truth and beauty are being built, inside and outside the fellowship of believers. We are his coworkers, sent out from here in the power of his Spirit to live and work to his praise and glory, alongside other unwitting servants of God.
‘Anyone who is not against us is for us’.
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