The silent power of God

What is the purpose of pentecostal power? If it is mystical, then what is the purpose of contemplation? It desires to do. Foster calls the charismatic stream the power to do while the holiness tradition is the power to be. Being strongly rooted in the Pentecostal tradition, I can wonder if we’ve even begun to tap into a power to do. Looking at the bigger picture we can see we’re doing, the Assembly of God is growing by leaps and bounds especially world wide; at home much slower, but we are still the fastest growing denomination. Still when we look at local narratives we don’t always see it fleshed out. Am I any more empowered to do than my brothers who pastor other churches and do not claim the pentecostal experience?

Rolhieser tells of Daniel Berrigan’s response to the question of God’s presence in today’s world.

He simply told the audience how he, working in a hospice for the terminally ill, goes each week to spend some time sitting by the bed of a young boy who is totally incapacitated, physically and mentally. The young boy can only lie there. He cannot speak or communicate with his body nor in any other way express himself to those who come into his room. He lies mute, helpless, by all outward appearance cut off from any possible communication. Berrigan then described how he goes regularly to sit by this young boy’s bed to try to hear what he is saying in his silence and helplessness.

After sharing this, Berrigan added a further point: The way this young man lies in our world, silent and helpless, is the way God lies in our world. To hear what God is saying we must learn to hear what this young boy is saying.

This is a powerful image of finding God in the silence, of finding the power that “lies muted, at the deep moral and spiritual base of things.”

Foster reminds me that for William J. Seymour, the renewal of the sign of Pentecost signaled divinely initiated racial reconciliation. Just as the original day of Pentecost had people from all regions of the Roman world hearing their own language, and has been seen as reversing the disintegration of Babel, this new Pentecost could bring integration reversing the babble of segregation. If this was God’s intent, and I believe it likely was, we quickly throw our monkey wrenches into it. Charles Parham quickly dismissed as sinful the worshiping together of black and white brothers. And the Assemblies of God became the white Pentecostals as the Church of God in Christ became the black. Some of this may have had to do with the strength of Wesleyan holiness with its view of sanctification as a second work of grace in black spirituality, but I’m sure the majority of the issue wasn’t theological but racial.

So if Azusa street was to usher in a power to do reconciliation, have we failed? I asked myself this yesterday as I pondered. If the power of my pentecostal experience is supposed to be a conduit to flow to those around me has it failed? As a fellowship have we embraced the Pentecostal power to change?

“Ask Zollie Smith if we failed.” The still voice came to my mind. Zollie Smith is the first black man to be on our national executive leadership team, moving from Executive Presbytery to be Director of Home Missions this year. It took a hundred years but God isn’t through yet! It is interesting how God chose the Charismatic Stream to effect Social Justice in his church. Zollie inspires me, not because of who he is, but because he shows who we are becoming as a church. Like Barack Obama challenging our concepts of race in presidential politics simply because he’s there, God is challenging the world through us because we are here.

So if the power of the Spirit is meant to make me a conduit of God’s power, to change me so powerfully by his presence in my life that my life changes the world with it’s presence, what will that look like? Lord God use me, let that power that underlies all that exists flow through me to the world around. Flow river flow. Spring up oh well of eternal desire!