PENTECOST 2005
From the Editor...
Drift
William Orr changed my life.
I knew I was in the presence of someone unusual when I first
heard about him through a friend. He had
a stroke in his 80's, and, as a first rate New Testament scholar, he
lost his
ability to use either English or Greek.
So how did he respond? He taught himself both languages again, and used
his final years on earth to tutor seminarians in Greek for free as a
ministry.
I was one of his students, and while I was ostensibly there
to learn Greek, what I learned more about was life (isn't that always
the way
with great teachers?).
Of all the lessons he taught me, the most powerful was about
the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
As we were working through a passage in John's gospel, the Holy Spirit
came up as a topic, and when I asked him about the subject, he didn't
even
hesitate in answer to my query.
Drift, he said. You
can imagine my response to a one word answer on a subject as vast as
that!
Drift? What did he mean talking about drift?
Think of your life as a being in a sailboat, he said, and
realize that the Holy Spirit guides as a wind (the very image Jesus
uses in
John 3). Sometimes, the Holy Spirit will guide through a strong direct
word or
work like a dramatic shift in the breeze.
Many days will be spent very ordinarily, floating along on the water,
but with an imperceptible direction nonetheless. But to be a
Christian means to be a sensitive
sailor because though you may feel you are simply drifting along,
unbeknownst
to you a series of circumstances may be changed in your life. If
you look carefully, you can sense the wind
beginning to shift. If it does, be ready to be guided afresh, he
said. Pay attention.
It was many years after that, toward the end of the second
year in my curacy, that my best friend, the rector with whom I was
working, my
bishop, and then my wife encouraged me to do doctoral work. It
took until my wife's prodding for me to
pay attention more carefully, but when I did, I realized that over the
last year
or so, the wind had shifted. I opened my sail a little and the shift
took
greater shape. Eventually I ended up at Oxford
University, as the Spirit
blew
where He willed.
Pentecost is a reminder to us that the heart posture of a
Christian is an openness to God's wind. It means every day is an
adventure. It means that the wind may
occasionally suddenly rush in, but that more often we are to celebrate
the
extraordinary blessing of apparently ordinary days. Above all, it
means learning the great Good
news that we are not in charge, and therefore we are to be sensitive to
shifts
in circumstances and feelings which accumulate directions over time.
On the first birthday of the church, there were
tongues like fire which surprised all those present. I think
about those tongues every Pentecost,
but I also think of a man in his eighties who taught himself Greek
again in
order to teach it to me. I recall, too, that in the midst of one
apparently
ordinary Greek lesson I learned an extraordinary lesson about the Holy
Spirit,
because my boat drifted into the harbor
of William Orr.
The
Rev. Canon Dr.
Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr
Harmon by
e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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