As you have no doubt noticed from my posts this week I believe that the Holy Spirit or the nudging of the Father, or Jesus knocking at your hearts door - whatever you wish to call it - can and does work prior to any action the Church might offer to recognize it.
It is often said of ordination services that it is the Church catching up to what the Holy Spirit (or any other person of the Trinity) was already doing. I believe the same is true of baptism - even for infants. When Peter tells the crowd that was "cut to heart" that they must be baptized "so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." I think that, in usual Peter fashion, he has gone a little overboard. The keys to the kingdom have already gone to his head.
I know that this will take me down a slippery slope (see marriage), but it seems to me that the sacraments of the Church - Baptism, Eucharist (a stretch here), confirmation, ordination, holy matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction - are all the Church catching up with what God is already doing. I hate to talk bad about Peter in the midst of his classic Acts 2 sermon, but c'mon brother - it isn't about you, it isn't about the Church, it is about God. Our outward and visible signs are after-the-facts of God's inward and invisible grace.
Certainly won't preach this, but I thought it worth a post.
1 comment:
I really like this, Steve. It makes me smile, because there are so many ways that we find ourselves catching up with what God is already doing. And you name well what some of our most important liturgical actions are really doing. Even some of the slippery slopes you mention would bear some pondering - perhaps better over a beer than from the pulpit at first - but some good stuff here.
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