[Key point: The Christian’s secret weapon is much more than hocus-pocus. It is the Holy Spirit, the energy of God.]
The “Cold War” era was grim. Citizens of both the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. were gripped by a frosty fear of everyone and everything. Behind it all was the terrifying threat of a mushroom cloud.
However, this extreme fear did manage to give us some great spy stories! This was the “golden age” for that golden guy “007,” not to mention “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Avengers,” “The Saint,” “Ice Station Zebra,” and the “Mission Impossible” television show. Nothing seemed to stoke the imaginations of the spy-thriller like the chill of the Cold War. Secret agents and their wonderful, amazing, gravity-defying, usually exploding arsenal of secret weapons were the answer to everyone’s deep fear and insecurities.
Our fascination with “secret weapons” still runs strong. Even today we remain convinced that some “secret weapon” will yet be developed that will put us in charge and keep us safe from future dangers.
In the past people looked to magic for their “secret weapons.” Amulets and incantations, special potions and rituals – all were humanity’s “secret weapons” against the uncontrollable and uncontainable. Even the church was caught up in the power of mystical “secret weapons” against the powers of darkness.
Before the Reformation the Mass was often understood as a big magic act. We have a remnant of that in our language today.
When a budding 8-year-old magician waves her plastic wand over a cardboard hat and declares “hocus-pocus,” she is actually uttering an ancient sacred “secret weapon.” “Hocus-pocus” is a phrase that came from the Latin words the priest chanted as he raised the bread and wine into the incensed air. As the priest declared, “Hoc est corpus meum” (“This is my body”), they believed that bread changed into body—leaving merely the external appearance of bread.
The highest drama of the week was ushered in by a secret sacred phrase that, when it bounced around the massive nooks and crannies of medieval cathedrals, sounded more like “hocus-pocus” than hoc est corpus meum.
The pre-Reformation church had it wrong and had it right. It was right to recognize that the power of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the resurrected Christ here on earth, was the greatest protective power a Christian could call upon. It was wrong, however, when the church tried to keep the gift of this presence a secret from the laity.
Mark’s gospel presents this “secret weapon”—the gift of the Holy Spirit—in just the right way. In a loud voice Mark proclaimed—”Okay, now, this is a secret that I’m revealing today. Jesus is the Son of God, and He comes offering everyone who believes in Him baptism in the Holy Spirit.”
Here was the gospel turned into gossip. It is a story meant to be talked about, wondered over, and, finally, graciously received.
When we receive Christian baptism, we receive the most powerful secret weapon ever offered to creation—the power of God’s love and grace. God’s love and grace is a power than transforms us. It completely changes us—taking out the “sin” and putting in the “Christ-righteousness.” It has no equal or comparison on earth.
The world still doubts this power because part of its “secretive” nature is its outward appearance. Who would think that a Spirit described as a “dove” would hold such power?
Yet, if we’re so miraculously empowered, why does the church continue to come across like some 98-pound weakling on the beach? Could it be because so few of us have taken this power, unleashed it, and released it into our lives? Most of us baptized in the Spirit are content to keep our secret weapon secret. We keep it eternally caged up, never letting the Spirit test its wings in our world.
In order to let our “secret weapon” function, we need to begin to practice what we’ll call “power living.” Just like bodybuilders and other serious athletes commit a portion of every day to toning their muscles and strengthening their endurance, Spirit-powered Christians must get into a daily routine to keep the power flowing. Power-living enables Christians to get “pumped up” with the Spirit.
Spiritual toning doesn’t mean receiving some miraculously special “spiritual gift” every day of your life. Spirit-powered living is a commitment to a three-step practice that helps keep the wings of the Spirit beating strongly in your soul.
First, you need a daily alignment with God and the Sacred. Spending Sunday morning between 8:30 & 9:30 or 11:00 and noon just isn’t enough. Spirit-powered living requires that every day we seek out God.
Some say that takes away some of the “specialness” or power of that relationship. In fact, the exact opposite is true. For the more we seek God in our daily lives, the more we will recognize that God’s presence surrounds us and sustains us wherever we may be.
What are some possibilities? Begin with Portals of Prayers. This short little study can take just five minutes a day – and this month’s studies are excellent – five minutes that could make a major difference in your life and, ultimately, the life of others. You can join a Bible study group—Sunday mornings, Tuesday noon, 2nd Saturday of the month—to help further immerse yourself into God’s Word.
However you choose to do it make an effort to spend time—daily—with God and the sacred.
Second, we need daily self-scrutiny and self-reflection.
Everyone who has ever tried to tone a few muscles knows that isometric exercise—those that push our own muscles against each other—are the ones that build both strength and flexibility.
Spirit-powered living turns the power of the Spirit inward as well as outward. It helps build deep reserves of energy and limitless wells of peace. We need to examine ourselves—our words and our actions.
As part of your daily spiritual discipline look at your daily walk of faith. Where you’ve failed and fallen—we used to call that sin—ask God to forgive you. That’s called repentance. Repentance is a change of mind, not just saying “I’m sorry.” It involves this inner change that is then expressed in an outer change. Reflect on your life of faith—and ask God to help build up your faith and the life your live as a reflection of that faith.
Examining the motives and intentions behind all our actions and words will enable us to let the Spirit of Christ within inform our every move. Gradually we can build confidence in our own reactions and resources as the Spirit continues to build up our faith.
Third, we need daily embodiment. That is, we need to move faith from “heart” to “hands.”
Let me ask you a question: What is the greatest distance in the world? I would suggest it is 12 inches—the distance from the “head” to the “heart” = faith. That’s when the facts we know here in our head become the what we place our trust in, that is faith.
Yet the next greatest is the distance from the “heart” to the “hands” = faith in action or daily embodiment, to use the phrase we’re using here. This means putting our Spirit-powered living into action. The Spirit that God lets free within our souls needs to be set free out in the world in order for its power to be fulfilled.
You see, the world doesn’t see our Spirit-powered living unless it is “lived out” in everyday life. The strength of the Spirit is in service—“works of service which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
One of those “works of service” is sharing the faith we have with others who don’t have it. That’s a key theme that runs throughout Epiphany. It means taking what we’ve come to see and know as true—and letting others see and know it, too.
Holy “hocus-pocus!” Putting to work the Spirit with which we’re being filled. That’s what Christian power living is all about. May you so live –
Spirit-strengthened …
Spirit-led … and …
Spirit-living.
Amen.