Life in the Spirit.

From Dean Brackley's The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola (126):

How much time and income should the Harrises devote to the Coalition against Homelessness? Should Carmen marry Ben? What expressions of affection are appropriate at this stage of their relationship? Should Chris enter seminary or novitiate? Should our group practice civil disobedience to protest the war?

Making wise decisions is the most important skill in life. It requires sizing up situations and determining the best course of action. This is discernment, a hallmark of Ignatian spirituality. Over a lifetime, we learn this art well or poorly. According to Ignatius's Foundation, all our thoughts, words, and actions should be directed toward the single goal of God's Reign. In the best of cases, we struggle all our lives to integrate our complex selves into single-minded service. The Spirit transforms us, resolving inner contradictions and sharpening our moral perception. In the end, beyond techniques and criteria, discernment is a matter of character and sensitivity, of becoming the person we should be.

At our Lenten book discussion group last Thursday, we noted how Lutherans have often struggled with the idea of "discipleship." We Lutherans lift up our great heritage of justification by grace through faith - the good news that we are saved by God and not by our own works. This is truly worth celebrating!

But sometimes we Lutherans get stuck there. It isn't that Lutherans don't live lives of faith active in love: On the contrary, Lutherans often show great care for the neighbor in need. It's just that in our theology we historically haven't spent much time thinking through what comes after forgiveness. We have often been so concerned about getting the order wrong - God loves us first and then we justified to live lives of faith active in love - that we haven't spent much time thinking through what a life of faith active in love might look like. "Discernment?" we might think. "Wise decision-making? Isn't that a 'good work'? If so, it won't save me! Best to leave it alone."

Wise decision-making won't save us, it is true. God alone does that. God alone frees us. As Brackley, our Jesuit companion, writes: "We are forgiven before we clean up our act."

But as my Old Testament professor might say, God loves us, yes, but God still has expectations. We are forgiven, yes, but now that we are forgiven we do actually need to get around to cleaning up our act - and not just cleaning up my personal act, but cleaning up our act as a human race.

And in his chapter "Life in the Spirit," Brackley suggests that this "cleaning up our act" is actually far more - and far more fun - than scrubbing away the dirt of our sinfulness. He suggests that - being filled with God's free and freeing love as we are - our post-justification, post-forgiveness, post-Egypt (to borrow the story of the Israelites) lives are to be lives of creative generosity in sharing God's love with the whole world.

Thanks be to God, we are not left to try and figure out these lives of creative generosity on our own. The Spirit, that third person of our Triune God, guides us by fanning the flame of love in our hearts. Thinking through how we might follow that wild Spirit as it fans the flames to and fro will be the subject of our next few chapters.

Of course, as Brackley point out, in our lives of creative generosity, we will make lots of mistakes. We could let them get us down - but we shouldn't. Listen to how Brackley puts it (128) as he once again echoes Luther's call to "sin boldly":

Infinite needs and demands lead to frustration, guilt trips, Messiah complexes, and crash landings - unless we have internalized the good news that we are forgiven before we clean up our act and that love will someday, somehow, triumph because God is laboring through us and despite us. This good news, this gospel, transforms harsh demands into the sweet yet challenging requirements of love. But though our response will fall short daily, our hope and inner peace are secure thanks to the good news, independent of our performance or measurable success. As Anne Patrick says, we must allow high moral demands 'to play over a ground alto of God's healing and empowering and justice-making love for us all.'

May it ever be so. Amen.