Living in the Spirit

We’ve all probably had a pet that we and our family got very attached to.  Almost a mystical connection, if your personality is open to such rich connections.

When we lived out in the California Desert a family in our Randsburg church had a small Dachshund given to them when the fellow’s brother who owned the dog took an assignment in the Middle East. 

The older couple was not prepared nor not all that excited in their later years to have a dog to care for and had asked our church members if any might be willing to take the dog off their hands.

Our family had always had dogs as I was growing up and missed having one.  Sure, well take the dog.  What’s his name?  “Nevada.”

Somewhere along the line Nevada must have been badly mistreated by a previous male owner because he was very afraid of all men.  Slowly, as Jai would sit on the floor with a dog treat, petting Nevada, he would tolerate me sitting beside her also petting him.

After a few weeks of this Nevada realized that I was a safe person to be around.  He’d let me pet him without Jai being besides us.  We’d go on walks together.  Soon Nevada was an integral part of our family.

When we took a church assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, of course, Nevada went with us.

During the winters Nevada lived in the attached garage, or downstairs in the furnished basement.  As there was no carpet, any messes or accidents were easily cleaned.  In the morning Jai would be up making breakfast before I had stirred myself from the bed.  She would open the basement door and I could hear her say, “Go get him, Nevada.  Go get him.” 

I would hear Nevada bounding through the hallway, his dog tags jingling as he came running.  With one mighty leap he was up on the bed licking me all over the face.  Now, who could sleep through that?  No one.  Time to get up, and in delight my blurry day would begin.

It was one of the saddest days in our family when the next door neighbor came over to tell us that Nevada must have gotten out and got hit by a car on the busy street in front of our house.  My heart was broken, as I broke down in tears.

For weeks afterward, early in the morning, the slightest noise from the kitchen for a moment seemed like Nevada’s dog tags jingling.  I’d swear, that’s what I had heard.  And as wakefulness returned, I realized that I had only imagined Nevada bounding down the hallway with his dog tags clanking together.

It was the remnants of the mystical connection I had had with that dear animal.  I suspect that many of us who had a dear pet like Nevada know the experience.

Or the mystical experience with a deceased spouse or child.  In a way beyond words, we carry their essence in our hearts – a bit of their soul resides within our days.  We never quite let them go.

The Gospel of John has from the earliest days been know as the “spiritual gospel.”  By the Middle Ages the iconography of the church had adopted the eagle as the symbol for this evangelist because his message soars close to the sun – God’s image in the material world.  Though the language put into the mouth of Jesus by the faith community that produced this gospel appears to be regular, descriptive dialogue, quite the contrary.  It is figurative, metaphorical.  All intended to lead the reader into a mystical, unitive and direct experience of Christ and God.

In Jesus’ prayer this unity is the point.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.  They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.  Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me…All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”

The reader is not being given knowledge about God and the Son.  The reader is being invited to an unmediated, experienced knowledge.  Invited into the actuality of the divine.  The same sort that can develop between a married couple over the years. 

William Countryman in his book, The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel: Crossing over into God,”[1] insists the gospel must be read as a unitive whole.  When broken up for lectionary passages, the progression into the deep, mystical relationship is missed.

How does the modern man and woman approach such a profound and potentially life changing experience?  With our rush and hurry, the distractions of electronic media and disquieting daily news?  With our incessant busyness about little that matters?

First, slow down.  If you’re about my age you would remember that advice in a song by Simon and Garfunkel, “The 59th Street Bridge Song.”  Maybe better remembered by the tag line: “Feelin’ Groovy.”

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobble stones
Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy

When you open John’s gospel – slow down.  Don’t rush through it as if you were cramming for a test or something. This gospel invites the reader into a relationship, an open-ended, direct personal relationship that moves ever deeper — Into a mystical journey with One who is Life and Truth.  By all means, get Dr. Countryman’s small introduction to John.  It is a most helpful and trustworthy guide.  I will be ordering several for our church library.  Used copies are still available on line.

In the community of faith, through its daily routine and work, that relationship will deepen, as it does in John’s gospel.

Kevin W. Hector notes this progressive journey in his book, Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology.[2]  In the work of the Spirit, we grow into that mystical unity with one another and with God.

This last week Miguel, our farmer for St. Francis Garden of Hope presented me with a huge bag of fresh peas.  Peas in their pods just like my mother used to bring home from the store when I was a small boy.

In the afternoon, when I got home from school, she and I would sit around the kitchen table shelling all those peas.  As the hours passed in conversation and sometimes in silence, we experienced a bond unlike any other that I had known.  One in the Spirit over that work.  A mystical bond that was almost heaven.

And when she would cook them up, just right, they were totally scrumptious. 

Yes, I enjoyed the peas, but more than that the real gift Miguel gave me was the memory of those precious moments.

In our work to bring our garden into reality, in the weeding, the sowing and harvesting.  In transporting it to the food banks it serves.  There is a godly mystical bond between the laborers.  All to the glory of God.

This is the relationship into which John’s gospel invites us.  First, just slow down.  Yeah, feeling groovy is a good start.  Then roll up your sleeves and get to work.

The delight of common effort will take your mind off all the dreadful news that you can do little about.  A rapidly warming planet out of control.  A corrupt and incompetent administration of grifters and conspiracy theorists.  Hunger and homelessness.  The depredations of ICE terrorizing our communities.

In the labor of our hands all that fades into the background, set aside for a brief, refreshing while.  In the work of that garden, slow down.  Make the morning last.  And being a little groovy in the Spirit will restore the soul.

Just like shelling peas over the kitchen table with your mom.

And in the work, the experience of our faith community we do grow deeper into that mystical relationship.  One with another and one with the divine.  Gracious to make the morning and all the mornings to come last.

Out of the depths of this inward journey we become yeast for the dough.  The Fruit of the Spirit flows.  Can’t help itself.

Here is some of the fruit of unity we and our United Methodist sisters and brothers are presently experiencing.  

I rejoice that the United Methodists have recently extended an invitation to us Episcopalians to heal the breach between us which opened over two hundred years ago when Bishop Samuel Seabury refused to recognize Francis Asbury’s consecration for work as bishop among the people called Methodists.  In the end we are all one in the unity of a mystical fellowship that feeds the soul.

I close with Fr. John Wesley’s admonition to his followers:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can. One in the Spirit over that work that takes us deeper.  That’s our charge.  We’ve got the vision.  We’ve got the power.  Let’s get to work.  Veggies await.  Glory awaits!  And so does Groovy.  Amen.

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[1] L. William Countryman, The Mystical Wat in the Fourth Gospel: Crossing over into God (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994).

[2] Kevin W. Hector, Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2023).

May 17, 2026
Ascension Sunday

“Living in the Spirit”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
1 Peter 4:1-12-14; 5:1-6; John 17:1-11