The Spirit of God

A sermon based on the readings for Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21 and Romans 8:14-17

In the name of Jesus; amen.

For several years now I have belonged to an on-line discussion board of other pastors from many different denominations from all over North America. I’ve never met any of these people in person, but despite that fact there have been some friendships formed and I have come to care very much for the people I have met on-line. And despite the fact that we are from different places, different denominations, different political backgrounds and climates we have become a community. It’s the wonder of the internet that such a thing could take place.

Well, yesterday as I sat down to write this sermon, I stopped first at this discussion site. I wanted to get some information about Pentecost and I knew I could find it there when I saw a post entitled: “Sad news. Death of AWG.” AWG was the screen name for a Methodist pastor who serves the church in Maine.

Someone else on the site had noticed that he hadn’t been around for awhile and did some searching for him. AWG, or Allan, had a web-site that he ran for congregations that had been wounded by clergy misconduct and had just finished a book on the topic. He and his wife also kept a small cabin as a retreat center for pastors and their families who needed time away to refresh and renew themselves. When our son was diagnosed with lead poisoning Allan offered it to Scott and me, but we never took him up on the offer.


Allan suffered from diabetes and a bad heart. His health had started to fail and according to his web-site he died on March 27th.

This might sound like a strange way to being a sermon for Pentecost. Pentecost is, after all, a festival day, a day of celebration and rejoicing. Today we remember the Holy Spirit coming with wind and fire. We sang, “Every time I feel the Spirit” one of the most joyful spirituals I know as our canticle of praise.

It seems a strange time to talk about someone dying, except that my heart is heavy from this news about this man I never met who I know prayed for me and offered me encouragement and sound advice when I asked for his support. And that isn’t because of the wonder of the internet, but because of the grace of God and the wonder of God’s Holy Spirit.

AWG had been my friend through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit might have worked through the computer, but the Spirit worked none-the-less because the Spirit works through relationships. Certainly the Spirit works in us as individuals, but the true purpose of the Spirit is to draw us together as a community and to bring us as individuals in community closer to God.

Those that gathered that first Pentecost shared a history with us as a people of faith. It began in a garden where life was perfect. It was a garden called into being by God’s own breath which in Hebrew is the same word as “spirit.” Ruah.

There we walked and talked with God, lived in relationship with God, until we decided perfection wasn’t perfect enough unless we could be like God and so we ate the fruit that the snake promised would make us know everything that God knew.

And out of the garden we were sent and as time passed we decided we wanted to be able to go where God was and so we built a tower. It was so tall that we were certain that soon enough it would reach heaven until God confused us by making us look different and talk different from one another.

The story of Adam and Eve being thrown out of the garden and the story of the tower of Babel were meant to explain how our relationships with God and our relationships with one another are broken relationships. But the story of Pentecost is a story of God putting the pieces of our relationships back together.

On Pentecost, the Spirit, the breath of God, breathes on us forming a new creation. It’s the same Spirit that is present in baptism where we are made children of God. And the Spirit works in us, pulling us together as God’s adopted children.

That pull happens in all sorts of strange ways and it binds us together with God and with people we haven’t even seen but are connected to by God’s love.

We are meant to be in relationship with God. God formed us in God’s own image so that we could be with God. The creator created us for the purpose of relationship. Not as playthings, or toys, or as a hobby, but as beloved children who love the one who made them.

We are also meant to be in relationship with one another. God saw that Adam was lonely and knew it wasn’t right. We were created to honor and care for one another. God sees that we struggle to understand and listen to one another and knows it isn’t right because we were created to honor and care for one another.

And the wonder of God making things right is that God decided to come and be with us. Jesus came as a real human being, lived with us, laughed and cried with us, and died for us. Then, when it was time for Jesus to return to God, God came to us again in the Spirit. No more trying to know everything God knows… no more trying to climb up to heaven… God came to us, to live in relationship with us.

My heart is weighed down by the death of a really wonderful person who I hardly knew, but I am filled with joy that God gave me such a relationship in the first place. And because of the Spirit my heavy heart soars with the knowledge that God is making all things right in the promise of the resurrection and in the promise of a tomorrow where even death cannot break relationships that God has called into being.

God’s purpose in us cannot be thwarted. Death, hell, and the devil have been defeated. The Spirit of God dwells with us and gathers us together in grief and in celebration.

Amen.


For AWG, rest in the peace of God.

Just Sing

A sermon based on Acts 16:16-34

In the name of Jesus; amen.

Last week our sending hymn was “When Peace Like a River.” Now I don’t know about the rest of you who were here, but that hymn for me was the highlight of my Sunday last week. Y’all sang that song like you meant it.

When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and has shed his own blood for my soul.

He lives--oh, the bliss of this glorious thought; my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to his cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Lord, hasten the day when our faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall descend; even so it is well with my soul.

Now this was a hymn that was written in the 1800’s, but I imagine that the hymn that Paul and Silas sang in that first century prison that night after their arrest would have sounded just like “When Peace Like a River” especially the way we sang last week.

It’s one of my favorites by the way, as is the last hymn we will sing today, “Thine the Amen”. If you are at all like me then the words of many hymns are as sacred to you as scripture. In fact what Paul and Silas sang may very well have been scripture because the Psalms were used as hymns and were written with the intention of being sung.

Whatever it was that they were singing; those prisoners with them, in that jail, listened as they sang and prayed. They were so captivated by the words and music that even when there was a great earthquake so violent that it shook the foundations of the prison, they did not move. They were so captivated by the singing and praying that when the doors flew open and their chains were unfastened all of them remained.

And because of it the jailer and his whole family believed on the Lord Jesus and were baptized. The jailer, their captor, took them into his own home, cared for their wounds and fed them and he with his whole family was baptized without delay.

It’s a remarkable story. Paul and Silas are arrested, beaten with rods, thrown into the innermost cell in jail, their feet are fastened into stocks, and yet… they sing and pray and because of this a whole family comes to know Jesus.

Well, really it was God who did it, God who gave Paul and Silas the peace that let them sing so sweetly that this thing happened. It was God who caused the earthquake to happen, God who opened their prison doors and unlatched their chains. It was also God who worked in the hearts of the other prisoners, keeping them there to continue listening. And it was God who worked in the heart of the jailer as he washed the wounds Paul and Silas had received from their punishment, the horrible flogging they endured before being shackled; it was God who worked in the water of baptism.

God did it all.

God turned Paul and Silas’ captivity into something else. God recreated that moment in time so that the jailer might become captive to Christ’s love and Paul and Silas might become free of their prison.

It might seem as though the miracle would be that God caused an earthquake that shook open the prison, but the miracle was that God worked in the hearts of the characters in our story. God worked miracles in prayer and in singing.

God worked miracles in prayer and singing.

We aren’t told what Paul and Silas prayed and we aren’t told what hymns they sang, we are only told that they were praying and singing when God made the earthquake happen.

We don’t know if they were giving thanks or singing lament. We don’t know if they were asking to be rescued or singing about peaceful rivers. And I don’t much think it matters what prayers they were praying or what hymns they were singing. What matters is that in their captivity they prayed and they sang hymns and that God was listening.

God listens when we pray. The earth might not always shake after we say “amen”, but God listens. And God listens when we sing, even when we sing off key.

But God doesn’t just listen when we pray and when we sing. God frees us when we pray and God loosens the chains that bind us when we sing. And God connects us to others in our prayers and in our singing.

Paul and Silas did not pray secret prayers or sing silent hymns. Their words and music drew others in and caused them to listen and become a part of their experience of God.

God frees us only to connect us to others… to bind us in a new way to one another. It’s why we gather together to pray and to sing hymns out loud, because in doing so we become one with another.

So pray out loud and sing, even if it’s off key. God is listening to our voices and drawing them together.

Amen.

Our Mother, Christ

A sermon based on John 14:23-29

Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

In the name of Jesus; amen.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.”

When my brother and I were little the prospect of my parents going out for the night meant that we would have a sitter. Now, I was a momma’s girl and I never liked the idea of my mother going out and leaving us to be cared for by someone else. But the worst part for me was going to bed at night when my mother wasn’t home and the person taking care of us wasn’t my father.

Home took on a new meaning without my mom in it especially at night. There were nights with sitters where I would lie in bed trying to fall asleep with a feeling that could only be described as homesickness. For a little girl it was an odd concept; to be at home and still feel homesick and yet, that is exactly how I felt without my mother to tuck me in and kiss me goodnight.

I never wanted my mom to go away even for a night because that feeling was awful.

Except there was one sitter who didn’t make me feel that way. Whenever she would come I knew we were in for a good time. Doris would play with us, let us watch our TV shows, make us cool fun food, let us stay up past our bedtime and tuck my brother and me in bed just like my mom did. If Doris was our sitter, I could handle the fact that my mom wasn’t there.

In today’s gospel Jesus tells the disciples that he is leaving. It continues a theme from last week’s gospel where Jesus says this:

“Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.’”

Maybe some of you will have a hard time with the concept of Jesus being like a mother, but the idea is not so far off. Jesus referred to himself as a mother hen wanting to gather her brood under her wings and at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries mystic Julian of Norwich wrote a series of visions in which she described Christ as mother.

She wrote:
“The Second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature, in our substantial making. In him we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother by mercy in our sensuality, by taking flesh.

“Thus our mother, Christ, in whom our parts are kept unseparated, works in us in various ways. For in our mother, Christ, we profit and increase, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and by virtue of his passion, death, and resurrection joins us to our substance. This is how our mother, Christ, works in mercy in all his beloved children who are submissive and obedient to him….”

And of course it seems apropos for today to consider the idea.

Jesus is a mother about to leave her children in the care of another.

At this point in John’s gospel Jesus has told the disciples what is going to happen to him. They must be in a state of denial and despair; denial of the possibility that Jesus was really going to die and despair of the possibility that they would be without him.

I never wanted to believe that my parents would actually go out without me and my brother and I almost always worried that I would be ok without them.

Jesus promises that when he leaves his disciples someone else will come to take care of them. Our translation of this reading calls this other caretaker the Advocate, but the original word Jesus uses is Paraklete which I always find a funny sounding word. Is it a bird? Is it a pair of those shoes with spikes on the bottom that you wear to play sports?

Advocate is a good translation, but not perfect. It’s one of those words that loses the nuance when translated from the original. Other translations use, comforter, counselor, friend, and helper.

When we think of having an advocate we think of having a person who will speak on our behalf. It’s true, that’s what an advocate does, but the Advocate that the Father sends is meant to speak on behalf of Jesus.

The Advocate that the Father sends is meant to care for us on behalf of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is our babysitter, the one that takes care of us in Jesus’ absence. But the Spirit isn’t just any old babysitter. The Spirit is the one that teaches us everything we need to know about Jesus and reminds us what he told us. The Holy Spirit is the one who comforts us and takes away that feeling of homesickness when Jesus, our mother is not with us.

The Spirit is the one who gives us the peace of Christ in Christ’s absence.

Mothers are meant to love their children; not all do and not all do it well, but Jesus, our mother, loves us enough, more than enough so that even in this time when we wait for his return we are provided for out of that love.

It is the Paraklete who tucks us into bed at night and kisses us on the forehead, reminds us to say our prayers and tells us that we are deeply loved.

It is the Paraklete who tells us not to worry… mom will be home again soon and we don’t need to be afraid.

It is the Paraklete who holds us until Christ comes again to gather us up in his arms and hold us close.

We are cared for and loved by our mother Jesus and our Father in Heaven and the Paraklete, the Holy Spirit, Christ’s advocate and our caretaker.

Amen.

All you need is love

A sermon based on John 13:31-35
When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, "Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

In the name of Jesus; amen.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.

Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.

Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed he stood up from his meal and washed his disciples’ feet. He told them that he was going to be betrayed and as they questioned which one of them it might be Judas gets up and leaves. It is at this point that our gospel begins with events that put into motion Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

Judas goes out to alert the authorities of Jesus’ wherabouts and Jesus turns to his friends and tells them that the Son of Man and God have been glorified, are glorified, and will be glorified. Then he tells them where he is going, they cannot come, however, he gives them a new commandment:

Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

It wasn’t a small matter that night and it isn’t a small matter today. Throughout scripture, when asked what the most important commandment is, Jesus always responds with a command to love; love God, love your neighbor.

And this time Jesus puts a new emphasis on the command… to love as he loved.

Reading this gospel now, knowing that Jesus is about to show his love by going to the cross, might make some of us a little uncomfortable. Are we supposed to love by dying like Jesus did? No, and Jesus says this: “Where I am going you can not come.” But, Jesus is clear that we are to love others the way that he loved. Jesus who ate with tax collectors, welcomed children into his arms, and sat down with prostitutes wants us to love the way he loved.

In 1967 The Beatles performed “All you need is Love” in front of a world-wide audience via satellite. It was the first ever live global television link. Broadcast to 26 countries and watched by 350 million people (perhaps you were one of them) John and Paul, backed by Ringo and George, proclaimed a new slogan for the time: “All you need is love.”

With love, they asserted, all things could be accomplished. There was nothing you could do that couldn’t be done, all you needed was love to sing the song, learn the game, make the thing, save those in need of being saved, and be you, it was easy!

I don’t think they were entirely wrong. Love is a powerful thing. There is strength in love that cannot be matched in any other way. Knowing that we are loved can give us a whole new view of ourselves and our lives, but loving changes us and it makes the world different.

Jesus’ love changed the world, it undid death, it saved us. But it was the first part of the act. Jesus’ love wasn’t meant to end at his crucifixion or at his resurrection. It didn’t end with his ascension or with the coming of the Spirit. It was the first part of a continuous action. God was glorified, is being glorified, and will be glorified in the act of our being loved by Jesus and then loving others because of it.

But we are supposed to love the way Jesus did, in an unconditional way, in a way that is active and free of judgement. It’s not meant for just one group or kind of people. It isn’t meant for just the people we know and like.

This love that Jesus wants us to act out is love for one another. It’s love for those we like and dislike. It’s love for those we agree with and disagree with. It’s love for those we live with and those who live lives we will never experience.

And it’s an active love. It’s a love that spoke truth and kindness. It’s a love that embraced the sick and cuddled children. It’s a love that washed feet. It’s a love that valued the other regardless of race, gender, and social class and it’s meant to be a love that keeps on valuing the other regardless of politics, religion, and even sexual orientation.

When the Beatles did that broadcast it was a significant event in the age of technology. It was meant to make the world smaller, to bring people closer together. We live in a time not unlike that first century world where we are exposed to all kinds of people. But the world seems bigger despite the technology that was meant to make it smaller and we have found new ways of despising one another and acting out of that spite.

But love is meant to connect us and the love that Jesus gives us freely can do that and does that. It brings us together in our faith as brothers and sisters through baptism and then calls us to live out our faith in the world, not separate from those who are not like us, but with them in love.

If all we really need is love, then we have it. We have everything because Jesus loved us, loves us, will always love us and gives us enough to share with one another.

Amen.