The Primeval Battle - A Confrontation

Preached on Sunday, September 9, 2018 (a second edition of a sermon preached 6-9-13)

Scripture readings: Acts 13:4-12; Ephesians 6:10-20

Paul and Barnabas were honored to be invited into the presence of the Roman governor of Cyprus to tell him the message about Jesus. They found that he was, in so many ways, the perfect audience for the good news.

He was intelligent; which didn’t mean that he was merely very smart. Being merely smart can cause so much trouble. Intelligence meant that he could understand, and sort things out, and see what was really there, and come to the right conclusion. And this intelligent audience had a wizard, a sorcerer, right by his side.

Walking Near Crab Creek, North of Mattawa/Desert Aire
August 2018

We can’t be sure that Barnabas and Paul knew from the very start that the man standing beside the governor’s chair was a sorcerer. They seem to have argued with Elymas as though he was merely an influential man, like others they had met. There was some shifting in what they understood was going on in front of them. There was some shifting in what they realized they had to do about it.

There was a kind of inspiration involved on Paul’s part. We read that he was, “filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas (the wizard)” and spoke judgment upon him. (Acts 13:9)

While Barnabas and Paul were trying to share their faith and lead the governor to faith in Jesus, the sorcerer “opposed them and tried to turn the governor from the faith.” There was this growing conflict, until the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of Paul to who this man named Elymas was, and what he stood for. The conflict was an outbreak of what has been called “spiritual warfare.”

I know, from my own experience that such warfare is real and that it is going on all the time. There is the Kingdom of God and there is the Shadow Kingdom of this present darkness. There are armies of these kingdoms fighting some kind of war that we can’t see, but that war involves us and has an effect on us.

At the same time, I want to avoid obsession. C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." (C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”)

I think our human race can fall into the same pair of opposite errors related to angels: either to disbelieve in them or to have an unhealthy interest in them. Angels almost never make their presence known unless they have a special mission that requires them to communicate with us.

Elymas the wizard probably would never have called his familiar spirits devils. They were just spirits, and maybe even gods to him. Or he thought they were angels at his service. As Paul says, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Paul, in his thoughts on our struggle against “the spiritual forces of evil”, doesn’t tell us much about either devils or angels. The angels may well be working or fighting all around us but, for Paul, the main point is all about living inside of the spiritual realities that come to us through Jesus: truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, the Spirit and word of God, and prayer. He calls this our armor, or our defense. He calls it our means of standing through it all; standing up in resistance and going forward. (Ephesians 6:11)

I have seen angels, myself, a few times. One summer night, when I was sixteen, I struggled with an invisible devil until I was able to say, “Go away, in Jesus’ name, and don’t come back.” And that came as quite a surprise to me because, at that time, I really didn’t believe in the devil or in demons. But I know what the Bible told me to do about it.

That is one way of being aware of a spiritual warfare but there is no need whatsoever for any kind of experience like that. In fact, if you tried looking for experiences like this it might get you in a lot of trouble. I know this from personal experience. I would solemnly warn you that there are much more important and necessary ways to be aware of such a warfare.

Paul said for us to be aware of it in the form of things like truth, and peace, and faith, and prayer. Our hold on the truth, and the peace that comes from the good news, and a faith and loyalty toward God in our heart, and all kinds of prayer make us part of the warfare.

Seeing these in others is also a way in which we take part. We see the armies of the kingdom of God when people live out the truth, and bring peace to others, and patiently cope by faith and prayer; trusting and communicating with God.

At such times, you see and feel the unseen. You see and feel the power of God living in others and living in you. You see it in the love and integrity of families. You see it in the baptism of babies, and children, and adults. You see it in weddings. You see it in holy funerals.

You see the glory of the armies of the kingdom of light. You see people living out what God is putting into them, but you also see it as a sign of the march of a whole kingdom (a whole new world) on the move; holding out and advancing against the darkness.

On the other side of the war, it is easy to see the sadness and the badness lurking in human nature; but sometimes you see something much worse. You see self-fulfilling fears. You see self-destructive behavior. You see the irresistible and irrational descent into misunderstanding and misinterpretation between people who should be working together; people who should be friends, or who should love each other.

You see something beyond human weakness. Sometimes you hear the cackling laughter of the spiritual forces of darkness. You may not hear it with your ears but you feel it in a shudder down your spine.

Paul was aware of something strange in his meeting with the governor. There was this other man. His name was Bar-Jesus (bar-Joshua, son of Joshua, a common name) Elymas (a Jewish and a Greek combination). In this way he was just like Saul who was also Paul (Saulus Paulus, a Jewish and Roman combination). One was a Jew who had turned into a sorcerer. The other was a Jew who had turned into a Christian. They had parted ways. They had been swept apart by the forces from the dark side of the spiritual warfare.

The Romans were so much about mastery and control, and this Roman governor was being mastered by the sorcerer every time Paul tried to share Jesus with him. The governor was “intelligent”, meaning that he had a gift for putting things and ideas together. He had the skill to see where and how things added up, and he was oddly not able to hold on to anything Paul said.

In the governor’s oddly disabled intelligence Paul saw something more than the work of a man who simply posed as a sorcerer. He saw that Elymas was more than a poser. He saw that the spiritual forces of evil were there, and at work.

The power and the wisdom of God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, filled Paul. So, Paul could speak for God and put his finger on exactly what was going on. Paul saw the hand of God was at work in this moment of time. God himself was there with Paul to face the spiritual forces.

The interesting thing is that, as far as we know, nothing worse happened to the sorcerer than what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus where Paul had met Jesus. Paul, too, had been blinded for a time by Jesus himself, and had to be led by the hand, just like Elymas. (Acts 9:8 and 13:11)

Paul’s blindness and having to be led by the hand were the mercy of Jesus. They were part of the story of Paul’s salvation. They could be part of the salvation of Elymas. We simply don’t know how the story of Elymas ended. When it all happened to Paul, it was a matter of salvation and hope. The salvation and hope that come through Jesus are the power that created the armor of God.

They come to us not as a feeling but as a fact. Jesus, and everything he has done for us, almost forces itself upon us in a way that leads us to repent and surrender. We see Jesus. We see the cross and the one hanging there. We see an empty tomb and death and all our fears and defeats defeated by Jesus and the resurrection. When we see it, how can we say “no” to what he shows us? How can we escape?

We see the truth of it; and it is that truth (that factuality) that serves like a belt that holds our lives together: the belt of truth. However much we may struggle, Jesus has made the fact of his love, the truth of his love, just as great a reality as any of our struggles.

There is the “breastplate of righteousness” where everything is set right. Jesus is the righteousness of God and our righteousness too. He is the justice of God who sets us right with himself and with ourselves.

In the cross of Christ, we die to ourselves. From the tomb of Jesus, we rise as new people who can stand against the devil, because Jesus has made us right before God, and Jesus stands with us.

We are still sinners, but Jesus stands up for us against all accusers. The word “devil” means accuser. The spiritual warfare seeks to accuse us and make us give up. The grace of God in Jesus enables us to stand up.

There is “the shoeing of your feet with the gospel of peace”. Paul almost never says anything in a simple way. The gospel means good news. The good news of Jesus gives us peace with God, but it also gives us peace in every way. In Hebrew, the word peace is shalom and it is all about relationships. It doesn’t mean an absence of conflict. Peace means all relationships are healthy and flourishing, especially our relationship with God, in Christ.

The spiritual warfare attacks us when we are not nurturing our most important relationships. Or the warfare tempts us to mess with our most important relationships. The gospel of peace prepares us to stop and pay attention to people. The peace of Christ teaches us how to nurture our relationships, and this protects us, and it protects them, from the spiritual forces of evil.

There is “the shield of faith” and faith is a kind of loyalty and trust in God, in Jesus. Loyalty listens to Jesus instead of listening to our doubts, or despair, or weariness, or weakness, or our strongest desires and temptations.

Loyalty and trust help us to listen to Jesus, who forgives our sins, and so we have another way to defend ourselves than by proving ourselves, or by justifying ourselves, or by pretending we are something other than what we are. True faith saves us from pride as well as from fear.

Then there is the “helmet of salvation”. When I was seventeen I drowned, but I was saved from the lake. I was rescued from the water by Charlie Lucas.

I was rescued, then I was resuscitated, then I was safe and alive. Salvation is our rescue by God, in Jesus, and we are safe. Knowing we are safe in Christ is how we stand up to the struggle of the war.

Then there is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”. In Isaiah chapter eleven we can see the power of the Lord working through the Holy Spirit, and through the Messiah. Isaiah wrote like this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him; the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” (Isaiah 11:1-4)

This would tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the word that Jesus speaks in healing, mercy, and judgment. In this way, Jesus himself, in the Spirit, spoke from Paul’s heart and mouth to the sorcerer Elymas. Or we could say that Paul spoke in the Spirit, and Jesus spoke with him.

The Spirit put his sword in Paul’s hands, or the Spirit put his sword in Paul’s mouth. The Spirit gave him God’s word to speak God’s truth. It sounded like judgment, and yet it had the potential for mercy.

In spiritual warfare, we can see things as they are, and name them for what they are. At the same time, we can also leave the door of mercy open. We know that the sword of the Spirit has been given to us with an end in view; to make all things new.  

We have many powerful swords of the Spirit in the Bible. When we recall or speak these words of God, the voice of God speaks again from the words we have read from the Good Book, and works with power.

Then there is prayer. Prayer isn’t given a name as a part of the armor of God. Yet, maybe it is also part of the sword of the Spirit. In Romans chapter eight, Paul says, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)

In the spiritual struggle we may be too tired, or confused, or frustrated to know how to pray, but God’s own words and thoughts (what we would pray if we were faithful, and loving, and wise) gets said. Through the Holy Spirit praying in us, the word of God gets said, in prayer; and that prayer changes things.

What God does for us in Christ is the real armor that we wear. God is our strength. The Lord’s Supper tells us this. Here is the gospel set upon a table. “Eat and be strong,” it says. “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (Ephesians 6:10) “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

Pentecost and the Power of Connection

Preached on Pentecost Sunday, May 20, 2018

Scripture readings: John 15:26-16:15; Acts 2:1-21

We all know people who are connectors. Some people dabble in matchmaking.  Some people always want all their best friends to be friends of each other. But there are plenty of other areas in life where we need to make connections or be the connector.

Walks Along the Columbia River and Crab Creek
April 2018

Sometimes a generation will be the connector in a family. Usually it’s the oldest generation that keeps the branches of a family in touch.

Some of my ancestors were Irish. They owned a farm in county Tyrone, in the old kingdom of Ulster in the northern part of that country. The farm was too small to support all the kids when they grew up about 1850, so all but the oldest son left the farm. Some went to England, some to America, and some to Australia.

They kept writing letters from the very start. Since about 1850 the cousins in Australia and America have been writing to each other every generation. I’m the family connector in America. I write the letters and connect the news on either side of the Pacific. I hold the family together, on my side, as well as I can: to keep going a connection that has lasted one hundred and sixty-seven years.

Someone told me about a grandchild who kept the older generations of a family together, after a divorce had broken up part of the family and made enemies among that older generation.

The child forced the peace. It can be a hard job for a child (and not really a fair job, for a child). Children often show a powerful instinct to be connectors.

Jesus is a connector, building a bridge for us to peace with God through the cross. All the talk, in the Bible, about the faithfulness of God says that it is the nature of God to pursue, restore, and maintain connections.

It is the special work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, to be “The Great Connector.” The Holy Spirit connects us with all the reality of Jesus. Jesus said that the Spirit, “Will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.” (John 16:14-15)

When the Holy Spirit connects us with Jesus we are connected with nothing different and nothing less than God himself: The Spirit, the Son, and the Father. The Holy Spirit is our living, personal, supernatural connection with all the reality of Jesus and all the reality of God.

Jesus calls us to be his witnesses, so that others may know him through us.

The work of being the church and the work of being a witness to the world, and to your family, and to your neighbor is the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The connector, Jesus, gives his connection work to the Holy Spirit, who gives the connection work to us. A witness is a connector. A disciple in the family of the church is a connector. But I want to concentrate on the connection work of witnessing to others.

A witness is a person who has special knowledge, or experience, or a special relationship. A witness is a person who knows what they know, not by hearsay, but by reality. They have seen what they have seen. Or, what has happened has happened to them.

Jesus says that the Spirit “will take from what is mine and make it known to you.” Now, what has the Holy Spirit made known to you, out of the things of Jesus? Or what is there about Jesus that you have discovered, through your connection with the Spirit?

I don’t know whether this is really a good thing or not; but I find that as I get older, I have seen, over and over again, the same pattern taking shape. The pattern of my life is that anything of any importance has taken me a long, long time to achieve.

Some of the most basic parts of living have taken a lot longer for me than they normally take for anyone else. Tying my own shoes, riding a bike, driving a car all took me a lot longer than they normally take anyone else. I look at my personal history, and I see how I have tried my own patience, over and over again; to say nothing of the patience of others, but I have never, somehow, seemed to have tried the patience of God.

I learn that my life must be full of examples of the patience of God, or else I must go crazy. But I also find that the patience of God must be more than only a theory that I can talk about. After all, the patience of God could be nothing but a figment of my imagination, or my wishful thinking. That patience had been a gift that has worked and enabled me to serve God in a way that is a bit different from the gifts of others.

The Holy Spirit is the living, powerful, personal, supernatural connection between the patience of God and the story of my life. And, so, I believe that I could be a good and faithful witness of the patience of God.

If I don’t have that living, personal connection to the patience of God, then I will not be qualified as a witness to that patience. Patience is part of the grace of God. And, if I don’t have the Spirit-connection to that grace, I will not be very convincing.

For one thing, if I am not totally convinced of the grace of God, then I will not be convincingly gracious or patient in my words and my life. I will probably not give much grace to anyone who really needs it. Or, if my words and behavior are gracious and seemingly patient. Others will be able to see though me. My grace and patience will be strangely fragile, or else have a pretend quality to them.

Once, years ago, my dad said something that I thought was the most screwball idea I had ever heard from him, and I told him so. We argued for at least a half hour. I never lost patience with my dad’s ability to listen to reason, when reason was surely on my side. We went on and on and on with this and finally my Dad stopped, and looked me deep in the eyes, and said, “Son, the trouble with you is that you don’t know when to stop.” See how genuine he thought my patience was? (Ha!)

We are, none of us, perfect. That goes without saying. And so, people who have the Holy Spirit’s connection to the grace of God will have lapses and breakdowns of graciousness.

They will need yet more grace for themselves. And they will earnestly, and prayerfully, and repentantly turn to the Lord for that living connection to grace. But, if that is not there, it will become clear.

Does it sound odd to say that when we are being a witness to Jesus, in telling others what we know about him, then we are bearing witness to something that does not belong to us, because it is a gift?  Does it sound odd to say that this is how it is supposed to be? Scripture teaches us to call God “My God” and to call Jesus “My Lord.” But to call him “mine” or “yours” is a gift, and not a possession. It is this way, because what we have is a gift that we call a personal relationship.

You cannot possess a person. A relationship is always a gift.

            I think even being in touch with reality is a gift. We cannot take it for granted.

What we have is like a telephone connection, or an electrical connection. Sometimes, when you are on the phone, the connection goes dead. Suddenly you realize that you may very well have launched into some brilliant or very touching observations, and none of it was heard, because the connection went dead and you didn’t even notice.

Without your personal connection to the reality of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, your connection with the patience, or the grace of God, may have gone dead, at least for the moment. You have to hang up and dial again. Or let the Spirit call you back.

What are you a witness to? What can you make known about Jesus and his Father, because of what the Spirit has brought home to you? Are you thoroughly connected to grace? Are you thoroughly connected to holiness? Are you thoroughly connected to the truth? Are you thoroughly connected with peace, or the servanthood of Christ, or the fellowship to which Christ calls us together?

Or, better yet, can you stand in the crowd that stands on a hill just outside Jerusalem, at the foot of the cross, with others who were the enemies of Jesus, or those who were indifferent to Jesus, or the friends who denied Jesus and ran away? 

Do you have a living, personal connection to that scene, and do you know that it happened for your salvation; that it happened to give you a new life?

Jesus implies that the Holy Spirit is a great connector. That is what he means when he says that the Spirit will witness, will testify, about him. And, since that is so, we are to testify, too. We are to make ourselves available as junior connectors to the Great Connector.

But it was not enough for the disciples to simply have been with Jesus from the start. They could have tried to be witnesses of the things they had seen, and heard, and experienced. But without the living, present connection, working within them, it would not be enough.

Remember that Jesus said the Spirit would be their new Counselor, their new Comforter? Jesus had been their first Counselor.

Part of Jesus’ job had always included explaining the disciple’s behavior and words to the people who were offended by them: like the time when the disciples walked through the wheat fields, and plucked grain on the Sabbath, or when they ate with unwashed hands.

Jesus had to make the connection between his friends who were trying to be his witnesses and the people they were supposed to be witnessing to. From now on, Jesus said, that would be the work of the Holy Spirit.

We need The Great Connector to do his great connecting between the people around us and ourselves. The miracle of the many languages of Pentecost was just as much a miracle of effective hearing as it was a miracle of effective speaking.

We need the Holy Spirit to graciously explain us and interpret us to others, because we do not often deserve to be understood or listened to. We need that grace first, in order to share the grace of God so radically given in Christ. The work that God has graciously assigned to us will always require his grace to make the real work happen.

And then, if we have this living connection with God’s reality, we will see God at work preparing connections with people, and we will do our best to be on the spot, when and where God is working.

To be in the Spirit is to live in a world that is full of connections in various stages of contact or unraveling. To be in the Spirit is to be amazed at the gaping need for connection with God, and the connection with love of God reaching out to those in need. This need is everywhere.

The test question is: Are you connected with this? And the question that goes along with it is: Can you stand in that crowd, at the foot of the cross, and know that that cross is the price paid in blood for you and paid in blood for the whole world?

You cannot be a witness of Jesus, carrying all our sins on the cross, without that living connection of the Holy Spirit to that cross.

And, still, this is what Jesus promises to give you, through his love and grace.

The Declaration of Something New

Preached on Sunday, July 2, 2017

Scripture reading: Acts 17:16-34

Photos from Independence Celebrations
Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
July 3-4, 2017

A new garden-lover asked a master gardener for advice. “What would be good me to plant in an area where we get very little rain? And my best place for a garden has too little afternoon sun, clay soil, and it sits on a rocky ledge?” The master gardener thought for a moment and asked, “How about a flagpole?”

By the time he left Athens, Paul may have felt like he’d been trying to plant a garden in a spot like that. Athens was the one spot where he had been least persecuted, and yet the least accepted. Still, I think, many have underestimated his success in Athens. Paul made a dent in it for Jesus.

It hadn’t been Paul’s plan to plant anything in Athens. He was there by accident. He had simply been kicked out of everywhere else along the way. His only real plan was to wait there for his friends and helpers to catch up with him. His friends (Timothy and Silas) were slow in coming because it took them a lot longer to get kicked out of a place than it did for Paul.

Whatever the plan, the waiting seemed endless. Paul grew impatient and agitated, which might explain why he was so good at teaching patience and peace to us.

If Paul had been a tourist, or an historian, he should have loved Athens. Athens was a beautiful city: the cultural heartland of ancient Greece. It was full of beautiful temples and statuary. But the white marble statues were painted in vivid living color, and a lot of them were naked, and a lot of them portrayed gods and goddesses that were being actively worshiped by everyone there. That is now mostly all in the past, and those statues and temples have become admired as great art and architecture.

It would have bothered us as much as it bothered Paul, to see the evidence that the temple of the goddess of love served as a house of prostitution. Chariot salesmen saw nothing wrong with asking the god of business (Hermes) for help in making sales. People in troubled times would burn incense to the dead emperor Augustus. Would we have smiled at this, snapped our photos, and thought it was all so quaint and picturesque?

Paul was distressed by this. So, he stopped waiting and he went to work for Jesus. Paul did what he was so good at: sharing his faith, sharing how strong and real Jesus is, and how good it is to know him. For Paul, the clinching sign of Jesus’ power was shown by his resurrection from the dead.

Resurrection, in Greek, is Anastasia. Anastasia sounded like the fancy name of a goddess. Greek gods often came pairs: male and female, husband and wife. Jesus and Anastasia: were they a foreign god and goddess pair? The Athenians wondered.

To Paul’s amazement, he wasn’t kicked out of town, but he was called to court to explain himself.

Some people were laughing at him, calling him a “babbler”. If Paul spoke the way he wrote, in the letters we have of his, it might explain the laughter. The “babbler” word, in Greek, is hard to translate. It literally means “seed-picker”; like a bird pecking here, and pecking there, hopping from place to place, seemingly at random. Paul, as a speaker, might not have been so easy to follow. What made up for this was his enthusiasm and creativity.

Luke tells us that the people of Athens loved to talk more than anything. So, they didn’t mind encouraging even a babbler to join in their talk.

Let’s look at the story of Paul in Athens. Let’s think about the strange, mixed response he got there: laughter, interest, and faith. Paul tried to translate the message of Jesus into their thought patterns. He tried to shed a light into the weakest and neediest places of their ways of thinking.

The people of Athens had built many little philosophical worlds in their own minds to help them deal with reality, and with the spiritual reality that was populated by their gods and goddesses, and yet also pointed to something beyond those many gods and goddesses.

Some of their philosophers, for a long time, wondered if there was one thing, or one single source, of everything. Paul had to open up those little worlds, and his efforts only succeeded for a few of those who heard him: at least at the start.

Luke mentions two main groups of philosophers: The Epicureans and the Stoics.

The Epicureans taught that the most important thing was to be happy. Some of them really went overboard on that, and these have plenty of followers today, although I don’t know anyone who calls themselves an epicurean. There were party-animal epicureans. Their philosophy of life was, “eat, drink, and be merry, and let the good times roll.”

The stricter epicureans were fairly serious people. They said that, the way life is, it’s hard work to be truly happy in the end, especially if you go overboard. The serious epicureans said to seek the good life by setting your sights a little lower. Live a quiet life. Try not to let yourself get involved in other people’s troubles. Don’t expect too much; and, then, you won’t be disappointed.

They read this lesson into their history, which was easy for them to do. Four centuries earlier, the Greek city states (especially Sparta and Athens) became strong and wealthy. Sparta and Athens became ambitious, and proud, and they basically exhausted themselves in a twenty-seven year-long war (the Peloponnesian War).

Sparta won, and went straight into decline. Athens was conquered, but kept its fame. Everyone wanted to go to Athens: to see, and listen, and learn.

Pride and ambition had reduced Athens to being a tourist destination. So, the epicureans said: be satisfied with a little. Keep a low profile.

There was, in Athens, at least one altar dedicated to An Unknown God. The Greeks knew about lots and lots of gods, and it was quite a lot of work to keep on the good side of them all. Then someone had the horrifying thought: what if there was a god that no one knew about, and what if that god felt left out and got mad at them for forgetting?

People could get into a lot of trouble because of this. So, they built the Altar to the Unknown God, in order to cover all their bases.

As long as they had that altar, and left offerings on it, they didn’t worry whether he remained unknown. They were satisfied to keep it that way. The epicureans believed there couldn’t be any true contact with the divine, anyway, so why bother?

Once, in our own early history, there was a temptation to a political way of keeping your sights low. In colonial times, in America, Britain began trying to make real money off her colonies. The King and Parliament took away the colonists many of their existing legal rights to pass their own laws, and set their own taxes, and elect their own officials. Some of the colonists were tempted to just go along with it, set their sights low, and make the best of it. They had always thought of themselves as loyal British citizens, and so it seemed like treason to stand up for their old freedoms.

One of the leaders in Massachusetts, named William Prescott, wrote against this temptation: “Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity. Now, if we give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed? Let us all be of one heart, and stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free….”

Some early Americans refused to let go of a spirit of adventure; a desire not to make the best of things as they were. That refusal to give in made our revolution possible. As you read history, you discover that this spirit of adventure had been in decline, and only revived about forty to thirty years before our revolution, during the time called “The Great Awakening”. It came from a spiritual revival that swept the colonies. The adventure of becoming spiritually alive, within, had made other adventures and revolutions possible.

When Paul preached in Athens, he quoted words written when it was still an adventure to be Greek. In those earlier days, centuries before Christ, they had known as much of a spiritual adventure as they were capable of having before the gospel came. These were words about one God, and this is how they went: “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” “We are indeed his offspring.”

It may have embarrassed Paul’s hearers to be reminded that they had left their adventures behind them, and that they had sunk to the level of being content to let an unknown God remain unknown.

The days of groping are over, Paul said. Yet many things remain unknown for us. The epicureans kept their sights low, for fear of being disappointed.

Have you ever been afraid of being disappointed in God? Have you ever been afraid to pray? Have you been afraid to pray for someone to be healed, or for yourself to receive guidance and direction?

Of course, we know that God is God, and we aren’t God. We know that God will only answer our prayers as he knows is best for us; but have you ever prayed to know God’s will and then found yourself too fearful to listen for the answer?

There are times when I’m afraid to know God’s will, because, then, I might have to do something about it. For instance, if I know God desires you to have more freedom in sharing your faith with others, then I know that I will need to do it more myself. And, if I’m afraid to live out my life with energy in the will of God, isn’t it because I’m afraid I’ll fall on my face? And, if I’m afraid of that, isn’t it because I’m afraid that God won’t help me? And, if I’m afraid he won’t help me to do what he wants, isn’t that because I still don’t know him and trust him well enough?

There is a tremendous part of his love and power that are unknown to me. George MacDonald says, “Faith is doing what God says.” Until I do that, I won’t know much of him, or be much like Jesus who died for me to make me a child of God. I want to “live, and move, and have my being” in Jesus.

For the people of Athens, their little world of low expectations kept them in the dark.

Another little world that kept them from responding to Jesus was the world of the past. You didn’t have to be a philosopher to come under the spell of the past in Athens. The hill called the Areopagus, or the Hill of Mars, on which Paul and his audience stood, or the court building in which Paul may have spoken, was surrounded by monuments of the past and the homes of great men long dead. They looked at the past and whispered: “What if?” and “If Only?”

They relived old battles and they placed the blame for the failures of long ago.

There’s a saying that goes like this: “We are too soon old and too late smart.” Athens was an old, old city, in Paul’s day; and even the young people in it were old and set in their ways, even though Luke says that they loved talking about the latest thing. They loved talking, just as long as it didn’t lead to doing. Even the young were old.

Paul gave them his theory of history. “God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them, and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps feel after him and find him.” (Acts 17:24-27)

Paul spoke to people who had built up a world of attitudes that taught them to see the past as lost opportunities for success that made every new possibility impossible. For them, knowledge had come too late.

Not so, said Paul. The past wasn’t only your chance for getting what you wish you had. The past was a challenge to feel after God and find him. You can still do that, now. That invitation has not passed.

Paul turned the focus to the present. Paul said: “But now, God commands…” (Acts 17:30) Paul’s call (God’s call) to repent means two things. It means to reverse and go back to God’s place for you to start. It also means having a new mind, and having (within you) a new “everything within” that comes from God, not from yourself. That becomes the new present.

That present (God’s present) is holy. God overlooks the past ignorance, the missed chances, for the sake of the holy present, now.

There is such a thing as lost opportunity. Those lost opportunities do affect the present.

As individuals, as a congregation, as a community, and as a nation, we live with the consequences of our choices; but this is God’s present moment. The whole purpose can get going again, now. The purpose, even of the failures, is…what? The purpose is repentance. It’s a changed mind, a changed feeling, a changed heart, a changed state of faith and hope and love.

The ancient world didn’t believe in change, except as a change for the worse. Are we any different? Do we believe that God could turn a world like ours around? Do we believe the course of things can change? Do we believe that we can change?

The state of our faith may be such that only God still believes that there can be a new direction, or a new chance. If only God were more realistic! The word of God, through Paul, says that everything else was times of ignorance, but now…. Change in you and change in me, and change in the most surprising things, if only we will not be prejudiced against God’s will by the failures of our past. The past cannot be changed, but now…now, what will we do?

The other little world of philosophy was the stoic world. One of their teachings was “self-sufficiency” or “self-mastery”. It was a kind of independence. Part of it was not letting the world and the people in it sap your strength. Don’t depend on these too much. Be responsible for yourself. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself up. You have ability within you, if you choose. The stoics taught this.

The stoic way is (in many ways) the American way. The American Founders were trained in the old classical philosophies, and Stoicism was a favorite of theirs. But it really only became the American way as the Great Awakening receded in their memories.

If you know much about Benjamin Franklin, his words, spoken at Independence Hall, at the Constitutional Convention, may surprise you. Franklin said: “In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. And have we now forgotten this powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance?”

Paul pointed to dependence on The One who rose from the dead. He said very little about this in our record of his speech on the Hill of Mars: perhaps because the laughter cut him short.

The goal of history for nations (to have the chance to seek, and feel after, and find God) would wind up not in the self-sufficiency that is so popular now, but in a declaration of dependence. Our dependence has to take seriously the words of the Declaration of Independence: “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.” Reliance has nothing to do with independence.

We depend not only on God watching out for us daily, but on someone who died and rose from the dead, for us, to make an inner change possible.

This is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We know what he is like. We can read about him, and we can meet him for ourselves, if we want, if we ask him in our heart.

Even if we feel good about ourselves and what we have done, here is someone who has done more for us than we can ever do, in return, for him.

We don’t have an unknown God to speculate and make guesses about, although we may have so much more to learn and to know about this God.  We have a God who is a risen Savior, and we can know him, and depend on him.

Just as in Athens, we don’t always make much of a response to this Lord. But, let’s give God, in Jesus, something to work on in us. Let’s give him a great expectation that matches our growing knowledge of him. Let’s give him a willingness to let the present be the start of something new in us. Let’s give him a decision to depend on Jesus who died and rose to be our Savior and our life: life for us and a new life for the people and the world around us.

Pentecost - The Gift of the Spirit and a New Creation

Preached on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2017

Scripture readings: Genesis 1:1-2; Acts 2:1-21

The sound of a violent wind; what appeared to be tongues of fire on top of every disciple’s head; your ability to share with others the message of the wonders of God in their own language: have you ever been there? I haven’t. Yet, somehow that is exactly where we are; all of us together. This is what is true of everyone who belongs to Jesus.

A week or two after I turned nineteen, I was in a Presbyterian youth group that had its own Pentecost. Alright, it was just a little Pentecost; no wind, no fire. It was something we all felt, although I was the only one there who began to speak in tongues, which I had never done before. I remember it very well. I remember how it felt for me.

I believe that we all can (and probably all should) have Pentecosts of our own; at least once in our lives, but maybe it should happen more than once: as often as we need it.

I believe we should all kneel before the Baby Jesus at the manger, and we should all stand at the cross, and know that something real is happening to us. I wish that for you all.

Jesus gets born in each of us, in our time, even though Jesus was born only once, long ago. Jesus dies for each one of us, in our time, even though Jesus only died once, for all, on the cross.

I must tell you that anything of real importance never stops. Everything that matters goes on and on, and it all can become yours. The crowd at Pentecost heard, in their own native languages, the wonders of God. In that moment, the wonders of God became their own. The wonders of God never end: not a single one of God’s wonders ever stops.

Pentecost is (like the birth and the cross of Jesus) a one-time event that is so important that it never stops. It can’t stop, because it is an event that has its place in the very nature of God. What God is, and what God wants, and what God gives, flows through our world, for all people, for all time.

We see God in the wind of Pentecost. In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, our concepts of wind, and spirit, and breath are all contained in one single word (ruach). The same concepts are covered by a single root word in the Greek language of the New Testament (pneo).

In the Book of Genesis, when we read about the Spirit of God hovering over the unformed creation which is about to become the living, moving creation that we see around us…when we read about this Spirit of God, we are also reading about the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. This is what God breathes into the first human beings in order to give all humans life. We exist, we are alive, we breathe, and we are spiritual beings reflecting the image and the glory of God because we are all created. We are creatures. We are creations.

Peter reminded the crowd of the words of the prophet Joel, who told of the times of the last days, when those days are about to become the new day of the new creation. In that time, the Holy Spirit would be poured out on all people. All people need to become a new creation in order to be part of the great new creation of all things: a new creation of the Spirit. Peter essentially said that this was what Pentecost was all about.

Does this sound strange? The original Christian Pentecost meant that all Christians become the new creation of the Holy Spirit, because Jesus died for us and rose from the dead. By grace, and by faith, when Jesus draws us to himself, we die with him, and we rise from the dead with him, and we become new. It’s the will of the Father, and the work of the Son, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

When you read about the first generation of Christians, as told by the Book of Acts, you can tell that they weren’t always feeling new. You can tell that, from time to time, they had new experiences of the power and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They needed new experiences of being made new, if they were going to succeed at keeping on the road of the new creation.

The Spirit is like breathing, because it keeps on happening. That is how the Holy Spirit keeps us alive spiritually. The truth is that this is how the Holy Spirit keeps the whole universe going, all the time. If the Holy Spirit stopped its life-giving work, for only a moment, the whole creation would cease to exist.

But, for you and me, the work of the Spirit is like the alternative power source of the wind. It’s a renewable energy source.

And it’s not only for merely you and me, as individuals. The Holy Spirit was, and is, God’s power for the Church: for all the people of Jesus as a collective, single unity.

What we are together is kept alive, and goes on, and hopefully grows, because we love what the Holy Spirit wants to do in all of us, together. This means that we need to all be together, just as all of Jesus’ people were all together, in one place, for the Holy Spirit to take them all together and make them part of the same experience and miracle. The will to not be together is the will of something else than the Spirit of God.

The Spirit continually works in two movements, or two directions. The Spirit drives our movement out, into the world, to share the wonders of God with everyone. And the Spirit drives our movement in, together, to be one. If we, ourselves don’t participate in these two movements or in these two directions in life (if we don’t love these two directions of life) then we may not fully receive the life that comes from the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit can’t move us in his two special directions, then he may resort to moving without us.

Then, there is fire. Fire is a symbol of purity or purification. This is part of what was behind the burnt offerings, or the sacrifices, in the Old Testament. Fire took care of (and got rid of) the sin represented by the animal sacrifices slain on the altar.

Purity, or purification, is what happened when the prophet Isaiah had a vision of God, in all his glory and holiness. In the presence of God, Isaiah recoiled in horror at himself and his people, in the light of God’s glory. In this vision, Isaiah was touched on his lips with a burning coal, to make him clean, in order to make him what God wanted him to be, to free him from whatever kept him from being what God wanted him to be.

The fire represents the Holy Spirit because the life that comes from the Spirit sets us free from everything that keeps us from being what we are created by God to be. In a way, this is what John the Baptist meant, when he predicted that Jesus would baptize everyone with “the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Matthew 3:11)

I don’t think the crowd saw the fire. I think they heard the sound of the wind and they were confused when they heard the message of the wonders of God in their own language from the people who shouldn’t have been able to speak their language.

It was only the people of Jesus, gathered in one place, who saw the fire resting on the heads of everyone there in that room, before they went out. I believe this vision of the fire tells us something important about our life together, and our growing together, in the Spirit. It tells us that we should be able to look at each other and see glory and purity.

For the Holy Spirit to make itself real and powerfully present for me, it’s necessary for me to look at each one of you and see you crowned with flame. For the Holy Spirit to make itself real and powerfully present in you, you must see each other crowned in flame. By the way, you should see me the same way, too. We don’t have the fullness of Pentecost without that reality, because that’s what God is all about: it’s what he is, and it’s what he wants.

Then, there’s the message of the wonders of God. The wonders of God are what we see in Jesus. Jesus said: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) The disciples weren’t only telling the people about Jesus, they were telling about their witnessing Jesus. (Acts 2:32) They were telling the wonders of God as they had witnessed them for themselves.

The Holy Spirit takes the things of Jesus and makes them ours. Jesus said this would happen through the Spirit. “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26) “He will glorify me, because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you. (John16:14-15)

When the people of Jesus shared the wonders of God with the others, they weren’t sharing merely the facts, they were sharing their very own lives with strangers. The wonders of God were their wonders. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, makes this so.

When I speak in tongues, I speak to God. This is what often happened in the early churches, and Paul writes about this in his first letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 14) It’s a way to speak to God in such a way as to share yourself with him beyond your understanding.

The tongues of Pentecost were different. They were a gift of communication with others. As such, in a way, the tongues of Pentecost were completely unnecessary. They were unnecessary because everyone in the crowd would have been able to understand the two languages that the disciples were also able to speak and understand.

Everyone in that crowd would have been able to speak and understand, more or less, the two international languages of that part of the ancient world. The two languages were Greek and Aramaic. Aramaic was a common international language to the east (at least as far as Persia). Aramaic included the nearby areas of Syria and Arabia. It included the disciples own home area of Judea and Galilee. Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic as their home language. It was their language of the heart, but it was also an international language for the lands to the east.

They also would have known Greek. People all over the Roman Empire knew Greek and there were Greeks in North Africa, and as far east as India, and what is now Afghanistan. Aramaic would serve a purpose for Pentecost: Greek even more so.

This rendered speaking in all those other languages completely unnecessary: except for one reason. All those many areas (except for Greece) had hearth languages. There were these old dialects that had not died away. These were languages of the heart, the private languages of the home.

For us (for you and me) the Holy Spirit wants to empower our ability to speak to other people’s hearts. God wants you to communicate in other languages than our holy church language, whatever that may be.

The Holy Spirit may give you the gift of speaking to people who seem to speak the same language as you do, only they may have the language of another way of life, another system of priorities and purposes that make you seem strange and foreign to them. The Spirit can empower you to bridge the gaps between your heart and their heart.

Here, again, the power of the Holy Spirit is designed to be so much more than a personal experience. The Holy Spirit wants to become an interpersonal experience: a heart to heart experience.

Pentecost is meant for each and every one of you, as the people of Jesus. It’s for all of us as we form a family of people together. There may be no audible wind, or visible fire. There may be no foreign languages. But there is that heart to heart with each other and with the people of the world around you.

There is that fiery, purifying freedom from everything that keeps you from being the person you were created to be, and touched by Jesus to be. There is the new creation; living in the new world. In the Holy Spirit, we live in a world that operates according to God’s will, and God’s priorities, and God’s victory in Jesus.

This new life of Pentecost is the gift of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The life-giving power of the Holy Spirit is like breathing. It’s a renewable energy. It has not stopped. It will not stop working for you. It will not stop being available to us, together.

It isn’t really our thing. It’s God’s thing. Pentecosts is God’s plan and intention for all people, including us. Don’t write it off. Don’t count it out. Be ready and willing to receive it. Be ready to do something new and unexpected.