"A LIVING AND POWERFUL IMAGE!" By The Rev. Gary Miller John 3:1-8 Please pray with me. Gracious and loving God, as we enter this time of meditation, may you take the imperfect words of my mouth, the meditations of each of our hearts, directing them to a perfect understanding of your love, your care and your presence with us. We pray this all in Christ’s name, Amen. Grace and peace be to each, to all, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. My dear friends….
That piece of music is a living and powerful image for me … to get beyond oneself, to open one’s heart, to be filled with love and care for the child, for the children. Father them home. It is to the young children in Christ that both John and Paul speak this morning. It is to the children. There is a message of great importance about the trust in God’s spirit and the power of that spirit. The image that is created here is that this spirit is so powerful, so potent, so unpredictable and so uncontrollable, that it can come upon us like a mighty wind. And with that wind it brings to each and all of us the gift of new life … new eyes … new spirits to live in the model of the Christ. The spirit of God, as Nicodemus hears from Jesus, casts away the old and puts in place a new order, an order that’s outside the realms of our own human control, but one that is vibrantly alive … alive and filled with the spirit and doing things it finds difficult to even imagine. In mainstream Christianity, there is a certain level of discomfort any time we have conversation about the Holy Spirit. There is, for many of us, some difficulty in making declarations about how we believe the Spirit is working in our lives. As a matter of fact, the topic of the Holy Spirit is not at the top of any mainline Protestant church’s theological list of favorites. It’s just not there. You can verify that for yourself if you look carefully at the hymnals before you. And … that’s the best hymnal I think we can have in our sanctuary. Yet there are less than ten hymns with specific reference to the Holy Spirit, and over 100 with regard to God as Creator and Jesus as the Christ. So even the writers of our hymns struggle with taking seriously and/or expressing the importance of God’s Spirit moving in our midst. You know that I try to work with the lectionary week after week and to follow that prescribed course of study. But even when we look to the lectionary, as it’s set out over years A, B and C, there are really only two Sundays where we focus on the Holy Spirit and that’s Pentecost, which was last Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, which is today. Perhaps if the church is truly to be alive, it needs to create its own focus on God’s Spirit and its mighty movement in our midst. There are other fellowships within Christianity, who, unlike us, don’t like to “talk” about the Holy Spirit, or even suggest that they have some control over God’s Holy Spirit. Yet, they believe they recognize the signs of that Holy Spirit. In many of the Pentecostal traditions, one of the signs of a true believer is how many of the gifts of the Holy Spirit a person has. An even greater sign is when you start speaking in tongues. I am certain that if anyone here has had an extended conversation with someone who declares himself or herself Pentecostal, you’ve talked about the Holy Spirit. And you’ve also been a bit indicted about the Holy Spirit not being alive in your church, our church, about us not celebrating the gifts of the Spirit. Yet I want to say unequivocally to each and all who gather here this morning, we do speak in tongues. We are vested with the gifts of God’s Spirit … each of us … all of us. And we have, all of us, been entrusted with many gifts of God’s Spirit as we care for and as we love one another, as we are open to and affirming of one another. As we teach, as we contribute, as we participate in worship, we speak in the tongues of the Spirit and with the many gifts that God has entrusted to us. The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus unfolds in an interesting and somewhat puzzling fashion. You see, both of them, Jesus and Nicodemus, were teachers, teachers about things of the faith. And they’ve gotten together. Nicodemus has come under the cover of darkness to talk to Jesus about some of this Kingdom “stuff,” about some of this religious “stuff.” But it doesn’t take much conversation to know that they are not on the same page. Nicodemus is stuck at the literal, the physical or the numbers level, and, to a certain degree, that’s where he needs to be on his journey of faith. He is not wrong where he is, but there is more, much, much more, declares Jesus. There is even the gift of new life. There is even that rebirth in new ways, and with new vision, and with new eyes. And even though Nicodemus was a wise and presumably good man, he still appears to be baffled by the meaning of all that Jesus had to say to him. Because his faith could go no deeper than his intellect, he could not open the window to the moving of the spirit in his life. My dear friends … it is a fervent belief of mine that there is no greater need in the church today than that we open ourselves to the workings of God’s Spirit … God’s Holy Spirit in our mids, for we have not yet understood full , what God has set before us. Last Sunday at approximately 11:30 a.m., we gathered as a congregation, in this very room, to do some church “business” … much like Nicodemus came to Jesus for faith “business.” We gathered together, believing we needed to get some things straight about the mission of the church. We gathered to do some “Kingdom” business, if you will. The numbers were in. They had been carefully massaged and understood, and it was time to consider action … what will we do as a people of faith? Just like Nicodemus in the presence of Jesus. What will he do? What could he do? Oh, I know, there are those among us even this morning who have been terribly uncomfortable with those number discussions, numbers that in our moderator’s voice that indicated vitality, energy, involvement and a real future. I couldn’t help but think about that discomfort during this last week. I could not help also thinking about my last appointment with my cardiologist and how important the numbers were to the assessment of my health and my well being. My ability to move forward, to open the window to God’s working in my life, came with some real assurances. The doctor said, with some pride, “The numbers are in.” And that was my blood pressure ... it was also my weight. It was my cholesterol. I have not had anyone for years tell me, “Your blood pressure is superb. It’s 112/84; the scale says you’ve lost five pounds, and your good cholesterol outweighs your bad cholesterol.” And I was ready to fly. But … I couldn’t fly without the numbers being in. Well, for the church, for this church, the numbers were in. But the question was: Could we catch God’s Spirit and fly? And the fresh wind of that spirit last Sunday morning, uncontrollable and undeniable, came from the lips of a recent confirmand who jumped to her feet on the left side of the sanctuary and said in that 13-year-old voice, “After all of our adult considerations, we are so excited. And we (the youth of the church) will do everything we can to help this church move where it needs to grow.” For those of you who were here last Sunday … do you remember the working of the Spirit in those moments? Those words are not an exact quote, but they are in the same vicinity. When she finished that statement, there was a different atmosphere in here. It was like a fresh wind had blown in the sanctuary and we, all of a sudden, all of us in this place where we debate whether to applaud or not to applaud, all of us in this place erupted in spontaneous applause that was overwhelming. We had caught the Spirit and the Vision of what God has set before us. Brianna brought to us a different tongue, which we all could understand. It was a tongue of energy, of excitement. It was invigorating. It was: we will get this done. When she finished speaking, when we finished rejoicing in that fresh breeze of her voice, the numbers became rather unimportant, and, dare I say it, we were, as a family of faith, born again in the image of God’s Spirit. We were infused with permission to “father” a whole new generation of possibilities and responsibilities in the midst of God’s people. And this initiative, this fresh wind, about which we’ve now set our hearts, is not primarily about us. I want you to hear this clearly. This initiative about which we’ve set our hearts and which is coming from this fresh breeze of the Spirit in our midst, is not about us. It’s about US. It’s about tutoring and mentoring, and giving more children the opportunity to grow into their dreams. It’s about loving and forgiving … and having more people to feel included and cared about. It is about safe, secure and affordable housing so that everyone has a roof under which to dwell. It is about feeding the poor. It’s about FoodShare. It’s about ConnectiKids. It’s about Loaves and Fishes. It’s about Covenant to Care. It’s about being in the heart of the city with a heart for the city, and that’s not just about us; it’s about US. And it is a living and a powerful image. The numbers are in. The heart is strong. The body is vital. The will is resolute. And the wind of God’s Spirit fills our sails. And the wind of God’s Spirit gives us new life, and it enables us to parent a new and exciting future. Happy Father’s Day … where we celebrate our two lasting bequests to all of the children of God—roots and wings to fly. It’s a living and powerful image. Let us bring ‘em home. (sung) Amen and Alleluia!
|
|
|
