“Moses and the Holy Spirit” (Number 11:24-30)

Rob Tennant, Hillside Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Pentecost, Sunday, May 31, 2020

(COVID-19, steaming worship)

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw_dkxDX9ng

            Shavuot is the commemoration of Moses receiving the Torah, the law, on Mount Sinai.  Some Christians will say they don’t like the law.  Some Christians ignore Jesus’ statement “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”  Jesus adored God’s law and knew it better than anyone.  He read the law, memorized the law, and meditated on the law. 

What is this law?  Read the first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.   Creation.  Establishment of Israel as God’s people.  Slavery in Egypt and Exodus.  And law.  Much of this law, we Christians don’t observe because we believe the sacrificial worship system was fulfilled by Jesus.  Still, the law is in the Bible we claim to revere.  We have to read it, respect it, and understand it.

Shavuot; Jewish people remember Moses receiving the law. 

In Acts 2, the followers of Jesus were where we left them last week in Acts 1, in Jerusalem, waiting to see what God would do next.  The day of Shavuot came, or in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the day of Pentecost.  God’s next move was to rain down fire – the Holy Spirit, filling the hearts and minds of Jesus’ followers, empowering them to spread God’s love as they bore witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In his Pentecost sermon, Peter tied the coming of the Spirit to the vision of the prophet Joel.  “In the last days, … God declares, … I will pour out my Spirit” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28).  Christians today rightly associate Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t pay enough attention to the activity of the Spirit throughout God’s word.  We circle this as the moment God empowered his followers.  It’s not the first time God acted as Spirit.  This event at Shavuot, the Pentecost that came immediately after the resurrection, falls in line with a tradition of God’s Spirit filling His people so they could achieve his purposes. 

Of the 100’s of Old Testament stories in which we see the Spirit, consider Numbers 11.  Moses has led Israel out of Egypt.  The nation camped out at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses received the law.  Then, the people moved across the Sinai Peninsula toward Canaan – the Promised Land.  In Numbers 11, on the move, the people complained.

Griping, groaning, grousing: it’s one of the original human activities.  In Exodus chapter 2, enslaved in Egypt, the Israelites groan.  Verse 24 says “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, and God looked upon the Israelites, and God noticed them.”  Heard. Remembered.  Looked.  Noticed.  Through Moses, God led his people through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness, completely dependent upon him.  By the time we arrive at Numbers 11, the people have complained a lot.  Now they are pining to go back to Egypt. 

They have forgotten how unbearable life was under the taskmaster’s whip.  “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at” (Numbers 11:5-6).  In the face of wilderness challenges, they whine and complain and God isn’t having it. 

This part of the story should be very familiar for us, especially in today’s outrage culture.  Facebook and Twitter exist for us to, unchecked, spew forth our self-righteousness. We are easily offended.  From the busybody on the neighborhood list serve to the school friend you haven’t seen in a decade to the past-his-prime comedian to the White House; everyone can go on these platforms and try to shame those they don’t like.  Outrage culture is polarizing our country.  It is dangerous and immediate.  We are better and quicker at complaining than we have ever been. 

Moses heard the people complaining.  Because of his special relationship with God, he knew their complaints angered God.  I am certain God is none-to-happy with the way we, in our culture talk about about one another.  God was furious, the people wept, and Moses was in the middle of it. So, he complained.  He barks at God, “Why have you treated [me] so badly?  Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of this people on me?  Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,’ to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?  Where am I to get meat to give all these people?  For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat.’ I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me.  If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once” (Numbers 11:11-15).

Oh, Moses really tells God off.  As your pastor, I suggest you don’t talk to God the way Moses did.  If you do, don’t expect God to react the same way to you that he did to Moses.  Look at Eve, Noah, Abraham, Hagar, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, Ruth, Samson, Job, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Esther, and Daniel, just to name a few.  Each one has a dynamic relationship with God as Spirit, but each is unique, different from the others.  If you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, you will develop your relationship with God the Spirit and maybe you’ll find a moment where you want to complain as Moses did.  God relates to each individual individually.  What we see with Moses is not a formula or a pattern; it’s story.  Your part in the story will be unique to your relationship with God. 

Moses unloaded, gave God a piece of his mind.  It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last.  In this instance, God says, OK.  Gather seventy elders and I’ll give them Spirit so it’s not all on you.  He gives exactly what Moses requested.  Then he tells Moses he’s going to give exactly what the people requested.

They don’t like the Manna God had fed them.  He’ll give meat – quail meat.  He’ll give so much they’ll have quail coming out of their noses (Numbers 11:20). What does Moses say?  “I have 600,000 people with me” (11:21).  He can’t believe God can do this.  Moses has already seen a burning bush, the 10 plagues that devastated Egypt, God traveling before him in a fiery cloud, the parting of the Red Sea, water pour forth from rocks, the Earth open up and swallow some of the people in an another instance of complaining, and he has received the law, written by God on stone tablets.  Will there ever come a moment when he doesn’t question God?  God has had enough!  He responds, “Is the Lord’s power limited?  You shall whether [God’s] word will come true” (11:23).

At this point both God and Moses sound riled up.  Does God get riled up?  The Holy Spirit is God available to us, speaking to our hearts, opening our eyes, and empowering us to work for God’s good in the world.  After this back-and-forth, Moses gathers 70 elders to the tent of meeting and the Spirit of the Lord comes on them, as it did in on Jesus’ followers at Pentecost in Acts 2. 

With the Spirit of the Lord on them, they prophesy.  This means they spoke God’s truth with clarity and conviction.  For some reason, two of the appointed elders, Eldad and Medad miss the meeting.  Can you imagine missing the one elder’s meeting where the Holy Spirit pours out on all the elders in a Pentecost-kind of way?  But God’s spirit wasn’t confined to the tent.  If they couldn’t make it, the Spirit would come to them!  They prophesied too.  They went around the camp speaking God’s truth.

“Whoa!  Whoa!  Whoa!” cries Joshua.  At this point, he’s Moses’ number 1 assistant.  “Stop these clowns” he tells Moses.  Eldad and Medad prophesying outside the tent didn’t fit Joshua’s paradigm.  Throughout the narrative in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the book of Joshua, he very rarely runs afoul of God’s will.  But here, it is too much for him.  As we often do, Joshua wants God to act, but not beyond what he can understand or control. Moses hits Joshua with a truth bomb Christians today badly need!  “Are you jealous for me, Joshua” (11:29)?  You think I want to be God’s only prophet?  “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit on all of them!”

At Pentecost, we don’t all become prophets, but we do all have the opportunity, in Christ, to know God the Spirit.  We can commit to speaking God’s truth.  We may not all be prophets, but we can speak prophetically.  Because God works with, in, and through anyone.  He worked through constantly complaining cowardly Moses.  He called out an imperfect people who fell short often, and through them settled the Promised Land.  When he came to earth in human flesh, Jesus, it was in a peasant family in a backwater town of an occupied nation.

In spite of the shortcomings we have as a people, hypersensitive complainers in an instant, outrage culture, God will work though us, His church.  God shook up the Roman empire working through the ragtag band of disciples whose leader had been crucified, and the world was changed.  Now there are followers of Jesus in every nation.

The spread of the Gospel happened because God the Spirit worked through people and nothing is impossible for God.  Moses saw God feed 600,000 people more meat than they could stomach.  With five pieces of pita bread and two trout, Jesus fed 5000 people until they were buffet-full.  There were 12 baskets of leftovers. 

No limits apply to God.  His Spirit pours out in the tent and outside it.  Will the Coronavirus break us?  Maybe, but if we, as God’s church, work in concert with the Holy Spirit, we’ll see the wonders God will do, even in a time such as this.  Will political divisiveness tear us apart?  To a degree, yes, but even in the midst of social turmoil, with the Spirit at work in us, we will see the wonders God works, working through His church.  

It is Pentecost.  Read the story: Numbers 11; Joel 2; Acts 2.  Look at the world around you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The Holy Spirit working in the church and through the lives of Jesus’ followers will continue drawing people to faith in Him.  Watch and see.  Is there anything God cannot do?

AMEN

“The Holy Spirit: God-Breathed Love” (John 14:16-17; 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)

Sunday, May 20, 2018

            We pray, hoping that someone is listening.  Does this make sense?  As Christians, we believe that good wins in the end.  More specifically, we believe God, expressing God’s love, ultimately prevails over evil.  Under this audacious belief, we live lives in which we expect things to turn out well.  Should we?  We hope for the good and live as if we’ll get what we’re hoping for.  Does this make sense?  Such hope stands on what, exactly?  What’s the foundation of our faith?

            Reading an Edgar Allen Poe poem last week, I was swallowed by a damp, thick, vague, darkness.  It is what Han Solo means when he says, “I have a bad feeling about this.”  People familiar with Poe might tell me I have just described all his poems, not just the one I was reading last Thursday.  Yet poets and Star Wars characters are not the only ones to trust their gut instincts instead of evidence.  I have seen the most down-to-earth of people fall prey to indescribable, untouchable yet still palpable feelings.   Something is there.  Intuition. I have heard the most sober-minded of church members talk about the feeling of being blanketed by a thick spiritual heaviness. 

            I’m no poet and I wasn’t in star wars.  But I have had my own moments where feelings existing outside the realm of 5 senses have overcome me. 

            I was on the streets of Washington DC in 1993 outside an establishment that featured exotic dancing.  As men with lust in their eyes and wads of cash in their hands lined up to pay the cover charge, I felt evil in the air.  It clung to my skin like the steamy air after a hot summer rain. 

            Indeed, why should we Christians have optimism or hope or faith?  Evil is about in the world.  Demons; temptation; the sin of man against man, woman against woman; what good news can we offer?  To what hope can we cling?

            We stand at a border in a war zone.  Before us is no man’s land.  That phrase originated in World War I.  Between the German trench line and the French trench line was a space uncontrolled by either side.  Any venture in might mean poisonous gas, bombs, or exposure to enemy gunfire.  To go into no man’s land was to stare into death.  But there was no winning the war without advancing.

            After the resurrection of Jesus and the ascension, where Jesus went to sit at the right hand of the Father, the disciples sat in utter uncertainty.  Were they destined to be executed as Jesus was?  If so, would it do any good?  If death was before them, did they have the courage to face it?  They had become dependent upon the physical, bodily presence of Jesus.  Were they ready for life without him with them?  Staring into the void, exposed in no man’s land, the disciples saw God’s love for them in the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit came as Jesus promised the Spirit would. 

            We cannot see the Holy Spirit.  We cannot measure the Holy Spirit through any form of scientific observation.  Relating to God the Spirit, even believing in God the Spirit, is an act of faith.  We live in this condition, in faith.  And that lands us right in that most dangerous of places – no man’s land.

            We have our life experiences.  I live with what I have seen and felt.  I have severely sprained both ankles in pick-up basketball games.  The pain is alive in my memory.  When I am watching a game on TV, and player is injured, and the broadcast shows it over and over in super-slow motion, I can’t even watch.  I feel the horrible pain. 

I remember a time in a Hardees restaurant, 27 years ago.  I was visiting my friends at Radford University.  We were in the restaurant laughing about something, and a Radford student thought I was laughing at him.  The next thing I knew, this guy was threatening to fight me.  I was so shocked to go from carefree laughter to fight or flight mode, I didn’t even really size up my attacker.  Thankfully that confrontation was posturing, not an actual fight.  Still, all these years later, I remember.

I remember the best hugs I have ever had. I remember times my dad and brother and I laughed at the silliest of things, laughed until we cried.

I remember watching my son joyfully run up the garage steps upon returning home from school.  I delighted in his happiness.  Then his foot slipped and he went down, face first, breaking his tooth in half on the steps; all that blood.  I get a little nervous now, when the kids run up those steps.  I walk up those steps with a little more care.

These are tactile experiences, memories with taste and touch, emotions and reactions.  I cannot recall “seeing” the Holy Spirit of God in any of these experiences.  From this no man’s land, this space of memory, I – we – stand at the border of the physical world and the great unknown.  We have deeper cuts than sprained ankles and broken teeth.  We have injuries to the soul, wounds only God can heal and we cannot see this God we desperately need.  We have no choice.  We have to step forward into the unknown future.  Where is God?

We were made for relationships.  Even those among us who enjoy quiet and solitude need others.  We all need intimacy.  Yet, nothing hurts us as much as the person we love who rejects us.  We cannot look into the mind and heart of another person.  So we step into relationship not knowing if we will be laughed at or loved.  And if we are laughed at, then who picks us up?  Where is God?

All we can do is step into the future.  We cannot be squatters in No Man’s Land.  We can live isolated from relationships, a life lived alone, but that leads to intolerable emptiness.  We must step into the unknown.  But how?

            I mentioned the uncertainty of the disciples at Jesus’ death.  Even seeing him resurrected, still they were unsure of what was next.  They had lived life with him, in his bodily presence.  They were in the boat when he calmed the raging storm.  They saw him raise dead people to life.  Being so close with him, they discovered their very best selves.  Once he ascended to the Father was gone, no longer with them in body, could they continue to be their very best selves?

            I doubt they really understood the mission or the message at this point.  We venerate Peter and Andrew, James and John, Matthew and Thomas and the rest, and rightly so.  But in that short time between ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, I believe the disciples had greater anxiety than the spiritual uncertainty we live with daily.  They surely felt that their lives were on the line.

            The teaching of Jesus at the Last Supper, recorded in the Gospel of John, specifically what’s in chapters 14, 15, & 16 is God’s answer to the disciples’ tremulous confusion in the days after the ascension.  What Jesus says there is for us in the moments when we desperately ask, “Where is God?”

            God is here!  “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate” said Jesus (14:16).  “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (15:26).  The New Revised Standard Version uses the word ‘Advocate’ to translate the Greek word ‘Paraclete.’  In reality, no single word in English adequately captures the meaning of this word; we might even say of this name. 

            The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit sent by God.  English translators have called this one ‘Advocate,’ ‘Comforter,’ ‘Helper,’ ‘Teacher,’ and ‘Mediator.’  The Spirit fills all of these roles.  The presence of the Holy Spirit is so important for living the life of a follower of Jesus, he actually said it was for the best that he depart.  His ascension was the best thing that could come for the disciples because the Holy Spirit would not come until he departed.  I find it hard to understand how I am better off apart from Jesus’ bodily presence, and I never met Jesus in the body.  How much more would these disciples whose feet were washed by him become incredulous when he said his departure was for the best?  But that’s what he said.  They, we, need the Spirit more than we need Jesus present in the body.  We cannot be disciples apart from the Holy Spirit.  We cannot be Christians apart from the Holy Spirit.

            However, this does not mean we strain to see or hear or feel the Holy Spirit.  Yes, we can listen, quiet our minds, open our hearts, and truly listen.  But, communing with the Spirit is not something we accomplish.  It’s something we receive, a gift of God’s grace.  The Spirit is sent by God as God’s presence with us.  We have this gift and God won’t ever go away.  God may sit patiently waiting for us to be responsive to the Spirit, or the Spirit may act in ways we cannot easily see, but the Spirit is God’s promise that God is always with us.  As we come to understand this, we see that No Man’s Land is transformed and becomes God’s Space.

            In John 16:8-11, the Spirit is an accuser who proves the depths of error found in the world.  Remember, in the Gospel of John, the world is fallen and dying, and is a dangerous place.  If we get too wrapped with the world, apart from God, we die with it.  The Spirit shows that world does not understand sin, righteousness, or judgment.  Sin is life lived in rebellion against God.  Righteousness is life lived in right relationship with God.  Judgment is God’s verdict that the world will die and be destroyed before entering the resurrection and being made new.  The Spirit exists within the evil world to teach this lesson about sin, righteousness, and judgment and at the same to time to speak God’s condemnation. 

            Such wrath-filled rhetoric might give us pause, raise our fears a little, but we can be comforted.  The same Spirit that speaks judgment to the world takes the church, the followers of Jesus, by the hand.  The Spirit guides us to the path of absolute joy and eternal life.  I would say the Spirit guides us gently and much of the time that is so.  But sometimes, some of us need more than an arm on the shoulder.  We need a swift kick to get us moving in the direction of God.  When need be, the Holy Spirit provides the necessary nudge. 

            Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (16:12).  He’s called the Spirit of truth and he guides us into the truth.  And by the way, the Holy Spirit has no gender.  I say “He” because of the insufficiency of language. Earlier in John 14, we hear Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  So when Jesus declares that the Spirit will guide us he means two things.  The Holy Spirit enables us to truly see the world as it is, and guides us to Jesus. 

            Jesus says that he sends the Spirit.  He also says the Spirit comes from the Father.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus and the Father are one and whenever one acts, we are assured it is as if the other said that word or performed that deed.  All that I am saying does nothing to clarify the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  I cannot make the 3-in-one nature of God simple.  Next week we will talk more about our Trinitarian understanding of God.  I fear confusions will persist.  What I offer – what the Bible offers – what Jesus promised is not answers, but presence.

            God knows that John’s gospel presents the world as evil.   God knows the struggles, the uncertainty, and the sense of isolation that we face.  God knows.  God loves us and what God has done for us is to come to us.  God is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the ultimate testimony that God is love.  God’s ultimate value is love.  When you or I feel abandoned or defeated or collapsed in guilt or lost, God says to us, “I love you.  I will show you my love by being with you.”  This is God: love.  God is love. 

            Many years on Pentecost Sunday – today – we would read Acts 2 and see how the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit launched the beginning of the age of the church, the body of Christ alive and active in the world.  This year on Pentecost Sunday, rest in who God is.  God is the one who loves you and is with you.  The world is dying in sin, but you are rescued for eternal joy, eternal love, and eternal life.  The Spirit has come and is here.  We need not fear.  Because of who God is, we can live in the midst of evil as witnesses to the truth.

AMEN

Called to New Creation

One of my heroes of the Christian faith is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp for his small role in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer had been teaching theology in the United States.  He did not have to go back to Germany.  He was free and clear.  But his faithfulness to Christ compelled him to return home, face the dangers, and try to do his part to help his countrymen.  He was courageous and faithful and because of that, he died. 

          What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “call” from God?  Was he called to be a theologian?  Was he called to be a martyr?  When I read a biography about Bonhoeffer, I was amazed to learn that one of his earliest jobs was as a youth minister in a German-speaking church in Spain.  I thought, “I can relate to that.  I’ve been a youth minister!  In a small way, I can feel connected to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”  What a thrill for me.

          What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s call from God?  He was called to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It is the same call God has for you and for me.  For Bonhoeffer, the call dictated how he would approach dating, which he put off for a long time.  By the time he was engaged to marry Maria von Wedemeyer, it was too late.  He was arrested before they could marry.  It’s sad, but it was a part of the testament of his life, a life lived following Jesus.

          His call led him to serve as youth pastor at that church in Spain.  His call led him to study theology and teach in New York.  His call led him, while in New York, to worship at a black Baptist church in Harlem and teach youth Sunday school there.  His call led him to go back to Germany.  And while he was in prison, prior to his execution, his call led him to stay even when he could have escaped.  He stayed in prison as an act of solidarity with others who were not getting out. 

          We have spent three weeks examining what it is to live as a person called by God.  Each one of us is called.  I occupy the role of pastor, I am called to that role, but I am no more called than anyone else here.  My calling is different than yours, but yours is just as much a call from God. 

My primary call is the same as Bonhoeffer’s and yours.  His call, my call and yours all stem from the heart of God who beckons all people to come to Him in faith and repentance.  We turn from sin and run into the outstretched, waiting arms of our loving father.  Jesus the Son bore our sins on the cross.  We are saved from death and saved to life as followers of Jesus.  In the disciple life, we live the life God saved us to live. 

          As called people, we live in fellowship – at the communion table and at the common table. We share life together.  A second way we live as called people is in the living of the Gospel story.  The story of our lives and the story of God are brought together in Christ, and we spend our lives telling the story of the Gospel.  A third we way we answer God and live as called people is forgiveness.  We live as forgiven people which means we receive forgiveness and we give it.  Today we receive as a fourth aspect of our calling.  We are called to be a part of a renewed humanity.

          Passages from 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5 paint the picture. 

          In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead,” and he describes the contrast from the body we have now – bodies that are dying, and the body we will have when we join Jesus in resurrection.  Resurrection is a part of new creation – God’s plan to reclaim His original creation, which was good. God will reclaim the world and the universe, through the cross cleanse us of sin and defeat death, and all will be as God intended in the beginning.

          Right now we still live under the shadow of the Fall, Adam and Eve’s original sin.  Right now we live with sin in the world and with the shadow of death cast over us.  We are all dying but God calls us to something else.  To answer and to live as called people, we live as those who will live eternally.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrected body is imperishable, raised in glory, and raised in power.  It is a spiritual body.  This does not mean it is immaterial.  In Heaven, we are not shades and we are not beams of light.  We have bodies, but as 1 Corinthians 15 says, we bear the image of the man of Heaven.

          The Spiritual Body cannot be harmed nor can it be killed.  Our resurrection into these spiritual bodies is made possible by the death of the Son on the cross and is the work of God the Spirit.  As we turn to faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit goes to work in us, transforming us.  The transformation is complete at the resurrection at the end time on Judgment Day.

          We see signs of this transformation in how we live here and now.  In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul writes, “From now on … we regard no one from a human point of view. … If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”  We are still in the world where pain is present and the effects of sin and death continue to plague mankind.  However, we see this world from God’s perspective and we begin to invite people we meet to move from the story of sin and death into the story of eternal life. 

          How do we live with this eternal perspective when we are surrounded by cancer and depression, drunk driving fatalities and the complete breakdown of marriages and families?  How do we, with a straight face, claim to see the world from God’s heavenly vantage point when stories of terrorism and refugee crises abound?  How can we talk about abundant life and eternal life in our world of death?  There’s an orphan crisis in numerous countries.  Abortion – the death of defenseless babies – is accepted as a normal practice.  Decency is mocked and political vitriol seems to lead to more success than truth telling. 

          I asked the discipleship groups of our church to discuss this question.  If you could eliminate any one thing from human experience – arthritis, heartache, taxes, diabetes – anything, what would you choose?  What would you remove from the human condition so with this thing gone, life would then be richer, more fulfilled, and happier?  What would you choose to get rid of?

          When God created the world, the human condition was “good” from God’s perspective.  This means to be human was to be healthy, to live forever, and to be in right relationship with God and with other humans.  The renewed creation, the resurrected existence in the eternal kingdom is the experience of living in healthy bodies that never die and it is the experience of being in right relationship with God and with people.  James K.A. Smith says the call to new creation is “a call to be human, to take up the vocation of being fully and authentically human, and to be a community of God’s people who image God to the world.”[i]

          When we read 2 Corinthians and talk about us becoming new creations, this is what is meant: healthy bodies that live forever in right relationships; relationships of love.  We live to thrive and to create, just as our God created us.  We live to make something of the world – something good, something useful, something beautiful, something delicious, something melodic, something joyful, something life-producing. 

          Of course, this call can only be answered as the Holy Spirit of God works through us.  Today is Pentecost, the birth of the church when the Holy Spirit filled the original Christ followers seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus.  When the Holy Spirit came, they were able miraculously speak each other’s languages.  They were able to understand as Peter preached in Aramaic.  And 3000 became Christians in one day.

          Today, the Holy Spirit continues filling the hearts of Jesus’ followers and speaking through the church, which is the body of Christ.  What is the Spirit saying and doing that leads us to answer and help other people answer the call to New Creation?

          We cannot cure all cancer, AIDS, heart disease, and other ailments that attack the body, not with a snap of the fingers or a simple prayer.  So what can the church do?  We pray fervently and unceasingly.  We support doctors and researchers and recognize that the work that they do is God’s ordained work and in answering God’s call, some Christ-followers go into medicine or research or nursing or pharmacy or public service as their life’s calling.  Those of us who do not go into these fields support and celebrate our brothers and sisters who do.  In this we way, we live into the New Creation.

Moreover, as the church, we come around our brothers and sisters who are troubled with sickness and disability.  As a community, we recognize that every member struggles with something, either emotional, physical, mental, financial, or some other struggle.  We wrap the arms of the body of Christ around every member in love so that while we won’t approximate the heavenly bodies described in 1 Corinthians 15, we will create space for all people to have joy, love, acceptance, and family.  We work for all to thrive.

How else do we answer the call to New Creation?  We won’t solve all the problems of evil and injustice, not with the snap of a finger or a simple prayer.  So, we pray fervently and unceasingly.  We see inequality and name it.  We insist that Black lives matter, we understand why, and we renounce systemic injustice as we create spaces for all people to thrive and have a voice.  We see tragedy, we open our doors and our hearts, and we creates spaces for immigrants, refugees, and homeless people to belong and be loved.  We see people Jesus loves before we declare nationality.  We recognize we are all children of God for whom Jesus died on the cross.  We, God’s evangelical church, proclaimers of the Gospel, are the loudest, most powerful voices that call for justice and brotherhood among people of different races.

How else do we answer the call to New Creation?  We won’t answer all the questions of identity and disagreement, not with the snap of a finger or a simple prayer.  So, we pray fervently and unceasingly and we go out of our way to pray for people whose perspective is different than our own.  This is how Paul’s vision in the two passages from Corinthians is lived out in our lives.  We welcome people – even people who disagree with us about what’s acceptable in terms of marriage and sexual orientation.  In the world’s fallen state, people of genuine good will have opposing opinions.  Opposing opinions does not mean we draw battle lines. As it is with disease and sickness and as it is with matters of justice and equality, we approach the question of identity and gender and orientation in love as we create a safe space where disagreements can be hashed out while maintaining the dignity of all in the conversation.  Creating safe space and living compassionately is how we answer the call to renewed humanity . 

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer played the different roles of his life – youth minister, theologian, German Sunday school teacher of black youth in Harlem, conspirator against Hitler – in every role, he was Spirit-driven.  However well I do in my roles – pastor, husband, dad, friend – I am Spirit-driven.  I mess up badly sometimes, but the Spirit has led me to these roles and when I perform in them, I am answer God’s call.  In the roles in your life, including getting out of bed to come to worship this morning, you have the opportunity to answer God’s call. 

When we all do that – answer the call, and cooperate with one another to create a space in our church community that empowers all present to explore God’s call on their lives and to answer that call, then we as a body are living into the resurrection reality.  Together, in worship, in faith, determined to maintain compassion, extend welcome, and share God’s grace-filled love, we lean in to God’s New Creation.

[i] Desiring the Kingdom, p.162-163.

Gospel Acceleration

You and a friend are talking.  Your friend is not really involved with Christianity in any way.  She doesn’t go to church.  As far as you know she really has no religious practice.  Faith is not something the two of you discuss, but she does know church is big part of your life.

            It is an occasion where the two of you are talking over lunch as you sometimes do.  She mentions she has wants to go to baseball game but she can’t find someone who will go with her.  She asks if you would go and you say, sure.  She pulls out her phone and pulls up the Bulls’ schedule.  She suggests a game that’s coming in the next week.  You start to say yes, but you realize that is the same day that something the church is hosting the chili cook-off.    

            In fact, you’ve want to invite this friend to this church event.  It will be fun and you hope it will be a springboard to discuss matters of faith with this friend because you are pretty sure she doesn’t really believe in anything.  You suggest that the two of you go to a game on a different day and then you ask if she would come to church to laugh and eat chili.

You’ve made the invitation and you look into her eyes.  There’s no spark.  In fact, her expression has gone blank.  You instantly know she is searching for a reason to turn down your invitation.  It is clear she wants no part of coming to church, discussing faith, or having this even come again.  Before you know it, lunch is over; you have no plans for a baseball game, you kind of feel like your friend is mad at you or at least annoyed. 

What happened?  Why is it so hard to talk about following Jesus with this friend or with a lot of people we know who are not in church?  Why does talking about our faith in the day-to-day conversations of life feel so weird? 

            This friend is interested in many things that you are also like.  There’s baseball.  You have worked together and are roughly the same age.  You have a lot of common ground and discussion with her is easy – unless it is about God or religion or faith.  Then, she slams the door shut. 

The Gospel has no ground. 

That is one example.  In countless others, we see how impossibly challenging it is to hope that we could share the news that in Jesus, God has come.  In Jesus’ death, God has taken away the sins of all who turn to him in faith.  In Jesus’ resurrection, God gives eternal life to all who give themselves to Him.  We are adopted as sons and daughters of God.  Disseminating that word, spreading that Good News, is why we are here. 

            However, in the secular workplace, coworkers, friends, bosses – they don’t want to hear us talk about Jesus, not most of the time.  Disinterest is an obstacle to the spread of the gospel. 

Our culture’s love individualism, tolerance, and relativism can be barriers.  Your religion is OK for you.  Mine is OK for me.  All religions are basically the same.  We tolerate all except for the religions that claim to be absolutely true.  If we’re all the same, there is no need for conversion.  And popular sentiment in our country is that the wrong thing is to try to say that there is anything wrong.  The Bible says the world is fallen – all have sinned.  That doesn’t really stick in today’s cultural climate.

            Another bump in evangelism road comes in our friendships with people as committed to their religious beliefs as we are to ours.  We have friends who are Muslims and Mormons, Jews and Buddhists and like in the example, we have friends who have no religion.  We love our friends.  But the differences act as obstacles.

            Make no mistake about it.  The Gospel is to be spread throughout the world.  Acts 1:8 – Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses.”  “Gospel” comes from a Greek word which means “good news.”  The only way news is actually news is if people hear it.  In our imagined encounter with friend who expresses no religion and might an atheist, is anyone hearing anything at all? 

            The first Christians did not know they were Christians.  The term had not been coined.  They knew they were followers of Jesus whom they had seen on the cross.  They saw him die and knew he was buried.  Then, they met him, resurrected.  Everything they ever knew was turned over.  Their worldviews were completely upended, but it did not stop there. 

            After the resurrection and after he ascended to the Father, they were seemingly left without much help in a world that was hostile to their cause.  The temple leaders rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  The Romans were not monotheists.  In religion, the Romans thought they were insane.  The Greeks did too.  In politics, the Romans held the power and at moment could enslave the people of Jerusalem including the original community of Jesus followers. 

How could these people, most of them poor and undereducated, obey Jesus’ command to tell of the good news of the salvation God gives in Him?  They were powerless.  They were directionless.  They were kind of in shock.

Then the Holy Spirit came in full force destroying every wall that would stand between the salvation God offers in Jesus and the people who need it.  They had been praying in that same upper room where Jesus shared the bread and the wine.  The Holy Spirit shook the house and they worshipped in song and prayer, prophecy and Heavenly tongues.

Jerusalem teemed with Jews who had come from all over for Passover and the Pentecost.  Many heard the commotion and rushed to the house as the disciples, now Spirit-filled, spilled out into the street.  One by one, the disciple testified.  The gathering crowd was amazed.

Everyone looked around and saw as clear day that this was a gathering of people from everywhere – yet all clearly understood.  The obstacle of language was overcome and the Gospel advanced.  They saw that these were fishermen, not educated folks.  And they came from Galilees, not a place known to produce people of sophistication or scholarship.  More obstacle are obliterated – socioeconomic divisions; education; and the Gospel moves forward from the disciples mouths into the ears, minds, and hearts of the people in the crowd. 

Some critics accused the disciples of drinking too much.  I struggle with the logic.  I never thought getting smashed would enable me to speak Amharic or Karen.  Alcohol doesn’t have affect.  And the crowd did not buy this lame explanation from those who would oppose the Gospel.  They listened as Peter spoke and the story of Jesus was proclaimed. 

He told of the crucifixion and that would be a problem.  People did not continue following a would-be Messiah after he died.  They went and found a new Messiah.  But here was Peter still holding on, claiming Jesus had been raised.  No one, I mean no one, believed the Messiah would be resurrected ahead of an end-time resurrection at which point all people would be raised for judgment.  Peter’s message that Jesus was the carrier of God’s salvation and had been raised by God was totally unexpected.  Expectations and the idea of death stood to block the advance of the Gospel.  Empowered by the Spirit, Peter preached through these blockers.

When the Spirit poured out on the community of faith in Acts 2, they shared the Gospel, spread the good news of life in Jesus in spite of insurmountable opposition.  This event launched the movement of the Christians who carried salvation throughout the world.  The rest of the book of Acts follows Peter and John, Philip, and Paul and Barnabas and then Paul, Timothy, Silas, and Luke along with Priscilla and Aquila as they tell all who will listen that Jesus is Lord.

Many, like our friend in the opening story I imagined, have no part in it.  Many do not want to hear about Jesus.  But some do.  And even when we hear, “No thanks, let’s just go to a baseball game,” we don’t give up.  We pray for that person.  Maybe our invitation planted a seed that someone else will harvest down the line. 

The Holy Spirit is as active now as was the case in Acts 2.  The Gospel accelerated across Israel, through Turkey, through Greece, to Rome.  It continues today.  We have the word.  We stand in the encouragement of the church community – praying for each other, building up each other.  We have the history of our faith and the Christians who have gone before us to inspire us.  Finally, we have God – the Holy Spirit – in us. 

Our culture shows indifference or a penchant for pluralism.  In China, there are the persistent attempts of the government to control everything.  In Western Europe, many buy into the myth that religion has died.  In parts of Africa, Christianity is so infused with traditional religions it is hardly recognizable.  In North Korea, open Christian expression can land you in jail.  In Syria and Egypt, proclaiming faith in Jesus as the Son of God can get you killed. 

Everywhere, there are challenges and it appears the easiest thing to do is go underground, worship in secret, and keep to ourselves.  But a fire burns; the fire of Holy Spirit sizzles.  We can’t put it out and we should not try.  We stand it in it so the light of Jesus shines through us.  The Gospel is going to continue to fill the world.  We play our part by worship, by prayer, and by setting ourselves so we are attuned to the Spirit. 

I have a friend.  More often than not, when we try to get together, life gets in the way.  When do find time to grab a sandwich, our conversation is mostly about our kids or college basketball or the weather – not especially deep or spiritual topics.  He knows my work and my life and I think he’s most comfortable at the surface.

But last year, he showed up here at church – just once.  I’ve known him for almost 9 years and he finally came.  The Gospel is on the move around the world and into my friends’ heart.  To me what happened at Pentecost was a miracle.  When the Spirit filled those first disciples, it was amazing.  To me, when my friend comes back to church and when our conversation moves from debates about who should start at Small Forward to questions about what it really means to be a follower of Jesus that will be a miracle too.  They will be as important an advance of God’s Kingdom as any I can imagine. 

Evangelism and the work of the Holy Spirit are interchangeable.  I am sure this is true in your life and your friendships too.  The gospel is rushing forward.  Pray that you as an individual and we as church can be part of it.

AMEN