Welcoming the Spirit
The South Church Mount Prospect, Illinois 5 June 2022
Acts 2: 1-21
As we made our way through the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost it came to me that each week’s texts had something to say about the Spirit. I want to review a few of those teachings today. On Easter Sunday I stressed that our goal is not to merely re-tell the story that Jesus was resurrected. We do not just claim that Christ was risen but that Christ is risen. Yes, at Easter we acknowledge that death does not get the last word. But we also celebrate that the energy of Christ is afoot in our world today and that this energy is accessible to us all. Our faith is not merely a set of beliefs. It is based on a living, breathing relationship with the Spirit of God. Our faith is not just a belief past events but an experience of a present reality. Many of us must learn how to relate to and to connect with that Spirit. The purpose of the story of Pentecost is not to take us back two millennia to a fascinating piece of Christian history but to invite us into our own relationship with the Spirit of God, as it is available to us here and now. Our faith is a present tense faith.
The following week we explored how quickly the first people who proclaimed the message of Jesus found themselves in trouble, just like Jesus did. Peter’s message was subversive. It challenged the conventional wisdom of his day, it challenged the religion he had grown up with, and it challenged the Empire that believed that the power of Caesar was god-like and never to be questioned. The Spirit revealed itself to be a force for change. It helped transform individual people who, once transformed, became critical of a world system that had created so much injustice. That same Spirit has fought the same battle over and over again throughout human history.
Jesus was careful to name the Spirit a Spirt of truth as well as love. Many advocates for social justice have been fueled by their relationship with the Spirit of Truth and Love. That truth need not be associated with religion whatsoever. Truth is truth. Prophets see the world as it really is and speak the truth they see. Such a witness will always be a threat to those whose power is based on preventing others from having power and whose methods require a distortion or denial of the truth. Any time people with power abuse the truth in order to maintain that power, they have turned their back on the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is by nature subversive, and it always will be until we find a way to create societies based on truth and love.
The Spirit never seems to rest and that’s why, when it comes to how we relate to the Spirt, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves being led to change, to transform. One week we looked at how Paul and Peter were both led to change. Both men had encounters with the Spirit of Jesus. We need to learn to welcome the Spirit when it shows up in our lives. For most of use it does not entail a vision of Jesus, but we can learn from how Jesus worked with Paul and Peter because it’s the same way the Spirit works with us.
When the Spirit of Jesus showed up in Paul’s life he was obsessed with persecuting the followers of Jesus. Peter was feeling guilty for having denied he ever knew Jesus. In Paul’s case Jesus begins with a question, he asks Paul why he is persecuting him. The Spirit literally works within our heads and our hearts. Often that begins with a question. We find ourselves becoming curious about something and our minds won’t let go. Or we wonder why we behaved a certain way and rather than deny it or suppress it we decide to explore it. We ask God to help us see the truth about ourselves, trusting that God’s love is unconditional. Personal growth and transformation always begin with clearly and honestly seeing ourselves and our lives. Once that happens, all things become possible. Jesus holds no grudge against Paul. He wants what is best for Paul. He helps Paul become a servant of love instead of a servant of hate.
In Peter’s case Jesus helps him realize that Jesus wasn’t angry with Peter for denying that he knew him. Peter was just protecting himself, and acting from fear, which is pretty hard not to do when what you fear is wielding a sword. Jesus helps Peter move on. He does this by redirecting Peter from fear and guilt toward love and self-acceptance.
The Spirit can and will help anyone see more clearly. That’s what true enlightenment is, to see reality without the familiar blinders of fear, guilt, and ego-protection. If we try to see with love rather than judgment, reality will reveal itself to us. The Spirit is there encouraging us, challenging us, coaxing us, redirecting us. Our task is to become sensitive to its methods so that we can welcome it presence more fully into our lives.
The following week we explored the idea that the map is not the same as the territory it points to. We can know all about the Bible or become professors of theology but unless we develop a relationship with the Spirit everything we know about God, Jesus, and Spirit are only signs and symbols. If our entire spiritual knowledge is based on books and other people’s teachings then we have what I call an armchair understanding of God, an armchair understanding of Jesus, and an armchair understanding of what it means to be a human being. We may have some good maps but we haven’t entered the territory.
We looked at how resistant Jesus was to being pinned down to one single identity. He was often asked if he was the Messiah and he made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in being trapped by the limitations of that concept. He refused to be turned into a symbol. He wanted people to have the same deep, trusting, personal relationship with God that he experienced. “I and the father are of one heart and mind,” he said. (John 20:30 The Message Version) The spirit that Jesus had and that he promised we could have will lead us into the territory once we welcome it’s guidance into our lives.
The next week we looked at how the Spirit helped Peter understand that he needed to expand his audience to include non-Jews. Peter was given a vision. It was confusing at first. He resisted it. Then he was given the insight that allowed him to interpret his vision. He saw that, for him at least, the dietary restrictions imposed by his religion were no longer a reason to divide people into separate groups. The Spirit helped Peter understand that the message about God and Jesus, a message that he felt compelled to preach, was for all people, no exceptions. Some of us have had had visions. All of us are given dreams that may, at first, be difficult to understand. God’s Spirit has communicated with people through dreams since the beginning of time. You may need to learn a dream interpretation method or work with a spiritual director who is trained in dream work, but with curiosity and perseverance many dreams will reveal a message that will benefit your life.
The next week we looked at Jesus’ farewell discourse. At the end of John’s gospel Jesus tells his followers that he will leave them soon, and that he will die. But he promises that the Spirit will come to them and that this Spirit will be the same Spirit that lives in Jesus himself, the Spirit of God. He promises that it will take life within those who welcome it deeply into their being. As he puts it “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” One way to welcome the Spirit is to live from a place of love. It’s one of many times that Jesus makes it clear that he’s not talking theoretically. The Spirit is real. It is an intelligent energy of truth and love. Jesus said it would make its home within us. The Spirit can work within our minds, teaching us, leading us. It also works in our hearts. Jesus promises to leave them with his peace, a peace that is different from the peace the world claims to offer. The peace Jesus offers is largely based on what is going on inside us. If we trust that we are God’s, that God is with us, and that the Spirit is with us as a loving intelligent energy, then we can rest in the peace that this awareness brings.
The final sermon from these weeks took us back to the beginning where people get in trouble for preaching and teaching. Paul and Silas are in prison. They have gotten into what some would call good trouble. Sure, their plans are interrupted and they experience a little discomfort. But they still find ways to carry their message. The Spirit leads them into trouble and the Spirit gets them out of it. Meanwhile, the message of truth and love is effectively communicated.
I would not be here if I did not have a relationship with a power greater than myself and I connect to and relate to that power through the Spirit, a Spirit that has become a friend, a comforter, and a teacher, just like Jesus said it would. There is no end of things I want to say about the Spirit. I think the only other thing I must say today is to remind us again that the Spirit of God is also somewhat beyond our comprehension. That means it must retain the ability to surprise us. My goal is to help us find ways to relate to it, to experience a relationship with it. But we will never be able to say all there is to say about Spirit any more than we could ever say all there is to say about God.
Never doubt that the Spirit is real. Jesus said it this way. “You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next.” (John 5:8) The Spirit’s nature is akin to the breath, or the wind. It is ever present and beyond our ability to control. Like a windmill turning in the wind, we may draw power from the Spirit, but we cannot control it. Like the wind it can be felt but it can’t be seen. But like trees dancing in the wind, we can see how our world is affected by the Spirit of Truth and Love. And we can appreciate just how impoverished our world is when the Spirit is missing. Which is why we continue to sing and pray and say: Come, Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Rev. Rick Kesler Page 6