Letter to a Resurrected People, Chapter 5: I Will Never Leave You Alone

Acts 2:1-21      When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

John 14:8-17, 25-27  Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

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I once worked with a man who was a pastor from the Pentecostal tradition – Dean was his name – and we talked about speaking in tongues.  It is, of course, a usual part of the Pentecostal worship experience.  Some of you may have attended worship services in Pentecostal churches and seen this for yourselves.  Some of the folks at the roundtable this past week shared their experiences.  None of us had ever spoken in tongues ourselves – and none of us really felt that we understand the gift of tongues – but it is common enough that we had some familiarity with it.

Pastor Dean and I had some conversations about the whole phenomenon.  He knew something about Presbyterians and was not surprised that the gift of tongues was foreign to me.  But he said, even though he knows who we are, he doesn’t doubt for a second that God could cause an outbreak of tongues even in a Presbyterian church.  I said, Of course.  Having a strong view of God’s omnipotence, as any good Presbyterian does, I don’t doubt it either.  I’m sure God can do anything God chooses to do.  Although – knowing as many Presbyterians as I do – I believe it would be one of God’s greater miracles. 

This past week I came across an article that suggested to me I have suffered from some misunderstandings about the gift of tongues.  The article described tongues as a kind of prayer that is free of language, allowing a person to let go of control and let the Spirit work.  It seems to be a kind of personal spiritual practice that people do in public.

But on the day of Pentecost something of a different nature was happening.  While it was an inbreaking of the same Spirit, it resulted in a different manifestation of the Spirit’s power.

This was the Spirit that Jesus had promised them, before his arrest weeks earlier. His disciples were feeling as insecure as we often feel, wanting some assurance, some sign, that they could follow. So Jesus told them that the Father would give them an Advocate, a Spirit of truth, to be with them forever, to teach them everything they needed to know.  This Spirit, Jesus assured them, will be with you and in you.

And on that day of Pentecost, when the Spirit arrived like a rush of violent wind, it hovered over them and inhabited them and gave them power to do what they formerly could not do.  Somehow, they were able to communicate with all the various and diverse people who were gathered in Jerusalem for the festival.  By the power of the Spirit, they were connected with people who were different from them.  This is the miracle of Pentecost.

The gift Jesus promise to his disciples that evening in the upper room is for us too.  The message Jesus left with the disciples is for us too:  that he will not leave us alone.  He remains with us by the presence of the Holy Spirit – whose power connects us with other people, all sorts of people.  He will never leave us alone – because we have him with us still and we have the company of one another, all of us made one by the reconciling life of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Let me share some words from the last chapter of the letter from our Apostle today, some words about the Spirit that will not leave us alone.

As Jesus promised his friends 2000 years ago, I remind you today:  He will not leave you alone.  The Holy Spirit is a gift from God that brings you comfort, courage, wisdom, and truth.  The Spirit brings you many things, but one thing I especially want you to remember today is that the Spirit brings you community. 

The Spirit broke into the small gathering of disciples on Pentecost and gave them the ability to reach beyond their comfortable limits to speak to the diverse multicultural gathering outside their walls. The same Spirit enables you to knit together community where there was none before.  When you came to this church you found new family, amongst people who had been strangers before.  This was the work of the Spirit!  But know that the Spirit does not rest.  The Spirit continues to break barriers, forge bonds, enlarge circles of community. 

Like many others, your denomination has spent too many years paralyzed by divisive political issues.  Some congregations have thrown themselves into the fight, while others have preferred to stick their heads in the sand.  It hardly matters which approach you took.  Neither could heal conflict nor bring reconciliation.  Both took too much energy and limited your ability to be effective evangelists in the world.  The church has nearly forgotten how to pay attention to, and care about, some of the most important things it was meant to be and do. 

Perhaps it is time to do something different: to listen for the Spirit, who enables us to speak and hear one another across divisions of culture, language, politics, generation, and anything else that divides us.  The Spirit will give you confidence to speak truth in love, to listen compassionately, and to practice patience with one and all. 

The Apostle has spoken.

Now it is your turn.  You have listened for several weeks to the words from the Apostle to a resurrected people.  What do you have to say in return?  Let the Spirit who is among us and in us work through us to say what we need to say in answer to all we have heard. 

Gather in small groups where you are and together write your letter from the church to the Apostle of Jesus Christ.  This is not the time to generate a list of ideas of things we can or should do.  This is merely to speak your heart to the Apostle – voice the hopes, the needs, the concerns and questions of a resurrected people – the church of Jesus Christ.

Letter to a Resurrected People, Chapter 4: We're In It Together

Acts 16:16-34              One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

John 17:20-26            ”I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

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There is probably no better example of the idea of two being made one than marriage.  The very word, marry, means two coming together as one.  In fact, when I worked in restaurants I learned a new use of the word: at the end of the day we would “marry the condiments.”  Take those two half-empty bottles of catsup, pour the remains of one into the other, wipe up the mess you made on the label, and there you go – two are made one. 

Kim and I had the joy of being at our daughter’s wedding last Sunday and witnessing the ritual of two being made one.  As Kira and Shane made their solemn vows to each other and exchanged rings, they were transformed from two independent individuals to one unit – a family. 

The two become one, and that extends to their respective families as well.  Now our two families are connected.  At the wedding reception, Shane’s young nephew got out on the dance floor with my son Henry.  And when the song ended he shook Henry’s hand and introduced himself.  He said, “You’re my uncle-in-law.”  The two families are made one.

 A wedding is a perfect example of the image presented in this passage from John – an image of what was once separate becoming united as one. “That they may all be one, as you and I are one,” Jesus says in his prayer to the Father.  “Let the love with which you have loved me be also in them.” 

These are beautiful words … beautiful sentiments.  They fill us with good feelings, and then we go home.  To actually live these words is something on a different level.  We know life isn’t lived in perfect harmony, like the old Coke commercial song.

The scene we read from Acts today gets right to the nub of it.  The Apostles Paul and Silas are followed by a slave girl with a spirit of divination.  Some may call it a gift; others would call it a curse.  Whatever it is, she seems to have the ability to tell the future, and her owners have made a happy profit from it.  For reasons that are not made entirely clear, Paul becomes annoyed.  Perhaps it is because she is like a droning mosquito following him around.  Perhaps it is because she is drawing too much attention to him.  Perhaps, and quite likely, I think, he is annoyed at the exploitation of this girl and the fact that the culture seems to wholeheartedly accept it. Whatever it is, he is annoyed enough to turn around and cast the spirit right out of the girl.  It would seem that this is a good thing for the girl, but a bad thing for her owners who have just lost a reliable source of income.  They are predictably angry, and they charge Paul and Silas with disturbing the peace.  The local authorities concur and have them thrown in jail. 

The girl who was oppressed by a demon and by her fellow human beings has now been freed, but the men who set her free are now imprisoned.  They broke the rules.  Such are the ways of the world.  There is, you might think, a finite amount of power and freedom to go around; if I gain some then someone else must lose some.  This may be the way of the world – but it is not the way of the gospel.  The Spirit of God brings an earthquake that breaks down the walls that imprison Paul and Silas.  Chains are broken; locks are opened.  But Paul and Silas do not try to escape – they simply wait in their former cell for the jailer to reach them.  That night, those who had been separated were made one in Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus Christ resists the ways of the world that create division.  The power of the gospel gives us freedom to break down barriers, to work together for the well-being of all.  And it takes faithful effort on the part of all Jesus’ disciples.  What does it look like for us to make this faithful effort?  What does it take in our world to show the oneness we have in Christ?  What might the Apostles of Christ say about this to us, the church in Huber Heights, to help us be the church that we were meant to be?

Perhaps we can imagine such a message.  Hear these words from the fourth chapter of our letter to a resurrected people.

Chapter 4:

“Love one another as I have loved you.”  These are the words Jesus said to us.  Living this love requires making some changes in our lives, including pulling down some barriers that separate us from others.  We would prefer to remain separate from those who seem to make our lives difficult.  We say things like, “life is too short to spend it with people I don’t like.” 

There is a phrase I have been hearing a lot among church folks:  like-minded people.  There is this peculiar notion that it is our right to associate only with those we want to associate with.  There is the idea that it is a good thing for churches to be made up of people who have the same opinions about everything, and that anyone who disagrees should go find another church where there might be other folks who think the same way. 

The church has developed this habit of splintering into smaller and smaller groups of people with whom we feel comfortable.  To say about a church, “I feel comfortable there,” has become an entirely acceptable excuse for joining a congregation.  It is not often that I hear someone say, “I am a member of this church because I feel challenged there – challenged to grow.” 

Of course, it is not only the church that exhibits this characteristic.  You are living in an increasingly polarized culture, and nothing exemplifies it more than your politics.  There are dedicated news stations for those who identify as conservative or liberal, and they do not report the same news.  Rather than growing in understanding toward one another, the goal seems to be simply reinforcing your respective pre-existing beliefs. 

I have a great concern for you and the culture in which you live, that you grow increasingly estranged from one another.  As your interests grow farther apart and your views of the world grow farther apart, your ability to care for one another will diminish.

Yet I remain hopeful that the gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than any walls we might build separating us one from another.  I am hopeful that the love of God is working in you, and the Spirit will stir you to confess your own culpability in the challenges we are facing.  We must resist the temptation to lay blame for all problems at the feet of someone else and search our own souls for the ways we have caused misunderstanding and alienation.  We must be willing to say, “I was wrong and I am sorry” or, “This is hard for me, and I need your patience.”

The love of God in Christ Jesus brings us together, uniting us as one, as Jesus and the Father are one with the Holy Spirit.  Truly I say to you, what affects you affects me; what hurts you hurts me; what blesses you blesses me.  We are in this together.  That is our challenge and that is also our strength.

As we take this message with us today, and throughout this week, let us ask ourselves what are the particular challenges we face.  How are we separated from others in our neighborhood – what are the walls that separate us from the people who live in our neighborhood, right around our church property?  How well do we know our neighbors – and if we do know them, do we love them?  What separates us from one another even within our congregation?  Do we allow barriers to grow between us, hiding behind them to avoid having to talk about the hard things? 

As we take this message with us today and into this week, let us carry the knowledge in our heads and our hearts that the gospel frees us from the things that separate us; that the love we know through Christ Jesus has the power to break down barriers and build up peace in even the toughest places.  God loves us enough to do that.  In the name of the one who is love.

Letter to a Resurrected People, Chapter 3: Breaking the Rules

Acts 11:1-18    Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

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

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I wrote a column for this month’s newsletter about America’s history of a phenomenon we call Great Awakenings – moments when the church has experienced some kind of shift in religious practices or even beliefs, and when there is a lot of energy around these shifts.  Some people are energized to move toward some new direction, others are energized to actively resist the new direction, maybe even to move backwards.  Nat Davis talked about this a bit when he preached here a few weeks ago.  And I will have more to say about it in the May issue of the Disciple, which I hope you will read.  There is a great history of religious awakenings in America, and there is no reason to think that there will not be more of them.

But religious awakenings are not only an American phenomenon.  In the two thousand year history of the church there have been many periods that might be described as awakenings.  You can even go back farther, into the history of Israel before Christ, and find evidence of awakenings.  In fact, the birth of the church was part of an awakening – an awakening that pivoted on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There are certain things to look for when an awakening happens.

When awakening happens there is upheaval.  There is always a strong, passionate movement forward into a new realm.  But not everyone is quick to see and endorse the new thing that is happening.  This is what was happening in the Acts story, where Peter addressed the Jerusalem church about his revelation in Joppa.  This was a major event in the development of the church – so major, the story had to be told essentially three times. The passage we heard today is the third and final telling of an event that led directly to the opening of the church to the gentiles.

It was a major turning point, but it wasn’t a sudden change that came out of nowhere – there was a trajectory leading to this moment that can be traced.  Earlier, there had been some conversation among the followers of Jesus about who was to be included in this new movement.  Their initial understanding was that it was meant only for the Jews because up until that point the God we know through Christ was understood to be the God of Israel alone.  But now the Holy Spirit was at work amongst them in a new way, nudging them in the direction of greater inclusivity.  And perhaps they were remembering that Jesus had not limited his work to the Jews.  There were stirrings of a new openness.  But up until this moment, the old guard was holding the line on tradition: Jesus was the messiah to the Jews; the mission work was to be concentrated on the Jews. 

This story Peter tells about his vision and experiences in Joppa is the tipping point.  Afterward, this young and growing institution shifts in a new direction: the church moves out into the larger world.  Although the apostles don’t turn their backs on the Jews, there is finally a recognition – an awakening to the fact – that the good news of Jesus Christ is for the entire world.

When awakening happens it leads to a new thing being born.  And it usually results in the new thing breaking off from the old thing, separating into two entities, because there are some who dissent.  They don’t want to get on this train because they prefer things the way they were before.  They reject the notion that the rules of the game might somehow change.  No one appreciates it when the rules change in the middle of the game. 

I am sure it seemed to many at that time as though the rules were changing.  The idea that the Jewish messiah would be a savior for the whole world was a radical notion.  And not only did it mean giving a nod of assent, perhaps grudging assent.  It meant embracing those whom they have previously called unclean.  “What God has made clean you must not call profane,” Peter hears in his vision.  And I assure you; he was not just talking about food.

From this point on, peoples and nations who had been called unclean would now be called brothers and sisters.  And consequently, requirements for membership would change, normative practices would change, beliefs would change because this tent has become a much bigger, more inclusive, tent. 

This story of the church reaching a tipping point is one that was repeated again and again over the centuries, and it is one that is repeating itself right now.  We have seen a great deal of strife over the past few decades related to issues of inclusiveness and the limits of salvation, the limits of love.  We see it reflected in the culture as well as in the church: a shift toward greater and wider love.  An understanding that the love that Jesus called us to is greater than anything else and there are no rules that bind love – love is the rule.

When awakening happens love expands. 

This all reminds me of that old saying, supposedly an ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.  No one can deny these are interesting times for the church – times when we could use a word of encouragement from the Apostles.  So let’s open up the letter from our imagined Apostle, the letter that we have been reading for the past few weeks.  Just as the apostles wrote letters to the churches of the first century, we can imagine what they might say to the church of the 21^st century.

Chapter 3:

I think you know well that our Lord Jesus loves you – you have a song you like to sing that says so.  And you teach it to your children, for which I commend you.  Jesus loves you; God loves you; the Bible tells you so.  You know this, yet I see you are still on a learning curve in this regard.

There is much discussion amongst you about who is encircled in Jesus’ love, and what exactly that means for them and for you and for the church as a whole.  Is everyone included?  Can you extend the love of Jesus to everyone? Can you love them just as they are, or must they change somehow before they are eligible for this love? 

The most effective lessons are learned by experience.  There are moments when you find yourself confronted with a decision – a decision that would have been easily made at an earlier point in your life – but now surprising questions and reservations pop into your head. 

We know of a woman who feared for the life of her teenage daughter.  She watched the girl grow increasingly withdrawn; she seemed to be hovering at the edge of a great abyss.  This woman was deeply afraid she would lose her daughter to suicide, an accident, something tragic.  One day the girl came to her and said, “Mom, there is something I need to tell you. I’m gay.”  And the woman found that she was greatly relieved.  Her daughter wasn’t dying – she was struggling to figure out her identity.  She was going to be all right.

A few years later, the daughter came to her mother again and said, “Mom, there is something else I need to tell you.  I am transgender.  In my heart and soul I am a man.”  This was harder for the mother to accept, but she loved her child and her child loved her; love led the way in their relationship. 

The boundaries that you observe need to be based in love.  When you draw a line and say that the people on one side are acceptable and the people on the other side are not, I urge you to look at the people on the other side of the line and see them as individual, full flesh and blood, human beings.  Take the step of getting to know one or more of them, seek to know who they are.  Then decide if the line ought to be there or not.

Certainly, some of the bigger questions of your day revolve around sexuality, but the matter of inclusive love extends to many other questions as well. For example, when you older members find that you are judging young people for their failure to join you at church worship and activities, and become active members, imagine walking in their shoes with compassion, with love.  Or when you younger folks find you are reluctant to sit at the Bible study with the oldsters because they know so much more than you – well, think about that:  They know so much more than you, you might learn something valuable from them.

I remind you again that Jesus gave us a commandment – he said it was new, but it was actually a very old commandment for a new day:  Love one another as I have loved you.  Such wisdom is in this commandment!  Jesus knew the upheaval to come would bring trials for this community.  But if love comes first, whatever happens next will be better because of it.

We live in interesting times, that is for sure.  And at times it feels like someone has changed the rules of the game.  But let us remember the rule is love, as it has been from the beginning is now and ever shall be.  Amen.