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“Are We Channels of God’s
Spirit?” Sermon
Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – June 9, 2019
Centenary United Methodist Church Psalm
104:24-34; John 14:8-17
Pentecost Sunday Today is our annual observance of Pentecost. The experience was
described as sounds like rushing wind, tongues of fire,
and speaking in recognizable languages that were not their own.
(Acts 2:2-4) This group-experience was attributed to the coming
of the Holy Spirit that Jesus referenced in our lesson this morning:
I will ask God and he will send you a helper
who will stay with you forever.
This helper will be the Spirit that will reveal the truth about
God. (John 14:16f) Why the early followers of Jesus made a connection between his
prediction and this extraordinary experience belongs to the archive
of tradition. So far as
the growth of Christianity is concerned, this exact experience has never
been duplicated. What can we do with such an experience?
Yet, what happened that day has been declared by the early Church
as the birthday of Christianity. What Jesus had in mind was far more definitive than
rushing wind, fire, and speaking in foreign languages.
He was teaching that his followers could become capable of
bringing the spirit of God's nature into the material world.
This is a teaching that has
real substance to it. Jesus said,
I am telling you the truth, those who believe in me
will be able to do what I do, yes, they will do even greater things
because I am returning to God. (John 14:12) When we think about God or discuss the nature of God in a small
group setting, what thoughts do we discuss?
What adjectives do we use to describe our Creator? The field of
definitions can be narrowed by focusing on how Jesus revealed God's
nature. In spite of our
definitions, God's nature is mysterious, invisible, and beyond
definition. God creates a spirit of loving energy. There are no
finger prints or foot prints that prove that God was
silently working on anyone's behalf.
When such an experience happens, it can easily be defined by
secularists as good fortune and pure luck.
However, when we are followers of Jesus' teaching, even with
little commitment to what he taught, people have a unique lens to
speculate about such life's events.
Remember, Jesus said, "If you have faith the size of a mustard
seed, you can move mountains."
(Luke 17:6) There was a young family that experienced a
tragedy. The husband was
driving home from a late business meeting one evening when he fell
asleep at the wheel and his car crashed into a tree.
He died in the accident, leaving his widow with two sons.
His life insurance took care of the family's financial needs for
several years. The boys
were in school, one in junior high and the other in high school.
Their mother eventually remarried and the family was doing well. When the boys desired to continue their education
beyond high school, that put a strain on the finances of the family.
Both boys excelled academically, but one of them had a remarkable talent
for being a highly creative and inventive architect.
He received a partial scholarship.
When the time arrived that both boys were in
college, the family was really struggling to make all their necessary
payments. The one son was
so gifted but there was nothing the couple could do to finance his last
year of education. His last year was close to six figures.
Being completely distraught, one evening Ted's mother went into
the backyard to share her concerns and ask for help from her deceased
husband. As I recall, she
said,
John, I am sure you are aware that I met a
wonderful man and have remarried. Ted has one more year of school left
but Jerry and I cannot possibly afford the payment for his senior year.
Is there anything that you can do to help us? We are so close to helping
Ted reach his goal. With Johnny now in college, Jerry and I have
exhausted all lines of credit and our home equity loan is maxed. The
university cannot extend our student loans. Please, please help us!
No one would think of speaking to a deceased husband unless there
was a faint chance that such communication is possible. A prayer is a
prayer regardless of the form it takes and to whom it is offered.
Jennifer was reaching out to the mysterious, invisible energy
that defies description and definition.
She had no idea what was possible. Within a week, Jerry and Jennifer received a letter from
Jenny's former father-in-law.
It read, My wife reminded me the other day, that when the boys were born, we put a good sum of money into an aggressive mutual fund on their birthdays for their education. Loretta said, 'I believe that Jerry and Jennifer might be able to use this money about now. Let's send it to them?
Jenny, to tell you the truth, I had completely
forgotten about these accounts because Loretta has been receiving the
annual statements and was filing them for the last twenty some years.
Please use this money for whatever your current needs might be.
I know that you are as proud of our grandsons as we are.
Loretta and I hope that this rather handsome sum helps. There are many stories like this that happen in people's lives.
There is no way that we can define them or find some formula that
will work for others.
Divine energy is not an automatic teller machine, nor can we
label such a financial windfall as a strange coincidence.
This was not how Jerry and Jennifer understood what happened.
The bank check was more than enough to cover all of the loans for
their boys' education and erase their home equity loan.
They chose to understand this mysterious event as
the gift from a presence that they could not define.
That presence performed a miracle through two loving
grandparents who thoughtfully made an investment for their grandsons'
education that would happen decades later.
A number of us have known people who have
experienced opportunities that came out of nowhere, of invisible arms
embracing them during a personal crisis, or of miracles occurring during
surgery when there was only a twenty percent chance the loved one would
survive. Such experiences happen because of a presence that
defies definition. God's love is disguised and it comes in
many different forms. One common element for me is that all of the forms
in my experience have occurred through people.
Like any wise parent, God wants people to achieve confidence and
independence, as they draw on the resources that have been instilled
within each of us. Our relationship with God may be like a parent who
starts us riding a bike with training wheels on the back.
One day those training wheels are mysteriously missing and soon
after that, the invisible hand holding the seat is removed without our
knowing it. We are riding
that bike because we have mastered the technique for doing
so. This is God's intent
for all of us. God does not
need to micromanage our lives. This invisible presence has nothing to do
with any need of God to receive recognition, praise, and gratitude.
God designed us to struggle and struggle some more until we learn
to find our way. Caterpillars perfectly illustrate this.
These crawling insects eventually find themselves trapped and in
crisis. They have to
struggle mightily to free themselves from the very mess that
they created. In
struggling to free themselves from their cocoon, they strengthen a set
of wings that they never knew they had and they emerge from their
trappings with the ability to fly instead of crawling, plus they have a
new physical presence.
Humans emerge as an angel-in-the-flesh. This is a metaphor for our own lives.
God created us with the ability to use our imaginations and our
attitudes. It takes both of
these for us not only to sense God's presence but to know how to build a
relationship with an energy that we will never define with any accuracy.
We have to remember that spirit remains
spirit.
God's spirit connects with our human spirits and not with our
bodies. Jesus' body was only the vehicle that housed his loving and
forgiving spirit. God does not interfere with issues in the material
world. Every
person Jesus healed eventually died.
Every nation that God allegedly supported militarily, according
to their historians, fell to other nations that were more powerful.
However, the more loving energy we express to others, the more
loving energy we create within ourselves.
(Matthew 25:29) While terrible events are what appear in our
headlines, the invisible work of love continues often without
recognition. Loving energy
does not seek praise and honor.
Loving energy seeks only results when people can ride their
bikes without the training wheels
believing that they alone mastered how such riding is done. They
in turn, reach out to others, by teaching them how to navigate
successfully around the influences of the material world. This is how
the Holy Spirit creates among all of God's children.
It happens incrementally over eons of time as humanity slowly
arrives at a level of understanding and awareness that each is not alone
during the unfolding of history.
No one is on the same level of the learning curve so there will
always be the need for those who point to what is possible. Some people believe that they have succeeded in
life by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is
God's plan for us. God
remains busy secretly guiding those who become the hinges on
which the pages of history turn.
Could we be one of those channels through whom God's spirit has
been busy preparing the future?
We graduate from life long before any of us realize that we
played such a role. All loving people are channels of God love
even if they sow their seeds in
the most obscure garden in the
world where there were no social media platforms or cell services.
Impossible? Think again.
Jesus did this very thing and asked us to follow him. He was
pointing to what is possible for all of us.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
We thank you God,
that your love for us is eternal and changeless.
We thank you for making yourself known to us even when our lives
reflect the confusing crosscurrents
of the material world. Our wanting to know more truth
about your will does not always give us the courage to live it. In spite
of our blindness, you still
call us to represent your presence in the world.
We welcome the challenge to be
your hands and
feet and to pass on to others
the torch of understanding
that loving others is what
makes your spirit visible.
Amen.
Thank you, God, for allowing us the privilege
of finding our own way in life. There are so many people through
the ages who have believed that they had the answers for everyone else.
What a splendid moment it was when we learned that the journey of
discovery has been ours and ours alone because we have chosen to follow
Jesus' guidance to give love away even during our rough patches. Teach us, O God, how to love with our spirits. Move us away from pettiness, from fault finding, from always needing to be right, and from our giving unsolicited criticism to those who have not matured according to our timetable. May we be slow to judge and quick to learn that all experiences can serve to teach us a better way. May we strive to be like you while trusting you for how, when, and where our lives might serve a purpose we now cannot understand. We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . . |