"On The Journey, In The Spirit" Pentecost 2009 May 31, 2009

(First, read the passages for this sermon: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)

God the Holy Spirit has assembled us here. God the Holy Spirit has created us, as a worshiping community, at this time and in this place.

Indeed, God the Holy Spirit has been bringing us along since we were baptized. In this morning’s gospel story, Jesus promises, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” Since the day that we were baptized into the resurrection of Jesus, we have been on the journey, in the Spirit.

On this day of Pentecost, this is our particular theme.

On the journey, in the Spirit, our question always is: What is God up to?

What is God doing that is new?

What is God creating?

Those are the questions in the story that we read each year on Pentecost, from the Acts of the Apostles. First – why are the Roman authorities unable to stamp out the Jesus movement? They tried to do that, by executing Jesus. But some of Jesus’ followers have reported his grave to be empty! Some of Jesus’ followers have seen him alive, after they had seen him dead.

Are these reports of crackpots?

Or is God up to something? Is God creating something that is new?

That leads us into this morning’s phantasmagorical story, from the second chapter of Acts. (You know that the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts was written by the same anonymous author. Luke is “Part 1,” telling the story of Jesus, and Acts is “Part 2,” telling the story of the first-generation church.) In the story from Acts this morning, Jesus has been executed only weeks ago. Those appearances of Jesus – or, at least, we think it’s been Jesus – what is going on? What is God up to? What is God creating?

Jesus disciples, observant Jews that they are, have gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost. It’s an agricultural, religious festival. The city of Jerusalem is crowded with Jewish pilgrims from all over the region. And God does something new!

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. The polyglot of pilgrims are amazed! Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene – all of these people understand words of their languages! They are being spoken by followers of Jesus – who are themselves astonished by what’s coming out of their mouths! What is going on?

Some bystanders sneer and say that the Jesus people are drunk! But Peter says this, in one of the best comic lines in all of Scripture: “We’re not drunk! It’s only nine o’clock in the morning!”

No, Peter says, what you are watching and hearing is the Holy Spirit creating the Church. It is to be a community in which the words of the prophet Joel are fulfilled:

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.

John Howard Yoder writes that God the Holy Spirit is here creating a new way of behaving: “a kind of life strikingly, offensively different from the rest of the world; it dared to claim that Christ himself was its norm and to believe in the active enabling presence of the Holy Spirit.”

You and I have been baptized into this same Church; into this behavior, into this kind of life that God creates: strikingly, offensively different from the rest of the world. Here’s how Bryan Stone describes this new creation of God: “the marks of the early church are concrete and visible: jubilation, unity, consensus built on spiritual discernment, material sharing, inclusive table fellowship, bold proclamation, and public defiance of the powers.” In other words, among us, in the church, God the Holy Spirit has created the presence of the kingdom, now come, into daily human life! “Your kingdom come.” It is answered prayer.

On the journey, in the Spirit, with each other who are on pilgrimage, in this community that we call “church,” “our lives are patterned together into the narrative of [Jesus’] life.” God the Holy Spirit “[scripts] our minds and bodies through worship and ministry into a new timeliness,…’gospel’ time, resurrection time. Learning to be a Christian, then, is not just learning about a story; it is learning to live into a story.”

That is what we are about, on the journey, in the Spirit, in community with each other. We are learning to be Christians. We are learning to see the resurrection, the kingdom come, in our daily lives. On the journey, in the Spirit, the Spirit is forming us into God’s point of view! We are learning to repent from cynicism and despair, and to live into hope – because God is always doing something that is new. We are being formed by God the Holy Spirit in the distinctive and strange Christian life of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,” as Paul describes this life in one place (Col. 3:12). We are rejoicing to see in ourselves the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as Paul describes this in another place (Gal. 5:22-23): the distinctive and strange Christian life of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

How does the Holy Spirit form us into lives of such strange distinctiveness? It happens as we practice the faith. The Spirit changes our priorities and behaviors as we do the things that those affirming their baptisms this morning will themselves promise to do:

to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
(From the Affirmation of Baptism liturgy in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 236.)

What a strange, distinctive, utterly joyful way to live: on the journey, in the Spirit; watchful and open to what God is doing that is new; embodying that new creation; inviting others into the journey; into life in the Spirit.

God is no less active now than in that story from the Acts of the Apostles. On the journey, in the Spirit, our questions are always: What is God up to? What is God doing that is new? What is God creating? And what is God calling us to do, in response?

Thanks be to God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

“Called To A Better Way Of Life” Easter 6 May 17, 2009

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 15:(1-8)9-17)

The Baccalaureate service for graduating seniors and their families was yesterday morning at the College. I participated – because I said I would. I had been assigned to lead the benediction, but I cringed when I discovered what the benediction was! It included these words of call and response:

Leader: What we call the beginning is often the end
People: And to make an end to make a beginning.
Leader: We shall not cease from exploration
People: And the end of all our exploring
Leader: Will be to arrive where we started …

(It goes on from there for a few more lines, but I will spare you from any more of it. In fact, the Call to Worship was even worse, and the Invocation did not invoke the name of God. I know, I know: I’m rigid. And sectarian. But, in my humble opinion, I think that a worship service ought to at least mention God.)

You see, I had agreed to take part in the Baccalaureate service because I assumed that the service would be what we’ve done in the past. But this year, it turns out, one of the other campus ministers had assumed that she could entirely re-do the service, and that the rest of us didn’t need to review it before it was printed!

When I did see the service, boy, was I angry! I shot off an e-mail, mincing no words, pointing out where the service fell short of what it should be. In fact, there was a flurry of e-mail protests from other campus ministers who also had not had the chance to help prepare the service, and who also did not like the words they had been assigned to say. How did the author of the service begin her e-mail of reply? With these words: “I have to begin my response by saying how furious I am …”

Oh, how good we human beings are at misunderstanding each other, or working from conflicting assumptions, or taking too much initiative and getting ourselves into trouble, or taking pot shots at each other after the fact. Think of when you’ve been caught up in such a situation. What are the results? Hurt feelings, at least. Resentment. Quickly-escalating anger.

I’m right, of course! You’re wrong!

And often: We’re stuck – in our festering resentment and anger!

As followers of Jesus, we are called to a better way of life. Here is a short description of what that looks like: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

These words come from this morning’s reading, from the gospel of John. They describe the life of love to which we are called. Indeed, this life of love is commanded.

The use of the word, “commandments,” is arresting, isn’t it? This is obviously something profoundly different from the way we often think of love. Do you hear anything sappy or sentimental here? Do you even hear anything about reciprocity? There isn’t any: “I love you because you deserve it!” Or even: “I love you because you love me back.” Instead, we hear Jesus talking about “commandments.” We’re commanded to love those we don’t even like (to quote Al Kuhn.) Boy, is that hard! This Christian way of life is not something that comes naturally, is it? What is required is faith formation by the Holy Spirit.

So. Back to the Baccalaureate brouhaha. The campus minister who radically changed the service was wrong! No one gave her permission to re-write the service unilaterally! I was really angry.

But here’s the thing. I am also commanded by the God who created me, to live in a better way than tit-for-tat anger. And, so, when the e-mails were flying, angry and resentful, I took a deep breath, and composed this e-mail reply to my equally-angry and resentful colleague:

Margaret --

I am sorry that this is emotional. Indeed, I can understand your emotion.

I am sorry that none of us questioned our assumptions. For myself, I had heard you state clearly, at two meetings, that you thought the liturgy was inadequate. I did not hear others in the group sharing the same opinion. I did hear people encourage you to work on an alternative -- which you assumed to be the freedom to shape and change the service. However, I assumed that, when you came up with something, you would share it. As the weeks went by, and nothing was shared, I assumed that there would be no changes.

And so, we are where we are -- which is unsatisfactory for all of us.

I am sorry, for my part, that I did not contribute to better collaboration and communication.

Now, guess what? As it turns out, the next day, we campus ministers were scheduled to get together for our end-of-the-semester lunch! So, when I arrived at the restaurant, again I took a deep breath, and sat across the table from Margaret, and asked, “Are we still friends?”

We are! Hooray! Maybe these words in today’s gospel reading about joy are actually true: If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The Christian life of faith would be so much easier if it was a private, individualistic thing; if it was a set of beliefs that each one of us could make up for ourselves, according to what makes me feel comfortable, or what “meets my our needs!” But that, of course, would not be the Christian life of faith – at least not as Jesus’ teachings have been brought to us through the Biblical tradition.

Instead, Dorothy Day nails this Christian life of faith, this better way of life to which we are called, with this one sentence: “[A person’s] love for God can be measured by his love for the one he loves least.” (The Duty of Delight, page 119.)

A person’s love for God can be measured by his love for the one he loves least.

Then, by that measure, how can we possibly measure up? It is all grace. It is all what God the Holy Spirit makes possible. Our lives are our response to what God has already done to measure us up. That’s in this morning’s gospel passage as well. The gospel writer has Jesus saying, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” In the story, of course, Jesus is laying down his life for “friends” who remain ignorant, who betray him, who desert him, who in no way deserve what Jesus is doing for them.

Through the human flesh of Jesus, God acts first, with saving grace. Our salvation is won. Now, God commands us to respond. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

You and I learn to respond, as God the Holy Spirit forms us into the Christian life of faith. Through the words that we speak and sing and hear in Sunday morning liturgy, the Holy Spirit forms us. Through the practices of daily prayer, using passages of Scripture, the Holy Spirit forms us. Through the conversations we have, sharing our lives with others on the journey of faith, the Holy Spirit forms us.

The Holy Spirit forms us so that you and I will turn away from self-centeredness, which is where anger and resentment come from.

And then, turned towards God, the Spirit leads us along a new journey, to respond to God’s commandment to love.

It’s a better way to live!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia