May 9 Sermon: The Spirit Will Be With Us
Sermon, Sunday May 9th 2010
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
John 14:23-29
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Do you ever wish you lived in Biblical times so you could be a better follower of Jesus? Now, I’m sure nobody here would want to trade our ipads for parchment paper, go back to a time without cell phones and air conditioning. A time with rigid laws that deemed women the property of men…that’s not what we want to go back to. BUT, I DO get envious of the Disciples because they have Jesus right there and can ask him questions, learn from him close-up, watch and imitate his every move. Because 2,000 years later, in the city of Chicago, it can be really hard sometimes to be a disciple of Jesus. The path isn’t so clear, we want to imitate his moves but don’t know how…it doesn’t seem fair.
For if the Disciples had a question, they could ask and get an actual, bona fide answer: [WWJD?] Jesus, when you say love my neighbor, who is my neighbor? And he tells them that any person is our neighbor, especially those we ignore. Jesus, who should we be eating and hanging out with? And he invites them to a dinner with women and tax collectors and those with leprosy. If they wanted to know where they should go and how to get there, Jesus would tell them. He would lead them, in fact!
When we have a question, our answers aren’t so clear: Jesus, should I quit my job and go back to school to follow what I love? What should the future of Holy Covenant look like? Why did the floods in Nashville occur? The earthquake in Haiti? What should we do about immigration reform?
We have doubts about his miracles and whether they happened and what they mean…his Disciples got to witness their power with their very own eyes. No need to have doubts when the one you might doubt is so close you can touch him. There’s a kind of certainty and clarity for the Disciples that we miss today. One, that if we’re honest with ourselves, we crave.
And yet, and yet…in this text, everything is about to change for those smug disciples. Jesus tells them he will only be with them in the flesh a little longer. Now we have some sympathy for those disciples….we know what they are going through. They want answers, a leader, a tangible guide….and he is leaving them.
They are shocked and sad and confused and don’t know what to do next. Not only are they experiencing their own grief over losing Jesus, they are faced with the daunting task of figuring out how to remain his followers when he’s not here to follow anymore.
And that’s where we meet the Disciples, with the shared question, across 2,000 years: How are we to follow Jesus when he’s not here teaching and leading us?
Jesus, never one to leave us hanging, gives a simple answer: The Holy Spirit will come to you, the Advocate, to guide you and teach you everything you need to know.
Do you feel better? The Disciples were still confused…they’re not so sure what this Spirit is and how it will function in their lives. And though we’ve had 2,000 years of church history since Jesus left us the Spirit, we’re not always so clear ourselves. We know that Jesus is a person who lived in the Middle East…he taught and loved and then saved the world by dying on a cross and then raising from the dead. He saved the world from death and through him we have new life.
We know that God is the creator of the universe, of all that was and is and ever will be. The source and ground of all being. The one who became incarnate in Jesus Christ in order to live and love and suffer and triumph as a human being…a love so deep that God became one of us.
But the Holy Spirit…the spirit is much harder to explain, to wrap our minds around. And yet the Spirit is what Jesus leaves for us! Now, we invoke the Spirit all the time, but does that mean we know exactly what we are invoking? We say or sing “Come Holy Spirit”…over and over again…which can sometimes make us think that we have to wait passively and quietly for the Spirit to come…to be very still and maybe the Spirit will show up…an do what, exactly?
Or we assume that other people have felt the Spirit, we just haven’t yet…we hear stories of people speaking in tongues, or overcome with a feeling so strong their legs get wobbly..maybe you’ve had one of these overwhelmingly physical experiences of the spirit yourself. But for those of us who haven’t had this kind of bodily sensation of the Spirit, we sometimes wonder if we’ve every really experienced the Spirit.
And too often we hear the invocation of the spirit misused/abused and we don’t know what to trust…there are pastors who preach the so called “prosperity gospel,” telling followers they’ve heard from the spirit and this is the message: if we give our money, money will come back to us. Or if we give a huge donation to the church (so that the pastor can fly around in a private plane), then bad things won’t happen; we won’t get sick, our child will stop misbehaving, we’ll get that dream job.
Or people say: “The Spirit led me to do it” when they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. And we wonder, was that the Spirit or someone’s own selfish desires speaking? It’s seems easy for people to use the Spirit in their favor, because we can’t really prove it.
How do we know what this Spirit is, we wonder with the Disciples, wouldn’t it be easier if Jesus just stayed around as a human being? Because we can’t see, touch, smell, hear and feel the Spirit, it’s difficult to know when it’s present and how. How do we discern?
Well, let’s see what Jesus tells us about the Spirit, what he tells the Disciples, and tells us, about what we are to do in his absence.
First, he says, if you love me, keep my word. He makes it clear that just because he won’t be on the earth any longer in that very body, that we are still to love him.
We know this from personal experience, don’t we? When we’ve lost a loved one to death…a spouse or a grandparent or sibling…we know that our love keeps on going. And we love those, not just by saying the words I love you out loud or in our prayers, but by doing something about it: If our sister loved soccer, we coach a team of girls in her name. If our grandmother was a devoted gardener, we continue to grow some roses in a pot on our porch. We cook our father’s favorite recipe. We teach our children about the legacy they leave.
This is, in part, what it means to keep loving Jesus after he’s gone. To keep doing what he’s been teaching: loving our enemy, loving ourselves, seeking peace, practicing generosity, extending love, working for justice. He makes it clear that the way to live our lives when he’s gone is not so much about what we say or proclaim, but how we act. How we live out his love by keeping his word.
Because then he says: The Holy Spirit will remind you of all I have said to you.
The Holy Spirit, then, is our guide, our teacher, our advocate. The Holy Spirit is the one with us who helps us remember the word of Jesus so that we can live it out. And when we do this, we will never be alone.
So we know, that when people invoke the spirit, for whatever purposes, and those purposes are contrary to the Gospel, then it is not really the Spirit at work. For the word of Jesus doesn’t tell us that if we give money we’ll receive money—in fact, money is the root of all evil. The Spirit of God will NEVER be on the side of war or violence of any kind, for Jesus tells us over and over again, in no uncertain terms, that his way is peace. He dies at the violent hands of the powers of the world, which is the ultimate sign to us that violence is always tragic and never the way.
What Jesus is giving us, then, is not some nebulous concept that is hard to discern. He’s very clear: The Spirit will be with us to remind us of Jesus’ word. And when we remember the words of Jesus, when we live out the Gospel, we are loving him. And the Spirit guides us, comforts us, empowers us in this way of love.
So this is really good news, for us and for the Disciples…for even though Jesus is no longer with us, we are being taught and reminded, always about how best to love and follow him.
Jesus says: do this in remembrance of me. And when we do, there we will find the Spirit.
Every time we remember, the Spirit is with us. When we love, the Spirit is moving us. When we keep Jesus’ word, the spirit is guiding us.
When Jesus looked at the woman caught in adultery he offers grace instead of violence. When we remember and decide to forgive our partner for a mistake, instead of holding on to revenge, the Spirit is alive.
When Jesus tells a parable about the Good Samaritan, he teaches that we should look beyond language and ethnic boundaries and recognize God in all people. When we remember this story, and seek justice in Arizona for those who are being racially profiled, the Spirit is working.
When Jesus encountered a hungry crowd of thousands, he empowered his Disciples to feed them out of 5 loaves of bread a few fish. When we remember, we begin to see abundance where the world sees scarcity and realize that we can feed and heal and clothe and house thousands, by starting with a small amount and the Spirit will provide.
When Jesus lost his friend Lazarus to death, he wept out of grief. When we remember, we’re not afraid to let ourselves cry and feel and mourn when we experience loss through divorce or heartache, illness or death. And the Spirit will be with us, comforting us and helping us heal.
When Jesus shares a meal with his Disciples, on the last night of his life, proclaiming forgiveness, he teaches them to share this meal always. When we remember, we gather around a table of new life, together, letting the Spirit animate our participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as a community.
When Jesus is raised from the dead, he overcomes death with life, giving the world a new hope of eternal life. When we remember, we open our eyes to the Spirit’s work of new life on earth of redemption, forgiveness, and new beginnings; and we are confident at the loss of a loved one that she is reconciled with God upon death and proclaim the day when we will all feast together at the heavenly banquet.
So friends, Jesus may not be with us in the flesh, but in fact, through the Spirit, he is all around us. The Spirit reminds us to see his face in the face of others and so respond in love.
Yesterday, many of us gathered together for our congregational summit and we focused on the 2nd part of our mission statement: Love all people. We searched Scripture, our own experiences, and our roles within Holy Covenant to discern how we, as a community, can best love all people. Our work was centered in Scripture and came out of what Jesus taught us in the Gospels. I’m happy to report that the Spirit was alive and working among us yesterday, reminding us of the word of Jesus and how to live it out. The Spirit led us yesterday to, among many things: continue to dream about a Sunday evening meal where we dine together with dignity diner guests—possibly by starting a garden to grow vegetables or becoming a drop off for CSA shares and cooking from local farmers; planning an early fall mission trip—there are already people ready to lead this effort—if you want to be on that team you can talk to Carrie Devries; being intentional about welcoming particularly the large number of lgbtq homeless youth into our new youth group, Akwaaba; becoming active in working for justice and education around immigration and a living wage; welcoming people who are new to this community, in worship, so that all are welcome…not just those who already have friends or connections. It was an exciting morning. Friends, the Spirit is alive and well in this place helping us live out the Gospel. I can’t wait to see where the Spirit will lead us next.
So let us go out of here, proclaiming proudly and triumphantly, Come Holy Spirit; lead us as we love all people.
Tags: Kate
