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May 13, 2007 Rev. Steve Gehlert I love history! It's always fascinated me. It was my major in college and what I planned to study and teach, until a powerful experience with the church taaught me to love something else even more, and got me pointed in another direction. Still, I love it and it fascinates me. I read about it as much as I can - about important people, events, or movements. If I'm on vacation, if there's something historical to see, in New York, Washington, Baltimore, wherever, I'm there! Somehow, I connect with the people who lived it. I still remember the lump in my throat that I got when I visited the Franklin Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park and saw a life-sized portrait of Winston Churchill, with London burning in the background during the Blitz, or a beautiful little girl, eyes full of fear, photographed for some awful purpose, along a million other, displayed on a wall at Auschwitz. I'll never forget her picture; it haunts me to this day. I guess it's that sense of connection that explains why most of the sabbatical time I've been able to take has focused on going to Biblical and, therefore historical, places in Israel, Greece, and Turkey. It also explains why I sometimes feel I missed out, and I have this sense of wishing I could've been there to experience events first-hand and, perhaps, influence how they came out. I felt that as I recently watched a program about Jamestown and saw how the settlers initially relied on the Native Americans for food, until they sensed reluctance to deliver the food, when the began to kill, burn and plunder so they could take what they wanted. It made me wish I could've been there to be a voice against the murder and genocide was to become so much a part of our history. Of course, I have those same feelings about biblical events, like the one for today. Jesus is sharing a last meal with his disciples, sharing farewell words with them. As soon as he's finished, they'll go out, Judas will plant one on him, and all those horrible, violent events begin. I can connect with their anxiety, but I also wish I could've been there to try to be more faithful than they turned out to be. That's what it's like for us. We know what's going to happen: Jesus dies, rises, the church is born, and here we are all these years later. That's why it's important for me, for us all to try to sense the smallness of the disciples and the largeness of Jesus' promises. Jesus' talk of departure means disappointment, devastation. They've followed him for three years of their lives, left everything, believed his audacious claims. And now he's leaving - to where we can't go? There's a common impression out there that you and I and everyone else who've lived since Jesus have missed out. Those who knew him in the flesh got to see his miracles, watch him play with children, cheer him on against his enemies - "how easy it would've been for me to be faithful," we think to ourselves. And how hard now. As if our difficulties in discipleship have to do with historical distance, with lack of first-hand experience, rather than something else. But notice that the Bible presents things the other way around. Jesus actually promises his church will do greater things than he did. The Father and the Son will come and live in those who keep his word. The Holy Spirit, another advocate, a counselor, will come and remind us of all he taught. We ought even to rejoice that Jesus is leaving - so the Spirit can come. Now is the day of salvation. Light shimmers around the edges of things. Jesus' resurrection casts a glow back on these events. It was all planned. Jesus' peace is here now with us. We have a powerful counselor on our side. I remember a seminary friend's sense of hopelessness when his car was wrecked one summer. Like most of us, he was doing part-time field work in a church while attending and paying for seminary, so needless to say there wasn't an extravagant amount of money around for repairs or a new car. The car insurance company, sensing his lack of funds, refused to pay even though their client was at fault. Lawyers wouldn't take a case for so little money. Luckily for him, a lawyer who attended his field work church offered to take it pro bono. The insurers called to settle the next day. He had a powerful, undeserved advocate without whom he could've been mistreated. But with whom - phone calls were returned, courteousness picked up, and financial obligations were fulfilled. That's the kind of "Advocate" Jesus is promising those who follow him as they face the world. Even in this little room, this huddled batch of rather dense disciples, Jesus promises that he and the Father will move into their hearts and make a home. For their upcoming trials they have a promised Advocate and so ought not worry. In the face of tumult to come they're told, commanded even, to have peace, a permanent peace that is the presence of Jesus himself. A child grew up in Brazil, where her parents worked in that country's slums, begun by poor squatters who moved from countryside to city in search of work and camp on land not theirs, which eventually become little communities. Drugs, poverty, and hopelessness rule there. Now she does ministry in one. How? Well, for starters, she had to realize that you can't own anything you don't mind losing. Jesus' commandments about possessions are suddenly much more palatable. Second, you have to help people find work. In some cases they receive training to become cooks, in others to clean homes or offices, in others to make things out of the garbage that's all around them. But also, you have to provide the church. She tries to do that, following the model of similar churches in similar favelas, that have an extraordinary dignity about them - a few small rough-hewn pews, a small lectern, and a tiny cross. Not much on the surface, but something that makes a difference, because of the courage she's found to live for Jesus and for others. You see, we're not caretakers of a museum to a dead hero. We're those who've been called to do what he did, and more! His words today promise that we'll receive the strength we need to do that! That points to the most important difference that the gift of the Spirit's meant to make. The gift is not just an advocate to help us through difficult personal times, or a comforter when our busy lives become over-whelming, or peace in the midst of strife created by our own self-seeking. No, those gifts are not meant for just anybody, for those who living anxious, stressed, and driven lives because they've given themselves to living for themselves, as the consumer culture has taught them to do. No, those gifts, are meant for very specific people - Jesus' disciples, those who love him, belong to him, and want to follow, serve and honor him in the world. They're the one's who need this gift, because they face the same kind of resistance, threats, and danger that he did. They're going to pay a price for being his disciples. Those gifts are given to help them have the strength, courage, wisdom, and inner peace to be able to do that. They're given so they'll be able to do his work, and give him glory and honor with their lives. They're gifts for his people to help them truly be his people. That means that those who receive the gift of the Spirit are, in fact, his disciples; the ones really do love him, belong to him, and want to follow, serve, and honor him in the world. So, maybe the most important aspect of this gift, is that it is the HOLY SPIRIT, Jesus' Spirit, the Spirit that animated, guided, strengthen, and sustained him. That means it's the Spirit that gives us a disciple's heart, a heart that's turned away from self-focus and on to God and others. It's the Spirit that makes our heart want what Jesus wanted, to love and serve God, by loving and serving others. Isn't that where it all has to begin? If we don't get Jesus' heart, a heart that loves him, wants to follow and serve him, we're not going to go anywhere on the path of discipleship are we? We need the wisdom, comfort, strength and courage that the Spirit gives, because our heart belongs to Jesus and we want to live for him, show him, make him real to the world. We can do all kinds of churchy things, greet and usher, sing, lead worship, teach, or serve meals, but if the Spirit hasn't breathed into our heart so that it's begun to be Jesus' heart, what we do will not serve or glorify him. It may get us affirmation or attention. It may project spirituality, while still withholding the time, talent, and treasure we've been given from Jesus. Or, it may be a distraction; the half-hearted effort, the lack of respect, the pouty face, the negative attitude, that shouts to the world that though we're here, we really don't give a care about anything but ourselves. But there's a reason that an image for the Spirit is fire. It burns, burns as a kind of desire to live for Christ. When the Spirit comes into our hearts, it's impossible to be self-focused or apathetic - your focus has move out from yourself and onto him, you care about what he cares about - all of creation. All of the other gifts of the Spirit, the wisdom, comfort, strength, courage, and peace, flow from and because of that first gift - the heart that belongs to Jesus, that's on fire for Jesus, that burns for him. What a difference that fire makes. That fire in just one person's heart burns far brighter than lots of people without it, just going through the motions, either out for themselves, or not caring about who they're serving. That fire makes all the difference between a witness that draws people to Jesus, and one that says, "are you kinding, you can see they don't care, why should I?" That fire makes all the difference between letting go that's hurtful and wrong because you don't want to stick your neck out and say something, and having the courage to name what's wrong so that it can be dealt with. Jesus needs people who love him and are animated by his Spirit, who have the heart and the desire to want to follow and serve him. Those people, no matter how small their number, how humble their background, how lowly their position or power, make a difference, because they do what they do not for themselves but for Jesus, and so because he's promised them his Spirit, whatever they do they'll not do alone, but by the Spirit's power. They are the ones who can show what the love of God really is, show it through their lives, show it because they're not afraid of what the world can do. The hope of the world is that some few will live that kind of witness. May God help us be among those few. |
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