Sermon Text: : John 3.1-17; Romans 8.12-17
11 Jun 06, Trinity Sunday
Theme: "What does it mean to be led by the Holy Spirit?"
In this season of Pentecost, we need to consider what it might mean to be led by the Holy Spirit?
There is some heavy theology here, and a good bit of hard work to do.
We might need to "unlearn" some common notions if we are to be "shaped" and "formed" by the scriptural texts themselves. In the Gospel lesson for today, Nicodemus came to Jesus saying "we know," and had to be reminded: "You do not know." Our past ways of knowing, get in the way of experiencing God anew and in all fullness. To be "born anew," means also to be "born from above." In the original Greek of the New Testament, both meanings of the word must be held in tension, at the same time, and in that is the deeper knowing.
At Pentecost, in last Sunday's texts (Acts 2/Romans 8), we grappled with the Holy Spirit "falling on" or "seizing" the early church, "driving the people out" from Jerusalem to the far corners of the earth (Which "movement" is the whole theme of the Book of Acts). Such scriptural offerings demand that we face what it means to be "called" by God and the Holy Spirit, in order to "fulfill our destiny," and to "grow down." (In last week's reflections on the text, the lives of Josephine Baker and Judy Garland, were cited as examples of contrast consequences in achieving this rooted-ness or not).
The Pentecost text pushed us to consider a focus on special gifts of "languages" or the many "tongues." Rather than being "Pentecostal" or "charismatic" (with a small "c"), we had to conclude from the text itself that the church now has the calling of "discernment," passed on from Jesus, to the Apostles. The whole church is to be a "teacher," now, and to be a partner in interpreting God's movement among us in the world. This may be more than we bargained for, and certainly a greater intrusion and demand upon our life than what is usually meant in our culture by "being spiritual."
Today we deal with the Holy Spirit and what the church has come to confess as the Trinity. This is "Trinity Sunday." To consider faithfully what we are dealing with here is no simple matter.
To speak of Trinity is to recognize that God has three decisive ways of being God in the world, acting and alive. God is experienced in three 'modalities," sometimes referred to as "persons," (though this latter reference sometimes confuses).
What we are all about as "church," that "peculiar" community gathered to discern God's work in the world through the Holy Spirit, can best be described in the New Testament as a "foretaste," "sign" and "instrument" for revealing and participating in that larger world which Jesus called "the Kingdom of God," or God's larger "dream" and "intention" for the world and for us, each one.
I like this summary description of "Church," by one of our own Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) leading theologians, Joe R. Jones.
The Church is:
... that liberative and redemptive
Community of persons
Called into being by the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Through the Holy Spirit
To witness in word and deed
To the living triune God
For the benefit of the world
To the glory of God.
(See the excellent summary of the workings of the Holy Spirit in Joe R. Jones, two-volume Systematic Theology, A Grammar of Christian Faith, Systematic Explorations in Christian Life and Doctrine, NY: Roman and Littlefield, 2002, Volumes I and II, p. 25.)
Leading a "purpose - driven" or "called" life makes all the difference. "Alignment" with God's purposes for our life is a form of "spiritual chiropractic." In this medical field, such alignment allows the body to "heal itself."
In the New Testament Greek, the word for Holy Spirit, kata-kaleo means, quite literally, "The one who runs along side of you calling your name." The Holy Spirit is also described by Jesus as the "comforter" and "teacher" who shall "lead you into all truth." God, then, through the Holy Spirit, speaks into our days, "nudging" us toward some higher purpose. And we will remain miserable until we find out what that call or demand upon our life might be.
The church, too, is a "called" community moving toward eternal purposes:
"Missional communities are called to represent the compassion, justice, and peace of the reign or kingdom of God. The distinctive characteristics of such communities are that the Holy Spirit creates and sustains them. Their identity (who they are), their character (how they are), their motivation (why they are), and their vocation (what they do) are theological, and therefore 'missional.' ... The community-forming activity of the Holy Spirit challenges us to move beyond the contemporary assumption that the Spirit's actions center exclusively, or even primarily, on the individual soul. Not only does the Creator Spirit renew particular lives, but the Spirit is the source of all life in creation (Inagrace Dietterich, "Missional Community: Cultivating Communities of the Holy Spirit," Missional Church: A vision for the sending of the Church in North America, Darrell L. Guder, Ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 142ff)."
Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2004), has the old, dying Pastor, John Ames, reflecting back upon his life, offering a journaled-memoir to his young son: "One great benefit of a religious vocation is that it helps you concentrate. It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore."
One of the graces of the profession, he continues, is that you get to "bless people," placing your hand on their brow and asking for them the protection of God.
Each of us can offer these "blessings," too . . . becoming, in fact, a bodying-forth of God's Presence. And so, may it be with us, as God's faith community, discerning, daily, this making most vivid, the touch of the Spirit of God upon each of our lives.
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