First Love

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Revelation 2:1-7; Joel 2:12-17

June 15, 2014 • Portage First UMC

When was the last time you got an honest-to-goodness letter in the mail? I know that most days, when I open the mailbox, all I find are bills, ads and junk. Most of the mail ends up in the recycling bin before I ever get to the house! I’m even told e-mail is “old hat” now, as people prefer to text, send instant messages or write on your Facebook timeline. But, last winter, our crawl space flooded and we had to pull everything out of there to see what could be saved and what was ruined. And in those boxes, I found cards and letters from past birthdays and other events. Letters. Real letters that were still in the envelope they arrived in. It was a lot of fun sorting through them, reading them, remembering things I had forgotten, and revisiting (in my mind at least) old friendships and family relationships. There’s something about a letter, even in this age of high-tech communication, that shows a greater depth in a relationship than an e-mail or text. On those rare occasions when a letter or a card does show up in my mailbox, I read it slowly, I savor it, and I keep many of them—only now they’re all in plastic totes! Letters are pieces of history, tangible reminders of shared relationship.

Contained within chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, are a series of letters. They were written to seven churches in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey): Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. These churches formed a half-circle, starting with Ephesus, going north on the coast to Pergamum and then returning inland to Laodicea. They were not far from the island of Patmos, where John the Apostle was “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s day (1:10). It’s there he received a vision of Jesus Christ (1:1) that we know as the book of Revelation. The whole book was probably a circular letter, meant to be read at each of the churches, which is why each of these short letters concludes basically the same way: “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7). Not to “the church,” but to the “churches.” All of them. And all of us. Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches…even down to today, because these letters were preserved so that churches throughout all time could hear what the Spirit is saying, not just to long ago, now-dead churches, but to the church living in today’s world.

You see, these are really letters from an old friend. They are letters from Jesus, the one who “walks among the seven golden lampstands” (2:1). Written down by the disciple John, before Jesus goes on to show him what “must take place,” these letters first call the churches to faithfulness. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at these letters. We’ll be taking a journey through the lives of seven first-century churches, to see what message they have for us here in the twenty-first century. Each of these letters contains instructions for what it means to be “victorious,” or, as in some translations, “a conqueror.” How do we “win” in the game of life? Specifically, the book of Revelation is concerned about how to live a holy life in the midst of an unholy world. How do we continue to be faithful Christians when the world seems to do everything it can to pull us off that path? That is the question we will focus on as we make our journey through Asia Minor and stop at each of these churches. So grab your walking stick and come with me because the first stop on our journey is the church at Ephesus.

Ephesus was a city of major importance, boasting a population of a quarter of a million people (Smith, Unveiled Hope, pg. 42; Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 11). It was a world-class city. In its own day, it ranked up there with Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria (Mulholland [b], “Revelation,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pg. 434). Today, we would put it alongside New York or Paris or Beijing or London—a city so well known you don’t even need to name its country. It was a seaport, and so it had become a major center for both sea trade and overland shipping. The market in the middle of the town was packed with goods from all over the world; one person described the Ephesian market as a “mall on steroids.” Anything you wanted, you could probably find in Ephesus, good and bad, healthy and otherwise. Because of its location and the trade, Ephesus was a wealthy, cosmopolitan city. It was also a “free city,” having been granted self-government by Rome, and it had a theater that could seat 24,000 people. Today, that theater is one of the best-preserved archaeological sites in the world.

Ephesus was also an intellectual center, boasting one of the world’s largest libraries, the Celsus Library. But just around the corner from that building was the town brothel, right out in the open. And while all of that was important, the main reason people came to Ephesus was spiritual. The city had fourteen temples to pagan gods, but none of them rivaled the beauty and the splendor of the Temple of Artemis. Ephesus was the center of worship for the goddess Artemis, the goddess of fertility and life. Her temple was bigger than a football field and a half and was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. (Mulholland [a], Revelation: Holy Living in an Unholy World, pg. 94). From 1000 BC, Artemis had been worshipped here, and her temple in the first century contained hundreds of temple prostitutes, both male and female. Ephesus was also a center for emperor worship. Above the library was an inscription that proclaimed Caesar, the emperor, as a god, and there were particular times of the year when the citizens were expected to affirm that idea. So along comes Paul, the apostle, probably somewhere around the year 50 A.D., preaching about this Lord named Jesus. Paul spent more time in this place than in any other, and he loved these people dearly. Later, he sent Timothy to pastor them, and eventually the apostle John came here.

And the church grew. The people of Ephesus took to the message of Jesus. In fact, it grew so well that we have a story in the book of Acts of a riot that takes place there. There was a silversmith named Demetrius, a man who made little silver statues of Artemis for tourists to purchase and take home, and he made a good living at that. But then people started believing in Jesus and they began rejecting the worship of Artemis. Now, I don’t know if Demetrius cared one way or the other who they worshipped. What he cared about was money, and these Christians, as they grew in number, were taking away from his business. So they got the people stirred up, and thousands of them rushed into the theater, where they began shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Luke says they shouted that for two solid hours until the city clerk finally calmed them down and reminded them that there were law courts to settle such disputes (19:23-41). You see, the church was a threat because it had impacted the lives of the people so deeply it was even affecting the economy of the city.

No doubt the church was busy, and probably even well-thought-of in the community. I imagine them feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, preaching the good news. In fact, in this letter from Jesus, he has a word of encouragement for them: “I know your deeds,” he says, “your hard work and your perseverance” (2:2). He commends them for the ways they have worked hard against false doctrines and have not let false apostles continue to preach and teach. They have protected the orthodoxy of the faith; in other words, they believe all the right things. They have even opposed the Nicolaitans (2:6). Now, we don’t know a lot about this particular group, but from a few clues in the Bible, we can assume they were trying to be Christian without the moral obligations. It seems “they had worked out a compromise with the pagan society in which they lived,” and were involved in both idolatry and immorality (Mounce, The Book of Revelation, pg. 89). The Ephesian Christians have stood against them, trying to draw a clear line between those who believed in the Gospel and those who did not (Wright 13). And because of that, because of their faithfulness, Jesus seems to indicate that they have found themselves under attack. He writes to them, “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary” (2:3). These are faithful, orthodox Christians, or so it seems on the outside.

But there’s a problem. Jesus says, “I hold this grudge against you” (2:4). Now, I don’t know about you, but those are just about the last words I would want to hear Jesus say to me. “I have a grudge against you.” It’s bad enough to have a friend or family member say that to you, but Jesus? And this is his grudge: “You have forsaken the love you had at first” (2:4). Another translation says they have abandoned their first love. How many of us remember our first love? Maybe it was someone you admired from afar, or even someone you never spoke to, but you just knew that person was perfect for you. Whether or not you ended up together, the old cliche is true: “You never forget your first love.” Today, with Facebook and Twitter, you can even find them online sometimes. And maybe you don’t love that person as you might have once, but you never forget them. Unless, it seems, you are in Ephesus. Jesus says they have “forsaken” the love they had at first. The word “forsaken” refers to a divorce, which tells us somewhere along the way they have made a choice. No one divorces accidentally; a choice is made, and that’s the image Jesus is applying to these seemingly faithful Christians: “You have forsaken the love you had at first.” They still believe all the right things. They may even be doing the right things, but something is missing. Something has been left behind.

What they have forsaken is their “first love,” their agape. There’s that word again: agape, self-giving, sacrificing, “no-strings-attached” kind of love that God has for us, and that we are supposed to have for each other. That kind of love Jesus tells his disciples to have when he talks to them on the last night he is with them: “Love one another,” he says (cf. John 13:34). Agape one another. It seems Ephesus was very strong on the truth, but very weak with it comes to love. Strong on believing the right things, but weak on doing anything about it. Orthodoxy without outreach (cf. Mulholland [b] 435). Head without heart. It “is a church which has lost the heart of a bride” (Smith 43). I experienced that several years ago when I participated in a Work Camp in a southern state. The group that went was very excited about what we would be able to accomplish, but when we arrived, we sensed something wasn’t quite right. The leaders were doing all the right things, helping people as they had always done, but several of our team independently commented to me that they felt like the spirit behind what was being done was missing. Somewhere along the way, the reason for the good work was forgotten, or forsaken. That’s what had happened in Ephesus. As Dr. Robert Mulholland puts it, Ephesus “had lost the offensive of love and adopted the defensive of orthodoxy” ([a] 95).

And that’s always a danger for the church. John tells us in the very beginning of his gospel that Jesus came full of “grace and truth” (John 1:14). Another way to say that is he came with love and orthodoxy. Love and truth have to be held in dynamic tension for a church to be a church. To go too far in one direction or the other creates problems. Love without truth creates a “tolerant pluralism,” and the end result is that the church becomes formed around human values, my preferences, what I want. Truth without love becomes a cold, harsh legalism, and the end result is a community formed around upholding a list of “do’s and don’ts”. To have a healthy community of faith, truth and love have to be held in tension. We stand for the truth, and we reach out in love and with the love of Jesus Christ (cf. Mulholland [b] 435). We see this even in the current tension within our own denomination over the issue of homosexuality. Both sides claim truth, both sides claim love, and then there are those in the middle trying their best to hold the tension between the two. And a lot of folks are just confused, heartbroken and hurt while people from both sides call for a division in the ironically-named United Methodist Church. I don’t know what will come out of all that, but I wonder what Jesus might say to us about that tension, about how to hold love and truth together, and about whether or not we have forsaken our first love in today’s world.

To Ephesus, Jesus says they are doing the right things, but they need to remember why they are doing them. Three words stand out in verse 5, three words that might give us a clue as to how to hold onto this tension in today’s world. The first word is “consider.” “Consider how far you have fallen!” Jesus encourages the church to take time to look back and remember that love they had at first; it is the “hallmark of Christian existence” (Mulholland [a] 95). Memory is a powerful force. We think back, and we see steps taken, or opportunities missed. Memory can be a force for regret or for change. When couples enter counseling, often because they have forgotten or forsaken their first love, they are often asked what it was that made them choose each other in the first place. What made you fall in love at first? What did you love about him or her? Why did you say “yes” when you were asked to wed? There’s power in memory to resurrect the present. Remember. Consider. Look back. Ephesus is challenged to consider the days when love abounded in the congregation, when they did their “good works” out of a heart of love for Jesus and love for their fellow human beings instead of just doing it because they felt like they had to (Mounce 88). So that begs the question: what do we need to consider?

The second word is a common one around the church: “repent.” While common, the word isn’t often understood. Repentance is more than just saying, “I’m sorry.” In Biblical thinking, repentance involves a “turning around,” a changing of the ways, doing a “180.” It’s as if you’re headed north and then you turn around suddenly and head south, completely in the opposite direction. The problem is we often want to repent and not really change. We want forgiveness without real repentance. Beyond feeling sorry, repentance includes dealing decisively with our sin, determining by God's grace that our sin will no longer define us. Repentance is absolutely necessary for communion with Christ, and for Ephesus, it was crucial. The end of the verse says, “If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (2:5). That’s a reference back to chapter 1, where Jesus is seen standing among seven lampstands, each lampstand representing one of the churches (1:12-13, 20). If the lampstand were to be   removed, the implication would be that Ephesus would cease to be a church. They would no longer be shining the light of Jesus into the world. Without repentance, Ephesus will be removed from the circle of churches. It’s a frightening promise…or prediction. Today, if you go to Ephesus, you will see many ruins and shops and sites. But one thing you won’t find today is an active Christian church, a Gospel presence (Wright 11). Consider. Repent.

The third word is very practical: “do.” “Do the things you did at first” (2:5). Go back to basics, Ephesus. Start over. Once you’ve considered your past and repented of your present, then do what you first did. Now, some of those works might be the same things they’re doing now. The difference will be the spirit in which they’re done. Anyone can serve food at a soup kitchen; does it make a difference if it’s done in the spirit of Christ? Anyone can read children Bible stories; does it make a difference if it’s done in the midst of a passionate love for the Word made flesh? Many people are very good at helping others in the midst of grief; does it make a difference if that help is given with the love of God? As Jesus writes to Ephesus, we learn that simply doing the right thing is not enough in eternity’s view. Yes, the homeless person may get fed, the child may be taught, and the grieving family may be encouraged, but if they don’t encounter the love of Jesus Christ along the way, the actions are worthless. “Do the things you did at first,” when you were first in love with Jesus. “It’s easy to let this slip. It’s easy to settle down into a vaguely comfortable existence which puts its own needs first and, sometimes, last as well. The Ephesian church needs to wake up, remember how things used to be, to repent and get back on track” (Wright 13).

So let us be very clear: Jesus is describing a progression. “Doing” was not the problem in Ephesus. They were “doing;” they were doing many things, good things. What they weren’t doing is loving. “Do” has little power without “consider” and “repent.” Remember Paul’s words in his famous chapter on love: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3).

The prophet Joel said the same thing to the nation of Judah in the year 500 B.C. “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing” (Joel 2:13-14). That was in a time when the nation was threatened by an invasion of locusts; everyday life was terribly disrupted, and the people, seeing this as a punishment from God, cried out (Hubbard, Joel & Amos, pg. 21ff.). Joel reminds them, much as Jesus reminds the Ephesian church, that it was to God they needed to return. Remember (consider) that he is gracious and merciful, repent in your hearts, then perhaps God will save you and leave a blessing behind for you. For the Ephesians, being conquerors means they will consider, repent, and do. They will return to “the love [they] had at first” (2:4).

Then, in verse 7, we read, “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” What is he talking about? That great temple built to Artemis, the one which everyone came to see, the wonder of the world, had within its grounds a beautiful garden, a king’s sort of garden. In ancient times, the king’s garden was the most beautiful, the place people wanted to be invited to. It was called “paradise,” and a similar garden was there in the courtyard of the temple of Artemis. In the center of that garden was a tree, which functioned sometimes as a sacred shrine, and other times as a place of refuge. For instance, if you committed a crime and you thought you might be caught, you could run to the temple, and once you got within a certain distance of this tree, this “tree of life,” you would be safe from capture and punishment (Wright 12). Of course, the flaw in that plan is what you did next. You couldn’t stay next to the tree forever, so you would ask for asylum, for protection, even for forgiveness of your crime. There at the tree of life, you indeed might find your life restored. That same imagery shows up at the end of the book of Revelation, in chapter 22, where an image of the perfected kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, is presented. There, the “tree of life” is said to grow by the river of the water of life, which flows from the throne of God. “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2; Mulholland [a] 97), writes John. The one who is victorious, who returns to Christ as their first love, the one who does the things done at first, that one will find life, true life, and in turn become an agent of Christ, an agent of healing in the world. The victorious person will be one who has purpose and who brings the healing message of Christ to the nations.

You see, “first love” is not so much about chronology as it is about priority. For most of us, probably all of us, Jesus is not the first person we loved. When he called the Ephesians, and us, to place him as our first love, he’s calling us to make him the top priority in our lives, the focus of everything we do. The experience of the Ephesians, and the word of Jesus to them, ought to cause us to stop a moment and ask why we do what we do. If Jesus were writing this letter to us, would he say the same things? Or would he find we are still following our “first love”?

For several years, we have had as our mission statement, as our driving force, this phrase: we are “becoming a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ.” That statement seeks to encompass both truth (Jesus Christ) and love (community). It also seeks to balance belief with outreach, because we want people to encounter Jesus in everything we say and everything we do. And we say, even here in this sanctuary, that we want to live that out by loving God, loving others and offering Jesus. So the question we have to ask, Portage First United Methodist Church, is this: how are we doing? Or, even more to the point, is what we’re doing done because of our love for Jesus or just because we think we ought to? This past week, Pastor Deb and I were having a conversation along these very lines. We got to talking about the many opportunities for outreach we have had in this community and in this church, and how those have constantly called us to obey Jesus’ calling to us. Jesus told us to feed the hungry, and we have tried to do that through Feed My Lambs and through our support of the food pantry and the Trustees’ emergency food supply. Every month, you all bring in food to give away, not because you have to. Most of the time, we even forget to remind you! You do it because of your “first love.” Jesus said to clothe the naked, and every year at our rummage sale, clothes and such are not only sold, but there are also clothes, especially in the fall, given away to school children who might not have new clothes or clothes that fit them. The rummage sale is not just about making money; it’s about making a difference. We support the Portage Resale Shop as well, and they operate in a similar fashion. Brandon Miller, the executive director, isn’t about making a profit; he’s trying to touch people’s lives. We collect coats and hats and gloves in the winter time for school children, and many of you are helping supply needs with Royal Family Kids Camp this summer, not out of obligation but because of your “first love.”

Jesus said visit the prisoner, the outcast, and we have an exciting new ministry that our Outreach Team has launched this year, under the direction of Steve Massow, reaching out to minister to and encourage and inspire and touch prisoners with the love of Jesus. Let me tell you, just from what little I know about what they’ve gone through to get to the place where they can actually visit prisoners, these folks did it out of their “first love,” because many of us would have given up long ago with all the obstacles and barricades that the government and prison system put up. They don’t go to the prison out of obligation; they do it because of their “first love.” Jesus said to visit the sick, and one of the most exciting things that’s been happening around this congregation are the twenty-three Congregational Care Ministers who are, every week in unseen and often unknown ways, reaching out to the sick, the hurting, the lonely and the lost. Sometimes it’s a card, other times it’s a phone call, sometimes a prayer and others a visit. They give of their time in ways you and I don’t know, and they do it because of that “first love.” Jesus said to give the thirsty a drink, and you all have been involved in providing clean water in Guatemala. This next year, we hope to take a mission team down there to see that work in action. Clean water for the whole world is not an impossible goal. If God’s people step up, act on that “first love,” it can be done (cf. Matthew 24:31-46).

And so, out of that conversation, Pastor Deb and I began asking, “What next?” Where is Jesus calling us to reach out and extend that “first love”? Where are the places in our community that need God’s people to make a difference? If we think about “offering a cup of cold water” as meeting any sort of human need, how can we do that? Who are the “strangers” and the “outcasts” right here in our own community? I often hear people asking why we reach out in other states or countries when there is great need here at home. And there is great need here, but I think sometimes it takes reaching out way beyond ourselves to open our eyes to what’s going on here. We become blind to the needs around us because we see them all the time. Sort of like how I’ll put something on the steps or on the counter and ask the kids to take it to their room. A week later, it’s still there. They stopped seeing it because it was right in front of them. When I go away to serve, there’s something that happens to heighten my awareness of the needs of the world, including those that have been staring me in the face. So we must become aware, open our eyes to the strangers, the outcasts, the ones in need of experiencing that “first love” right around us. Pastor Deb and I didn’t have a clear answer that afternoon, but we are praying about it, and invite you to do the same. Above all else, our desire and goal is to balance what we do between truth and love, and to make sure our motivation in everything is the love, spirit and grace of Jesus Christ. He is our “first love.” Without him shining through us, we offer the world very little.

Years ago in a small midwestern town, it was one man’s job to watch  the railroad crossing. When a train would approach at night he was to wave his lantern to warn those driving on the narrow road that a train was approaching and to get them to stop until it passed by. One particular night as the train was coming down the tracks, the man took his place to warn any oncoming cars. He could see a car in the distance approaching the railroad tracks so he began to wave his lantern against the moonlit sky. The car continued to come so the man waved the lantern harder. The train was only seconds away from the crossing and the car was not even slowing down. The man couldn’t believe it, so he waved the lantern even harder. Still the car came. The car was almost to the track and the train was about to pass, and the man knew he couldn’t stand in the middle of the road any longer. Once more he frantically waved his lantern but the car continued to come at full speed. Finally the man jumped out of the way as the car sped by and was hit by the train on the tracks. Everyone in the car was killed. At the investigation, the grief-stricken man explained to the authorities how he tried to warn the oncoming vehicle but it wouldn’t stop. The officer in charge said to the man, “Sir, you waved your lantern, but you forgot to light it” (More Hot Illustrations, pg. 104).

We’re called to offer the light of Christ, but we must offer it in a way that the flame of our love for Jesus never goes out. Can they see Jesus in us? Or are we just doing what we’re expected to do, not realizing the light has gone out, the lampstand has been removed? Tradition tells us that the Apostle John died in Ephesus and is buried here (Dictionary of the Later New Testament, pg. 147). But as he grew older and more feeble, they say he would simply repeat one phrase over and over again: “Little children, love one another.” When it came time to sum up his ministry and his life, he returned to his first love, and urged his church to do the same. “Little children, love one another.” “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7). Let’s pray.

Holy Spirit Holes

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Acts 2:1-13

June 8, 2014 • Portage First UMC

We had gotten up very early in the morning, packed our things and loaded the bus. There were eight of us who, after having spent ten days in Israel, were headed to Egypt to trace both Jewish and Christian stories in that ancient land. We sort of traced the route of the Exodus in reverse, as we left Jerusalem, we passed into the desert near Jericho and headed along the Jordan River down toward the Dead Sea. After a lengthy border crossing that felt a bit like a prisoner or hostage exchange, we entered Egypt and got on another bus. Next stop: Mount Sinai, but that was to be several more hours on the bus, going through an inhospitable desert. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those ancient travelers, carrying everything either on their backs or on donkeys, walking through the heat and the sand in what must have seemed to be an endless wasteland. What was it that kept them going? What made them put one foot in front of the other, day after day after day—for forty years? It was hope, pure and simple. It was the hope that God was fulfilling a promise made to their ancestor, Abraham, when God had told him that he would give his children this land, this promised land, this holy land.

Their first stop was the place where we were headed: Mount Sinai, in the midst of the desert. Fifty days after escaping from slavery in Egypt, the people had arrived at this mountain where, not all that long before, God had called Moses to go and rescue them. When our bus stopped at the foot of this mountain range, as we walked up a slight hill to the monastery that is there, I was tired. But how much more tired had those first travelers been? I had ridden in a bus; they had not. And yet, they gathered there at Sinai, and they received God’s direction for life. If they wanted to be God’s people, this was the way they were going to have to live. After this place, they walked with renewed hope because here they had begun to be shaped into the people of God.

Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, the people of God gathered on another mountain, Mount Zion in Jerusalem, in the last place they had been together with Jesus. They, too, were exhausted, though the weariness was more spiritual and emotional than physical. The crucifixion had nearly killed them, too, and then he had been raised. The last time they had seen him, though, was ten days ago, when he had ascended back to the Father, and at that point they had been told to “wait” for the “gift” God the Father had promised to send (Acts 1:4). In the very near future, they were assured, they would be given everything they needed to be able to live the way God called them to live. In fact, they are specifically told they will be given “power” to be God's people (1:8). And so they waited. For ten days, they waited and they prayed and they waited and they prayed. And then, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, after he had rescued them from slavery to sin and death, something happened.

It was the day of Pentecost, one of the three great festivals that all Jewish men who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem were legally bound to attend (Barclay, The Acts of the Apostles, pg. 21). That was no problem for these followers of Jesus; they had, in fact, not gone far from Jerusalem since Jesus was crucified and raised. On the day of Pentecost, Luke says, they were all together in one place. They had withdrawn to wait and pray, knowing the next move was up to God (Willimon, Interpretation: Acts, pg. 27). Now, I’ve often wondered why God made them wait ten days. Why not just send the “gift” immediately after Jesus left planet Earth? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I do know that we usually need time to prepare for seismic shifts, radical changes. In those ten days, as they prayed, I believe God was preparing their hearts, opening them up to what God wanted to do among them. They needed those ten days—in fact, they needed the fifty days since the resurrection—to really be ready to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, O God.” It takes time for us to realize that only God can give us what we most desperately need (Willimon 27).

And so, as they are praying, the Holy Spirit comes. In an experience that is somewhat beyond words, the Spirit comes to dwell among these followers of Jesus. Now, lest we assume that God’s Spirit just now showed up, we need to remember that there are many times, going all the way to creation, where the Bible tells us that the Spirit is present, moving, working. The Spirit is present in every age, but on this particular Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes in a mighty rush of wind and in tongues of fire that rested on everyone’s head. These things, symbols really, Luke says came from heaven (2:2) and surrounded the community as a whole but also rested upon each individual person. Wind and fire. Wind to clear out the chaff, the useless stuff, and fire to purify the good that is left. And these disciples, these followers of Jesus, are forever changed. The rest of the book of Acts—the rest of the New Testament, really—is the story of what happened to these followers and to the world because of the coming of the Spirit.

When we think of the Holy Spirit, many of us have different ideas, maybe even frightening ideas. For some, the name “pentecostal” brings up images of wild, uncontrolled worship services. Or we think of that mysterious act, “speaking in tongues.” In fact, maybe some of us have been told that you’re not really “filled with the Spirit” unless you speak in tongues because, they say, that’s what happened on the first Pentecost! And yet, what happened here seems a miraculous event geared for that day. These followers of Jesus are given abilities to proclaim the good news about Jesus in real languages they haven’t learned so that all of those gathered in Jerusalem can understand the message (2:11). There’s not any evidence that these disciples retained that ability. No, the real evidence of the filling of the Spirit, according to the New Testament, is when the fruit of the Spirit begins to grow, begins to be in evidence in our lives. Growing that fruit (love, joy, peace, forbearance [or patience], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—Galatians 5:22-23) is what it means to be more and more like Jesus. After all, the Spirit’s job is to make us more like him in every way.

But there are some specific ways the book of Acts says the Spirit moves and works among the community of believers. First of all, the Holy Spirit is the source of guidance for the believer (Barclay 19). There is story after story in the book of Acts of ways the Spirit provides preparation for the various disciples for situations they’re about to find themselves in. One of them is in Acts 8, when Philip, one of the lesser-known disciples, is directed to go to a particular location. He’s not told why, but when he gets there, he meets a political official from the country of Ethiopia, one who is in charge of all the money for the queen. And when Philip sees this chariot passing by, the Spirit tells him to go over by it, and it’s then he gets into a conversation about matters of faith. At the end of the conversation, he baptizes this official and sends him as an ambassador of the Christian faith back to the country (8:26-40). Now, in my own life, I’ve not heard the Spirit speak quite so clearly as he appears to speak in the book of Acts. But there have been numerous times when the Spirit has given me a nudge in my heart to go some particular place or to do some particular thing. One time, I felt a nudge to go visit Barbara who was in the hospital. It wasn’t part of my plan for that morning; I was planning to go that afternoon. But the nudge wouldn’t go away, so finally I got in the car and headed there, and when I arrived, the nurse was just leaving. Barbara had just been told she had inoperable cancer, and her family was nowhere around. I got to be there and pray with her and talk with her, for the last time as it turned out, and it was just the right time because the Spirit nudged me, guided me. Another time I had been trying to connect with a young man who was seriously ill, and we kept missing each other. His many doctor’s appointments kept him quite busy. One day, though, I got that same nudge, and I had learned from the previous experience to pay attention to that. (Yes, he can be taught!) So I drove the two miles to his home, and he had just gotten home that day. We shared time around the table, and prayed together, and not long after, I got the call to do his funeral. Now, there have been just as many if not more times when I haven’t listened to that voice or paid attention to that nudge. I’m always praying to do better, because one of the Spirit’s works in our lives is to give guidance.

Another way the Spirit works is to give us courage and power (Barclay 19). Jesus, in fact, said that the Spirit would do this. To his followers who, he knew, would be risking their lives in following him, he said, “When they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19-20). In Acts 4, we see Peter being brought in front of the Sanhedrin, the same group that not that long ago had condemned Jesus to death, and Peter seems unafraid. This ordinary fisherman who, just a couple of months before, had run and hid when Jesus was arrested, now stood before the ruling body and boldly spoke of his faith in Jesus (4:1-22). The Spirit gave him courage. The same Spirit gave courage to a young missionary named Jim Elliot, who was called to give his life to reach the Auca people in Ecuador. And he literally gave his life. He and four other missionaries were speared to death on the banks of a river by the Auca people. For quite a while, no one knew what had happened to them, and even after the truth was learned, his wife Elisabeth returned and spent two years with the people who had killed her husband, sharing the gospel about Jesus. That takes courage! She lived by the words her husband had once wrote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” (paraphrased). I confess most of the time I don’t anywhere near that type of courage. There are times when I have done hard things, but it’s been mainly because I had to, not because of any particular amount of courage that I found within myself. And therein lies the problem: I look for courage within myself when all the time the Spirit is waiting to give it to me if I’ll just ask. Elisabeth Elliot didn’t have that kind of courage herself. That is a gift from God’s Holy Spirit. I’m praying for more courage because the days are difficult and we all need to be able to stand firmly for our faith.

And that brings us to the third thing the Spirit does: he makes us into the sort of person God the Father wants us to be (Barclay 20). In Acts 5:32, during a sermon Peter is preaching to the religious leaders, he says that the Holy Spirit is “given to those who obey” God. Peter reminds them, these folks who chose to help put Jesus to death, that obeying God is a choice. God gives us that choice. We have free will, to do good or do harm, to love or to hate, to obey or disobey. But, Peter is saying, only those who obey are given the Holy Spirit. To follow Jesus fully, we must make the choice to obey. We don’t just “happen” to follow Jesus. We don’t just end up in his company by accident. It’s a choice. And when we make that choice, we begin to find the fruit I mentioned earlier growing within us. Sometimes we will claim we don’t know what to do, how to follow Jesus. The Bible is confusing, we say, and the pastor is even moreso! I love the quote from Mark Twain, who once said it wasn’t the parts of the Bible he didn’t understand that concerned him; it’s the parts he did understand. The question is whether or not we’re putting off obeying until we understand it all, because we likely never will! What if we just got busy doing the stuff we know we’re supposed to do, like loving one another, loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? What if we just obeyed those things? What if we fed the hungry, clothed the naked, reached out to the outcast? What if we stopped worrying about the things we have no control over and focused on the things we already know God has called us to do? The Spirit shapes us into the people God has meant us to be, and he begins to do that when we take the first step of obedience.

So the Spirit gives guidance, gives courage, and shapes us into Christlike people. But, some of us may be thinking, the Spirit doesn’t seem to be working in those ways, or in any way, in my life! In fact, I feel sort of spirit-less. The question those first followers of Jesus would ask us then is this: are we open to his moving in our life? Or are we closed off? It’s a bit like eating. Since he’s graduating from high school tonight, it seems only fair that I tell a “baby Christopher” story today. Some of you know that he is a picky eater. Very picky. He adds maybe one new food a year, if that. And he’s always been that way. In fact, very early on he had certain baby foods he would eat and certain ones he most definitely would not. And when he didn’t like a certain food, he would clamp his mouth shut and there was nothing either of us could do to get him to open it. No matter how softly we spoke or tried to convince his baby mind that it was good for him, he wasn’t opening his mouth to it. And sometimes we are just like that with the work of the Spirit in our lives. We read about what he did in the Bible. We understand that the Spirit works with some people, but we’re not going to allow him to work in us that way. John Wimber, who later went on to found the Vineyard Churches, once told about the first time he went to church as an adult. He went expecting dramatic things to happen, things like what are described in the Bible. After visiting several Sundays in a row, he went over to an official-looking man and asked him, “When do they do it?” “Do what?” the man replied. “The stuff,” Wimber answered. “What stuff?” “The stuff in the Bible.” “What do you mean?” “You know, multiplying loaves and fish, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind. That stuff.” “Oh,” the man said, “we don’t do that. We believe in it, and we pray about it. But we don’t do it” (http://citppc.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=553) We may believe the Spirit works in particular ways, gives guidance, courage and life-transformation, but are we open to it? Do we have Holy Spirit holes in our lives?

What is known as the middle ages is sometimes called the Dark Ages because it was a time of cultural loss. Rome had been destroyed and this time period was basically a six hundred year Great Depression. Food was scarce, people had very little and civilization hung on by a thread. And yet, in the midst of that was the church. Many of the great cathedrals were built during this time, and that not only gave people jobs, it gave them hope. Even in small towns, the church became the place of beauty, culture and life. Stained glass windows began to be used during this time to tell stories so that those who couldn’t read could learn the stories of the faith.

During this dark time, Pentecost became a huge celebration for the church, and many of them were built with Pentecost specifically in mind. Those high, domed ceilings hid a number of trap doors, holes in the roof, that were used on Pentecost. During the liturgy, these holes would be opened and down would come live doves, swooping over the congregation as living symbols of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The choir would make whooshing and drumming sounds to represent the violent windstorm. Then, as the doves flew back and forth, the trap doors would be opened again and bushels of rose petals would be showered down on the congregation. These red petals were meant to represent the tongues of fire falling on the gathered congregation (http://stjohns-online.org/pentecostCOT.html). Can you imagine what that would have been like? Of course, building codes would never allow us to get away with that today, but these trap doors were known as “Holy Spirit Holes,” and to me, they remind us of the need for us to make “holes,” to make room for the Spirit to enter our lives. If there is no entry point, we will not experience all that God has for us.

So where are some places in our lives where we might be able to make “Holy Spirit Holes,” ways for the Spirit to transform our lives? Let’s start “close to home,” as we might say, with our relationships, those who are closest to us. We’ve just been through six weeks of talking about relationships and how to maintain them, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time here, but the question we have to ask when we seek to form Holy Spirit holes is whether or not there is greater evidence of the fruit of the Spirit growing in our relationships than there was, say, a year ago. Let me remind you of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Right before that list, Paul mentions actions, attitudes and behaviors that he calls “works of the flesh;” in other words, they are things that come from us and not from the Spirit of God. Now, usually when we read that list, we like to focus on the so-called “big” things, the really obvious “sins,” or at least the ones that we’re not (currently) participating in. So we remember that things like “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft…drunkenness, orgies, and the like” are on Paul’s list (Galatians 5:19-21). But we forget that Paul also includes in that list “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.” He even goes so far as to say, “Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5:21). Now, at times we all end up feeling those feelings and harboring those resentments, probably especially with those who are closest to us. It really does seem to be true that familiarity breeds contempt. So, with the disciples, we might wonder, “Who then can be saved?” (cf. Luke 18:26). Is there any hope? Thankfully, with God there is always grace, and by allowing the Spirit to work in our own hearts, to grow that fruit, we begin to find our relationships open to his work and we grow in love, joy, peace, patience and the rest. Are we willing to make room for the Spirit to work in and heal our relationships?

Another area of life for the Holy Spirit to work is in our spiritual life, our relationship and walk with Jesus. Actually, this is the crux for me. When I am allowing room for the Spirit to speak to me daily, to work in me minute by minute, I find my emotional and mental health is better because my spiritual health is better. Relationships are better. Work is better. Life is better. My routine is usually to get the kids up and use the time while they are getting ready for school to pray and to read the Bible and to get my thoughts focused on Jesus for the day. However, there are days when that doesn’t happen, and with school out, it will be different. But there are days when the schedule gets too busy, or when I have to be somewhere early in the morning. And the “holes” that I have put in place for the Spirit to work get closed up. There are some times when I get to the end of the day and I’m rather frazzled, and then I glance over to the place where I normally have my devotions and I remember I didn’t do that. I didn’t make room. So I sit down and open myself back up to the work of the Spirit. Martin Luther, the great German reformer, was known for his prayer life, and when he was especially busy, he would get up even earlier to pray. One time, he said he had so much to do that day that he would spend the first three hours in prayer. Would we do that? I confess I’m put to shame by Luther’s example. I would be one who would “get busy, it needs to be done.” But we need to make “holes” (room) for the Spirit to meet us and fill us daily, because we leak.

We do this through what we know as the “means of grace,” those things we do to open ourselves to what God wants to do in us by his Holy Spirit. So we read and study and meditate on the Scriptures. Do you read the Bible regularly, or is the only time you hear words from its pages here in worship? We provide a daily reading guide for every day in the bulletin, and there are many online and offline resources you can use as well. Pastor Deb and I would be happy to help you find one that helps you, that fits your personality. Being in the Scriptures, letting our lives be soaked by its message, is an essential way we open our lives to God’s Spirit. So is prayer, talking to God and listening to him. I could preach a whole series of sermons on that alone—in fact, I have before. But prayer is more than just giving a list of requests to God. It’s opening ourselves to what God wants to do, and in this case, asking God to make you more loving while at the same time helping you heal anything that might have been caused by those “works of the flesh.” Worship is another way we open ourselves to the Spirit. When we worship together, we help each other open up to what God wants to do. We celebrate God’s goodness and remember that it’s not about “me” or even “us.” It’s about what God wants to do through us. At this church, we say we expect everyone in corporate worship unless you’re sick or out of town; it’s that important. It’s here that we experience God’s grace in tangible forms, whether through the hug of a brother or sister in Christ, or through the water of baptism, or the bread and juice of communion. It’s in worship that grace becomes touchable. And, there are other, many other, means of grace we could talk about—things like fasting (everyone’s least favorite practice), healthy living, sharing our faith with others, and so on. The point is this: we need daily routines, practices, habits that open up the Holy Spirit holes in our lives so that he can get in and do his transformative work. Every day.

That work that begins in our spirit then flows out into our daily work life. That’s one of the reasons I believe it’s important, at least for me, to open those conduits for the Spirit in the morning. I need that grace to guide me all day long. Some of you find it better in the evening, so that God’s grace can settle you for the night. You have to find what works for you, but if the Spirit doesn’t impact our work life, then it doesn’t really impact us at all, because that’s where we spend most of our time. And I mean “work” whether you get paid for it or not. Whatever you do to fill your days is your “work.” Do you treat those you work with, those you encounter, with the fruit of the spirit? Do they know you are a follower of Jesus? When we were at Annual Conference, Bishop Greg Palmer told of taking his car to the dealership to have something fixed, and the man checking him in noticed his Bishop’s pin on his lapel. When he asked what that was, Bishop Palmer explained that he was a United Methodist Bishop. “Really?” the man said. “I’m a Methodist, too!” But he didn’t attend church very often. So Bishop Palmer suggested a church nearby, and then went to sit down. A bit later, he was talking with another employee who asked about the pin as well, and said he was very involved in a local Methodist church. Bishop Palmer asked if he knew the man at the counter. Of course he did. Did you know he’s a Methodist? Well, no, the man said, they didn’t talk about things like that. So Bishop Palmer introduced them to each other, and neither of them had any idea the other was part of his church! You see, the question is always whether or not people know that you’re a follower of Jesus in the way you conduct your business, in the way you treat others, in the way you live your life. We open the “Holy Spirit holes” in our work life by living out that fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things, Paul says, there is no law. In other words, there is nothing to stop us from doing and living those things, and as we open our lives to the Spirit, he will help us live that fruit more and more.

I have a friend who is a storm chaser. I think he’s nuts, but he loves to chase tornadoes and other violent weather. He’ll take his vacation time just to chase storms. He’s not content to sit in his home (as I would be) and hear about the storms from the meteorologist (who is safely in his studio). No, he wants to be out there in the middle of it, risking it all to catch a glimpse of a really big storm. As I said, I think he’s nuts, but then I begin to think about the way Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit. It’s not a calm, peaceful arrival that the disciples observe clinically from a distance. The picture is more one of a storm, and they are right out in the middle of it. I don’t think that’s a mistake, either that the Spirit came that way or that Luke tells us about it that way, because when it comes to the work of the Spirit in our lives, we’re not supposed to be far-off observers. It’s far more important that we are out in the middle of the storm, arms wide open to allow the Spirit to sweep through our lives, cleanse our hearts, and transform our community (cf. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part One, pg. 22). The Spirit comes to change us from listless believers into fire-filled followers of Jesus. He does not come quietly; he comes in a storm, and he comes to do a new thing. Will you allow the Spirit into your life, to guide you, to give you courage, and to transform you into who God wants you to be? Let’s pray.