The Apostles Creed, a Lover s Quarrel: The Holy Ghost

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1 John 20:19-23, Romans 8:18-27 The Apostles Creed, a Lover s Quarrel: The Holy Ghost A sermon by Rev. Aaron Fulp-Eickstaedt At Immanuel Presbyterian Church, McLean VA On August 18 th, 2013 My summer sermon series on The Apostles Creed, a Lover s Quarrel, continues today with a look at the phrase, I believe in the Holy Spirit. Before I read our two passages of scripture today, an introductory word is in order. The Spirit is present throughout the Bible in the Hebrew scriptures it is understood as the breath of God that was present at creation, it is mentioned in the book of Numbers, it is the inspiration for the prophets who spoke God s words of challenge and comfort to the people, Joel speaks of the day when the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. But in the New Testament, the Spirit moves into clearer focus. The Spirit is behind Jesus conception; it leads him into the desert to be tempted, it is there at the start of his ministry, it is mentioned in his words, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach Good News to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, and so forth. But what the New Testament wants to say is that the Spirit is not restricted to Jesus. The Book of Acts details the event of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, and ten days after Jesus ascends into heaven, as the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem. In John s Gospel, on the night before his arrest, Jesus promises the disciples that he will send the Spirit, and after his resurrection he meets them in that same upper room, cowering in fear, and he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit. Listen now for what John s Gospel says about that and what the spirit might lead them to do: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul outlines his theology before arriving there, and I think he reaches the pinnacle of his thought in Chapter 8. Listen for what he has to say about the Spirit, and how the Holy Spirit helps us with the challenges of life. Note that he speaks of the creation being in labor pains that we have the first fruit of the Spirit, and that the Spirit helps us in our weakness. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

2 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in Thy sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. And may the Gospel be more to us than mere words. May the Holy Spirit produce in us strong conviction. Amen. I believe in the Holy Spirit, or, as the creed says in somewhat more archaic form, I believe in the Holy Ghost. What are we saying when we make that claim? grief. As a way into answering that question, I invite you to think with me about the process of Today marks the first anniversary of the death of a friend of mine s father. He was a good man, but truth be told, he was not at all religious. He d seen enough of religion to know that it could be full of hypocrisy. And he wanted no part of that. However, he was a good man and he knew what it was to love and be loved. He was a principled man, whose life left a legacy for his daughter. In a Facebook post yesterday she wrote: I am sentimental, teary, and sad. I miss my Dad s physical presence, but feel him spiritually. I miss his voice, his touch, his sense of humor, and most of all, his unconditional love for me. Part of the work of grief is the task of understanding how the person to whom we ve had to say goodbye has shaped us and in some way continues to influence us. My friend is doing that. Seeing how her father, in some way, continues to live in her. Grief work involves incorporating the lessons we ve learned from the person who has died, and seeing how they continue to abide in the way we live. How Wally lives in Paul and Mark; how Bob lives in Paulette and Sally; how Dianne s mom lives on in her; how Barbara s mom lives on in her. One of the ways we do that is through the telling and retelling of stories. That s why, at funerals and memorial services like the one I attended yesterday for Dick Schwartz, the husband of Anne Schwartz, the director of Dolley Madison Preschool, stories get told. The children and grandchildren shared their stories yesterday of how particular Dick was, the way he liked the ice cube trays filled just so, so that every cube of ice was uniform; his love for his sports teams like the Redskins and the Maryland Terrapins and his loyalty to particular brands like Ford automotive and Hellman s Mayonnaise. They spoke of his competitive spirit which came out in everything from tennis to golf to bridge to how his lawn looked. His kids said, We couldn t play on our lawn. Our dad encouraged us to play in the street. Though they may not possess all of those foibles, I m sure his children and grandchildren and perhaps even his friends have already been pointing to ways that Dick and his spirit, continues to live in them.

3 I know that John and Cathy Fisher, who were at the memorial service, said that they were going from the funeral back to Capon Springs where they vacation every year. They were in the shuffleboard tournament finals. And they were going to try to win it for Dick. They d felt his spirit with them all week. Which brings me back, at long last, to the Holy Spirit. When we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, I think part of what we are saying is that the Spirit that was and is in Jesus can and does live on in us. We have something of his Spirit in us. It s our birthright. Frederick Buechner, that eloquent Presbyterian preacher and author whom I m so fond of quoting, wrote in his book A Room Called Remember, about how our stories and Christ s stories mix, and how even when they diverge from each other it is our story that diverges from his, so that we know by his absence as well as by his presence in our lives who Christ is and who we are and who we are not. We have it in us, Buechner wrote, to be Christs to each other and maybe in some unimaginable way to God, too that's what we have to tell finally. We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us. We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him and once in a while maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another's pain and to rejoice with some measure of his rejoicing at another's joy almost as if it were our own. i That is Christ s Spirit, the Holy Spirit at work in us. That s what the Spirit does. It helps us to be as Christ to each other and to the world. To say that we believe in the Holy Spirit is to say that we have it in us to do that, to bear the fruit of love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. To say that we believe in the Holy Spirit is to say not just that we believe certain things about the Spirit, it is to say that we allow that Spirit to be at work in us. The Spirit, as Brian McLaren says, is God in us or upon us or all around us. When we talk too much about receiving the Spirit sometimes we miss out on the truth that it is already in and around us. We simply have to embrace that truth. Sometimes faith is not so much about allowing the Spirit to get in. It s about allowing the Spirit to get out. To believe or trust in the Holy Spirit is to be led by that Spirit into lives that reflect more and more of the love and compassion that God calls us to show to others. Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion worldwide, was on a panel this week with a rabbi, Julia Neuberger at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland. ii He lamented on this panel how easily people in the well-off Western church complain about how terribly we are being persecuted, when he says that really we are just being made mildly uncomfortable. When you ve had any contact with real persecuted minorities, he said, you learn to use the word very chastely. Real persecution is happening to Christians in places like Egypt, as we can t forget this week.

4 Then he launched a withering critique of popular ideas about spirituality. "The last thing spirituality is about is the placid hum of a well-conducted meditation, he said. (Not that there is anything wrong with meditation, but it is not an end in itself. It serves the great purpose of making us ready to be used by God). He said the word "spiritual" in today's society was frequently misused in two ways: either to mean "unworldly and useless, (which he says is probably the sense in which it has been used about him), or meaning 'I'm serious about my inner life, I want to cultivate my sensibility.'" He added: "Speaking from the Christian tradition, the idea that being spiritual is just about having nice experiences is rather laughable. Most people who have written seriously about the life of the spirit in Christianity and Judaism spend a lot of their time telling you how absolutely bloody awful it is." Williams argued that true spirituality was not simply about fostering the inner life, but was about the individual's interaction with others. So how do we go about living in the Spirit? I think we begin by acknowledging that it is finally about being a channel of peace, recognizing that the Spirit really and truly does pre-exist all religions. It didn t come into being with the Christian faith. It came into being with God, who is before all things. When we acknowledge the pre-existence of the Spirit and that it can operate in all people everywhere, then what we do is try to surrender to how the Spirit might work through us, how we might be a channel. Meditation has a purpose then. It puts us in tune with the divine love and lets us be a conduit for that love. Small groups have their purpose, because they put us together with others who are trying to be intentional about living the life of the Spirit. But to believe in the Spirit, to practice a spirituality centered in that affirmation, is to know that it is never simply just about us. It is always about others. Listen for what Frederick Buechner said about spirituality, and our two stories Christ s story and our story converging or not: And who knows but that in the end, by God's mercy, the two stories will converge for good and all, and though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either, his story will come true in us at last. And in the meantime, this side of Paradise, it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God's word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of God s holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all. The way that happens is through the work of the Spirit in, through, and beyond us stammering itself forth through our holy stories. The holy stories of us all.

5 Bill Yates, Dick Schwartz, Bob Preston, Wally Erickson, and you name your saint. The holy stories of us all. In Jesus name. Amen. i Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, (New York: Harper Collins, 1992). ii Much of what follows about Williams talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival is drawn from an article in The Guardian. You can read the article here: