Rev. Rebecca Schlatter Liberty Sermon preached at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Bangor, ME May 21, 2017 Sixth Sunday of Easter Texts: Acts 17:22-31, John 14:1-15-21 In Children s Time, we talked about wrapping up our year s theme in faith formation: gifts of the church. There are so many that we didn t get a chance to talk about, including the Holy Spirit, who is a gift from God to the church that we carry with us: God s love and Jesus presence. It s hard to draw a picture of the Holy Spirit, but people sometimes imagine it as fire. Which is kind of strange, because the Spirit doesn t make us hot like fire does, and it doesn t burn up things like fire. But the Holy Spirit does make us excited and eager to share God s love in all kinds of ways. My 4-year-old son likes a cartoon called Paw Patrol, which is about a group of pups who go on missions to help people. Each of them has something they say when they are sent out. Marshall the fire dog always says, All fired up! He s excited and eager to get going which is sort of like what the Holy Spirit does for us. At the end of worship, sometimes we hear, Go in peace, serve the Lord, and we respond, Thanks be to God. Or sometimes we hear, Our worship has ended, and we say, Our service has just begun. Could you imagine if we heard, Jesus sends us on a mission of love, and the Spirit goes with us? Then we could say, All fired up! More to Good News than Resurrection You know how television series will sometimes do a recap of where the story left off, so viewers who missed the last episode can get up to speed quickly? Well, that s how we need to start this morning, because we are picking up where we left off both with the reading from John and with the sermon theme from last week. Previously, in John s gospel Jesus has just finished his last supper with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. He has assured them of his love for them by washing their feet, and he has called them to that same love. He has told them he would be both betrayed and denied by a few of his followers, but then he said in last week s passage, Do not let your hearts be troubled by these challenges or any of the others you will face. I am making a place for you to dwell forever in the love that God the Father and I share, and that you share with us now too. I am the way to that love and the truth and life it holds. No matter what the disciples do, and no matter what happens to them, Jesus tells them he is the ultimate safety for them. In the security of his eternal love, they can find the courage to face their unknown future. So that s where we begin today: with courage to face the future. Maybe for you that means facing the future after graduation, your own or a loved one s. Maybe it means facing the
future with new health problems, or without someone you love. Maybe it means facing the future as a congregation whose pastor of 20 years just retired, as Redeemer is doing now. The disciples don t understand this yet, as Jesus has not yet been taken from them. But they too are facing an unknown future, without Jesus physical presence. Jesus is trying to prepare them for it, by assuring them that even when they can t see him anymore, they will not be abandoned. Even more than that, they will be drawn even more deeply into the love of God through Jesus. It s a tough message to communicate, though, because the disciples are only human. Like most of us, they are better at looking backward to the past than forward to the future. Because who can imagine something that has not yet happened? They know what it has been like to be with Jesus in the flesh to feel his love and friendship, to hear his powerful teaching, to catch glimpses of God s mystery through him, to rely on his healing and forgiving and comforting presence. They do not know, and cannot begin to imagine, what it will be like without him. At this point it would be so easy to believe that their best days are behind them. It is much harder to believe that there is more life to come than they can imagine that, as The Message translation of verse 19 says, they are about to come alive. But isn t this the kind of thing that faith always invites us to trust? That there is more to the world than only what we can perceive with our senses and understand with our intellect? That there is more to hope for in the future than only what we ve experienced in the past? It s what Paul is preaching to the Athenians in today s first reading: there is more to your unknown God than you think. In our church year, it s what the seven Sundays of the Easter season are pointing to. The resurrection is good news, but there is even more to good news than Jesus being raised from the dead. Now, doesn t that sound completely absurd? Jesus has been raised from the dead, and we re talking about something more? More than being raised from the dead? How on earth do you top resurrection?! Maybe you don t top it exactly, but maybe you see how the reach of God s new and abundant life is extended more widely than you imagined. That s what Jesus is describing in today s gospel reading. But again, it is a tough message to communicate, because his departure would create a huge crisis in John s Christian community. It s hard to overestimate this crisis. All along, the core of Jesus message has been incarnation: that he, in the flesh, is God incarnate, and through him all people can know the unknowable creator God. So what happens when he isn t in the flesh anymore, when the incarnation is over, so to speak? People will lose their access to God, right? Future generations will just be out of luck? No there s more to it than that. That s what the Spirit will be for: to continue the mutual love of God and Jesus and his followers, to connect their past with their future, to continue the creative work of God in and with them, and to remind people of all that Jesus has said. ( All that Jesus has said is referred to as commandments, but the word doesn t really mean do s and don ts. It means his teaching about knowing God s love and doing God s work. Holding those words close means being engaged in that love and work.) Jesus has been their Advocate, and now there will be another one to be with them and in them forever, the very presence of Jesus
himself. The Spirit will kindle their hearts, as Martin Luther wrote in his catechism, inspiring faith, calling, enlightening, forgiving, empowering, making them holy. There is more to good news than resurrection: The Holy Spirit is the more. The Bible has two stories of the actual coming of the Spirit upon the disciples. One or both are usually the readings on the day of Pentecost. In Acts, the disciples are gathered together after Jesus resurrection and his ascension into heaven, on the Jewish festival called Pentecost. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. The other story is in John s gospel. When we read it each year on the Sunday after Easter, we are usually still focused on resurrection and might even miss the Spirit reference: 19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week [the day of resurrection], 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. 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. It is just as Jesus has promised: Because he lives, they also will come alive with the Spirit, a word in Greek that also means breath. It s hard not to think of the story of creation, when Genesis says the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. With the Spirit in them, the disciples come alive with Christ s own life. These are amazing stories, but there is more to Pentecost than stories about ancient people. In fact, we won t even be reading those stories on the day of Pentecost this year. We will focus on how the reach of God s new and abundant life extends in our own time and place. Because we each have our own Pentecost story in baptism: That s when the Spirit is breathed into us. In community, throughout our lives, we discern where and how it sends us to live in and live out of Christ s love. In that discernment, maybe we will see how there is more to church than we might imagine, too. Last November, Pastor Elaine and I and several members of Redeemer attended a webinar entitled From Destination to Training Ground: Rediscovering Your Church s Vocation. The speaker was Rev. David Lose, president of the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. As he talked about cultural changes in the church all churches, not just Lutheran ones he described an image that really struck me, an image alluded to in the title of his talk. For centuries, he said, coming to church has been seen primarily like coming to a concert hall. Church is a spiritual destination where people come expecting an
excellent performance which means the gospel preached beautifully, the sacraments offered powerfully, the music uplifting and the fellowship warm and welcoming. Those are all good things! There is nothing wrong with that, just like there s nothing wrong with a really amazing concert. But people are not coming to church like they used to; we have been hearing for years about declining attendance and waning interest in traditional church. Fortunately, there is so much more to the church than weekly concerts. Continuing that musical metaphor, Dr. Lose described the church like a community music school. (That s the training ground in the title of the webinar.) You don t go to a music school because of its excellent concerts. You go because of the way it helps you improve as a musician, and because you get to learn from fellow students and helpful teachers, and because you come to belong with other musicians who join you in playing the music you love. Even if playing music is not your thing, I hope the metaphor still makes sense. You could also say that coming to church is not like watching a sporting event here everyone is on the field playing and learning and belonging to the team. Use whatever metaphor you need to envision church not as a gathering of spectators but as the kind of community that makes you come alive! In this vision, the most important day of the week in the church is not Sunday, but every day you re out in the world being a Christian. In this vision, you wouldn t judge a congregation by how good a show they put on, but by how well they prepare and support one another to go out into the world with the love of Christ. You don t judge pastors by how well they perform, but by how well they coach the players. You don t judge worship by how seamless or even how inspiring it is in the moment, but by how it helps you live your life with more love, more hope, more peace, more connection to God and others. Because living our lives that way is what Jesus has in mind. Like his first disciples, we cannot see it fully yet, but we catch glimpses of the more through the Holy Spirit, working in us through the gospel, the water of baptism, the bread and wine of communion. Trusting in that work in these last days of the Easter season, we celebrate resurrection and yet know there is more to it than that. And so we pray, Come, Holy Spirit Hymn of the Day: ELW 804, Come Down, O Love Divine The final blessing was written by William Sloane Coffin, an activist, Presbyterian pastor and American public theologian who died in 2006: May the Lord bless you and keep you. May God's face shine upon you with grace and mercy. May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short; grace to risk something big for something good; grace to remember that the world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
So, may God take your minds and think through them; may God take your lips and speak through them; may God take your hearts and set them on fire.