You Also Are to Testify: a sermon for Pentecost

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

²⁶ “When the Companion comes, whom I will send from the Father—the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me. ²⁷ You will testify too, because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I didn’t say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵ But now I go away to the one who sent me. None of you ask me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶ Yet because I have said these things to you, you are filled with sorrow. ⁷ I assure you that it is better for you that I go away. If I don’t go away, the Companion won’t come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸ When he comes, he will show the world it was wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment. ⁹ He will show the world it was wrong about sin because they don’t believe in me. ¹⁰ He will show the world it was wrong about righteousness because I’m going to the Father and you won’t see me anymore. ¹¹ He will show the world it was wrong about judgment because this world’s ruler stands condemned.

¹² “ I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now. ¹³ However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you in all truth. He won’t speak on his own, but will say whatever he hears and will proclaim to you what is to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and proclaim it to you. ¹⁵ Everything that the Father has is mine. That’s why I said that the Spirit takes what is mine and will proclaim it to you. ¹⁶ Soon you won’t be able to see me; soon after that, you will see me. ”

Common English Bible

Let the words of my mouth

and the meditations of my heart

be pleasing to you,

LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

Photo by Amy Mann

I watched Facebook with considerable jealousy a couple weeks ago as some friends of mine attended the Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta. Homiletics, by the way, is the study and subsequent practice of preaching and all the mess that goes into it.

The Festival of Homiletics gathered some of the most well-known preachers in the world under one roof. If you’ve ever been inspired by a good sermon or in awe of a really outstanding preacher (and I know that happens to you every week here), then you can imagine the atmosphere.

One of my friends caught this quote from a hero of the craft:

"Like that first Pentecost, God crashes our parties and invites in the people we're trying to avoid." - Nadia Bolz-Weber

Why were the disciples gathered in their cloistered room? Because they were afraid; they were trying to avoid the crowds who had so recently demanded Jesus’ crucifixion.

But you might notice that when Jesus appears to the disciples after the Resurrection, he does so unannounced and often breaking the fundamental laws of physics, appearing on their fishing trips and in locked rooms.

And the Spirit, the Breath of God, does exactly the same thing.

a sound like the rush of a violent wind…

⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…

God breaks into their everyday lives, into their safely locked rooms, and begins the work that the disciples were ill-equipped to do on their own.

Not only were they not confident enough to preach; not only were they completely unprepared to share in the language and cultural context of that diverse crowd in Jerusalem; but they lacked the broader vision that God had, even after Jesus shared it with them:

go and make disciples of all nations

The disciples didn’t need a Long Range Planning Committee. The disciples needed a Right Now Organizing Committee.

We just grew from 120 to 3000. Dude, what do we do???

How many of us has even seen a crowd of 3000 people?

Can you just imagine what that must have been like for the disciples? Can you imagine what that would look like here? This circuit doesn’t typically gather 100 people on a Sunday. To have an explosion of that magnitude would be like everyone in the Nickelsville zip code hearing and being set on fire by the Gospel of Christ.

Why doesn’t that happen?

Maybe it’s because we’re very happy to leave here and go about our lives as usual. And there is good evidence that most of the disciples’ lives were business as usual. But the difference is that under the thin skin of normalcy, something abnormal and exciting was quivering to burst forth from each of them.

And what I am NOT going to do right now is bemoan the fact that our churches in America seem to be lacking that quivering excitement. What good is whining and moaning?

What I am going to do is to encourage you to remember that moment that Jesus got you excited. And I’m not just talking about some big conversion experience. If I’m being perfectly honest with you, I don’t personally have one to point to. My entire life has been a conversion experience, and praise God that Jesus ain’t done with me yet!

On Thursday of last week, we celebrated Aldersgate Day. That’s the day we remember John Wesley, the founder of the methodist movement, stopping in to visit a study on a particularly boring piece of commentary on Romans. He went in rather down in the dumps, but he left feeling his heart strangely warmed, with a new confidence that Jesus loved him.

We celebrate it as Wesley’s conversion experience.

But two weeks later, his journal records his questioning and his despair renewed.

All his life was progress toward perfection, too.

But he had one moment he could point to in which he had a glimpse of the overwhelming, unfailing love of God.

I bet you’ve had that.

And I know it’s hard to grab on to a moment and sustain that remembering to keep being inspired by it. I doubt, as finite human beings, that we are capable of sustaining it, of always realizing the infinite love of God. It’s so much bigger than us that trying to sustain that understanding might just blow our little minds.

But maybe that’s the point.

Take that moment, and hear in it the voice of the Comforter that Jesus has sent us. Jesus doesn’t say that the Spirit of truth will suddenly reveal to us all truth. Jesus says the Spirit will guide us into all truth.

So don’t sweat it if you don’t have all the answers, or if you’re not completely confident in God’s saving power. You don’t have to be!

Just take what you have, take what you know, and hear Jesus’ command:

²⁶ “When the Companion comes, whom I will send from the Father—the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me. ²⁷ You will testify too, because you have been with me from the beginning.

And here’s the fun part.

[Go outside with everyone’s balloons]

When we are willing to share that testimony - not a testimony of condemnation, because that’s God’s, not ours to decide - but a testimony of love that overwhelms and overcomes all, then the Spirit will take the power of our testimony and spread it through all creation.

When we release these, the wind is going to take them wherever the wind wants. When we release our witness to the people and to the world around us, the wind of God’s Spirit will blow our testimony way out of our control and into the wilderness of God’s creation.

Ready? Go!

[Release balloons]

That’s how amazing God’s love is.

That’s a love worth celebrating.

Let’s sing together because we can trust God’s Spirit…

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 15:9-17

⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Luke’s record of the Acts of the Apostles is a narrative comprised of snapshots with not a lot of record of time. It might be that we can trust Luke to give us a chronological record, but he doesn’t exactly promise that. He promises an “ordered account” at the beginning of his first volume.

So we’re not at all sure when Peter climbed up on his roof to pray, but the vision he receives there is dramatic and clear and really ought to still stir us to question our own presumptions today.

Do you remember? All we share in our reading today is the culmination of the story, but I think that what builds up to it is what really speaks to us.

If you don’t remember this story, check it out. It’s one of the best!

An officer in Rome’s army named Cornelius is one of those rare converts to Judaism. At tea-time one day, God decides that it’s time for Cornelius to take the next step, and an angel appears to him.

“Cornelius!”

<gaping>

“…What is it, Lord?”

“Cornelius, you are one devoted dude. God’s got a task for you…”

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Peter is getting away sunning himself on his roof when all of a sudden he has a hunger-inspired vision.

Have you ever been so hungry you start seeing visions of food?

Peter does just that. But it’s a bunch of stuff he isn’t allowed to eat.

God lowers a tablecloth down to Peter and it’s got, oh, I don’t know, barbeque and lobster and cheeseburgers. Stuff you can’t have if you’re a devoted Jew.

And God tells Peter, “I know you’re hungry. Take your pick.”

“Yeah, right, God. I know temptation when I see it. I know enough not to sin that obviously.”

“No, Peter, seriously. If I tell you it’s okay, then it’s okay.”

And that exchange is multiplied by three. Just to hammer the point home. And it blows. Peter’s. Mind. It’s an abstraction he can’t figure how to put into practice. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just about food. Maybe God is just telling Peter, and just Peter, that bacon is on the menu now.

Mmmm bacon.

While Peter is trying to work this out, there’s a knock at his door. And Peter hears the Breath of God whisper in his ear:

“You’ve got visitors. I sent them your way. Go with them.”

And so Cornelius and his household are brought into the household of faith. It isn’t just about bacon, after all. And we get this marvelous proclamation that Peter makes in today’s reading:

“These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they?”

John reminds us that the speaking-in-tongues bit that Peter witnesses is just icing on the cake, though. The fruits of the Spirit that Cornelius and his household are demonstrating are far simpler:

²By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

[Cornelius] gave generously to those in need among the Jewish people and prayed to God constantly.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Remember: the followers of Christ who wrote our New Testament are recalling Jesus’ words and reflecting on them all the time. It’s when Peter has this rooftop experience and has to interpret it on the ground that we see Christianity really start to take a new shape.

If I call it clean, you’ve got no business calling it unclean.

If I call it blessed, you’ve got no business calling it cursed.

If I call it righteous, you’ve got no business calling it sin.

We so often think, in the Church, that we have a monopoly on praise and salvation and theology. But our own scriptures speak a contrary word. Did you hear the words of the Psalmist today?

⁴ Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth…
  
⁷ Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
   the world and those who live in it.
⁸ Let the floods clap their hands;
   let the hills sing together for joy
⁹ at the presence of the Lord

I’ve heard the sea roar. The sea doesn’t tire. The crashing waves will keep crashing as long as tectonic plates move and the moon revolves around the earth.

I’ve heard the applause of the floods, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes in a forte so deafening that I can’t even yell a conversation with someone standing right beside me.

I’ve heard the hills singing together in wind and birdsong and livestock.

And if God can call forth praise out of the inanimate features of the earth, how can we possibly say that God only calls the faithful of the Church?

The earth doesn’t need a thousand laws and regulations to tell it how to praise. All the earth needs…

Well, let’s unpack that one, shall we?

In order to get the applause of the floods, we need water. That’s a good place to start, right? But water, by itself, will just stand still. It won’t move. Still water is stagnant. It’ll grow things, but it won’t applaud. It’ll gradually become a pool of death.

For water to applaud, it needs to move. For water to move, we need slope. Gradient. Running water will applaud.

But only if it’s got obstructions. If I run water on a completely smooth surface, it won’t make a sound. I need shape and form.

The floods clap their hands because they’re slamming against rocks and trees, because they’re filling in holes with great sucking sounds (and if you’ve never heard a hole suck, you probably aren’t in rivers the way that I am).

Water, gradient, shape. They’re ingredients that occur naturally, that are always cycling and transforming. They don’t require thought or regulation. They’re just there.

And it’s funny. Our lives would be like that, too. God has created us to live lives that are constant praise, constant joy. God isn’t calling us to put forth tremendous effort to fake praise for an hour, or for ten minutes on a Sunday morning.

We don’t need rules and regulations. We just need to get over ourselves and recognize that we are created for praise!

And that’s how love ought to be, too.

“This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you.”

That means just love the people I like, right? No, it means just love the people in my church, right? No, it means just loving Christians, right?

As if we even do that.

No, Jesus’ words are for everybody. Love one another.

The only reason we don’t love is because we let our sin get in the way. We close ourselves off to other people. We don’t believe in what they do, in what they say, in what they profess, in what they live. We don’t agree with them and so we must be right and so we refuse to love them.

Let. Go.

Love one another.

We are created in God’s image, and God is love.

Take off the shades that discolor the people you see, the bigotry and judgment and pride, and let us all see one another with the eyes God has created.

And I know, I know it’s not as easy as taking off a pair of sunglasses. Letting go of sin, especially something as deeply rooted as prejudice and pride, takes re-learning of our lives.

But it’s okay. Peter didn’t get it right right away. He and Paul argue for a long time about the direction that the Way of Christ is heading. Peter, the simple fisherman who you’d think would have an easier time making the shift, doesn’t get it as quickly as Paul, who is rooted in law and the judgment and strictness of the Temple. Somehow, Paul shrugs off a lifetime of learning and sees Christ leading the Church out into the Greek world, and simple, stubborn Peter just can’t do it.

It’s weird. I don’t understand that.

But I do understand that I have a lot of learned behavior, learned expectations that I have got to shrug off so I can see God doing a new thing, so I can open my God’s eyes and see my neighbor for the blessing God sees.

God’s commandments are not difficult, not burdensome.

Because when we step out of our own way, we become God’s children.

Let go, friends. Let go with me, and let’s just see into what terrifying and new places God’s Spirit will guide us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.