You In Us, and We In You

John 14:15-21

Let us pray:

O God, you have prepared such good things for us than we can understand: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises. Amen.

Today is the sixth Sunday of the season of Eastertide; next week, we celebrate Pentecost, the fiftieth Sunday of Eastertide. Pentecost celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. Up to this time, we have been learning about the Holy Spirit from the promises of Jesus:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever (Luke 14:16)

Luke 14:6 is not the only scripture where Jesus says he will give the disciples the Holy Spirit. This promise appears thirty-five times in the Bible. The Holy Spirit is a significant member of the Trinity and a presence of guidance for us.

Ahead of us lies Christ’s Ascension into heaven and the Descent of the Holy Spirit. Ahead of the apostles and generations of Christians lie centuries of working and waiting -faithfully building the kingdom of God ‘til Christ calls us home. The wait has been long. It will be much longer. But it will not be lonely. Jesus tells us:

I will not leave you orphaned.

Help is here right now. Jesus promises:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.

Jesus has alluded to the Holy Spirit before. But this time, he gives the Holy Spirit a job description: the ‘Advocate’ who counsels and defends. The Father is the Creator. The Son is the Redeemer. They are familiar and easy roles to visualize. Think of all our images of Jesus, from the blessed babe to the miracle worker, from sacred victim to risen Savior. Then picture the Father. For me, the most graphic image will always be Michelangelo’s creator in the Sistine Chapel, reaching out his finger to give life to Adam.

But the Holy Spirit is another story. Our only picture of the Holy Spirit is a descending dove or a tongue of fire. It’s sketchy imagery, and because we are such visual learners, we often have difficulty understanding and appreciating the nature and role of the Holy Spirit.

And I think the Holy Spirit gets a bad rap.

•    He’s often referred to as ‘it.’
•    He’s mistaken for the force from Star Wars.
•    He’s confused with a ghost in paranormal activity.
•    Frequently, he’s just ignored or forgotten.

Since he is an invisible spirit, it can be hard to relate to him and his work.

You may know him by name and hear him invoked during a baptism but have no idea who he is or how he is at work in your life.

Mee Spousler of the Mount Hope United Methodist Church in Aston, PA., tells how she was trying to put her three-year-old son to bed for a nap. When she was unsuccessful, she put him in her bed and laid down with him to encourage him to rest. She fell asleep, but he didn’t. When she woke up, she saw him sitting on a chair at the end of the bed and asked, “Luke, what are you doing?”

“I’m playing God,” he replied.
“Playing God?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m watching over you while you sleep.”[1]

Children understand more than we do sometimes. God IS watching over us. Jesus gave that promise through the Holy Spirit. Not only will God watch over us, but through the presence of the Holy Spirit, we will be reminded of what it means to

“Love Jesus and keep his commands.”

God will help us create the environment of love, grace, faith, and security we need today. Our challenge is to listen to the Holy Spirit and to trust Christ.

The Holy Spirit is amongst us – all the time and everywhere. Christians should never question His existence. It’s essential to thoroughly understand what the Spirit is doing in our day-to-day lives and how we can live a more dedicated life to all the blessings made possible through Him.

Here are nine ways he’s at work in our lives today.

He makes known the presence of Jesus
His primary work is to be the presence of Jesus in our life and the world today. The Holy Spirit redirects our pursuits from aiming at ourselves to glorifying Jesus. He will lead us away from loving ourselves to loving God and others. He gives us a new purpose in our lives.

He makes us more like Jesus
There’s one crucial point to make about the Holy Spirit: He’s holy, and the Holy Spirit produces holiness in us. As we walk with the Spirit he will strip away our love for sin and make us more like Jesus.

He helps us understand the Bible
The Holy Spirit helps us understand the Bible, its meaning, and how it changes our lives. The Holy Spirit will work through the gospel proclamation through our Bible reading, family, and friends.

He calls us to work
The Holy Spirit calls people to a specific vocation or task, guiding in the vocational decisions we make. Sometimes our life will appear to be a random assortment of loosely connected events, but this is not the case. God is directing our steps and guiding our lives.

He empowers us to service
The Holy Spirit also calls us to service, taking our natural abilities and improving upon them, using average, ordinary, and even rejected members of society.

He helps us pray
Sometimes we feel inadequate in our prayer life or don’t know what to pray. In these moments, the Holy Spirit will help us; remember to ask the Holy Spirit to help you when you find yourself in those moments.

He guides us
Though the Holy Spirit is at work guiding us on a deep, personal level, the Scriptures suggest that we cooperate in his guidance by

“walking according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4; Galatians 5:16).

Don’t just pray and wait for a particular result. Pray and act.

He empowers us to build the church
The Holy Spirit helps us to witness, directs our evangelistic efforts, and empowers our efforts to build Jesus’s church.

He gives us spiritual gifts
The Holy Spirit also gives us spiritual gifts for the common good and the building up of the church so we may serve others. Sometimes God will reveal his glory to unbelievers through a supernatural display of spiritual gifts.

Is it possible to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit? Jesus told His disciples,

“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13).

The Holy Spirit is available to those who have put their trust in Jesus. The Holy Spirit has been described as wind (John 3:8), a dove (Mark 1:10), and a gift (Acts 2:38). It is possible to hear the voice of the Spirit when believers humble themselves. He speaks to our hearts and leads us in the right direction when we learn to listen.

How do we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit?

Be Quiet
We are sometimes too busy to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. We must find a place to sit before God, uninterrupted by other distractions; being quiet before the Lord is more than just not talking. We must quiet our anxious thoughts and meditate on His word as we wait to hear from the Holy Spirit.

The voice of the Holy Spirit is gentle and quiet – almost impossible for us to hear when we don’t pay close attention.

Be Prepared
We must take the time to reflect on our words, actions, and thoughts if we want to hear from God. Our sins keep us from hearing the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit. By confessing and repenting our sins—we allow the Spirit of God to come into our hearts. The more we grow in our relationship with God, the more sensitive we become to the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Be Aware
It’s difficult to hear the Holy Spirit when we don’t know the Bible. We are most familiar with the word of God through the hearing and teaching of it. Also, through personal memorization, meditation, and individual study—believers can know the truths of God’s word. Everything the Holy Spirit says to our hearts will align perfectly with Scripture. Through reading and listening to the Bible, we will gain greater confidence in hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Be Open
Faith is the foundation of our walk with God. We believe in Him even though we can’t see or touch the Holy Spirit. We demonstrate our faith by trusting God to lead us in the right direction, even in unknown times. Faith encourages us to grow spiritually and become more acquainted with the voice of the Spirit. There needs to be openness coupled with the courage to step out in faith when following the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Be Ready
The Holy Spirit is evident when we are ready to obey, even when inconvenient. The readiness to follow in obedience assures us that we are moving in the right direction. The Holy Spirit empowers the obedient with great strength and peace amid difficulty.

Be Patient
Hearing from the Holy Spirit requires us to be patient and wait. He knows the whole story from beginning to end and will move at the appointed time. We need to seek His peace and learn to wait on the Lord with an attitude of expectancy, not complacency.

Jesus tells his disciples that although he must leave them physically, the Father will send “another” Advocate to be with them. That “truth-telling advocate,” the one everyone needs and wants in their lives – that’s the Holy Spirit – the “Spirit of Truth,” as Jesus calls it. That Spirit of Truth will keep us on track, guide us, and be with us until the end of time, ensuring that we will always feel guided. No matter what comes our way, even when the going gets tough, even when times are hard, even when others disdain us, and even when bad things happen, the Holy Spirit makes us free:

• Free from doubt.
• Free from worry.
• Free from anxiety.
• Free from depression.
• Free from fear.
• Free from inhibitions.
• Free from wrong thinking.
• Free from anything that would threaten us.

Are you Listening?

The voice of the Holy Spirit is gentle and quiet – challenging for us to hear it when we don’t pay close attention. By choosing to humble ourselves, by being silent, prepared, aware, open, ready, and patient – we will hear His voice more clearly and trust Him more freely. The Holy Spirit is a gift of God’s grace to His people—open your gift wisely and be blessed in His presence.

In the Holy Spirit, we are assured:

as you, Christ, are in God
and God is in you,
so are you in us,
and we in you.

So are you in us and
we in you.[2]

Amen.

Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 14 May 2023

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[1]      Dynamic Preaching, Apr/May/Jun 1999 Vol XIV, No. 2. (Seven Worlds Publishing, Knoxville, TN) p. 41-42

[2]      Andrew King. Oakville, Ontario; Beatitude Society

S. T. A. R. T.

John 10:1-10

This Sunday is known as ‘The Good Shepherd’ Sunday – almost everyone knows some variation of this parable: the shepherd who knew all the sheep’s names, the one who left 99 sheep to rescue one, and gathered them into the sheepfold to be safe.

Here is another image of the shepherd – this time from astronomy. As you look up into the night sky, Saturn is the brightest celestial object after the moon, that mysterious planet with its rings. We learned from the first Voyager probe that Saturn has moons and that the ring is a collection of these moons. The astronomers who identified these moons and their function in the ring dubbed them “shepherd moons.”

The shepherd moons bring order from chaos, harmony and beauty from disorder. They ‘shepherd’ millions of particles – some as big as a bus and others as small as a speck – into the Saturn rings.

The shepherd moons are a metaphor for God. They bring together and hold different particles into relationships. Shepherding, in this sense, gathers us as persons and as communities. The shepherd moons represent God, who unites things we often see as unrelated in beautiful, symmetrical harmony. The rings of Saturn are an image of our varied, complex, pluralistic world, with many different perspectives, which form a unit by the shepherding care of God.

The shepherd in this image is the one who brings and holds together different parts of our world. Shepherding creates an identity, a person, and a community. It is to make clear that God brings together those things we often take apart. We live in a pluralistic reality, with many different groups, but they are all cared for by God.

God gathers the different particles – that’s us! – together. Diverse experiences make us who we are: our past, our families, our faith, and our self-reflection of ourselves. We create a new reality from those things we find around us. God attracts single units into one reality. In our liturgy and worship – our tradition – we carry the seeds of meaning that keep getting revised. Jesus sums up the past images and breaks open new ones.[1]

Jesus can be a shepherd for our life in the same way. He is guiding us out of confusion by sheltering us. We have nothing to fear; all we must do is answer His voice.

God’s love is always here, despite our waywardness. This love comes to us unmerited, there for the asking. It is unlimited love, confronting evil in love. Like Martin Luther King, the good shepherd, and his followers put themselves in the path of danger and are willing to pay the price.

The Good Shepherd challenges us to find the love of God in the world around us, to look for God in unexpected places, unanticipated events, and unconventional faces. It tells us to look for the grace of God where we least expect it. The bottom line is that God’s unlimited love is there for everyone.

How we feel and see this unlimited love grounding and directing us is the question. In the church, we learn the meaning of Jesus as our shepherd. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice, and He knows the individual needs of those within his care. There are real wolves and thieves out there – people who do not have the best interests of the common good in their hearts. The good shepherd will do everything needed to protect them.

The church’s job is to offer support and teach us. We are in webs of relationships; we choose the best of the gifts offered to us. We must imitate this unlimited love. Ultimately, it is up to each of us to make sense of our faith.

How many of you here would like a fresh start in your life?

How many would like to be in the fold of the Good Shepherd?

This morning I want to share a formula for starting over, regardless of failures in the past. The method is known as ‘S. T. A. R. T.

S. T. A. R. T.
S –       Stop making excuses.
If we want a fresh start, we must stop making excuses for our failures and blaming others. We’ve got to stop seeing ourselves as victims of our circumstances.

Other people can hurt us, other people can harm us, and other people can scar us. We have a choice – we can determine how we respond to those hurts. Nobody can destroy our life without our permission. The only person who can ruin our lives is ourselves.

T –       Take An Inventory Of Our Life
We must take an inventory of our lives. That means we must evaluate all our experiences and discard those failures. We must take stock of our life experiences and learn from them.

Failure can be our friend or foe – we determine which. We can choose to learn from failure or choose to repeat it. If we learn from it, then it can be our friend. However, it is our foe if we don’t learn from it. We must learn from our mistakes.

As we take inventory of our life, we must ask ourselves three questions.

1. What have we learned? If we don’t sit down and think it through, we’ll repeat the same mistake because we didn’t learn from it the first time.
2. What have we got going for us? Have we got our health? Have we got our freedom? Have we got some friends? Have we got a church family? What do we have that we can get a fresh start with?
3. Who can help us? We need somebody by our side – a friend, a partner, a support person, or a support group. Find someone that can help you. We need somebody else to walk along with us, enabling us to get a fresh start in life. Jesus will be there; He will help us pull our lives back together and ensure we get started on the right foot.

A –       Act in faith
We have to go out into new territory. The Bible says that the key to changing anything is faith. If we want to change our circumstances, it takes dedication. If we change anything in our lives, we have to have faith.

To start acting in faith means we must stop having pity parties. We’ve got to stop feeling sorry for ourselves. The more time we spend regretting our past, the more we waste our future. We set ourselves up for more failure by focusing on past failures. Whatever we focus on, we tend to create in our present life.

R –       Refocus
If we want to change our lives, we must refocus and rethink our thoughts. How we think determines how we feel, and how we feel determines how we act.

Let me give you an example:

A beggar sat daily on a street corner across from an art studio. An artist had seen him for days and decided to paint his portrait. When the artist completed the picture, he invited the beggar into the studio. The artist said, “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

Inside the studio, the artist unveiled the portrait. At first, the beggar did not recognize himself. He kept saying, “Who is it?” The artist just smiled and said nothing. Then suddenly, the man saw himself in the portrait — not as he was in his dismal state, but as he could be. Then the beggar asked, “Is that me? Is that me?” The artist replied, “That’s who I see in you.” Then the beggar said, “If that’s who you see in me, then that’s who I’ll be.”

T –      Trust
We must trust God to help us succeed. Depend on Him; we don’t need to depend on ourselves. We’ve already proven that we can’t do it on our own. That’s why we’ve failed. They stumble and fall, then get up and say, “I’ll just try harder!” It’s like you go up to a wall and bang your head against it, and the wall doesn’t fall. You try it again, and Bang! Again. You keep doing it thinking, “Maybe it will fall over this time.” That’s the definition of insanity – doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. We will get the same result if we keep doing the same thing. We cannot change who we are; only God can do that. I am not speaking about the outward man but the inner man, the person of the heart. Success is not trying harder but living smarter and giving God control of our lives.

The good news this morning is in Isaiah 43:18. God says,

“I want you to have a fresh start in life; I want you to have a new beginning, I want to do something new in your life. ”

Aren’t you glad God wants to do something new in our lives? Doesn’t it excite you that God desires to give us a fresh start, a new beginning in life?

The Lord says, `Forget about what has happened before. Do not think about the past. Instead, look at the new things I’m going to do.

Listen to what God is saying in this verse. He says we mustn’t think about the past. Forget about what’s happened before. It’s over, done; we can’t change it.

We must understand that God is far more interested in our future than in our past. That’s where we are going to spend the rest of our lives. He says,

Forget about your past. Forget about the former things. Don’t think about it. Look at the new thing I’m going to do.” (Isaiah 43:19)

How can we have a fresh start?

We can have a fresh start by:

S. T. A. R. T.

• Stop making excuses
• Take an inventory of our lives
• Act in faith
• Refocus our thoughts
• Trust in God[2]

Will you have a fresh start in life?

Will you have a new beginning?

It. Is. Your. Choice.

Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 30 April 2023

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[1]      Adapted from Rev Dr George Hermanson, United Church’s Five Oaks Retreat Centre, Ontario, Canada
[2]      Adapted from John O Mooney