Glossolalia - A Sermon for The Baptism of the Lord

A Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord (RCL B) 1-8-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Themes:         the gifts of the Spirit
Title:               Glossolalia

“When Paul had laid his hands on [the believers in Ephesus], the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:6).

And so today, my friends, we find ourselves in consideration of a subject matter with which we Episcopalians are not very familiar: the so-called charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit.

These gifts include speaking in tongues and the gifts of prophecy, as well as healing (see 1 Corinthians 12). These gifts have always been present in the church since the Day of Pentecost, though their use has varied widely in different time periods by different Christian communities.   

The most unusual, distinctive and most controversial of these gifts is commonly known as speaking in tongues. On the special insert in your bulletin, you will see the proper name for this phenomenon as taken directly from the Greek of the New Testament: glossolalia.

So let me ask you now, and please answer honestly:

How many of you here have ever spoken in tongues?
How many of you have ever delivered a word of prophecy?

OK, be honest: How many of you were just looking around to see if anyone had raised their hand?

That’s understandable. Prophecy and speaking in tongues are not common in our parishes here, but – make no mistake about it – there are many Christians today who make use of these gifts and there are even Episcopal parishes in New Jersey where these spiritual gifts are evident.

In the beginning, before the varied heavenly bodies took their form and their various orbits were established, God spoke and said, “Let there be light.”

Now, be honest. Do you think God speaks English? Did God actually speak the word “light”?

If we stop to consider it, of course God did not speak as we think of speaking. The Creator has no mouth, no vocal cords, no lips or tongue with which to shape sounds and form intelligible words.

The Creator’s words are formless and yet they themselves shape all energy and matter.

How then does God speak? We can call this the language of the Spirit.

Many people consider speaking in tongues as learning the language of the Spirit, how the Holy Spirit speaks when interceding within us.

It may seem quite odd to you right now, but think for a moment of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God speaks every human language and even the language of God.

To lose ourselves in the Holy Spirit is like letting go and drifting in the current of a mighty river.

Caught in that flow, things can happen to us – and in us, and through us – that we cannot explain, because they are beyond what our minds can conceive.

These things happen today, my friends. The work of the Spirit has not changed. We live in the age of the Holy Spirit, these days after Pentecost when the Spirit is actively reaching out to all the world through the community of disciples.

These things are still happening today, even if we do not see them often in our lives.

Tony Campolo tells an amazing – and true! – story of prophecy in which he became unwittingly involved.

For many years, Dr. Campolo was a professor of sociology at Eastern College in St. David’s, just off of the Main Line. He is also a Baptist preacher. Dr. Campolo is retired now, but a few years back, he was asked to come and speak at a small Pentecostal college out in Pennsylvania. Before he was to begin, a number of the faculty gathered around Dr. Campolo to pray for him, to ask the Holy Spirit to fill him and guide him. These faculty laid their hands on Tony’s head as he knelt in the middle of their circle.

Well, these are Pentecostal people, and so they prayed long and passionately. Eventually, one of the men began to pray for a particular gentleman named Charlie Stoltzfus. And we praying and he said, “Lord! Don’t let that man leave his wife and three children! Send an angel to bring that man back to his family. Don’t let that family be destroyed! You know who I’m talking about, Lord…Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives down the road about a mile on the right-hand side in a silver house trailer!”

By this point, Tony was getting a bit annoyed. Hey…I thought you were supposed to be praying for me! he thought. And besides, why would you tell God where this Charlie guy lives? Do you think God is sitting there saying, ‘Now, give me that address again?’

Finally they finished, and Tony gave his talk to the students and then he got into his car and headed home. As he was going up the ramp onto the Pennsylvania turnpike, there was a young man hitchhiking. As a South Philly Italian and a Baptist preacher, Tony has always been a bit of a risk-taker, and he is prone to pick up hitchhikers.

So Dr. Campolo picked up this young man and they proceeded onto the PA turnpike. Tony introduced himself and asked, “And what is your name?” He said, “My name is Charlie Stolzfus.”

Tony was a bit stunned and was trying to remember what had been prayed and what he should do.

He didn’t say a word, but at the next exit, he changed directions and headed back from where they had just come. The guy said, “Hey mister! Where are you going?”

Tony said, “I’m going to take you home!”

“Why?”
“Because you just left your wife and three children, right?”

And he said, “Right, right!” And then he just leaned against the passenger door and stared at Dr. Campolo as if he was some kind of ghost. Tony drove back toward that college and stopped about a mile before the school in the driveway of a silver house trailer.

The young man looked in astonishment and asked, “How did you know where I live?”

“Because God told me! Now, I want you to go on inside because I want to talk to you and your wife!”

Charlie ran into the trailer and Tony followed him in a few minutes later. Tony met his wife, whose eyes were as wide as saucers, and he asked them to sit and he said, “Now, I need to talk with you two and I want you to listen.” Dr. Campolo told them the story of why he was there. He told them about our Lord Jesus, about God’s desire to change and transform our lives, and about the power of the Holy Spirit. Both of them made a decision to become Christians that night, and today Charlie Stoltzfus is still married and he serves as a Pentecostal minister somewhere in the South.

When our Lord was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him and the voice of God spoke. When you and I were baptized, we were sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.

Do you know what that means? There is a mystery to our lives which is beyond the scope of our logic, beyond the force of our rational minds. There is a power at work in the world and in our lives which cannot be explained away.

The Holy Spirit is alive and well today and continues to speak through the people of Christ today. Perhaps you will never practice glossolalia – speaking in tongues. Perhaps you will never utter a word of  prophecy. But who knows? Perhaps you will!

IF you will yield your life to an infusion of the Holy Spirit’s power within you.

After all, my friends, this is the question which matters the most of all:

Are you open to the power of the Holy Spirit working freely in your life?

Or, are you afraid of appearing strange or odd or different, afraid of losing control?

Don’t be afraid, my brothers and sisters. Open your heart. Allow the Holy Spirit to fill you and move through you with power. Why not?

Let’s ask for this power right now. Please bow your head and pray with me.

Come, Holy Spirit, Spirit of life, Spirit of power, Spirit of the living God. We praise you, we love you and we give you glory. Come and fill our hearts with your power until our cup is overflowing. Fill us and speak in us and through us, Lord, for we live to serve you alone. Thank you! Amen.

This Love and Power to Heal: St. Luke's Day

Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke 10/24/2010, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

 

Texts: 2 Timothy 4:5-11; Psalm 147:1-12; Luke 4:14-21

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”

 

Today, my friends, we are gathered together to remember our beloved ancestor in the faith, blessed and holy Luke. We do not know much about him, of course. Tradition tells us that he was a companion of St. Paul in his travels. It seems clear that he was a well-educated Greek, and thus he became one who wrote down what he heard and saw. Luke has left us with two well-written books: his eponymous Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles.

 

Both of these books contain Luke’s unique perspective on the ministry of Christ in the world. Our reading today from Luke’s Gospel was given to us as Jesus’ mission statement. It is Luke’s clear and concise statement for Jesus’ mission in the world.

 

If we wished to summarize this mission, we could say that the work of Jesus, the work that God had sent him into the world to do, was to preach, to teach and to heal.

 

His task was to preach: to proclaim to all who would listen the good news of a different and better way to live in connection with God.

 

His purpose was to teach: to reveal the errors of typical human ways of thinking and to show and explain the way that we can obtain this new and better life.

 

But the work of Christ was also to heal: to make God’s desire for wholeness and completeness a visible reality among us human beings.

 

These three – preaching, teaching and healing – are the essential components of Christ’s ministry. And do you know what that means for us? That means that these are also the essential components of our work as well.

 

As the church, our entire reason for existence is simply to carry on the work that Jesus began! Let this then be our lens by which we view and evaluate all that we do in the church. In every decision, and every activity, you can ask yourself these questions:  

• Does this project help to proclaim the possibility that all people can find new life in Christ?
• Does this activity help to teach people how to practically live the abundant and full life that God desires for us?
• Does this meeting provide a way for people to experience God’s healing touch within their lives?

If you can answer yes to any of these, then you can feel confident that this project is indeed faithful to Jesus, and inspired by the Spirit.

 

But if you evaluate any activity within the church and you find that you cannot answer in the affirmative to any of these questions, then we shouldn’t be doing it.

 

It may be a nice activity, but it belongs somewhere else. As the church, we have too much to do to carry on this bold mission of Jesus in our world today. We have too much to do, and we cannot afford  to be distracted in this way.

 

In particular, we have much to do to carry forward the healing ministry of Christ, this work which we remember today in honor of St. Luke the Physician. This is not something with which most of us here are very familiar. When we consider the healing work of Jesus, many of us today can find it difficult to understand this work.

 

How does God heal people? And what kind of healing are we talking about after all? Most of us have seen really bad healing preachers on TV, right?! Those who use manipulation to achieve fantastic displays. This helps them to raise lots of money and buy big houses in southern California!

 

Well, forget all about those false images. What we are talking about is true healing from God, the real work of healing in many different ways, and on many different levels. It is not something to be predicted, not something we can control.

 

Tony Campolo tells a story of a healing that God accomplished through his willing hands.

 

Tony is a Baptist from Philadelphia, a long-time Professor of Sociology at Eastern University. He is not one who regularly experiences works of healing, but, when he is invited to preach, Tony often asks whether there are any who would like to receive the laying on of hands, like we will do here shortly.

 

Once, when Tony was preaching at a church out in Oregon, he did exactly this. He spent nearly an hour talking with each person and praying for them. Nothing obvious happened at that time, but four days later Tony received a phone call. The woman on the other end said, “Tony, on Sunday you prayed for my husband. He had cancer.”

 

When he heard the word “had”, Tony perked up. “Had cancer?” he asked. “Well,” she said, “he’s dead now.”

 

Oh great, thought Tony. She’s probably calling to rip me, to complain about my total lack of healing ability! But she went on and said, “You don’t understand. When my husband and I walked into that church on Sunday, he was angry with God. He had cancer and he knew he was going to be dead soon, and he hated God for letting it happen. He wanted to see his grandchildren grow up more than anything. At night, he would lie in bed and curse God. It was horrible. And the angrier he got toward God, the meaner he was to everyone around him. It was unbearable to be in the same room with him. His nastiness just kept getting worse and worse. But then you laid hands on him on Sunday morning and you prayed for him. When he walked out of church, I knew there was something different. I could feel it. He was a different person. The last four days of our lives have been the best four days we’ve ever had together. We talked and laughed. We even sang hymns with each other. It was a good, good time.”

 

She paused, then added something very profound. She said, “Tony, my husband wasn’t cured, but he was healed.” (Let Me Tell You a Story, p. 34-36)

 

My sisters and brothers, let us be assured that God desires and intends for us to be healed. After all, this is the ministry of Christ, which Luke has recorded for us with suck skill. This healing work is still made effective today by the Holy Spirit, but only when we ask and when we put ourselves in a position to receive this healing grace.

 

We can’t control it; we can’t predict it, but this healing grace is at work today, and we all have access to it today because of Jesus our Savior. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Consuming Fire

Sermon for Proper 16 C RCL 8/22/2010, Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

Help us, O Lord, to become masters of ourselves, so that we might become the servants of others. Take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.

There’s a story of an old guy in the backwoods of Kentucky who used to show up for every tent revival meeting that they had in that area. Tent revivals originated in Kentucky and they remained common in this area whenever a traveling evangelist came into town.

At the end of each night’s service, an invitation was given for folks to give their lives over to Jesus, and at every invitation, this old backwoods guy would come on down the aisle. He would fall on his knees, raise his arms to the heavens and cry out, “Fill me, Jesus! Fill me! Fill me, Jesus!” Then, within a week or two, people around would notice that he was back to his old dissolute ways of living. But when the next series of revival meetings began, the old guy would be right there, kneeling and raising his arms in the air and praying to be filled.

One time, he was at one of these revival meetings, doing his thing, yelling out to the ceiling, “Fill me, Jesus! Fill me, Jesus!” But it seemed that some woman in the back of the congregation had had enough of these shenanigans from the old guy. So, in response to his pleadings to be filled up again, she suddenly yelled out, “Don’t do it, Lord! He leaks!” (Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, 2000, p.96).

Well, the truth is that the old guy is certainly not unique in that department.
We all leak! And this is why we all need to have a revival! We all need to be revived and renewed.

If you are in tune to the American religious scene, you will know that the word revival is a familiar part of the code language of American evangelicalism. It is often used to suggest that we, as a nation, have fallen away from the moral purity of the past, and from the wisdom of our founding fathers. Please understand that I am not using this word “revival” in this way. Nor am I suggesting that we set up a tent out in the park and have a week of evening revival meetings (though I do think that would be an interesting experiment! An Episcopal Tent Revival!).


What I am suggesting is that, because we all leak, we all therefore need regularly to be re-filled. This, of course, is true in every aspect of our lives. How difficult is it for any of us to keep up our interest or enthusiasm for anything in life? When disasters happen around the world, we all watch on TV and read about them in the paper. But within a few weeks, our interest wanes and we move on to something else. The same is true for most people when it comes to sports. Most watch with intense interest only when the playoffs come around. Very few have the fortitude to watch every single Phillies game of their 162-game season!

This reality is true in all of our relationships as well. It’s very common for the intensity of love and devotion that many experience with our spouses and partners to fade and ebb over time. When I counsel couples before marriage, I encourage them not to think of their relationship like a contract in which they come to an agreement to provide certain services for each other over a period of time, but rather more like an infant. A lasting relationship of intimacy is like a baby who needs to be fed and cared for continually if it is to survive and to grow and thrive.

The same is true then of our faith, our relationship with the living God. It is not enough that once we were baptized, or once we were born again, or once we were confirmed, or whatever the crucial turning point might be. That one moment was simply the opening of the door for this new relationship with God.

Instead, we must continue to nurture this relationship if it is to survive, grow and thrive. And when our love becomes cold, then what we need is a revival!

I am speaking today of our need for revival, because this is the primary compelling concern and spiritual admonition of this Letter to the Hebrews, which we have reading through recently. You can see this thrust clearly in this last sentence of our reading today: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Earlier, this letter encourages us to “not give up meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25, NIV), to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23), to “not abandon that confidence of yours” (Hebrews 10:35). And in the famous “Faith” chapter, the 11th chapter, we are presented with an amazing line-up of spiritual stars who have conquered and overcome by the power of faith in the living God.

Why all of this effort, you may ask, to encourage faithfulness among these Jewish Christian believers? The unnamed author of this letter is concerned. He writes because of “pastoral concern for a church plagued by neglect, apathy, absenteeism, retreat, and near the point of apostasy” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume XII, Abingdon Press, p.160). In a word, their love for God has grown cold. Their passion for the Gospel has faded away.

Does this sound familiar at all to you? It most definitely does to me. It sounds like a fair description of the church in our own time and place. I’m not speaking of you here today, of course, you who are the regulars, faithful in worship. But this is indeed the general state of the church in our day: plagued by neglect, apathy, absenteeism, shrinking back in retreat, struggling with apostasy, cold in love, feeble in passion.

Because of this reality in his own day, the author of this letter strove hard to convey the need for reverence and awe among the disciples there.

“Let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).

There can be no doubt at all that reverence and awe have been lost in our contemporary culture. How do we get it back, on an individual level and as a community of disciples?

We need a revival. Like that old guy in Kentucky, we need to be filled up once again by the Holy Spirit! We need our love to become warm once again. We need to have warm hearts and clear minds to see once again the magnificence and majesty of God, to see once again the amazing grace that God has given to us, to see once again the beauty of a life that is lived for the glory of God.

When the author here declares that “our God is a consuming fire”, he is making a reference to Deuteronomy 4:24 which states: “The Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.”

Like a jealous lover, God does not want ever to be in second place in the passion of your heart. The key to this revival of our reverence and awe, of our respect and love for God is in our intention. If we truly want to love the Lord our God with all our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength, and if we discipline ourselves to spend time with God on a regular basis, then it can happen. If we truly want it, we can keep our love alive and our relationship strong.

May God grant us the desire and the ability to worship with reverence and awe, to keep our hearts on fire with love and desire. Amen.

Enemies of the Cross

Sermon for 2 Lent (C RCL 2/28/2010), Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 13:31-35

Please repeat after me: “I am - a disciple – of Jesus Christ. I follow – no other. He is – my life – and my future. I love him – and follow him – where he leads – now and always.”

My friends: it is so easy to become distracted. In the hectic busyness of life, we are bombarded by a plethora of messages from the outside. Circumstances in the world, in society, seem to move in ways that can make us feel trapped. And inside of ourselves, a variety of emotions swim and move around, often-times without having any idea from where they come. When life feels chaotic or beyond-our-control, when anxiety dominates our minds, it can become so very common to gravitate to one of the old stand-bys in human life, one of the common mindsets of human beings. And that, of course, is the approach of legalism.

This is what happened to the Pharisees, after all.

But who exactly are the Pharisees? It is important for us to understand who they are. In the Gospels, in our Lord’s teachings, the Pharisees are one of the key reference points that he uses to make his points. If we want to understand what Jesus teaches us, then we need to understand what it is that the Pharisees represent.

During the days of Jesus’ life, the Pharisees were one of the groups who taught in the synagogues and represented a specific school of thought. They were the ones who maintained the traditions of the elders who strict devotion. But it was the Sadducees and the Temple priests who were dominant, because the Temple in Jerusalem served as the clear, visible center of their world. It was the teachers of the Temple who guided the spiritual life of the Jewish people.

That is, until the Romans came and leveled Jerusalem entirely to the ground in the year 70 AD. Once the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people were devastated. The center of their world was lost and there was an enormous power vacuum. Who would lead them? Who would teach them? It was the Pharisees who rose to prominence as the primary teaching Rabbis. And, as is so often the case when you have anxiety-ridden leaders, the Pharisees moved decisively to consolidate their authority.

The disciples of Jesus, the first Jewish followers of the Way, remained as the primary challenge to their authority among the Jewish people. The apostles were offering a very different interpretation of the Scriptures than that of the Pharisees, and the apostles hoped, of course, to become the dominant teachers in the synagogues.

The finale of this conflict came with the Birkat Ha-Minim, the Twelfth Blessing of the Amidah, one of the basic prayers recited in every synagogue. This Twelfth Blessing was added by the Pharisees in order to root out “the sectarians” as they called them, Messianic Jews who followed Jesus as the promised Messiah.

And so everyone in the synagogue became required to speak this following blessing, which actually reads more like a curse: “And for sectarians, let there be no hope; and may all the evil in an instant be destroyed and all Your enemies be cut down swiftly; and the evil ones uprooted and broken and destroyed and humbled soon in our days. Blessed are You, LORD, who breaks down enemies and humbles sinners.”

For Jesus and for the apostles, the Pharisees represent those who stubbornly demand strict adherence to tradition while ignoring that which is of the most importance of all. Paul refers to this as having a mind “set on earthly things.” For ease of reference, we call this mindset legalism. And don’t you think for a minute that it is one bit less prevalent now than it was 2000 years ago!

Tony Campolo tells a funny story of a man mowing the grass on a Saturday when he was brashly interrupted by his neighbor who happened to be a Seventh Day Adventist. Adventists, by the way, are a group who maintain the Sabbath and who insist that God has always intended the faithful to gather, to worship and to rest on Saturdays, rather than on Sundays. So his neighbor stops him while mowing and says with obvious disapproval, “It’s the Sabbath. You’re cutting grass on the Sabbath!” The man rather sheepishly tried to respond by saying: “Well, Jesus picked corn on the Sabbath!” The angry neighbor was not thinking too clearly, I suspect, when she responded by saying: “Two wrongs don’t make a right!” (Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, P. 155).

You see, unfortunately, many Christian people remain proud of their legalism: their strict observance of the outward form of tradition, although it is often obvious that their actions do not flow from a heart filled with love and joy.

In the Gospels, the Pharisees are always presented as the enemies of Jesus, those who oppose him and challenge him at every turn. Just before our Gospel episode today, in Luke 12:1 Jesus warned the people against “the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.”

This hypocrisy of the Pharisees reminds me of folks we knew when we lived in the country of central Virginia: polite, old-time Virginia people. One woman we lived next door to was always smiles and politeness, a true Southern lady who grew championship-quality daffodils. But it just so happened that her 5 year old son had not yet learned the art of Southern charm, and so when he used to come over and visit our busy young family, with two babies frolicking around, he would let it slip about how his mother truly felt. “My mom wasn’t too happy when your son was peeing in her daffodils!”

Smiles on the outside; but steaming mad on the inside! That, my friends, does not make for a good combination! Jesus lambasted the Pharisees for being so precise to make sure that their dishes were always cleaned exactly right, while neglecting justice for the poor and growing in their love for God.

The hypocrisy of the Pharisees remains a very real danger for us today.

It’s Lent now, as you know! Think about one of the traditional church guidelines for fasting, as an example. For centuries, people have avoided the eating of meat during Lent, and also on Fridays throughout the year. The idea – the end goal – has been to eat more simply as a type of fasting, and red meat was always gourmet fair. But let me ask you this. Which one of these meals accomplishes the goal more clearly today: A gourmet lobster feast or a fast food hamburger?

You see, the practice of avoiding meat is simply a means to an end. The problem with the Pharisees is that they have always confused the means with the end. But the goal of our discipleship – our training with Jesus – is that we become able to always keep these in the right priorities.

And this is one of the difficult things about being a Christian, living as a student-disciple of this Teacher, Jesus Christ. We are not given a manual on how to live. We have directions, yes, in the Scriptures. We have the example of Christ and those of the saints. But all of this needs to be translated and molded and shaped into a real life today, and that can be confusing.

Besides being baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is nothing else that we HAVE to do. But what we DO have to do is make sure that the Pharisees don’t win!

To be sure, the Pharisees are still with us today! The temptation to legalism is very much alive and well today. Let us remember that the goal of this journey that we are walking together is about our BEING and not our DOING, about the kind of people we are becoming.

One of the great preachers of our time, Fred Craddock, gave this simple summary recently about the trajectory of his life now that he is growing older. He said this: “Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully, and leave everything else to God” (Craddock Stories).

Now that is a plan for life in which the Pharisees do not win! Let’s not make it any more complicated than that. Amen.

One Who is More Powerful

Sermon for 3 Advent RCL, Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

There’s an event every summer out in the hills of Pennsylvania. It’s called the Creation Festival, and it’s run by a pastor from Medford. It’s a multi-day, long weekend Christian festival with an incredible number of Christian bands, daily worship sessions and bible studies, and lots of time for plain old fellowship as thousands of people are all camped camp out on farm fields. It’s primarily a major evangelical event, but youth groups from all kinds of churches attend and participate from all over the East Coast and Midwest.

Tony Campolo, the Baptist professor from Eastern University, of whom I’ve spoken often, has been a part of this festival many times. He tells of a Sunday during a Creation Festival a few years back when he was invited to preach at a local Lutheran church, and a number of young people from the festival followed him there to join in worship and to hear Dr. Campolo preach. Well, it happened at the beginning of the service, that the Lutheran pastor called the people to worship in his typical way, and he began saying: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord…” and, lo and behold, one of the young folks from the festival, sitting up in the balcony responded and called out, “All right!” and they all started clapping and hooting and hollering, and, well, making a joyful noise! It never even occurred to that poor, shocked pastor, or to his congregation, when he called on the people to make a joyful noise for God, that anyone present actually would!

We need sometimes, my friends, to stretch our comfort zones. Sometimes, God pushes us to make us uncomfortable. In fact, we have to stretch and push in order to grow. John the Baptizer, along with all of the prophets, is really good for this. Endowed with the prophetic office, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, John was right up in the face of his people with holy boldness.

I want you to seriously consider this morning how we would do well, at times, to follow the lead of the prophets. There are times when God is calling YOU to stand up with holy boldness and to speak the truth. Yes, you – each and every one of you. Sometimes there is no one else to whom you can pass the buck. There are times when you see evil and wrong right there in front of you, and you need to speak with holy boldness.

There is a right and a wrong in this world, and God calls us to stand up for the right. But what is even more amazing than this is that God gives us the power to do it! What else does it mean, my friends, to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? John the Baptizer, the prophet, speaks of the One coming after him. “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” This is quite a claim. What do you think this means for you, in your life? Clearly, if we are a people who have been baptized with the Spirit and with fire, touched by this powerful Messiah and Lord, then there surely is no place at all for timidity among us.

2 Timothy 1:7: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” Or as The Message version puts it: “God does not want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.”

God desires that we act boldly with the gifts that we as the church have been given. But this begs the question: Do we truly understand the measure of the gifts that God has given to us? Do we grasp it? My friends, we have been given the gift of God’s self-revelation, the deposit of our faith, here in the Scriptures and in the apostolic teachings of the Church. This deposit is a treasure beyond comprehension. I will spend my entire life digging into this treasure-house and I will only ever be able barely to scratch the surface. And this is not even to mention all of the other gifts that we have inherited as baptized people in this place: the houses of worship for which we are caretakers, the peace and security in which we are free to worship in this country, the blessing of living in a free democracy, and the incredible wealth with which we all live.

We are a people blessed beyond measure, and yet (you know this to be true) far too often we act as though we are poor. We walk out into the streets as though we have nothing of great value to offer to the world around us, as if we act in church out of simple duty alone, carrying forward this tradition because it is nice and it makes us feel good inside.

When we strip away all of the externals, the stark reality is that what we do here together in this place is a matter of life and death. We carry, we sing about, we speak of, we touch holy things. The words we speak in the liturgy are ancient, coming directly from the days of the apostles, those first ones who were touched by the fire of Christ, baptized in the Holy Spirit coming down upon them in tongues of flame.

On a personal level, this connection to the apostles is of great importance. The reason I left the Baptist tradition, in which I was first ordained, in order to return to the Episcopal Church, who had baptized and confirmed me, is because I am convinced of the power of the apostolic tradition. To be an “Episcopal” church means to be centered upon the office of the bishop, and our bishop stands in a direct line from the apostles, from Peter and Paul and Andrew and John. Our worship was not recently created in California. We do not sing songs that some new Christian in Nashville just wrote. Our ship travels in the apostolic river, and there is tremendous power and grace and blessing in these waters. I believe in my heart that the world needs these gifts, and our neighbors long for these gifts, even if they cannot yet express it.

And how then do we act? Do we hide this light under a bushel? Are we afraid to speak the truth in love? God calls us not to be shy with these gifts, but to be bold and loving and sensible. As Paul stated hear in the Epistle for this Sunday with such sublime clarity, “The Lord is near.” And so what flows out of this? What transpires when we recognize that the Lord is near, surrounding us at all times? Therefore…”do not worry about anything.” Christ empowers you to speak with boldness and so without fear or anxiety.

Now, please understand that I recognize this is not easy. We will all go home and have to figure out what to eat for dinner, and how to pay the mortgage, and make a list of what remaining presents we need to buy for Christmas, and think about how to keep the kids from arguing so much. And I recognize that the Church is in a confusing and complex time right now which can make us uncertain about what to say to others about the Church. I understand all of this. I understand the real world, I really do.

But we need to be careful not to use these things as an excuse. We have inherited an awesome treasure which is meant to be shared with others. Life is busy and complex and confusing, but we have a responsibility and we have made a commitment. And even in these busy lives that we lead today, this much remains true: each one of us does what we want in life. Really, search your heart, reflect on your life and you will know it is true. If you look carefully, you will see that we do in fact what we want with the time that is given to us.

Once again, the apostolic wisdom of the Church speaks directly to our need to be energized for action. The Collect for today speaks truth to us: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” This is exactly what we need: to be ignited with fire by the Holy Spirit, so that worry and fear are banished from our hearts, and nothing but rejoicing and peace and boldness and confidence remain.

So may it be always among us who are so blessed by Christ to find new life in this great tradition of truth and beauty and power. Amen.

Prove the World Wrong!

Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost (RCL – B)
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at Church of the Holy Spirit, Bellmawr

Texts: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-37; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27 & 16:4b-15

“And when he comes, the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong.” Amen.

My dear friends: we are all gathered together here this morning as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, as a community in which the Holy Spirit is moving and working.

Today, by the grace of God, we bring into this community a new member: Royal Tomeo. Of course, I will have the privilege and grace of pouring the water on his head, but remember this: it is all of us together who are baptizing Royal this day. We are baptizing Royal into the fellowship of the Church.

But remember this as well: Royal is NOT baptized today as an Episcopalian. No one ever is baptized as a Catholic, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Presbyterian or anything else! Royal will be baptized today in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So in another sense, it is not us at all who are doing the baptizing. It is in fact the Holy Spirit who will baptize Royal, who will immerse him into the new life we have in God.

This new life that we share together in the Holy Spirit – it changes us! It changes the way we act, the way we treat others. By the power of Holy Spirit, we are able to respect the dignity of every human being, to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

Tony Campolo tells a wonderful story of a time when he was in Haiti a few years back. Tony’s ministry works to promote good education for poor children in places like Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as places here like Camden. But once when Tony was in Port-au-Prince for a visit to check-up on the work there, as he was walking into the Holiday Inn hotel, three young girls intercepted him. They were probably about 15 years old. The one in the middle said to him, “Mister, for ten dollars you can have me all night long.”

Tony was shocked. He was aware of the extreme poverty in Haiti and what desperation that kind of poverty leads people to, but he wasn’t expecting this from girls so young. So he looked at the other two girls and asked them, “Can I have you each for ten dollars too?” They nodded yes, trying to hide their disgust for the bald, middle-aged American man. Quickly hatching a plan, Tony said, “Fine! I’ve got thirty dollars right here. I’m in Room 210. You be up there in half an hour. I’ll pay you then and I want all three of you for the whole night.”

As soon as he got up to his room, he called down to the concierge: “Send up every Disney movie you’ve got. If it’s made by Disney, send it up.” This was before the days when you could order a movie right on the TV. And then Tony called the hotel restaurant: “Do you make banana splits? Good! I want extra full banana splits, with extra fudge and extra whipped cream. And … I want four of them! Right away.” Pretty soon, the movies and the ice cream and the girls all arrived. And Tony sat them down on the bed and let them pick out movies that they would like to see. And they all ate ice cream and watched movies until 1 o’clock in the morning or so, when the girls all fell asleep.

And as Tony fell asleep on the chair in the corner of the room, he thought with disgust about how dirty men could abuse young girls like this, and how in the morning they will go back to the street and once again do whatever they can to find some money for their families. But at least for this one night, Tony felt sure that the Holy Spirit was speaking to him and guiding him to give these girls at least a chance to be kids again, to just have some fun together. At least for this one night, Tony could be a conduit for some blessing to these poor girls.

You see, the Holy Spirit proves the world wrong. There is a different way to be. We can treat others with dignity. By the power of the Spirit, we can love others with the love of Christ. It is our calling, and it is our gift, to love others in this way.

The famous Christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (see his Works of Love) points out the distinction between celebrated love and commanded love. Celebrated love is the love about which people write poems, about which movies are made. Celebrated love is all about making a distinction: I love this one person more than any other. With this love, the lover makes a clear choice.

But commanded love, the love to which Christ calls us, the love which the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts, - this love makes no distinctions. This is the beauty and majesty of it.

You see, God intends that I learn to see every single woman as my sister, and every single man as my brother. Every single one, without exception. This is the love that God calls us to in Christ. But it’s not the kind of love that we are accustomed to talking about in society. No one sings a song about this kind of love! But when it comes down to it, it is this Holy Spirit-empowered, commanded love which has the power to change the world.

Let’s practice it for just a moment: please take a moment and look at your neighbor on each side of you in the eye and say to them, as is appropriate, “You are my sister.” Or, “you are my brother.”

The Spirit leads us into all truth, and this is the truth about us.
It doesn’t matter what your neighbor looks like, what language they speak, who they live with, where they come from. It doesn’t even matter what they have done in their lives. This new community love in the Spirit has no boundaries. This is the way God intended it to be.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has always had the intention of creating a community that includes people of every language and race and color and gender and orientation.

This is the heart of what it means to be “church”. We don’t get to choose our family in the church. God brings all together and makes something new and different.

This agape love that we share in Christian community is demonstrated clearly every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. This is what St. John Chrysostom wrote:
“The whole ceremony [of the Lord’s table] is [also] a meal at which everyone has an equal place at the table. Thus we are celebrating our fellowship as brothers and sisters, with Christ as our unseen elder brother at one end of the table, and God our unseen father presiding at the other end” (On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom).

Our Lord speaks of the Spirit of Truth who comes to guide us into the truth about life, and who comes to prove the world wrong. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son into community gathered in the name of Jesus. Nowhere in the New Testament do we see the Holy Spirit filling a lone individual; the coming of the Spirit always happens in the community of Christ’s body. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name…(Matthew 18:20).

I really love this image of the Spirit: “he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” I love it, because every day I see a world that needs an awakening. Come on, Holy Spirit, let’s prove this crazy world wrong! Let’s prove this world wrong that “looking out for #1” is the only way to live, that “getting what is mine” is the way you have to be. Let’s prove the world wrong and show that there is an alternative, that Jesus creates a different kind of community where everyone is respected and honored and loved.

It is possible! We are the assembly of the Holy Spirit. When we gather together as God’s people, we create a free space where the words of Jesus, and the gifts of Jesus, are able to re-create the world, to make the world new again, to make us new again.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is the mystery that we enter into today as we celebrate the baptism of our newest brother into this community of love which is unlike any other.

As the great St. John Chrysostom preached: “Nothing can destroy love which is rooted and grounded in Christ.” So may the Holy Spirit always bring forth this love among us. Amen.