“HERITAGE OF THE SPIRIT”

How is your glow going now that winter is finally upon us? It was only a few weeks ago we brought out our red gear and glowed our way into church and through a heart-warming service remembering the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church’s birthday. We cooled down into Trinity but we are still within the Pentecost season until Advent will again burst upon us with blossoms of jackaranda and agapanthus.

We may or may not have remembered it but May 24 was a special day. On that date in 1738, John Wesley went most unwillingly to a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street to hear Luther’s Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. He described that about a quarter to nine, when the penny dropped about justification by faith alone, his heart “felt strangely warmed”. The Evangelical Revival in Britain commenced and the rest is history, our history.

Many times our churches have tried to replicate this experience but truth to tell we have struggled. The drift away from the churches continues all over the western world with every setback making matters worse. The media all but ignore the good news this sick world sadly needs in favour of this unsavoury appetite for bad news.

The truth is that Wesley’s experience was not entirely man-made. He would have been the first to say that it was for him a work of the Spirit encountering him when he most was in need for this refreshment as was the England of his time. Before Wesley, England was run by self-centred men. The then king neglected his queen in favour of mistresses and the Prime Minister promoted a corrupt parliament. By the end of the century, the king promoted faithfulness in marriage and William Pitt became the most dedicated Prime Minister in history. There were changes both in church and state brought about by the Spirit inspiring John Wesley.

We cry for the Spirit to come and renew us both church and world. But are we listening? The boy Samuel heard God’s call in the middle of the night when grown men should have been listening. Samuel heard, reflected, and acted.

The experience of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has been among us for generations. Those of us who trace back our family histories notice that no matter how far we go back in time, our ancestors always seemed to have been baptised in church. We fill in our census forms describing our faith allegiance. We have all the visible connections of being available for the Spirit to live and work in such a way that both church and world can flourish in the ways of God that would have us all love the Lord our God with all our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength, and our neighbours as ourselves. So, is it happening?

In quiet ways it is but not necessarily in the way it is most needed. This is a time where we need to reflect upon how our faith has come to us in the first place. As Elisha looked to Elijah his mentor, so we have received faith through our mentors who have left us something of the Spirit to carry the baton while surrounded by a host of witnesses who have gone before us.

What sort of heritage will we leave? I’m not talking about what we put into our last Will and Testament but what sort of Spirit will we leave for others to pick up from us? What sort of church and world will we leave behind us where the Spirit has opportunity to move in the way that is essential to move?

We ourselves have been mentored along the way. Who will be mentored by us in such away they can be open to the Spirit so their hearts as well may be strangely warmed that the world may believe that Jesus sets us all straight so that the world may work in the way it has always been meant to work?

“AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT”

      

Did you ever like ghost stories? Has anyone tried to tell you about haunted houses where strange things have gone bump in the night? Have people talked to you about “ouija” boards and mysterious séances? Have I now managed to get the hairs on the back of your neck standing straight up?

You may remember those days when adults standing up front in Sunday School or Scripture spoke to you about the “Holy Ghost”. This term changed to the “Holy Spirit” once little boys like me kept sounding a low and ominous “Woooooooo” whenever “Holy Ghost” was mentioned.

Perhaps you did a hunt through the Bible to find out how many times the word “spirit” was mentioned and where. Yes, you are quite right, “spirit” is first mentioned in the second verse in the story of creation where the Spirit of God hovered/brooded over the face of the waters.

Spirit is free. Spirit cannot be locked up (even though “spirits” can be bottled). We can’t nail spirit down. Spirit comes from God for spirit is within the triune God at the time when God alone existed. Although spirit can be contained within God, spirit emanates from God as God wills.

Pentecost celebrates the season when we, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church recognises that God, through Jesus Christ, has made spirit available to us where we are no matter who we are. We become energised by spirit because the Holy Spirit is God expressed in energy with us, among us, around us, and between us.

Too often we have looked upon the Holy Spirit as just a personal spiritual relationship between us and God – “We’ll build a world of our own that no one else can share” as the Seekers used to sing. I’ve heard many stories of spiritual journeys where it is just the person and God with the person pre-occupied with personal identity. Spirit is personal but by no means individualistically confined.

Spirit involves relationships. When the prophet Elijah was about to depart forever, his apprentice Elisha asked to inherit his spirit (2 Kings 2:9). Jesus promised his disciples that by leaving them the spirit could then and would come. (John 16:7-15). In Jesus Christ, God had become matter. With the physical body of Jesus departing, God as matter would be replaced by God as energy. Einstein would have understood this relatively well.

Matter is confined to one place and one time. Energy is not. With Jesus ascended, the Spirit could be seen to be free to be wherever disciples gathered or scattered. When we gather for worship, the Spirit warms us like coals in the fire-place. When we scatter to serve, the Spirit becomes our energy expended for the world around us. When we are weak, this gives us strength.

This has come home to me personally earlier this year when a new chapter began for me with my need for regular peritoneal dialysis to support my weakened kidneys. The warm support I have been receiving continues to be my strength as I adjust to living with this attached lifeline catheter of mine. This has underlined for me the presence of the Holy Spirit among us 24/7.

So many of us can attest to the spirit moving among us at worship and fortifying us for service. This has kept us going for now over 2000 years and will nurture and sustain us for as long as God wants. Like Elisha and the first disciples we have inherited the Spirit from those who have since physically departed. We can pray that when our time eventually comes for us, too, to depart we will have mentored others so that they too may share in the joys and challenges of the Spirit as part of both the gathered and the scattered people of God.

“WHOSE SPIRIT?”

            

Pentecost is coming up again so it’s time to rummage around for our red stuff to strut on the day so we can celebrate the coming of the Spirit giving birth to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We recall Jesus breaking the news to his first disciples that he will be leaving them forever but in his place will come the Spirit to be their constant companion.

This is not something to be “spooked” about despite its earlier translation as the “Holy Ghost” bringing up all those ghost stories we may have enjoyed telling one another as children. When you look at it, it has been quite common, then and now, to talk about “spirit”, particularly the spirit of some one close to us accompanying us in our memory long after they have gone.

Since last Pentecost we have farewelled several friends close to us. They no longer fill those familiar places. We have attended their funeral services and see their images now reduced to a picture on the front cover of the order of service celebrating their life. We know we shall never see them again but from time to time we experience something of their spirit welling up in our memories urging us to emulate a sample of their qualities as part of us. This is what Jesus meant when he said the spirit would take his place.

We need this spirit more now than ever before. We have cause for concern about the growing meanness we find in the world around us. Along with extreme weathers around the globe we find extreme attitudes and behaviour reflected in politics and religion, stifling moderate voices. Our last federal election saw the dreadful spectacle of the contenders for government vying for the mantle of meanness towards desperate asylum seekers. TV programs now cruelly mock other cultures within our midst.

Is this the sort of spirit we want nurtured in the society of the future? Surely, we yearn for a better way. Out of those whom we have farewelled recently the spirit of one stays with us. When we said goodbye to David Ellis we lost a friend who was without words. We lost a friend who could scarcely move his afflicted body yet we know the influence he had among us will stay among us. Through him, we have become more open and inclusive. We experienced his love when that was as much as he could give. We have become enriched because of him.

David could look us in the eye and engage us despite a world now hurrying by with individuals isolated with head down each immersed in an electronic security blanket, communicating not with eye contact but with thumbs on keys oblivious to surroundings even at the risk of their own safety.

Federal Budgets widen the all too wide gaps between people, forgetting the way that Jesus took healing others giving them the hand-up they needed to resume life. Despite the unfairness of his limitations and his total dependence upon the good will of others, David in his powerlessness bridged many gaps around him and helped make us the people we were called to be.

David’s spirit, I pray, will stay long with us. It will remind us of the purpose of the Spirit that Jesus left behind to present to us both with words and without words what this aching world is meant to become despite all the forces arraigned unfairly against us.

Let Jesus breathe on us again this Pentecost so that his spirit, reminded by the saints who have left us, becomes our spirit living and working for redemption around us.

"HANDING OVER"

No matter what we do or how long we do it there inevitably comes a time when we need to be planning an exit strategy.

Those who live in houses for a very long time find that the back yard appears to have grown larger over time. Those steps become steeper and those corners seem to become increasingly inaccessible. An exit strategy becomes necessary towards downsizing according to our needs and the limit of our capabilities.

Sometimes it is the work we do and the looming need to hand over to some one fitter. I have experienced this over the last few months when the time approached for me to retire from Aged Care honorary chaplaincy ministry. I retired last August from Thomas Bowden Retirement Village after 15 years and during May from the LCM Calvary Homes in Ryde after 20 years. Naturally, I was anxious about handing over so that the ministry there could be maintained after mine ceased.

During this time my mind was drawn to the story of Elijah handing over to Elisha as described in 2 Kings chapter 2. Much of this story is written within an ancient context but the familiar pattern is there. Elijah was given an inevitable exit strategy and I’m sure his feelings were mixed as were Elisha’s. Elisha had big shoes to fill so he asked, “Let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” (v9) This was an ambitious request but we see in the following chapters that Elisha carried on this important prophetic ministry in his own style.

We are now once more into the season of Pentecost where we live out our own inheritance of the Spirit breathed upon us by Jesus Christ. The inwardly warming tongues of flame and the invigorating rush of mighty wind at the first Pentecost has come down through the spiritual generations to us. We are called to ensure this same spirit flows down to those coming on after us. The Spirit is  contagious!

We all have a spirit (Rom 8:16). Even now we remember those who have been influential in our becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. We may or may not have received a double portion of their spirit but we acknowledge that something of their spirit has come across to us. Some of our mentors may have passed on like Elijah but they have left for us their inspiration for us to experience and to pass on. As the burning coals in the grate come and go each in their own time, the fire is kept going.

This is the story of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, warts and all. This is your story and mine, our story. We have a heritage to leave so the gift of mentoring becomes all the more Christ’s call to us. We will not in time be able to keep doing what we are called to do but what is being done still needs to be done even though it will be done in new and different ways. We cannot guarantee clones of ourselves and just as well because we are not the last word in what we do and there are always better ways to come according to the evolving times.

This is the time to pass on what we have received so that a sick and brutal world may glow not with the fires of self-destruction but with a burning hope for a more collaborative future within today’s context of the ongoing Spirit.

Energy of the Spirit

Surprising as it may seem when I was young I used to stumble over long abstract words. It is difficult to work the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” into everyday conversation. I also find that long abstract words can mean different things to different people. That’s why misunderstandings arise in conversations.

Fortunately for us, the medieval English Franciscan, William of Ockham, pleaded for the “KISS” principle – “Keep It Simple, Stupid” – slashing his razor through complicated hypotheses.

By the time you read this, we will have moved into the season of Pentecost which includes celebration of the Trinity. I was about to quote what our Lectionary says about it but have found the words complicated. Sigh!

I even have problems with the word “Spirituality” – again, that is a long word that can mean different things to different people. Remember the Beatles abandoning their suits and hairstyles of the 1960s for exotic dress seeking out new gurus to find themselves. They called this “Spirituality”.

Thankfully, this word wasn’t around my scene when I was young. The word that did influence me was “spirit”, mentioned frequently, I found, in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Jesus spoke about “spirit” throughout John’s Gospel, for instance. His conversation with the woman of Samaria centres around God being “a spirit”, not some one confined to a mere place.

When Jesus later spoke to his disciples about leaving them, he reassured them (and us too along the way) that while he would be physically away from them, he would always be with them (and with us) in spirit. Jesus’ use of the word “spirit” is what has stayed with me over the years.

Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Spirit. Not that God has ever been absent in spirit, but that with Jesus absent in the flesh, we still depend upon that assurance that God is within us and among us in spirit. I still imagine God hovering over us in spirit just as he was in the dawn of creation before we were even stardust. Even when we feel very alone we are never really alone.

I once had some doubts about the relevance of the Trinity. Was this too complicated? Funny, it took a little reflecting upon high school general science to reinforce this. Science was supposed to sabotage faith not underline it.  However, a simple sentence was at the heart of science – “Matter and energy can neither be created or destroyed”. How would this help?

In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God became “matter” for us. John’s Gospel describes this as “the Word made flesh”. In my young days, the word was “incarnation” or as Charles Wesley put it “incomprehensibly made man”. God became matter.

The Gospels describe the traumatic tragedy of the Word made flesh destroyed on Good Friday. John’s Gospel particularly describes Jesus reassuring his disciples that he (matter) would go away but return to them in spirit (energy).

We learned in science that matter can become energy. We learn from our New Testament that God became matter for us and resumed becoming energy for us when this matter was taken away.

Excuse my bias, but I prefer the word “energy” as explaining “spirit” more than “spirituality”. In this season of Pentecost, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (including us) celebrates and enacts the energy that God gives us from the energy that God is.

Live out the energy of the spirit!

"The Spirit Bond"

I was touched very recently by the visit to Crete of several very elderly returned soldiers who had returned to pay their respects to their fallen comrades.

On what would have been their last opportunity to do so, these frail but proud men struggled against their growing infirmities to walk shakily but independently down the path to visit the memorial headstones.

When each veteran saw each name upon a headstone, it was if the spirit of that young soldier had suddenly emerged into the vision of the visitor who became young again for a moment as the memories of comradeship flooded back. The returned soldiers would resume their shaky journey to return again to safety but with the reassurance that there was some closure with the spirit of the fallen soldiers now at peace.

I hope I’m not becoming doddery in my mind as I have relatives fallen somewhere overseas. Great-uncle Alec lies with mates somewhere at Pope’s Hill, Gallipoli. Grandpa’s two first cousins, memorialised at Villers-Bretonneux, were last seen at Bullecourt and off the Fremantle coast respectively. That was WW1. During the second global conflict, uncle Arthur fell somewhere in the swamps outside Buna, New Guinea. Dad’s cricketing cousin Ken went down in a Short Sunderland over the Mediterranean.

Several cousins of my mother, were found and buried appropriately. For so many war casualties, however, no final resting place was ever found. In many cultures around the world, there is the belief that their spirits cannot rest until proper respect is made. In many cultures and belief systems, respect is continually paid to the spirits of departed ancestors.

I used to disparage such practices in my youth but when one becomes old enough to experience bereavement a continuing bond remains with the departed out of respect. I saw this in the bearing of these veterans returning to Crete and this would be true for many as the years turn over.

There is still that sense of mystery regarding the afterlife. The body is farewelled to the elements with all its molecules dispersed and recycled into new forms of stardust. The spirit stays on in the memory of the mourners and often invigorates the lives of those now holding the baton passed to them.

We are about to leave the Easter season and move into Pentecost. In the latter parts of John’s Gospel, Jesus shocks his first disciples with the news of his coming death. He reassures them that, though his body will be gone, the bond of his spirit will stay with them if they carry out what the Father had sent him to do.

Pentecost reminds us that we, part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, remain with Jesus in spirit. We pray through his name, we read about him regularly, we hear what God has to say to us, and we commemorate him at the table.

Our bond with him is strengthened because it is a bond of spirit. We can continue doing some of the things that Jesus used to do when we continue with his values. We may ourselves walk shakily one way or another but with our insight we have seen his face and we know we are a part of him and he with us.

Trust Me!

Luke 12:32-40

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Federal Election in 13 days time

Since I was booked for this service today,

some one went and called a Federal Election for this month.

This changes our lives as we take personal responsibility

for choosing among those on offer to govern us for the next three years.

We come to this and other decision-making

each from our own personal perspectives, aware that there is no size fits all.

It’s good that we have our lectionary readings before us to help guide us

when we make these decisions.

1.2 The Lectionary Readings

These edited readings strangely enough fit into a pattern this week.

Psalm 50 starts appropriately with worship and sets it properly into context.

Everything we offer up to God belongs to him in the first place.

Nothing we can do in worship

can excuse us from responsibility in our relationships.

Isaiah chapter One describes a nation that has already fallen into this trap of believing that the more one puts into worship

the less one need deal with ethics and justice and compassion.

The Gospel reading from Luke reminds us that we remain accountable to God through Jesus Christ.

The famous Hebrews ch 11 shows us how we achieve this accountability.

Accountability is a timely theme, as not only do we have to vote,

it’s also tax time.

2 PREPARATION FOR DISCIPLESHIP (Luke 12:32-40)

2.1 Sustenance Living

We don’t have the time to go over all the juicy bits,

particularly as, after worship, some will be preparing to meet their fete,

and anyway, these readings feed into the Gospel, so we’ll focus there.

Last week, we looked at the Parable of the Rich Fool,

and this reading follows straight on from that.

We know how preoccupation with accumulating money

and what money can buy is the greatest distraction from getting on with life.

Here, Jesus promotes to his disciples sustenance living.

They have to travel light or they will be bogged down.

I still remember my Mother’s 2 large suitcases for going away for a weekend.

It took some years for me to unlearn that habit.

Pity my poor children who have to dispose of what I have after I have gone.

Don’t laugh, your turn will come.

This congregation, fortunately, has proved generous in many things

so I shall move on.

2.2 Tap on the shoulder

Some years ago, we were warned to be alert but not alarmed.

Jesus thought of that first.

We all know what it is like when we are expecting visitors but not sure when.

Before emails and mobile phones, even before telephones themselves,

we had even less warning.

The rich man last week had little warning,

not even enough time to think about writing his will

before that tap on the shoulder interrupted his plans.

We are possessed with the status quo of immortality,

that things will always be the same

or that they will grow and grow without end.

Those of us who have been burgled in our time

know what can happen to what we cherish when our back is turned.

3 “TRUST ME” (Heb 11:1-3, 8-16)

3.1 Something to show for our efforts

Life is not a matter of being successful but of being faithful.

That is something I wrestle with because, being human,

I am drawn into wondering what I will leave behind that is tangible.

They pulled down the hospital in which I was born,

the little church I grew up in is now too beyond repair to use,

and all my handiwork as a draftsman has all long been superseded.

I was warned that ministry is not something you can easily measure.

How many people still awake at the end of the sermon

is not necessarily a good sign.

Doubtless, in what everyone does there is that hankering

that we’d like to have something to show for our efforts.

3.2 Abraham

This is where this passage from Hebrews comes to our help.

What hits me about Abraham

is a man who had nothing really to show at all.

Everything that came to fruition was after he had passed on

so he never saw what was promised to him.

All God really said to him was, “Trust me”,

and Abraham took that risk of trusting some one whom he couldn’t see,

who wasn’t yet written about in a book (think about that one),

and who had to convince his wife that he was making the right choice.

3.3 “Who do you think you are?”

Perseverance is the word.

I have an admiration for British TV commentator Gryff Rhys Jones

who has been on our ABC TV screens recently,

particularly after he appeared on the BBC program

“Who do you think you are?”

He discovered ancestors of his who lived and died

in a 19th century poorhouse in the most Dickensian of circumstances.

I think a lot of tissues were used during that particular program.

I wonder did they often think at the time that they were miserable failures

with nothing in the future to pass on.

If only those ancestors could see that a descendant of theirs

has become internationally known

for his breezy, well produced TV documentary presentations.

Did Abraham ever think that his long journey was amounting to nothing

with even Sarah laughing behind his back at what was yet to happen?

3.4 My only sporting trophy

In my youth, I was visited by debilitating migraine headaches,

and found that taking up some sport lessened these attacks.

I joined a church hockey club

and found myself making up the final numbers

in the third senior male team in C grade, C2 to be precise.

In the words of the spin-doctors, we experienced negative improvement,

and found ourselves relegated to C3 grade, known as the basement.

One year we did so badly, we finished bottom of the ladder

so when the club met to make its presentations at the end of the year

our team felt that we didn’t deserve anything.

Lo and behold, there was a presentation,

and my mouth gaped wider when my name was called out.

The prize was a butter dish on an uninscribed silver plate.

The prize was awarded not for best player, of course,

but for being the most faithful in turning up for training.

Years later this, my only sporting trophy,

became the bread plate for Holy Communion in the Gosnells Uniting Church where I was minister.

3.5 Our leader forever

I mention this just to show that Jesus calls us not to be successful

but to be faithful.

We meant what we said.

We said what we meant.

A disciple is faithful 100%

That is our accountability to him.

It’s not what we can measure to ourselves that counts

but what measures with him, love of God and neighbour.

We are called not to be taken in by all the promises of this coming election

or to have unrealistic expectations tickled.

The real promises come from Jesus who is our leader forever.

AMEN