Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Spirit Leadership and the Offering of Christ

Transcribed from the sermon preached May 28, 2006

 The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Acts 15:1-11 I Peter 5:1-4

It is an exciting day in the life of this congregation as we ordain and install Deacons and Elders.  On the one hand ordination and installation of Deacons and Elders is not much more than an average day in the life of the church.  There is always plenty of work to be done, too much work to be done and not enough people to do it.  Therefore the nominating committee has a tough job finding people who are willing and able to find time in their busy lives to serve the church.  And, to convince ourselves that we do have time and ability we tend to break the job down to specific tasks.  You will have to attend a 2 1/2 hour meeting once a month.   You will serve on at least one commission, which will also meet once a month for an hour, or two.  You will participate in preparation for worship, in particular by preparing grape juice and bread for communion.  If you are on the Center Commission you will help discern who uses the building, what a fair fee might be, what a user group can expect from us as hosts, what we can expect from them.  The mission and justice crew discusses different ways the church can serve and work on issue of peace and justice, to turn our faith into Good News action promoting peace in the world.

          If you are on the worship commission you will help set dates for communion and other special aspects of worship.  You will help plan decoration and themes around the big seasons, Advent, Lent and Easter.  As for the Deacons, the membership is divided up among you so that each Deacon has a list of about ten members.  The Deacon tries to keep in touch with those people, and, if they have difficulties, they pray and try to help in any way possible.  In breaking the task of elder and deacon down in this way it help us figure out what, in practical terms, is required.

          From this perspective volunteering and being appointed to these roles is a nice way of offering a little bit of help to the community and society other than what you offer in promotion of your own personal and family livelihood.  It is a nice small gesture.

          There is a larger perspective, the perspective of the Spirit.  Last week I began talking about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the breath of life.  And, as I elaborated last week, is not simply separate from the physical world but is embodied within it as well.  Particularly, we saw the Spirit embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, in his body, in his life and acts of love.  We also see that while the Spirit is shown in particular through Jesus, the spirit is also present throughout life and creation.  It is quite possible to not know Jesus in particular and yet know the Spirit of Christ.  Indeed, we may say that if we know life we know the Spirit. 

Psalm 139 is my favorite for the month.  Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast…For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

While the Spirit surrounds and gives breath to all life, it is possible to go against the spirit.  The Spirit moves in a particular direction, which has been made know to us through Christ – It moves towards grace and love.  We are empowered by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, to live righteous lives of love and grace.

I love that image of being knit together by the Spirit.  Feliciana likes to knit.  It takes patience.  If someone gives you a gift of a knit blanket or sweater, you know lots of time and love went into it.  What a wonderful image to think of evolution as the Creation of an infinitely patient God, knitting us together, different strands of DNA, different life forms all tied together in the web of life. 

Still we are also uniquely created.  We are individuals.  Freedom is a prized attribute of human life, especially in America.  And self-interest is important.  For besides our maker, nobody know us better than ourselves, our needs, our desires, our hopes and dreams.  Certainly the ability to think for oneself, to stand on ones own when the group is headed in the wrong direction is incredibly important.  Or, when our group is doubting its direction, it is important to have someone step up as a leader to say, stay the course.

Mary Scales recently loaned me the book 1776 by David McCullough.  Even though I have almost no time to read anything other than pastoral counseling stuff for class, I found after reading a couple of pages I couldn’t put it down.  We learn from the book how an empire can get overextended and caught in an expensive quagmire against an enemy who has far more invested in the territory and is motivated by the simple fact that you are trying to impose your will on their land.  (But that is another sermon)

At first I just wanted to get to the part where the American soldiers actually attacked Boston.  In reading I found myself identifying with the common soldier, with no ammo, no sanitation, not enough food or clothing, too much disease and too much cold weather.  There was little question that the British army was far superior, with greater numbers, weapons and training.  And it wasn’t all that clear that independence was worth the cost, especially from an individual perspective.  But if it was a good thing that America became a nation, then we were lucky to have had a leader like Washington who had the charisma, stamina and integrity to inspire a nation and keep his eyes on the larger values of a free democracy.

We need the strength of individuals entrusted with the big picture to hold fast when the line needs holding, and to call for brave moves when going forward is in order.  We see this with Paul, Barnabus and Peter.  In their excitement for the Gospel they could not discriminate with whom they shared.  In the process unexpected people began to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.  This posed an odd dilemma for the Church.  For the Church had started as a branch of Judaism with adherence to the law.  The Judean law, as many of you know, regulated the entire culture, diet, clothing, work, family, sexuality, treatment of body, property, and worship.  It was an intricate web of purity codes based on a culture with powerful notions of honor and shame.  Many gentiles were moved by the message of God’s grace through Jesus, yet were unwilling, and didn’t see the need to adopt all the laws and values of Jewish Christians.  They had different diets, and the men were not particularly fond of the idea of chopping off the end of their penis.  Granted, this ritual of circumcision is a powerful symbolic castration, an acknowledgment of God as Father of past and future family.  This remains a ritual that can be respected as a powerful sign of faith and dedication to God.

Still, a transition was happening in the Church.  They started to see that transformation of outward appearance and connection to the right bloodline was less important than transformation of the heart.  It was a circumcision of the heart and soul that was necessary.  If you were not born into the right family which had already been dedicated to God, you need not worry, for you could be born again, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  This is a radical idea, not only for Judaism but also for most cultures, instilled as they are with the notion of authority and privilege based on bloodline.

Now the Church has always been made up of sinful human beings and eventually even this notion of the Holy Spirit would need to be further clarified, and finally co-opted to serve the purposes of the powerful classes and Church patriarchy.  The Church has certainly killed its share of scapegoats.  But the Holy Spirit has never been fully co-opted, and it is always breaking out, calling us once again toward a community of greater and greater equality and radical Christ like love and grace.

This is the point missed by the popular book and movie, the Da Vinci Code.  The Catholic Church and conservatives are upset for the books shoddy scholarship and its apparent blasphemy.  Certainly, as Sarah Harling pointed out after reading a youth leader magazine warning of the books dangers, “There are more pressing dangers in our world today than a fictional story.”  But since I am speaking about the Holy Spirit and leadership, I thought I might make a passing reference.

The book reports that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a baby girl.  The church has then been trying to keep this all a secret and try to kill the descendants of Jesus because it would mean that the one with the blood of Jesus would be head of the Church instead of the Pope.  Not a bad plot for a movie.  The basic problem with the scholarship, in my mind, is with origin of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  For before the powerful men refined the doctrine to fit with their purposes, women, the poor and marginalized were being liberated and adopted into the family of God by the Holy Spirit Herself. 

For example we have for the Historical record a letter sent by Pliny, the governor of Bithynia (the province just North of Asia) to the Emperor Trajan about year 112.  Pliny wants advice on how to deal with Christians for, as he says, “The plague of this superstition has spread not only in the cities, but through villages and the countryside.”  The problem was that they worshipped Jesus as Lord instead of the Emperor and other Roman God’s, and were therefore considered blasphemous, unpatriotic and even seditious.  Upon threat of torture and execution they were forced to worship the emperor and curse Christ.  If they refused they were killed.  The ones who did curse Christ and worship the emperor confirmed says Pliny, “Their entire guilt or error consisted in the fact that on a specified day before sunrise they were accustomed to gather and sing an antiphonal hymn to Christ as their god and to pledge themselves by an oath not to engage in any crime, but to abstain from all thievery, assault, and adultery, not to break their word once they had given it, and not to refuse to pay their legal debts.  They then went their separate ways, and came together later to eat a common meal, but it was ordinary, harmless food.  They discontinued even this practice in accordance with my edict by which I had forbidden political associations, in accord with your instructions.  I considered it all the more necessary to obtain by torture a confession of the truth from two female slaves, whom they called ‘deaconesses.’  I found nothing more than a vulgar, excessive superstition.”  (Boring.  Interpretation Commentary: Revelation. 1989)

Trying to tie authority in the church to bloodline would be a step backward.  It is not a radical idea; it is a socially constricting idea that the Gospel supersedes.  Even after the Church developed it hierarchy, the Holy Spirit has continued to break out in the most amazing ways through the most unusual people.  We have no more right to leadership than two female slaves from the second century.  Neither does the Pope for that matter.  This would not change even if Jesus had been married and had children.  For when the Holy Spirit moves through you, you know, you can feel it, you have been adopted into the family of God.  We are covered with Christ.  It has been said that God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called.  Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Christ, you are called to uphold some basic moral values, get together on a specified day for worship, though not before sunrise, sing a hymn or two or three, and eat together in a fairly ordinary way.  But at root of our worship of Christ, the one who lived, died, and rose again, while it may still sound like a excessive superstition, carries the radical idea that by God’s grace…not by law, not by bloodline, not by social power or status but by grace, the Holy Spirit of this risen Christ and the Author of Creation is available for our liberation and empowers us to create a new family value, where there is no distinction between them and us.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, Guatemalan nor American, gay nor straight, heck neither republican nor democrat, for we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Superstitious? Maybe. Mythical? Sure.  An important calling?  Eternally.  This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.