The Spirit Doesn't Always Play By The Rules

 

May 28, 2023 – The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday, Year A

Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 22:15.

Moses had a problem. The people of Israel wouldn’t stop grumbling about their situation, and the Lord was getting pretty angry about it. This time, the people were upset because they didn’t have any meat to eat. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God had led them through the Red Sea on dry land. God had rescued them from Pharaoh’s army. God had given them water to drink and manna to eat. But the people wanted more. 

“The rabble among them had a strong craving,” the Book of Numbers tells us. “If only we had meat to eat!” the people cried. “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses, sensing that there was nothing he could do to satisfy the people’s hunger or assuage God’s mounting wrath, became distraught.

“Why have you treated your servant so badly?” Moses said to the Lord. “Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?’ Where am I to get meat to give to all this people…? I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.”

And God listened to Moses and told him what to do. “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel…bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.” 

This was a good idea. Moses needed help, and God promised to give it to him. So Moses assembled seventy leaders from among the people, and God came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of his spirit and spread it among the seventy elders. As a sign that they had received a share of the spirit, those elders began to prophesy—they began to speak dramatically whatever words God gave them. Although, after a few moments, those prophetic utterances stopped, the community recognized that the elders had been endued with some of the divine spirit—that God had given them what they needed to accomplish their task. Finally, Moses would have the support he needed.

But there was another problem. Eldad and Medad, who had been registered among the elders but who had not gone to the tent of meeting, received their own share of the spirit back in the camp, and they began to prophesy. This renegade activity, operating outside the boundaries that God had established through Moses, threatened to undermine his authority and that of the seventy elders whom God had deputized. “My lord Moses, stop them!” cried Joshua, Moses’ faithful righthand. But Moses didn’t seem at all concerned. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asked. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

It turns out that God’s spirit is shared not only through duly authorized methods like the ordination of seventy elders but also through renegades like Eldad and Medad, who refuse to play by the rules. And, over the centuries, the rabbis have helped us understand why.

The ancient Jewish scholars who wrestled with this text proposed a few possible interpretations, most of which revolve around the mathematical challenge presented by the number seventy. God asked Moses to set apart seventy elders, but there were twelve ancestral tribes among the people, and seventy isn’t divisible by twelve. How was Moses supposed to spread his authority evenly among the tribes? If he chose six elders from each tribe, that would produce two too many, and five from each would leave him ten short. Jealousy would arise if he selected six from some tribes and five from others, so the rabbis, who creatively and faithfully interpreted the biblical text by expanding the story, proposed that Moses must have cast lots, writing the word “elder” on seventy slips of paper while leaving two slips blank. [1]

Some rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad drew the blank pieces of paper, but God’s spirit found them anyway. Others propose that those two were uncomfortable accepting the honor of being chosen an elder among their people, so they stayed back on purpose, trusting that God would use the seventy others in their place. And, in turn, God rewarded their humility and gave them the gift of prophecy that, unlike the gift given to the other seventy, did not cease. Still other rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad refused to accept an authority that was derivative of Moses’, preferring to exercise their own brand of leadership. [2]

In any case, it is remarkable that Moses responded to their unexpected and unauthorized prophecy not by becoming defensive but by encouraging more unbridled, unregulated work of the spirit. When Joshua came to him in a panic, he said to Moses literally, “My lord Moses, imprison them!” He wanted to lock them up, or at least place upon them the same burden of leadership that the seventy elders bore—a weight that, in theory, had left them with no time or ability to continue prophesying. The rabbinic tradition holds that Eldad and Medad had prophesied that Moses would die and that Joshua would be the one to lead them into the land of promise. No wonder Joshua reacted so strongly. Their prophesy represented a double-threat—both to Moses’ authority and to his life. But Moses, in his humility, would rather celebrate the spirit’s presence among God’s people than cling to either his own authority or his life.

This encounter reminds us that sometimes the Spirit shows up in ways that are prescribed by religious institutions, but sometimes those institutions fail to anticipate just how God’s Spirit will show up. Some of us like structure and good order. We find it easy to trust that God will become manifest through clearly defined channels like ordinations and vestries and bishop elections. And, while it’s true that the Spirit does show up in those ways, as the story of the seventy elders demonstrates, we must also recognize that there is no process, no prescription, no ballot, no liturgy, no sacrament that can contain the fullness of the Holy Ghost.

During the next three months, while I am on sabbatical, I bet the Holy Spirit will show up in ways that surprise all of us. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the kind of person who really likes it when God’s Spirit comes in carefully prescribed and clearly defined ways. Deep down, I know that my love of good order, although well-intentioned, can become an idolatry. By stepping away from this place for three months, I trust that new and unanticipated opportunities for leadership, creativity, and innovation will arise and that they will come not only in the ways that the staff, vestry, and I have planned but also in ways that right now only God can see. And I believe that will be true not only here at St. Paul’s but also in my own life as I leave behind the comfortable routines where I am in charge and accept a period of unfamiliar renewal.

When the Spirit shows up and surprises us, what will our reaction be—that of Moses or that of Joshua? Will we recognize the Spirit when she threatens our sense of order, or will we write her off because she hasn’t made an appointment or bothered to knock on the front door? The Spirit doesn’t always come as an invited guest. Sometimes she blows right in through the window with gale force winds, threatening to rip the shutters off. Sometimes it’s easier to dismiss her as a drunken mistake than to take her seriously. 

But God’s ultimate vision for the world is not a neat and tidy place, where those who have been appointed by the religious community are permitted to speak with divine authority but a world in which all people have received a share of the divine spirit. In those days, God declares, all people will prophesy—not only the ones we expect to speak on behalf of God but all people, regardless of age, gender, or economic status. 

Our celebration of Pentecost is a celebration that those last days are here among us, even now. This chapter of salvation history in which we live is defined by the universal, unrestrained work of the Holy Spirit. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Today, Moses’ dream has been realized. God has poured out that spirit upon all flesh. We are all Eldads and Medads. May God give us the wisdom and the humility to see it.

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1. https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.17a.5?lang=bi

2. https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4407977/jewish/Eldad-Medad-The-Mysterious-Prophets.htm#footnote6a4407977

Prayer Is Always The First Step

 

May 21, 2023 – The 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A

Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Video of this service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 25:45. 

For a group of church leaders who get a lot of credit, the disciples sure do spend a lot of time just sitting around. And that’s where God always seems to find them. Like a boss who checks up on you right when you’re taking a break, God seems to have a way of showing up when they are least prepared for it.

The risen Jesus didn’t reveal himself to the disciples while they were walking to Emmaus but after the journey was over as they sat together for the evening meal. He didn’t wait for the disciples to go out into the streets and share the good news of his resurrection but walked through locked doors in order to give them his peace. After Jesus blessed the apostles as he was ascending into heaven, God didn’t send the Spirit upon them immediately so that they could get right to work. Instead, they went back into the upper room, where they sat around and waited until the wind and fire of Holy Spirit came and filled the house.

It's a strange way to get things started—knowing that you have important work to do, unsure how you will get it done, a little confused about how God is going to help you, but somehow confident that something good is going to happen. After seeing Jesus taken up into heaven, the disciples were standing on the cusp of something completely new, so they did the only thing they knew how to do. The men and women who had followed Jesus got together in a room and devoted themselves to prayer and waited for God to show up.

That sounds a little bit like what happened in this community 175 years ago this Tuesday:

May 23, 1848, after due notice a meeting of the members of the Church was held in the schoolroom—the usual place of worship—and after divine service the Rev. W. C. Stout, Missionary, was called to the chair, and Col. W. S. Gidham appointed secretary…Whereupon the following instrument was read by the [Secretary] and on motion of John W. Chew adopted and signed by those whose names are thereunto written. To-wit: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We, the subscribers assembled for the purpose of organizing a parish of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of Fayetteville, County of Washington and State of Arkansas after due notice given do hereby agree to form a Parish to be known by the name of St. Paul’s Church Parish, and as such, do hereby acknowledge and accede to the doctrines, disciplines, and worship, the Constitution and canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America… [1]

That’s how we got our start—gathered together in a room, unsure of what was ahead of us but confident that God would give us what we need, and devoted to prayer. 

A whole lot of good has been done in and through St. Paul’s since that day. If we took time to pour through the archives, we could count the number of services, sermons, marriages, baptisms, confirmations, and burials that have been offered to God’s glory in this place. We could probably figure out how much money has been spent carrying out the ministries of this church and responding to the needs of the community. But the good work that has been accomplished here far exceeds what any service record, parish register, or balance sheet could attest. How many lives have been touched by the people of St. Paul’s? How many prayers have been answered? How many people have found a reason to hope in the midst of their struggle or recognized God’s presence in the face of hardship? For 175 years, the people of this parish have devoted themselves to carrying out God’s work in the world, and it should be no surprise to us that that work must always begin with prayer.

In this reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear two questions that make clear to us why prayer is essential if we are to be faithful in our work. First, the apostles ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” As Willie James Jennings notes, it is a perfectly natural question. They have journeyed from the depths of despair in the shadow of the cross to the heights of glory in the triumph of the risen Lord. They have seen God strike a fatal blow to death itself, and now they want to know what all of us who stand in the light of that victory want to know—is this the time when God will restore the kingdom to God’s people on earth? [2]

But every time we ask that question—and long to know the answer—we impose upon God the limitations of our own imaginations. For, whenever we ask God whether this is the real moment of triumph, we reveal our desire not to follow where Christ has led but to turn the resurrection of Jesus into a sign of our own victory. As Jennings writes, the desire imbedded within such a longing is fundamentally nationalistic—not a “nationalism bound to the anatomy of Israel, but the deeply human desire of every people to control their destiny and shape the world into their hoped-for eternal image.” [3]

Jesus’ reply to the apostles puts an end to such a fantasy: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” As Jennings continues, Jesus alone “will define resurrection’s meaning and resurrection’s purpose. It will not be used by these disciples as an ideological tool for statecraft. Nor will it constitute [for] them the winner’s circle. Such ways of thinking resurrection turn Jesus into the greatest victor in an eternal competition and produces disciples who follow Jesus only because they worship power.” 

Instead, we must wait in prayer for the power that comes to clothe us from on high. The power Jesus sends upon us is the power of the Holy Spirit—a power which is indistinguishable from the power of the Crucified One. It descends from the place where he has gone before, not to bestow upon us a power that belongs to this world but a power to transform it through his death and resurrection, through his sacrifice and love. Prayer is how we wait for the power that God will give us instead of rushing in and claiming only what the world can give.

But there is another danger we must face if we are to be faithful to the one who calls us and sends us and equips us with the Spirit’s power, and the second question in this reading from Acts helps us identify it. “While [Jesus] was going and [the apostles] were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’” Those who know the triumph of the risen Christ have a tendency to stand around, staring at what has already been accomplished without offering themselves to the work that lies ahead. Our first step might be to come together in prayer, but there’s a big difference between gazing at a memorial of what has been and praying that God will lead us into something new.

The challenge for us is holding onto both. We cannot charge ahead as if the reign of God is something we can bring about through our best efforts. It does not come from within us, no matter how good and wonderful our community of faith might be. It only comes from above. But neither can our waiting and watching and hoping be a mere passive expression of faith. We cannot remain still, standing in the fading glow of his ascension, even though standing still is often a lot more comfortable to us than stepping out into the unknown. 

We do not know what lies ahead. We do not know what it will cost us. We do not know whether we will succeed. We do not know how or when the fullness of God’s reign will take hold in this world. But we do know that God has made us witnesses of Jesus Christ—missionaries of the good news of God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love. And God has sent us the Holy Spirit to give us everything we need to be faithful to the work God is giving us to do.

In the end, prayer is how we balance the need to wait on God and the need to offer ourselves to God’s work. The majesty of God breaking forth fully into this world is not something for us to achieve, and yet it is something for us to give our whole lives to. That can only happen through prayer. Prayer is how we yield our egos over to God and allow the Spirit to shape and mold us into emissaries of God’s reign. Prayer is how we let go of our inadequate hopes and dreams and yoke ourselves instead to the dream of God. 

Once again, the people of this parish stand on the cusp of something new and wonderful. We do not know what it will be, but God does. We cannot see how or when it will come to pass, but God can. If we will be a part of it, we must come together and devote ourselves to prayer. And prayer is enough, for, by offering ourselves to God in that way, we trust God to use us however God will, and that’s when we know God will show up.

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1.  Stout, W. C.. “A Faithful Record of the Affairs, Spiritual and Temporal of St. Paul’s Parish,” 1848, p. 9.

2. Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press; Louisville: 2017, p. 17.

3. Jennings, p. 19.

Defined By Devotion

 

April 30, 2023 – The 4th Sunday of Easter, Year A

Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 23:05.

Tucker Carlson is an Episcopalian. Did you know that? He’s been an Episcopalian all his life. Born and baptized into an Episcopal parish in California, educated at an Episcopal school in Rhode Island, married to the daughter of an Episcopal priest, Carlson is as intimately familiar with the ins and outs of this denomination as almost anyone.[1]  I bring him up not to discuss his politics or the implications of his dismissal from Fox News but to note how different today’s church, in which such divisive forces are present, is from the one we hear about in Acts 2. 

Back then, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” That’s not exactly the unity of spirit that comes to mind when you hear that Tucker Carlson is a member of our church. How did we get from “all things in common” to “I refuse to believe that he’s an Episcopalian?”

Today’s reading from Acts is yet another story from the afterglow of Pentecost. For the third week in a row, we hear a passage from those first few moments after the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and alighted on the apostles. We’ll go back and hear how the Spirit arrived and how the apostles began to speak in other languages four weeks from today, but today’s lesson is what happened after Peter finished his sermon—after those who had received his words had repented and been baptized. Given the rather blunt and accusatory tone of that sermon, we might think that the real miracle of the story is that 3,000 persons were added to the faith that day. But, when we pick up with today’s reading and hear how those Christians lived together in unity, there’s no doubt where the real miracle is.

This is the power of the Holy Spirit—that a community of diverse people—rich and poor, old and young, male and female, literate and uneducated, Hebrew-speaking and Hellenized, powerful and powerless—Jews from all over the known world—were able to put aside all of their differences and all of their individual desires, needs, and concerns and live in such unity that they could sell all of their possessions, pool together all of their resources, and not fight about it. Now, that’s a miracle. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that this description of material and spiritual unity is some utopian metaphor that modern Christians are supposed to mythologize. I believe that it is an actual, literal description of what the community looks like when we are devoted to Jesus Christ just as they were.

Devotion is what defined them. “Those who had been baptized,” the Book of Acts tells us, “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Their lives revolved around formation and community. They learned together. They ate together. They prayed together. And the Bible makes it clear that they didn’t do that once a week. Listen to the story’s description of how those early Christians lived: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” This was not a Sunday-morning encounter but a daily endeavor. 

Each day, they continued to go into the temple as they always had, honoring their commitment to corporate worship and prayer, but their fellowship didn’t stop at the temple gate. At night, they went into each other’s homes, where, the passage tells us, they “broke bread…and ate their food”—a double-description that conveys both the symbolic and literal nourishment they received at the table. Their hearts were glad and overflowed with generosity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to all people, not only to those in their company. 

This was more than a church. This was more than a collection of believers. This was a community of faith—people bound together in joyous celebration of God’s unlimited goodness. There was no part of their lives that was untouched by this Spirit-filled movement. Everything they were and everything they had belonged to God, and the community grew and grew. 

Don’t we want to be a part of something like that? Don’t we want to immerse ourselves in God’s goodness until the blessings become so thick and full that we can no longer tell where one person’s bounty ends and another person’s begins? Don’t we believe that what God wants for us is the kind of unity that runs deep into our souls and that has the power to shape the whole world until we are all reconciled to God and to each other? That is the peace of God that passes all understanding.

What will we do to make that peace come to the earth? What can we do to make that vision for the world our reality? What decisions can we make, what structures can we put into place, what boundaries can we set, what rules can we establish, what leaders can we elect to be sure that God’s dream for the world comes to pass? The answer is none of them. 

Our job isn’t to make the reign of God a reality on the earth. That’s God’s job. And the good news of the Christian faith is that God has already brought that reality to the world in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our job is to devote ourselves to that truth. Our job is to commit ourselves—body, soul, and mind—time, talent, and treasure—to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers because that is how God’s reign comes into our lives, and it is our lives, lived together in unity, through which God’s reign takes hold in the world.

Given the state of our church, our country, and the world, it should come as no surprise that that sort of unity will not come about through expressions of power and might. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work by empowering us to make our vision for the world a reality. She works by taking hold of us and shaping us until our lives look like God’s life and our wills look like God’s will. Thus, the Spirit does not harden us with invincibility. She softens us to become vulnerable just as Christ was vulnerable. We do not have the power to bring the kind of unity described in Acts 2 into this or any other Christian community. But, by allowing the Holy Spirit to take control of our lives, God can and will make that same sort of unity the defining characteristic of our lives and of this congregation.

The vision for the church laid out in the Book of Acts is not an economic model or a recipe for communal life. It is simply a description of what the Body of Christ looks like when it is animated by the Holy Spirit and filled with God’s love. As Willie James Jennings wrote, “What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods and services is a God who dares impose on us divine love. Such love will not play fair. In the moment we think something is ours, or our people’s, that same God will demand we sell it, give it away, or offer more of it in order to feed the hungry, [clothe] the naked, or shelter the homeless, using it to create the bonds of shared life.”[2]

If we are going to get to a spiritual place where the total and complete demands of the Holy Spirit upon our lives fill us with joy instead of heartache and bring about unity instead of discord and inspire enthusiasm instead of reluctance, we must devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. That must be the life we live every day. That is how we learn how much God loves us. That is how we come to trust that God’s love for us and for the whole world is full and overflowing. That is how we learn to believe that what God has given us is infinitely more valuable than what the world can provide. Then our unity will no longer be our goal but the life we live together in God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

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1. Petiprin, Andrew, “Tucker Carlson, Episcopalian,” The Living Church; 26 June 2017: https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2017/06/26/tucker-carlson-episcopalian/. 

2. Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press: 2017, p. 40.