The Gift(s) of the Spirit

John 14: 8-17, 25-27

Philip said to [Jesus], “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you.

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Acts 2: 1-12 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,

Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,

Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

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When I was in high school, I learned French for four years…and I got to be about as good in speaking French as you can be with four years of French.

When I went to college, and was completing my engineering degree, we were given very few opportunities to take non-technical electives courses. So I did as much as I could to maintain my love of language and reading and writing and humanities and the arts. And one of the electives I took was two years of Italian. And I loved it. And I learned a bit of it – not quite as much as I had learned of French in High School, obviously, but a bit. But ever since that time, when I try to think of how to say something in Italian, it inevitably comes out as… French. Or some weird combination of the two, of French and Italian.

So I never really learned a second language enough to be fluent in it.  And I wish I had.

Twenty five years after my engineering undergraduate experience, I found myself in seminary. One of the things about Presbyterian seminaries is that you must learn how to read both Greek and Hebrew. What you have to learn is biblical Greek, and biblical Hebrew, not conversational Greek and Hebrew, but even so I felt quite anxious and intimidated at the prospect of trying to learn these two languages at this relatively late stage of my life and my learning journey. I wasn’t sure whether you could teach this old dog those sorts of new tricks.

Well, I got through it.  And they say you typically do better with one of those languages and struggle more with the other, and I will say that was true for me too – I struggled more with Hebrew than with Greek. But both were challenging, I have to admit.

Learning new languages is hard. It’s much easier for us to speak or to express ourselves in our dominant language, probably in our native language, than in one that we have learned later on. It seems like the language that we are born with and grow up with is the language that is inherent in our brain cells.

My German exchange student son, the young man who lived with us and went to high school in Ann Arbor for a year, came to us speaking fluent English, with a lovely accent, but fluent.  After two or three months, he told us that he had started to both think and to dream in English rather than German. That he had crossed a line where he no longer thought of what he wanted to say in German, and then translated it into English, but that he was now thinking his thoughts in English. That represented a real head change for him. It got to the point where, about a month before the school year was over, he was on the phone one day with his parents, actually skyping with them in his bedroom, and I heard him suddenly shout out in frustration, and I went to see what was wrong, and the problem was that he was having a hard time speaking German with them! He knew what he wanted to tell them, and he knew how to say it in English, but he couldn’t remember how to say it in German! He was both amazed and frustrated by that, and I of course found it very amusing. I think his parents got off that phone call a bit concerned about how he would be coming home to them a month later.

We pattern after our dominant language. And so here comes the Holy Spirit. The disciples have been with Jesus for three years, have been traveling with him, have been watching him and listening to him and learning from him. They have made their own faltering attempts to try to do what Jesus has done – to pray as Jesus prayed, to heal as Jesus healed, usually with limited success. And now, as the gospel according to John tells us, Jesus’ days on earth are winding down, and Jesus is trying to provide reassurance for the disciples, telling them that the Advocate will come. And by the Advocate he means the Holy Spirit. God will give them the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will teach them all things, and will tell them what to say. And they listen to him, but they don’t really get how this is going to work.

Until that day of Pentecost. When they are all together in the room, and a mighty, uncontrollable wind blows through. and little flames of fire appear, seeming to be on the heads of everyone there. Sounds of rushing winds. And suddenly they are all speaking in languages that they never learned before. They are the languages of the people who have come to Jerusalem from all over. They are speaking to the people who are there in their own languages. It’s just as if suddenly I could speak German to my exchange student son, with no training whatsoever.

We do know that there are people who are taken by the Holy Spirit in a particular way, and they speak in tongues, and others who also speak in tongues are apparently able to translate what is being said, in this somewhat unique language. But this scripture is talking about them speaking in languages that others normally spoke, other dialects from around the regions, translatable by the individuals for whom this was their dominant language already.

I love to read about the Holy Spirit, and I especially love to think about how the Holy Spirit causes us to be someone or something that we would otherwise not know how to be, and to do and even to say the things that we would not otherwise have the ability or the knowledge or the courage to do or to say. It takes us beyond what we are capable of doing on our own. It teaches us a way of life that is not our dominant way of doing things.

One of my very favorite expressions of the Holy Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes. We actually have those fruits posted around the clock on the wall in Agape Hall – be sure to take a fresh look at them today as you go get coffee after worship.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Those are behaviors; those are characteristics; and those, I would suggest, can even be languages. And they may be languages that are not our dominant languages; they may be languages that we need to learn. These are gifts of the Spirit, given for us to give to others.

What does it take to make words of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, part of our vocabulary? Part of our dominant language? What about making the deeds associated with these part of our dominant ways of living our lives?

In another section of John’s gospel, Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches, and that as branches, when we bear good fruit, we are going to get pruned, so that we can bear more good fruit.

Now, it’s been my experience that getting pruned is not my favorite sort of thing. Letting go of grudges, judgment, fear, anger, loss, attachments to things, is not all that easy. But I would suggest that in order for us to make room for the Holy Spirit to come and dwell in us, we must let go of the things that don’t leave room for the fruit of the spirit. We must let go of the things that fill us up so that we cannot make space for the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, generosity, gentleness and self control that are the fruits of the Spirit. We must let go of the languages of fear and judgment and anger in order to let the Holy Spirit come in. Brian McLaren, who wrote the book We Make the Road By Walking, the book that is taking us through this year of Bible study week by week – Brian McLaren suggest we need to first let it go, then let it be – or center and calm ourselves right where we are – before we can let it come – let the Holy Spirit come and fill our hearts with peace, with love, with the fruit of the Spirit. We must let ourselves be pruned. We must let ourselves heal. Then we can let ourselves be filled.

And the thing about the Holy Spirit is that it is uncontrolled, and it is uncontrollable. It comes like the wind – unpredictable – sometimes gentle, sometimes wild. It comes like fire – sometimes a candle light, sometimes a wildfire. It has the ability to change us – if we let it. It has the ability to refine us, to renew us, to bring new life – if we are open to it. It gives us a new dominant language – a language that is not so typically heard, but a language that can be understood by most anyone when it is spoken, when it is lived out. A language of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, generosity, and self-control. A language that is worth the pruning involved in order to make space for it. A language that brings new life, both to the giver and the receiver.

The dominant language of the kingdom of God.

Thanks be to God for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, and for the grace we have been given to receive it and to live it, to share it as gifts, in word and in deed, every day of our lives.

In Remembrance of Her

2 Corinthians 5:16-6:10 

From now on, therefore,

we regard no one from a human point of view;

even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,

we know him no longer in that way.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:

everything old has passed away;

see, everything has become new!

All this is from God,

who reconciled us to himself through Christ,

and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,

not counting their trespasses against them,

and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

So we are ambassadors for Christ,

since God is making his appeal through us;

we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,

so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him,

we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.

For he says,

         “At an acceptable time I have listened to you,

                  and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way,

so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

but as servants of God we have commended ourselves

in every way: through great endurance,

in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings,

imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God;

with the weapons of righteousness

for the right hand and for the left;

in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;

as unknown, and yet are well known;

as dying, and see—we are alive;

as punished, and yet not killed;

as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;

as poor, yet making many rich;

as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Mark 14:3–9 

While Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,

as he sat at the table,

a woman came with an alabaster jar

of very costly ointment of nard,

and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.

But some were there who said to one another in anger,

“Why was the ointment wasted in this way?

For this ointment could have been sold

for more than three hundred denarii,

and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her.

But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her?

She has performed a good service for me.

For you always have the poor with you,

and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish;

but you will not always have me.

She has done what she could;

she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.

Truly I tell you,

wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world,

what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

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Jesus said, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.

Will be told in remembrance of her.

What has she done that is memorable?

And do we actually remember what she has done?

What have we learned from it? How has it changed us? How might it change us, teach us, as disciples?

We don’t even know her name. A version of this story is told in all four gospels; only one, the gospel of John, says that it was Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and also places the dinner at their home, not the home of Simon the Leper as we hear in this story.

We know that she walked right in and went straight to do what she intended to do. She didn’t seem to worry about what the others thought. The others in the room scolded her, challenging the waste of the ointment, suggesting a better use would have been to convert it to cash and to give the money to the poor. But Jesus says, leave her alone. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.

Anointed his body beforehand for burial. As described by pastor and spiritual director Elizabeth Nordquist, the woman “anointed his head, spreading the aroma and the texture of the costly nard into the hair, scalp, neck, and shoulders of Jesus – for respite of pain, for removal of tension, for blessing in the present moment.” In doing this, she becomes a prophet, foretelling the cruelty that awaits Jesus in the days to come. With respect to this story, at least, her prophecy of his death is more accurate than the prophecy Jesus makes in return, that wherever the good news is told, she will be remembered. Because how much do we really remember her? How much do we take to heart what she has done, this silent woman performing this strange and awkward act?

What is memorable about this act?

It is an extravagantly generous gift – a pure luxury.

Alyce McKenzie, a seminary professor, describes it as “an act of kindness in a context of cruelty.”

She says, “She honors Jesus with an extravagant outpouring of herself that fills a room with sweet fragrance. Her action is an oasis of honor in a desert of plotting and brutality. While Judas looked for an opportunity to betray Jesus, she made an opportunity to honor him. Despite all the hostile power arrayed against Jesus, she manages to find a way to anoint him with a soothing, fragrant ointment. She doesn't ask for fame, just for you and me to do the same.”

Elizabeth Nordquist picks up the story, saying, “To a practical mind, beauty is not useful. For the economist, beauty does not balance the numbers. For the activist, beauty does not advance the cause. For the strategist, beauty does not give the upper hand. But Jesus, without addressing her directly in this text, affirms her presence and her actions in terms of who she is, what she does, and what the collateral blessing will be.

She has done what she could. As a woman she had no seat of power conferred on her from which to make decisions, or even enter the important conversations about the Jesus Way, about the current state of politics or the economy. Therefore, she begins where she is: What do I have? What can I do? What risks am I willing to take?”

We don’t like risky investments. We want a highly likely return on our investment. She sought none.

We want to fund only worthy causes. She cared nothing about that.

We want efficient and effective use of our resources. She knew nothing about that.

She did what she could. She entered into the mystery that was happening around them, with no idea of the outcome.

So what if this is what Jesus hopes we will remember from this woman, what we will learn from this story.

She has done what she could.

She has brought kindness and beauty into the midst of cruelty.

She stepped out past her own vulnerability and powerlessness and acted boldly to proclaim the Word through no words but through a powerful deed of pure love and generosity.

She has acted in faith, without knowledge of the result.

I think this is what Paul is talking about when he says,

“as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way:

through great endurance,

in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings,

imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God;

with the weapons of righteousness

for the right hand and for the left;

in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;

as unknown, and yet are well known;

as dying, and see—we are alive;

as punished, and yet not killed;

as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;

as poor, yet making many rich;

as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

Following Christ does not get us out of afflictions, and hardships, and calamities, and all manner of trouble and even cruelty. Following Christ gives us our response – kindness, love, truthful speech, purity, knowledge, patience, holiness of spirit. Rejoicing in sorrow, making many rich although we are poor, living out our lives in Christ in the assurance that we possess everything we need, even when we have nothing.

Paul wrote so many words, encouraging disciples and churches then and now about what life in Christ is all about. This unnamed woman, with no words spoken, has given us a message Jesus has labeled as just as important – that we should remember her and what her act teaches us, whenever we seek to learn and to share and to live out the good news – that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, and as Christ’s disciples, individually and in community, we can respond to Christ’s call to carry kindness into a cruel world, to act boldly without concern about what the people around us will think, to give extravagantly and generously to others a measure of beauty that will bring light into so many lives of sorrow and trouble, to proclaim the Word by simply doing what we can.

As Paul says, “do not accept the grace of God in vain. See – now is the acceptable time! See, now is the day of salvation!

Thanks be to God. Amen.