Life in the Spirit!

Life in the Spirit
June 12, 2011
Franktown United Methodist Church

What if you threw a party and everybody came? I mean everybody. Earlier this month a teenaged girl named Thessa in Hamburg, Germany decided to have a party to celebrate her 16th birthday. So she did what many people do to announce a party these days, she put it on Facebook. Only when she did it, she forgot to check that the invitation was only for her friends - or the smaller group of her "friends" who were really her friends. (It's so confusing to know who your friends are these days.)

So her invitation to a small party became a public event. By the time she realized what she had done, 15,000 people had responded that they were coming. Thessa and her parents tried to get the word out that it was a mistake. They changed the settings on Facebook. But on the day of 1500 people showed up outside of her small house in Hamburg. They brought homemade cakes and they danced in the streets. They trampled fences and broke some glass. 100 police officers had to be called in to control the crowd. Neighbors were not happy. And Thessa and her parents were not even there. They went elsewhere to celebrate.*

But what if you threw a party and nobody showed up? What if the food was on the table, the drinks iced, the music on, the streamers up, and nobody showed? Something tells me that might be even worse.

Peter and I have been talking about the Holy Spirit for several weeks now and of course today, on Pentecost Sunday, we have to talk about the Holy Spirit. We have talked about how the Spirit inspires us to witness, how the Spirit gives us power to work in the world, how the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ. But maybe we haven't emphasized the most important thing about the Holy Spirit - the Spirit is what gets us to the party!

You might wonder what this Holy Spirit business is all about. After all, do we really need the Spirit when we've got Jesus? It's Jesus who came to liberate us from "slavery to sin and death." It's Jesus who took on the cross. It's Jesus who faced down the devil. It's Jesus who died on that cross and offered us forgiveness for sins. It's Jesus who rose again to show us the way to eternal life. What more is the Spirit going to add to that story?

The Spirit is going to put us into that story. To receive the Holy Spirit is to know that that thing that happened on Calvary? It happened to you. That reconciliation God offers to the world? It was for you. That love that runs the universe? It's here and it's yours and it is not meant to be sitting around unaccessed, unused, unappreciated, unknown. It is meant to be shouted from the rooftops and proclaimed throughout the world.

That's the point of this whole crazy Pentecost experience. You remember where we left the disciples last week. They were watching as Jesus ascended into heaven after promising them that the Holy Spirit would come upon them. Two angels show up and ask them why they are looking up in the skies when there was work to be done in the world.

So the disciples get to work and these early disciples were Methodists. Do you know how I know? They have a committee meeting to nominate a replacement for Judas and then they have gather together in one place for the Festival of Pentecost.

And the Spirit breaks out on them and there is the sound of violent, rushing wind, and there are tongues of fire and the whole place is an uproar. The disciples start speaking in other languages. People from all over the world are there and they hear the disciples praising God in their own languages. There were people there from Cappadocia and they hear the disciples speaking in Cappadocian. There were people from Egypt and they hear them speaking Egyptian. The Elamites say, "Hey, they're speaking Elamite." The Phrygians say, "Man, they are talking Phrygian!" The Romans heard Latin. The folks from Mesopotamia heard Mesopotamian. The people from Tangier heard someone say, "God will provide." It was craziness. But it was the Spirit.

It was not meant to be a private possession of the disciples. If all the Spirit was was a golden ticket for a select few to get into the kingdom, then it was not the Spirit at all. The Spirit was to be poured out onto all flesh. The Spirit was unleashed to sweep the whole of creation into the drama. The Spirit was let go to let us in on the great love affair going on in the life of the Trinity. The love of God poured out on Jesus and in Jesus didn't have to include us. God doesn't need humanity to be God. God didn't need to create us. God didn't need to reconcile us to God. God didn't need to send Jesus, but God wanted us. God wanted the glory of a creation that could learn to sing God's praise. God wanted you and God wanted you so much that God, the great "I am," went to the cross and stretched out his arms and said, "I am for you." And the Spirit...well, the Spirit...and I bet you have never heard this analogy before...the Spirit is like the invite button on Thessa from Hamburg's Facebook. The Spirit will not let this good news be a private party. What God did in Jesus Christ is meant to be a very public event.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth, who wrote in German back in the days when Germans did heavy theology instead of going to birthday parties uninvited...Karl Barth said that "the Son of God is the prototype of the sonship of believers." Jesus shows us the way and gives us the model of what it means to be children of God. "This Christ," Barth says, "the children of God have 'put on.' This child...can meet this Father, the holy God, as a child its father, nowhere else than at the place where the only-begotten Son of God bore and bore away his sins." In other words - it is at the cross where we meet God. From God's side of the equation, Jesus on the cross is the invitation being made to the whole world of forgiveness of sins and new life in the world. But if it stopped there - if the invitation were made and no one knew - if no one responded - how sad would that be? What we need from our side is a response. What need from our side is the opportunity to participate in what God is doing. "That," says Karl Barth, "is having the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit is being set together with Christ in that turn from death to life."**

So life in the Spirit doesn't just mean ecstatic experiences and speaking in tongues. Life in the Spirit means that the cross is not just a story about Jesus; it's a story about me. And it's not just a story that took place centuries ago in a long-lost culture. It's a story that takes place now in this culture.

And it is a story that is renewed in every new generation. When we put water on Tate's head this morning...and Dale's and Morgan's...when we did that we were saying that their lives are claimed. We are saying that the love of God that we saw in the cross of Jesus was meant for them. And when the confirmands answered those questions they were placing themselves in a story that may have begun a long time ago but that is never more alive than it is in this room right now. The Holy Spirit didn't swoop down for a visit one Pentecost and then leave the building. The Holy Spirit came to stay so that every new Christian can know that they have a place, a role, a connection to God. Not because he deserves it. Not because she has earned it. But because God, who has no need of us, has made a way for us and has loved us beyond measure.

One of my colleagues in ministry, Steve Rhodes, once told the story about his daughter's birthday party. When she was a young girl, probably 4 or 5, she had invited her friends over and she could hardly wait until the guests arrived. She stood at the window and put her face to the glass, expectant. When the first guest arrived she started jumping up and down. She ran out to the car and when here friend got out the two of them started jumping up and down together. They went back into the house and looked out the window. When the next guest arrived they ran outside and the three of them now started jumping up and down. And so it went until all the guests arrived.

Steve says, this must be what the kingdom of heaven is like. A place where we are expected with joy. A place where we are invited. A place where we are ushered in the door. And a place where all are welcomed in love.

This morning, in this place, we are tasting a little bit of heaven. So praise the Lord, who sends the Spirit to make us one. Thanks be to God.

*Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben, "Facebook Sweet 16 Party Goes Viral; 1500 guests show up", Yahoo News, 5 Jun 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110605/us_ac/8591449_facebook_sweet_16_party_invitation_goes_viral_1500_guests_show_up
**Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 [T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1936], p. 524.