2023-05-30
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
“Life in the Spirit” Rev. Judith Bagley-Bonner, May 17, 2020
Galatians 5: 22-23
And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
John 14:15-17
[Jesus said:] "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask God, who will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it. You know it, because it abides with you, and will be in you.
Acts 2: Adapted
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. Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "[People] of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young ones shall see visions, and your old ones shall dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
Today, in addition to being the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and the day of the Blossom Time Parade, is Pentecost! The day we commemorate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the first believers, the birthday of the Church! It’s a big deal in each year’s swing through the lectionary, and deserves these special, lovely banners and paraments. I’m only sorry that the Blossom run meant we couldn’t gather physically for Pentecost, because it was when those first believers were gathered in tight-knit community that the Holy Spirit came, and this is a point that should not be lost on us. The Holy Spirit, it would seem, is most potently manifest in community! It is when we gather together as the many parts of the body that the Spirit can most fully and powerfully animate us as it did with those first believers forty days after Jesus’ resurrection. This is part of why “Jesus and me” individual spirituality doesn’t work. We need both the blessings and the challenges of working out our faith in community in order to be really alive in the Spirit.
But that said, I also want to say that’s not the only time the Spirit is real. The text from John which we also heard this morning suggests that the Spirit wants to be a part of each of our individual lives as well! We are promised an advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will live within us and guides us as we navigate the challenges and deal with the details of our daily round. Community is important, but it’s also not enough, for example, to just attend church each Sunday and think we’re living a spiritual life. We need to be alive with the Holy Spirit 24/7. The question of course is how, and what do I mean by that?
I am really talking, in a word, about mysticism, which, despite its “woo-woo” connotations is loosely defined as “the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience, such as intuition or insight or prayer.” That first Pentecost was a mystical experience! Tongues of flame Prophesy and visions! The Spirit was mystically present to them, but more to the point, I believe wants to be mystically present in all our lives as well. Maybe not in tongues, flames and visions, but in very real ways in any case. You see, mysticism comes in all shapes and sizes, and is not nearly as other-worldly as it sounds. You have had a mystical experience any time you have a strong sense of making the connection with God. It might be when the choir is singing, as I believe music carries the spirit in an almost unmediated, direct kind of way. It might be in nature when you are overcome with gratitude for a particularly lovely scene. It might be in reading scripture or other spiritual books, or in the midst of a conversation with a friend when you are really connecting in a special way. And it often occurs quietly and in the midst of the common. It’s any time you have a sense of awe or of God’s presence. In a way, you could say we are all mystics because we say prayers, even as simple as the Lord’s prayer, so we must, at some level, believe God is present and hearing our prayers! But I want to suggest on this day of Pentecost that there is so much more available to us! As people who have an inner hunger for something more, who have what CS Lewis defined as a God-shaped hole within us, we hunger, don’t we for a deeper connection, a stronger experience of the Spirit? Augustine put it this way, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
During the pandemic, I discovered a quaker writer from the early 1900’s, Thomas R. Kelley, and his rich and nourishing little book “A Testament of Devotion.” This small work became my curriculum for the shut-down days of the Pandemic, my bread and butter, and has shaped and directed my thoughts in powerful ways since then as well. Kelly was a mystic in that he sought constant awareness of God’s presence underneath everything he did in every moment of his common, daily life. He said, “deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Centre, a speaking voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto itself.”
Well, today’s scripture agrees. In it, Jesus offers us the same invitation. It is part of what is called Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. Kristin preached on the text two weeks ago, if it sounded familiar. And as seminarian, I’m sure she did a beautiful job exegeting (that’s the ten dollar word for digging out the meaning) exegeting the text. So I won’t belabor it, but just wanted to say that this scene occurred right before Jesus goes up to Jerusalem where he rightly supposes he will be killed. He is trying to prepare his disciples for ongoing life without his physical presence. He says to them, “I will ask God, who will give you another Advocate, (a helper!) to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it. But you know it, because it abides with you, and will be in you.” In other words, “the world won’t buy this because it cannot be proven, or verified by the senses, but you will know this Spirit because it will live in you!” The word abide is the perfect word here because it evokes ongoing, daily relationship. To remain. Continue. Stay put. The Spirit wants to find a dwelling place within each of us. And then we are to live differently, to lead a Spirit-led life, as opposed to a self-lead life. That’s not to say that each of our unique selves isn’t part of it. God gave us each our unique personality, after all, and I don’t believe God wants us to sublimate it, but the Spirit does want to work in partnership with us, leading, guiding our decisions, nudging us, teaching us, working with us such that our lives bloom with the fruit of the Spirit as listed in the Galatians text: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Kelly says, “Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living, which we know we are passing by. We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence. A life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that center! If only we could find the silence which is the source of sound! “ Kelly then goes on to explain the way to live from that center day by day, to abide in the Spirit and have the Spirit abide in us. He says, like other comtemplatives, that it is kind of life operating in stereo. You lead your life, manage your affairs, deal with circumstances as you always do, but you learn to listen for another voice, sense an unseen presence, all the while. He says you live life with “an attentiveness to the root of all living.” Like Jesus did. Jesus was constantly rooted in the love of his source. If he started to feel disconnected, he pulled away and went up the mountain to pray and reconnect. He had, in other words, a robust, daily prayer life and nothing got in the way of that.
Do we? Because it seems to me if we are to be mystics, those who have personal connection with and experience of God, that requires some kind of habitual, daily spiritual practice that puts us in touch with our divine center. It might be traditional prayer or meditation or yoga or whatever connects us through that divine isthmus to the mainland of eternal love. If you’re blessed enough to be in 12 step recovery, I’m talking about the 11th step here. “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for God’s will for us and a desire to carry that out.” Well, twelve steps or otherwise, this conscious connection has to be done daily because it doesn’t come naturally to most of us to live connected to the source.
To live in that stereo mode. Kelly says that there is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we can be living our daily round, thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs, but deep within, behind the scenes at a profounder level we may also, at the same time, be in prayer, allowing for a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.
I have had times in my life when I operated like this. When I was a very young minister, right out of seminary, I remember greeting people at the church door after the service, and as the line would pass through, I would talk with each person, sharing brief greetings and a couple of sentences about whatever was going on in their lives. But at the same time, I had an odd, but deeply satisfying sense that we were communicating on another level as well. Up here we shook hands and chatted normally. But I felt like there was another level, kind of running between our feet, underground, where the love of God was moving between us. I could sense that there was something more happening. It still happens to me occasionally, especially when I am doing the pastoral work of deeply listening to somebody, having set aside my sense of self to attend deeply to them. I sometimes feel a loving, inner hum that connects the two of us and both of us in God. I also sense it when I remember a very simple practice which is to pray for the highest good of those around me at any given moment, maybe walking down the street or on a train or in a meeting. Just to quietly pray for the person next to me.
I share all this not to toot my own spiritual horn, but to say that I think we can all learn to listen, and to sense these stirrings however they come to each of us. It is, indeed, kind of like operating in stereo, having the main part of yourself living your life, but a little part of you consciously connected to God. Maybe its like a beautiful, colorful kite, dipping and dancing and moving across the sky because all the while that fine but strong string is anchoring it to the flier’s hands. Kelly says that yielding to these persuasions, yielding to the guiding jerk and pull of the kite-flier, gladly committing ourselves, body and soul, to the light within, is the beginning of true life. He says, “walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends, but behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer, and keep it up throughout your day.” He goes on to warn that we all become disconnected from it regularly, but the trick is, when you notice you have forgotten that deeper, second level, just to quietly, without judgement return. He says, begin again exactly where you are. Don’t try to pretty yourself up. Just start where you are. Indeed God welcomes you back not with recrimination but with the joyful love of a parent whose toddler has just run back to Mama for a warm hug.
This idea of returning after a period of getting lost makes me think of one of my favorite poems by Denise Leverton, entitled, appropriately, “The Mystery.”
“Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells…
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.”
How about you, are you a kite that has become severed from its guiding string, and are you tired of being pulled violently by every cross-wind? Are you a person who has forgotten that you have a divine center, and has lost that isthmus of connection to eternal love? Have the clamoring noises of your life become so overwhelming that you have forgotten to listen for the still, small voice?
The great loving mystery waits for you. Start anytime. And if you have felt a nudge through this sermon, have sensed a hunger for more, I am going to suggest that you go to your favorite bookseller and order the small volume, Kelly’s Testament of Devotion which affirms again and again, in Kelly’s words, that
Life is meant to be lived from a DivineCenter and that there is a Divine Abyss within us all, a holy abiding Center, who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy Whisper at times. At times we have followed the Whisper and amazing equilibrium of life, amazing effectiveness of living has set it. The problem is that we have not counted this Holy Thing within us to be the most precious thing in all the world.. We have not been willing to surrender anything in order to attend to it. We must learn to center down and live from that holy Silence which is dearer than life, and take our life’s content into the silent places of the heart, with complete openness, ready to do or to let go, according to God’s leading.”
May this Pentecost light a fire anew in us. May it draw us back to the warmth of the divine, abiding Spirit within us all. Amen.