Sermon
Pentecost Sunday 2010.
May 23
Ocean Forest

Come, Holy Spirit
Genesis11:19, John 14:17,26, Acts 2:1-21

I was at footy training the other night with the little kids (aged about 7). I was one of the parents doing some skills work with 5 of the 20+ kids at training. There was one little guy in my group who was really bugging me. He was bugging me for lots of reasons.

First, I noticed that he just wanted to do everything and be seen by all the other lads to be doing everything – he wanted to be seen to be the best. Instead of taking his turn to do things, he was dominating everything and everyone. He wasn’t backward in telling everyone how good he was either. Essentially, he was very self-focused and very unhelpful to this little community of lads.

But then he got me going. He called me a derogatory name! He called me “fatso”! I was a bit stunned. I have not been called that probably since grade 3! I have never been called that by a kid at school here or on any sporting field when umpiring, coaching or just hanging around.

Then this little guy thought it was okay to have a laugh at me (and others) when I or they fumbled or dropped the ball during the activities. I really couldn’t believe that this little kid would think this is OK.

That little guy was building a tower of self among others – a tower that did not seem to have any limit on height! He has obviously learnt that it is really all about him and that it is fine to make a name for himself at the expense of others.
He is a living example of our human will to make a name for ourselves and build towers of greatness as a monument to self. No matter how magnificent we are and how wonderfully and fearfully made we are (as the Psalmist says (Psalm 139), we are broken. We are self-orientated to the core.

I reckon this little guy is in for some very hard falls as he tries to keep building his tower of self. Instead of making a name of respect and experiencing positive affirmation from those around him, he might end up making a name of derision which leads to put downs. Then he will have to work harder to be the best and keep building that tower of self, and so it goes…….

How much do we need a super-human power to indwell us and spin our self-orientated spirit around!? That little guy needs someone to help him re-learn what it is to be in relationship to others. He needs someone with great wisdom, patience and love to help him turn away from those monument to self ways and show him that he does not need to do that to be loved or forgiven or understood.

He is not alone. Our whole community with its tower-building centre needs radical intervention to truly find community and peace and fulfillment.

Friends, this day is the day when God names the tower for what it is and knocks it down in order to make us all part of a grand temple of the Spirit of Jesus. This day and this era of Pentecostal gifts is the undoing of the age old human will to make a name for ourselves rather than let God name us.

It is the time of God’s great gift to make us into a community of resurrected self-less givers to little guys and big people who are still trying to build their tower.

The Day of Pentecost is the undoing of that moment when God acted to scatter the people of the earth and confuse the way they spoke in order to stop them building their tower to God’s heaven and “make a name for themselves”. Acts 2 is the reversing of that decision by God as told in Genesis 11. By the resurrection of Jesus and the Spirit’s power, God touches the world gathered in Jerusalem for the Harvest Thanksgiving festival in the OT worship calendar.

At this time, of all times, harvest time: when human hearts may be gathering to make a name for themselves all over again, God acts in an overflowing kind of way to pour out the gift of supernatural life to the world and give them a harvest celebration they would never forget, and one that began a new era of closeness and drive and community and life in his world.

He is still doing this – even right here. There are towers of self-centredness being challenged, chipped away at, even sometimes demolished in our community. It may have happened to you lately! This is the work of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, and this work of the Spirit is essential for us and always done for good intention – the intention of God’s love for us…

....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.
…the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father sends in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (John 14: 17, 26)

We need this teaching, reminding, abiding and seeing from our Advocate who goes into bat for us and with us in the journey of living out our faith. But because the Spirit’s work in us can be quite challenging and unsettling, we might be scared of opening ourselves up to his work. When the Holy Spirit starts to chip away at our self-made monument to ourselves and the thing starts to wobble and crumble, it can be scary. We can switch off to the Spirit’s work in us and through us.

William James, the philosopher, said, “In some people religion exists as a dull habit, in others an acute fever”. Brennan Manning, the Catholic author, suggests that “Surely Jesus did not endure the shame of the cross to hand on a dull habit.”
(The Signiture of Jesus, Brennan Manning).

The fifteenth century mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote, “There are plenty of Christians to follow the Lord halfway, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends and honours, but it touches them too closely to disown themselves”.

It is the hardest thing about being a disciple of Jesus isn’t it? Disowning the self and the drive to make a name for myself. The other stuff is easier in that we can do something and maybe even congratulate ourselves at how “Christian” we are being. But actually letting the Spirit of Jesus into the soul and welcoming his Word for us, which is always a Word that calls us away from building our own life and letting him build us in Christ’s form, is the real guts of living this life in Christ.

I have to make a choice, and so do you. Will I let God name me and his Spirit build my life or will I only follow some outward observances and serving activities and call that, “my Christian life”?

If I decided that I want the Spirit to form me and teach me and shape me so that I become more like Jesus his great love and grace, wisdom, understanding and experience his close relationship with God as my heavenly Father – my “Abba” as Jesus calls the God of all creation, then I need only ask.

That is what Jesus says to do. Ask. “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” (John 14:14).

So, what do you want? What kind of life do you want? What person do you want to be? Will you enter the second half of the life with Jesus and expose the self-centred tower to the fire of the Holy Spirit and trust that it must become less and his life in you become more present?

The Spirit is saying that there is no need to be afraid of him. His work brings the one thing only he can give – peace – peace within myself an, peace with those around me, peace with the world in which I live and work, peace with the Maker of all, the only wise God.

Will you ask the Holy Spirit to come to you anew now?

Will you pray that ancient Pentecost prayer – the Mara, na tha – “Come, Holy Spirit”.

Broken Chains

Sermon
Ascension Day/Easter 7C
Sunday May 16, 2010

Broken Chains
Acts 16:16-34

Friends, we hear of a young girl, a civil servant, some men on the take, an angry urban mob, some bigoted city counselors, Paul, Silas, Luke and others, a magistrate and a family and wonder where we ourselves might be in this account of the Spirit of the risen Christ on the move in people’s lives.

We are still in Philippi, with Paul and others as they plant the gospel in that Roman place, with great help from that new convert, Lydia.

In pondering all these people and what happens, and what Luke, the writer, is wanting Christians people of all time to receive in this eye-witness account, it seems to me that there is one common thing that holds all of the people in these events together. It is chains. All of the people of whom Luke speaks have various chains – literal and metaphorical, holding them down from the heights they could experience in God’s Spirit who is definitely on the move in their town.

That young girl is in chains – the chains of oppressive practices of the men who are using her and her special talent to rip plenty of other people off for profit.

But she is not alone. Even Paul and Silas seem to be chained in something. When Paul , Silas and the others are confronted by this girl and her special talent for seeing what many cannot see – the spiritual realm and the future (at least in part), Paul gets angry. He is “very much annoyed” because this girl keeps announcing to everyone who they are and what the Lord is doing – day after day she just keeps yelling out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." Good message, but very annoying if you are wanting to talk to people and say a little more or less than that depending on the situation….. Or, very thorny to the ego when you are the one who is supposed to be the great fount of all hope and missionary!

Paul shows he is capable of impulsive behaviour – not shopping, but exorcism! “Come out of her!” he yells to what is obviously an evil spirit, as far as Paul can see. The evil spirit comes out and that’s all we hear. One wonders how the con-men who owned this girl would have reacted to this, and where this girl would now end up without her “special power”. (We hear next how they respond initially at least).

It may be that Paul is in chains here. He is the chains of a driven life. He “on a mission from God” to tell everyone what is right! Has he forgotten about compassion and care and love? Are the chains of drivenness so tightly attached to him that he has forgotten what he is really here for and what Jesus is all about – not being right or saved but loved?

Has he got carried away with his own special power and forgotten that his every breath is a gift from the Giver of all good gifts, not a right to use as he wills; especially to have power over other people when they get under your skin?

Then we hear of those angry con-men bent on pay-back. In not time there is that angry mob spurred on by angry con-men who owned the girl. They feel they have been robbed by these “Jews”. Yes, the old chestnut of human bondage comes out to play – prejudice; specifically, anti-Semitism. We have a recent history of that. We know where it leads. We have an Australian history of this kind of deep prejudice and we see where that leads in our own country and life-time. The chains seem unbreakable and the damage unlimited and unstoppable……

And then there is this jailer. Even though is the dealing in chains, he himself is under chains of the spirit. The great bondage of fear is all over him. As he guards Paul and Silas, who are beaten up and thrown in shackles in a dark, damp cell with other chained crims, he has the worst nightmare that a prison guard could have.

The prisoners are freed of their chains and either kill him or escape. Either way, his life is over because the punishment for a Roman guard when a crim escapes is death! Abject fear abounds….

We have mentioned a few chains. Any of them lingering around you?
We have all got them. We long to be unfettered and free in our love, understanding, our job, relationships; yet we experience chains that hobble us and limit our ability to love and be loved – by others and God.

If you were standing in a familiar room, a room you love and it got dark and the darkness exposed luminescent words on the walls and the words were the things that are troubling you, limiting you, hurting you, chaining you, what would the words be….

Look around the walls….
The words are the things that get you down…………………….

The words are the things that hold you back from being who you know you really are…….

The words are the things that make you fearful or shameful……..


When that earthquake strikes and that worst fear for this particular man is released in this fear-filled man he heads to what so many of our young Australian men head for – suicide. He is on the edge of the great darkness. But his world is radically interrupted by the sound of prisoners not escaping!

“We are still here!” yells Paul. “Don’t do it!”

• Yes, “Don’t do it”, friend. Someone thinking of your well being, someone is saving you from the edge.
• Don’t listen to that voice inside your head and heart that keeps putting you down.
• Don’t keep heading toward self-put-down and shame.
• Don’t keep believing that you hopeless or of no value to anyone or not good enough in their eyes.
• Don’t believe that you are owned by anyone or that he or she has a right to own you.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. We are still here. He is still here. Chains do not have to be lived in or with. They can be broken by Him. He longs to break them because of his love for you. He has the power and authority to break them and release you.

Oh, what a relief! I don’t have to go on killing myself, shaming myself, letting others do that.

“How can I find freedom?” How can my life be salvaged? The grateful jailer asks. “How can I be saved from this fear and those words on my wall? Who will loose the chains and let me be what I know I can be?


“Turn away from the words and the walls and the going to them all the time”, says the Spirit of Jesus.

Believe in the One who speaks different words about you
Beloved, son, daughter, bride, sheep beside still water, precious one, righteous one, child of the Most High, loved, ….

Friends, let him wash your wounds and patch you up and let him set your place at his table now.

Gather with the whole family and let your joy out and enjoy the moment, enjoy your baptism and all he gives in it, for you have “become a believer in God”, unfettered and free in his love and hope.

He enters our room and says those words that begin and end Easter – “Peace be with you”.

Sunday May 11th, 2010. Mothers Day

Acts 16:11-16
“And the Lord opened Lydia’s heart”

Well, we have done it. All us blokes who have a wife who is the mother of our children have done the annual pilgrimage to the shops to find THAT Mothers Day gift. Of course it is not easy….

What NOT to Buy Your Wife or get the kids to buy Mum on Mothers’ Day?: Many a man has felt extreme frigid temperatures for a long period based on a poor present decision. As a veteran of these wars, I'm still not sure what to buy my wife, but I'll pass on what not to buy her:
1. Don't buy clothing. That involves sizes. The chances are one in seven thousand that you will get her size right, and your wife will be offended the other 6999 times. "Do I look like a size 16?" she'll say in disgust. Too small a size doesn't cut it either: "I haven't worn a size 8 in 20 years!"
2. Avoid all things useful. The new silver polish advertised to save hundreds of hours is not going to win you any brownie points.
3. Don't buy anything that involves weight loss or self-improvement. She'll perceive a six-month membership to a diet centre as a suggestion that's she's overweight.
3. Don't buy jewellery. The jewellery your wife wants, you can't afford. And the jewellery you can afford, she doesn't want.
4. Finally, don't spend too much. "How do you think we're going to afford that?" she'll ask. But don't spend too little. She won't say anything, but she'll think, "Is that all I'm worth?"
Herb Forst in Cross River, NY, Patent Trader, in Reader's Digest, p. 69
.
Today we happen to hear about a wonderful woman of God. She was not a mother though. She was single. Her name is Lydia. She is a role model of being a woman; a Christian woman, and being a disciple of Jesus.

Luke tells us that he and Paul and the others meet Lydia because of an incredible vision of a European man calling them to reach the shores of Macedonia (Europe) for the first time. They respond to the Call and make the trip up the coast and arrive in Philippi.

This is a military retirement town. There are lots of distinguished war veterans living in this lovely city, and so, the city has some prominence in the Roman Empire.

Paul and the others would always go to the local Jewish community first and proclaim the gospel there before moving on the town square or hall or houses of Gentile people.

In Philippi there does not seem to be any synagogue or Jewish community to speak of. On the Saturday (Sabbath) they go looking for one but eventually hear that a few “God Fearers” meet down by the river. There they do an amazing thing. They actually sit down and talk and share a Word with women. Paul and the others have come so very far in their view of the world!

They meet Lydia. She strikes us a quite a strong women. She would have to be. First of all she is an immigrant. She comes from Thyatira (Western Turkey) and yet she is living in another country (Macedonia). Second: she is not married. For some that would be difficult to deal with in her culture (maybe still in ours too!). Third, she is a business entrepreneur. She deals with the upper crust of this city. This would be a male domain with a strong glass ceiling.

Lydia makes that much sought after cloth that all the retired military elite like to wear to functions and parties. She is a maker of the royal colour clothing – purple.

But that is not the thing that really shows her inner strength. She is a ‘God fearer’. In a city where every sweetener to worship other gods is on offer, and where one can make up one’s own religious observance of a various gods on sale, she honours the one true God. And she does not do this alone in secret but publicly with a small group of like-minded women.

She seeks the community of faith. She goes down to the river where they meet and she speaks the psalms, prays the prayers, reads the Torah and trusts in God’s presence. It would be so much easier to just give it up and do her own thing.

What was it that excited her and made her heart so overjoyed that day down by the river when Paul and Luke and the others began to speak of this Jesus of Nazareth? Luke does not tell us. Paul would have begun where she was at.

Maybe Paul spoke of business. Maybe he spoke of being treated as 2nd class in society (he knew what that was like). Maybe he spoke of purple robes – he would have had a good story to tell about holding purple robes at an event outside the city of Jerusalem (the stoning of Stephen). Who knows?

Whatever Paul spoke of, it was not only him speaking. As usual, the Holy Spirit was present in his word and using a human vessel to open the human heart to the love of Jesus for people. And Luke wants us to get that. He says “…and the Lord opened her heart’. Paul didn’t, she didn’t, …it was the one and only Lord – the Spirit of Jesus himself opening the human mind, soul, body and heart to the amazing love, mercy, kindness, grace and will of the risen Jesus.

Maybe Lydia was overwhelmed by the new understanding that she was a daughter of God, part of his community? Maybe she had often wondered about the Jewish laws and rituals and if they really did secure God’s favour. Now she knew that they didn’t. Jesus did!

Maybe she was blown away by the fact the God had come and got her. As she heard the story of the vision that led to Paul and the others being here in the first place, and then seeing this Jewish man sitting and teaching people whom he “normally” shouldn’t just confirmed that Jesus really wanted her in his kingdom and working for his kingdom in this place – and that was just inspiring!

......she responded.

She was baptised. Her whole family was baptised – siblings, friends, slaves, kids…. Baptism was the outward seal of what had already been going on the inside for Lydia. She could pin point the day that she became a member of Jesus’ church.
She could trust him for this belonging for her life and she could be sure that he would never renege on the commitments he made to her that day – “Lydia, you are my daughter with whom I am well pleased”!

Then Lydia, the daughter of the Most High responded. She responded with generosity. She wanted to be into what Jesus was doing among people. Having been given a great gift, she wanted to give something in return.

So strong was her desire to be in the mission of Jesus with Paul and the others she now opened her home and her life to their work in the city. This was the beginning of the Philippian church and of an enduring friendship and mission support that Paul must have really enjoyed because the letter to the Philippians that he would later write is often called his ‘Letter of Joy’.

Other people would be touched by the love of Jesus here; a jailor and a young girl…. And then a house church would begin and then lots of house churches….And this Christian community would be very generous and faithful contributors to the mission of God.

You have to wonder about Lydia’s involvement in this ongoing generosity. She was a strong woman who had a soft heart for Jesus, his people and their mission. She was wealthy. Maybe it is largely because of her that lots of things happened? After all, as we know, ‘mission takes money”.

The last thing I would observe about Lydia is that she was stubborn. “She prevailed” upon them, says Luke. She would not let them go and she would not take no for an answer to her desire to be involved in something special and of huge blessing for her town.

She was confident that God wanted to use her and her community to bring his overwhelming love and grace to bear on needy people’s lives and relationships, and eventually she persuaded everybody else to believe it.

We could do not too much better than to be mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, partners and colleagues in the same vein as Lydia. She shows us a few things

• It’s the Spirit of the Lord who changes us and changes the world- and so we all depend on him to live this life
• It is God’s intention that we be enlisted in his mission movement and that this requires our open hearts and open homes and lifestyles.
• It is the pure unbounded love of Jesus that lies at the heart of church and marriage and partnership, work and friendship and life.
• God uses makers of cloth, business people, foreign people, rich people, poor people, outcast people, “in” people in his world wide mission to bring them all into his city of light where the river of life runs and gives unimaginable fulfilment, joy, peace - ongoing….

We praise the Lord for another of his “mothers” of the church and we pray that he will open our hearts to hear him and give to him and be generous with our hearts and homes for his work. Amen.

HOMILY
Easter 5C
Sunday May 2nd, 2010.

after Glenda Kowald shared about her experiences in Mongolia...

Transformation
ACTS 1:1-18 Peter Reports to the Church in Jerusalem
1The apostles and the followers in Judea heard that Gentiles had accepted God's message. 2So when Peter came to Jerusalem, some of the Jewish followers started arguing with him. They wanted Gentile followers to be circumcised, and 3they said, "You stayed in the homes of Gentiles, and you even ate with them!"

4Then Peter told them exactly what had happened:

5I was in the town of Joppa and was praying when I fell sound asleep and had a vision. I saw heaven open, and something like a huge sheet held by its four corners came down to me. 6When I looked in it, I saw animals, wild beasts, snakes, and birds. 7I heard a voice saying to me, "Peter, get up! Kill these and eat them."

8But I said, "Lord, I can't do that! I've never taken a bite of anything that is unclean and not fit to eat." [a] 9The voice from heaven spoke to me again, "When God says that something can be used for food, don't say it isn't fit to eat." 10This happened three times before it was all taken back into heaven.

11Suddenly three men from Caesarea stood in front of the house where I was staying. 12The Holy Spirit told me to go with them and not to worry. Then six of the Lord's followers went with me to the home of a man 13who told us that an angel had appeared to him. The angel had ordered him to send to Joppa for someone named Simon Peter. 14Then Peter would tell him how he and everyone in his house could be saved.

15After I started speaking, the Holy Spirit was given to them, just as the Spirit had been given to us at the beginning. 16I remembered that the Lord had said, "John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." 17God gave those Gentiles the same gift that he gave us when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So how could I have gone against God?

18When they heard Peter say this, they stopped arguing and started praising God. They said, "God has now let Gentiles turn to him, and he has given life to them!"




When I hear Glenda speak and this account of Peter being shown by God of something very challenging for him (that non-Jewish people are sought and loved by God and can be made holy and one with God too) I can only think of one word to describe these experiences: transformation.

Glenda has spoken of a transformation into seeing and understanding something more; having her ideas, her inner being shaped into another way by the experience she has had – or should we say, the experienced God was with her in and orchestrated.

Peter was transformed by his experience of the Spirit of the risen Jesus coming upon people he thought could never receive him nor should receive him. Peter had a foundational belief that he had been brought up in totally undone by God. Peter had always been taught that he was one of the chosen people and that no other people can be chosen and loved by God, the creator and redeemer of Israel.

This fundamental belief of two worlds (Jewish and Gentile) took a lot of moving even by God. It is a huge account that Luke tells. Peter needs visions, strangers, a miraculous show of the Spirit working in others right before his very eyes and through his own speaking for him to finally come to new insight and new spiritual place that “God does not show favourites but accepts people from every kind of people who honour him” (Acts 10: 34).

What about you and me? What are our fundamental beliefs that God wants to and needs to completely disassemble in order for us to become the person of vision, witness, courage and faith that Peter became when he was coerced into giving up this “them and us” view of people and God?
Glenda had to be moved along, nudged here and there, challenged, encouraged, made uncomfortable, so she them could experience the reward of joy that following God’s lead brings for her to see new things for her life, the church, her calling as a mum, teacher, parent and friend....

What about you? What about me? What about us?

Here’s some things that God seems to challenge in me...
• People I don’t like don’t deserve God’s love or mine.
• Only “good” people can be Christians. What was that about healing and forgiving
sinners?
• People who place their faith in other religious faiths or philosophies are not
loved and sought by God.... That’s the Peter belief that God undid so that many
people could find healing and peace through Peter’s life.
• God can’t do anything much with me because I am too.........
• I am not much use to God and this church because I am too............
• God’s love and truth only comes to the world from Christian people.... What was
that about the good Samaritan?
• Being Christian is about going to church services.... What was that about Jesus
being “all in all” and the Spirit of God blowing when and where he wills as he
calls, gathers and enlightens the community called the church?
• God doesn’t really mind what we do and who we are during the week as long as we
turn up to church now and again.... What was that about the way of the cross and
picking up the call of Jesus and carrying it – following him and his voice?
• I can trust what and who I like for life because God is always gracious and will
accept me.... What was that about “repent and receive the good news of forgiveness for you sin"?

Ocean Forest is God’s community and he is seeking transformation in each of us. It seems that God will go to great lengths to transform everyday people with extraordinary measures to make people bringers of good news and healing for anyone and everyone.

God might be asking us to consider how we are holding out on him and resisting his new understandings and new ministry that he dearly wants us to be part of. How could you find yourself where Glenda found herself and bring such good news to people she does not even know?

How much will it take for the Lord to convince you that he is wanting to transform all of you for your great blessing and the freeing of many people who are still strangers to the mercy of God?

Could it be that our Mongolia is Ocean Forest? Could it be that God is transforming you into a person of great impact and influence in the lives of the people who are in and around this school and community?

I don’t know what you need to let go of. I don’t know what you need to take on. I do know that God is into transformation, not just information. He is into proclaiming good news not just giving information seminars about grace.

I do know that we are not meant to be standing still in our spiritual journey. God is offering growth, deeper understanding, a spiritual direction and the great fulfilment and joy that comes from trusting him – really trusting him; Letting the safe beliefs be examined, tried and tested and then modified, removed or strengthened as he nudges us, leads us, challenges – all in love and surrounded by grace.

It is scary stuff at the start. I reckon Glenda would agree. But then it becomes a place you never want to leave.

PRAY:
Transform us, Jesus, more and more into people of joy, love and influence for your grace working through us to bring life and healing to this community in need. Amen.