Fifth Sunday After Pentecost Year C 2010

Led by the Spirit

05 Pentecost C 10

June 27, 2010

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Luke 9:51-62


Let's practice.

First came Elijah, then came who? Elisha. The two names sound very much alike and we can get them confused easily. First came Elijah, then came Elisha. Let me hear you say it, church. Hebrew names are usually contractions of sentences. Elijah means "God is Yahweh," and Elisha means "God is salvation." First came Elijah. Then came Elisha.

Elisha was Elijah's single-minded and determined follower. He kept his eyes on the prize, as it were, and you heard it in the passage this morning: the prize was the Holy Spirit.

Keeping one's eyes on the prize is what all these passages are about, my friends.

The psalmist is distracted by the trouble he's in. It's all he can think about. His mind is occupied with it. You ever get that way? Happens to me all the time. I got up yesterday morning and I prayed for a quiet mind, and you know a half an hour later, my mind was like the New York Stock Exchange again. Just seems to happen.

So I had to get my mind on the kingdom again, you know. I had to meditate on the power of God again you know. If you have this problem, well, this psalm is your solution. Write this baby down. Psalm 77. The psalmist stops thinking about his trouble and what he's going to do about it, and he gets his eyes back on the prize. He talks about the unseen hand moving in the cosmic waters of chaos. He's thinking about that breath or wind or spirit that came from God and pushed back the cosmic waters to liberate the creation hidden underneath it.

There are all kinds of meaningful and important things, good, good things that can pull me right off track, make me forget all about the prize, the prize of the freedom of the Holy Spirit. Family, business, health and happiness. I can get preoccupied with these perfectly good and worthy things and the prize slips out of sight while I'm not looking and all of a sudden, I'm rushing here and I'm rushing there, but nothing really quite seems to work.

We live in a world of specialists, all of whom have expertise in this or that very difficult field. It's good that we have all these things. And there might be some in the church who think that being Christian is about becoming an expert in a whole bunch of special techniques. You know, how to have a Christian marriage for example. Or how to raise Christian children. Or what the right thing is to say in difficult situations.

Well, I understand that technical knowledge, being able to deal with some complex problem with good tools, is a great thing. But I've never been able to understand how faith has anything to do with techniques.

Jesus said, and I think it might be one of my favorite quotes: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be yours as well." We heard it yesterday at Elaine's funeral, and it appears it was one of her favorite passages as well. For me it means seeking the Holy Spirit, and I think that's what it meant to Jesus as well.

The prize of Christian life is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the salvation of God that has been given to us in Jesus Christ.

I've been reading Philip Gulley, and I'm hearing a lot of people are reading him. The Men of our Region brought him for one of their retreats. Gulley seems to want to let go of the claim that Jesus was divine, and for this he has gotten a lot of grief, even in the relatively liberal context of the Quaker community. Well, I think I know where he's going with his ideas, and I think maybe someone should suggest he come on over with the Disciples. As long as Jesus is the Christ, son of the living God, savior of the world, it doesn't matter to us if you have trouble believing he's divine.

I agree with Gulley that for many of us, making Jesus divine puts Jesus out of our reach, just like making a person a saint, in the more conventional sense of the word, makes them into something none of could attain or might even want to attain. But a saint is nothing more or less than one who has been sanctified, or made holy. A person who has been made holy is a person who has come to share in divinity.

I think the problem Gulley has is that when we worship Jesus we often stop following him. When we put Jesus on the unattainable pedestal, we cease to believe we might become as he is.

To follow Jesus is to open oneself to be filled with God's Holy Spirit, just as Jesus was himself. It is to be uncovered, revealed, released, liberated. It isn't to put on a first century robe and sandals and grow a beard. It isn't to know every law that is written in the bible (though I'm not sure there are many rank-and-file Christians who are in any danger of knowing all the laws of the Old Testament... anyone want to stand up right now and recite the ten commandments?). It isn't to have all the right techniques for living a happy life. It isn't to be able to cope with the one or two things we find difficult to explain.

To follow Jesus is to open oneself to the freedom of the Holy Spirit. We want to be God's children, we want to live in the light, we want to be fountains of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and faithfulness and generosity. But we aren't. That's our problem. And Jesus is telling us this morning that the problem is our focus. We are distracted by perfectly good and valuable and important things. But, like the psalmist, like Elisha, we need to get our eyes back on the prize. We need to get back to chasing that Holy Spirit.

You know I've read a number of sermons on this passage of Galatians that take that list of the seven fruits and talk about what each one means. It amazes me how quickly we fall into making Christian life into adherence to rules and laws. It's particularly amazing because Paul's whole point in Galatians is that rules and laws are of no use now that Christ has come.

The seven fruits of the Spirit are not a new list of commandments. It would be strange if they were, since in this same letter, Paul is certainly being neither patient or kind with the Galatians. The seven fruits are, well, fruits. They grow naturally out of a person that has received the Spirit. There's no list of commandments involved, no technique, no moral discernment.

What there is, is focus, commitment, determination. Making the reception of God's Spirit the absolute top priority. There are a whole list of spiritual practices that help us to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and to recognize the Spirit when we see her. The rest is up to God, who is our liberator.

I believe that freedom is salvation, and salvation is freedom. The freedom to be the spectacularly beautiful divine creation God intends you to be. Just as this glorious world was hidden in the dark cosmic waters, so glorious people are hidden inside each one of us. As that glorious person you have within you pops into view, Jesus himself crosses back from death into life. And when a bunch of these glorious people are drawn together around this table, the kingdom of God is here, and it is the day of salvation.

Amen.