When The Spirit of the Lord Comes Upon Us
Rev. John Simmons.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 18, 2006
Luke 4: 1-12; 18-19
Two weeks ago, on a Sunday night, I was at home watching a movie called “Just Like Heaven”. It wasn’t a profound movie but it was captivating and it had to do with the recovery of a young resident physician who lay in a coma and where her spirit went during at least some of the time while she was in the coma. When the movie ended I was suddenly aware I was very conscious of being touched by the spirit of God.
There were no religious themes in the movie – there was just something in it that touched me in a very strange and moving way. I felt very close to God and felt as if I needed to be open to God’s leading.
God’s leading has rarely come quickly for me so I still don’t know what this is all about but I am open to what may come.
Ten days after that experience I was meeting with my spiritual director. We were talking about directions my life might be taking. Just as we were ending and out of the blue he said, “Have you ever considered the Contemplative Life?” It was time to go so it was just the two words that I took with me.
Last Sunday morning we were sharing our spiritual practices in our class on aging. It was a slow start for some to get in touch with their spiritual practices but as we got rolling we had a list of thirty or more different spiritual practices within our group of fifteen or so. We were also aware that the sense of spirit was very palpable in the room. We could all feel it.
This week on Tuesday morning I was sitting on a rock at Anchor Bay looking out into the ocean. This was a familiar beach where, while my wife was living, our family would often visit. When we were visiting her brother and his family who has a second home in Gualala, sometimes we were just using their home for a family getaway. I suddenly became awash with memories – happy yet sad because Sue is only with me in spirit.
I then I had another flash. A lady friend I was very close to after Sue died spent many summer vacations with her family in the old fashioned motor lodge in which I was staying. Again there were happy memories I became aware of and yet sadness because Anna was only with me in spirit. She too had died some years ago.
Strangely I chose both the scripture and the sermon title before my visit with my spiritual director and most of the other experiences I have shared with you.
I’m paying close attention to this sermon to see where it takes me.
I don’t believe in the literalness of the scriptures telling about Jesus experience in the wilderness. I do believe that before Jesus began his public ministry he must have spent much time on communication with God. And I believe these experiences were the basis for the beginning of his ministry.
I also know that the second passage from Luke is from the book of Isaiah. It is the scripture Jesus used for his first sermon as recorded in Luke. After he read the words beginning with “The spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” he sat down. He began his sermon with the sentence “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”.
Now we don’t know if all of this took place as reported but we do know that Jesus moves through his ministry paying close attention to the guidance of the spirit of God as he experienced it. His was not a journey following a road map. His was a journey listening to and following the spirit.
It was and is what he calls his followers to do. It is the only entrance into the kingdom of God.
I want that to sink in. Being open to and following the spirit is the only entrance into the kingdom of God.
I decided when I was fifteen to become a minister. At eighteen I took on my first full time assignment. I was selected and trained to be one of thirty two youth workers to work for five months on “The Call to United Christian Youth Action”, a program sponsored by the National Council of Churches.
The program began with a two-week training experience for us at Camp Mack, Indiana. After two weeks of working with a variety of national staff and getting to know my fellow workers, I was off to my assignment to the three states of Northern New England. This was quite a challenge for a young man born and raised in Hollywood, California. Part of our training included a book on speaking extemporaneously published by the University of Chicago. We were also given a flip chart with illustrations upon which I had written notes that I could see but that were not visible to the congregation. These notes were to guide me through my speech.
After one night in Vermont I was taking to Windsor, Vermont for an area youth rally. My host got me to the site a little late. We arrived and immediately I was rushed to the front of the church to give my presentation. I had set my case containing my flip chart at the back of the room and I didn’t know that I was being ushered to the front to make my presentation
I didn’t even consider going back to get it. I just began speaking. I trusted that my experience at training and the close attention I had paid to what we were doing would come forth through me in my words and so it did.
As I look back upon my life I see this and other occasions that if I trust in the spirit I will get through whatever is before me. I think of those months I spent in New England traveling by bus, train, in cars with people associated with the churches and sometimes just be standing by the side of the road with my thumb out. It was an incredible experience and it was all a journey into the unknown.
Now this sermon is not about remembering, it is about being touched by the spirit of God. One of the questions, which must come up for all of us is “How do we know when we are being touched by the spirit of God?”
I wish I had an easy answer but I don’t. The answer rests somewhere within our own inner selves and how much we trust our intuitive knowledge. God is in spirit and thus comes to us in spirit. I believe that God’s spirit is always with us. I also believe that we are not always open to receiving this spirit.
Why would we resist receiving the spirit? You only have to look at the life of Jesus to come up with one answer. The spirit does not lead us in the paths we expect and sometimes it takes us on a journey that is difficult.
There are some within the Christian faith who believe that God takes care of them. I have never been able to be a part of that group. Oh sometimes I wish it were true. Sometimes I wish God would just take over and carry me on my journey, especially when it gets difficult.
There are all of those wonderful stories about God taking care of those believe in God. One them always comes to my mind is about the man who is complaining about God not taking care of him. God asks him to look at the footprints in the sand. For a portion of the journey there are two sets of footprints and then suddenly only one. God is supposed to have said, “Where there are only one set of footprints is when I was carrying you”. It is a beautiful image. I wish it were my experience.
There are others who say, “I trust in the Lord and whenever I am in need of money a check comes to me from some unexpected source”. Oh how I long for that experience sometimes at the end of the month. Sometimes I even go to the mailbox to check!
When long ago my son was just a tiny new born I felt a heavy sense of responsibility. As the weeks passed I began to wonder how the transition would come from my being responsible for my son and his becoming responsible for himself. I realize it was a gradual process that had to begin right in that moment and as he grew, each day brought more opportunities for him to make his own choices.
As he grew older there were more and more age appropriate choices. I had to remind myself that making choices is the freedom to make the wrong choice. Within limits I had to let him live with choices. Sometimes as a parent that is a very difficult thing to do. Yet how else was he going to learn?
I spent many years working with young adults. Many of them had unpleasant experiences with their childhoods. I frequently got to meet many of their parents and discovered they were for the most part for caring and well-intentioned people. I also observed that many of their parenting styles had led them into making rules to regulate the lives of their children.
I realized it was often these rules that got into the way of their relationship with their children. It wasn’t that they were bad rules; it was that they were rules instead of interaction. The rules got in the way of the feeling of connection between parent and child. The children felt distanced from their parents by the parent’s reliance upon the rules.
It is interesting to me that that part of the church that depends so significantly upon the rules of God to guide them have the most difficulty with interacting with people who are different. If you don’t live by their rules, they generally want little to do with you. Judgment is often a more significant part of their life than understanding.
Jesus only speaks of two basic rule and they are at the heart of both Christianity and Judaism, “Love the Lord your God with all your strength, heart and mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. It is not a lot of guidance for living a life in the complexity of today’s world.
Do you remember that as Jesus was coming to the end of his ministry he was reported as saying words to the effect that he would leave comforter that we have come to call the Holy Spirit? He didn’t leave us with a list of rules. He left us with a connection.
My daughter and I discussed her curfew as she was growing up. We had more interaction over that one issue than any other I can remember. I carefully explained to her that most of the accidents involving teenager occurred in the early morning hours. After four years of this seemingly endless discussion when she was seventeen, I finally said, “Come home when ever you want to.” Only once after that did she ever come in later than her curfew.
I don’t know what it means when I feel touched by the spirit. I do know that it gets my attention and causes me to wonder about my own life and the choices I’m making.
I am a spiritual director. Every month I meet with a small group of spiritual directors for what we call “peer supervision”. Each month one of us recounts in written form an interaction we have had with someone who comes to us for spiritual direction. We generally chose an interaction in which our own behavior troubles us.
One of the things we talk about the most is about when our interactions may get in the way of our clients own spiritual journey. We are not there to guide them. We are there to accompany them.
When Jesus announces in the Luke scripture that he is the one who is the Lord’s anointed, he then went on to discuss how the people had neglected God’s call to love their neighbors as themselves. They were reported so infuriated that they wanted to throw him over the cliff. It wasn’t the sense of direction they wanted. I think that what they wanted for him to lay out their journey in the way they believed they should follow. He knew that they wanted him to comfort, heal them and take care of them. Instead he challenged them.
While I was writing this sermon it was got hot, so I turned on the air conditioner. My cat does not like the air conditioner. A couple of days ago his cat door got stuck and for a couple of days he couldn’t go out through it. I have fixed it and it works just fine. I have told Joshua (my cat) that it is fixed. I even went to the extreme of getting down on my hands and knees and showing him the door worked from the inside out. He continues to meow for me to get up and open my door so that he can get out. I keep hoping his is going to get my message and try his door to discover he does have free access. I wish I could report a happy ending. He continues to wait and I continue to wait. It’s not a very conclusive ending to this sermon but that what Christianity is all about, trusting the access God has given us with our spirit and God’s spirit.
I wonder what door is ahead of me to open and discover another aspect of my journey in life. I wonder if I will eventually have either enough trust or need to try it. I have to wait and see.
Our spirit and God’s spirit are always waiting to connect. We have to make the choice. We have to discover where our journey leads us. God will not carry us down the path but God’s spirit is always available to be with us and comfort us.
My wife didn’t discover about the journey of her life until she was about to die. But she did realize it and she looked at me and said, “I know it’s a journey, will you go with me?” All I could say was, “I will go with you as far as I can”. And it was enough.
P.S. It is some kind of sign – just as I finished writing this sermon, Joshua went out his door. May you and I be able to do the same with our own doors to the inner and outer worlds of our lives.