THE CHURCH IN THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT
TEXTS: ACTS 17: 22-31; JOHN 14: 15-21
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CHARLESTON
SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
In our Acts text, Paul takes the gospel to Athens, Greece, the center of intellectual inquiry and a pantheon of idols and deities. Paul begins by reasoning from the natural, observable world toward faith in God. But that can only go so far. Revelation takes us where observation alone can’t go. He proclaims to them the resurrection of Jesus Christ, something beyond the natural, the final assurance that this God of resurrection life is, indeed, the Lord of heaven and earth.
The fourteenth chapter of John’s
gospel is part of what is known as the farewell discourse, where Jesus prepares
his disciples for his death, resurrection, and departure. In our particular verses, he assures them
that even though he will leave them, the Father will send the Holy Spirit as
Jesus continuing presence among them.
The Holy Spirit will guide them and future disciples as they seek to be
faithful to the gospel.
Let’s read our scripture lessons and
listen for God’s living Word to speak to us.
Acts 17: 22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
John 14: 15-21
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 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.
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Let us pray.
May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our
Redeemer. Amen.
How
do we Christians bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ with integrity in a pluralistic society?
Better yet, is it our task, in today’s world in the United States, to share the
gospel with people of other customs, beliefs, and religions?
Look
around you. Right here in Charleston, WV, we’re becoming less like the 1950s
world of Ozzie and Harriet and more like the 50s world in which Paul preached
in Athens, Greece. In fact, even Athens, WV, (down near Princeton and
Bluefield) is becoming a little more like Athens, Greece. We live in a diverse
society, whether it’s a great metropolitan area or small-town America.
So,
is Paul’s appeal to the philosophers gathered on the Areopagus a relevant text
for us to consider as 21st Century Presbyterian Christians? After
all, we’re a fairly enlightened people, aren’t we? We’re tolerant of people who
are different than we. How, then, does Paul’s effort to present Jesus Christ to
those people whom he himself says, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious
you are in every way,” square with accepting those who are different? How does
it speak to you and me here at First Presbyterian Church?
Paul
wasn’t being sarcastic about their religiosity. It was a sincere compliment to
a people who were sincere seekers after God. There were altars and idols
everywhere. They were an extremely religious people who bent over backwards not
to offend any deity. They even had an
altar with the inscription: “To an unknown god.” Paul saw it and said, “That’s
what I want to talk to you about. What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” He respected
the fact that they were in search of knowing God. Paul didn’t feel the need to
belittle them. They had a special place in his heart. He wanted them to
understand that the One, the God,
whom they so desperately sought to know, wanted to be known by them. The fact that they had such
religious yearnings, that they were seekers and believers in something, some Transcendent Being beyond themselves,
was an indication that God was actively revealing himself to them as they could
best comprehend and understand. Paul respected that, and therefore, respected
them. It was their sincere “searching” and “groping” after the Truth that
compelled Paul to share with them the God who has made himself known in Jesus
Christ. He didn’t see them as godless
people, but quite to the contrary, as a people hungry for God.
I
have friends of other faiths that I respect very much. While in Huntsville, I served on the board of the Interfaith
Mission Service, an organization dedicated to promoting better understanding
and tolerance between the adherents of the various faiths in the community and
bringing them together to serve the needs of the community. I also spent the
last three years studying and traveling with a group of clergy, which included
a rabbi. Since our area of study was preaching and worship, we worshiped
together, including worship in the Jewish temple.
On our trip to the Middle East last
year, we dialogued with Christians, Jews, and Muslims about our faiths’ roles
in promoting peace, examining how the interpretation of our respective
scriptures have hindered peace
and how re-interpretations might lead to peace, listening to each others’
stories and struggles and responding with compassion and advocacy. It’s through
getting to know each other as people, as God’s children, that we learn to have
a deeper respect for one another’s beliefs and traditions. I respect their
faith and their commitments to it, as they do mine. I believe that they know
God and serve the same God that I serve. I certainly don’t believe that my
relationship with God is more profound than theirs.
What
I do believe is that there is not a more profound revelation of God in history
than that of Jesus Christ. I, therefore, am compelled to share the gospel with
whoever I meet, no matter what their religious faith, because I believe that
God wants everyone to have the opportunity to know him through the most
intimate, personal encounter one can have with God—that’s the incarnation of
God in Jesus Christ, the one in whom God was pleased to fully dwell.
You’ve
heard the comment, and perhaps you’ve even made
it, that “We’re all headed to the same place. When you come right down to it,
all religions are saying the same thing.” If that’s true, then there’s no need
to choose (and maybe that’s why some people have not chosen to embrace a
particular religious faith).
But people who think that all
religions are the same don’t know much about religion. If you look closely at
the variety of religions, you find that they’re not all saying the same thing. It’s true that most religions do
share some common truths, but all religions aren’t in harmony, singing the same
song. To believe so is an offense to all
religions, including our own. Saying that any religion is as good as any other
implies that no religion makes any difference one way or the other.
It’s a mistake for us, as Christians,
to think that any religion is as true as any other, and miss the unique, ultimate
revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
Paul
believed, and so do I, that the event of Jesus Christ—his life, death, and
resurrection—was a unique and intentional revelation of God’s character and
God’s presence in history. It didn’t
just happen for the sake of recording an unusual event, but was an act of God
that brings salvation right now to
all who believe, trust, and follow Christ. Christ makes a difference in history
and in our personal lives. Why shouldn’t
we share this great news, if we truly care about other people and the
difference knowing God will make in their lives and the world we live in, if we
truly believe that knowing God in Christ makes a difference? In a
society such as ours, which in many ways is not so different from the Athens of
Paul’s time—one searching after the truth, searching after God—we should not
hesitate to share Christ with people of another faith, as long as we do so with
respect for their present relationship with God. Ours is not to deny what God has given them, but to share what God has given us, and offers
them, in Christ.
A
missionary to Asia came back to the United States and reported that he saw
Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims living grace-filled lives because of their
fellowship with God. He was surprised when some Christians were upset with what
he said. They wanted to believe that only those with the name of Christian have
any truth, and that God has left all others helpless, hopeless, and doomed.
The missionary wrote: “This is not Christian. It will not do to have a
faith that can be undermined by God’s saving one’s neighbor, or to be afraid
lest other people turn out to be closer to God than we have been led to
suppose.” And I might add, “afraid that their walk might be closer to God than
ours as Christians. What a frightening thought, but that’s what the rest of
this sermon is going to address.
What
about your walk with God in Christ
Jesus? That’s what the Christian faith is all about. We know the essence of who
God is, God’s character, through God’s self-revelation in the life and
character of Jesus Christ. He is the
source of our believing and our knowing God.
Jesus
spent a lot of time preparing his disciples for his death. He knew that his
physical departure from this world would be the hardest thing for his disciples
to endure, because he was the glue that held them together as God’s new
covenant people. How would they remain faithful after his death? Yes, he was
going to be resurrected, but he was also going to ascend to be with the Father in heaven. So, how
would they function, how would they hold together, what would give them the
strength to go on and build the Church of Jesus
Christ without him being there to guide them?
The
answer to that question is in our lesson from the Gospel of John.
After saying to them, “If you love me,
you will keep my commandments,” Jesus assures his disciples that his presence
will be there to give them the strength to do so. “…I will ask the Father, and
he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth….I will not leave
you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer
see me, but you will see me….On that day you will know that I am in my Father,
and you in me, and I in you….I will love [you] and reveal myself to [you].”
The
Holy Spirit is the gift of Jesus’ continuing presence among us to empower us to
be faithful. The Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts and teaches us about Jesus as
it bears witness to his character as we read the scriptures. The Holy Spirit is
our guide as we seek to live faithfully, keeping the commandments of the One
who loves us and whom we love. Jesus is in the Father, and we are in Jesus, and
Jesus is in us through the Holy Spirit.
We
are Christians. We are members of the Christian religion, but being Christian
is not enough. We must be the Church
in the power of the Spirit. That’s
what sets us apart. We’ve seen God in Jesus Christ and we have given our lives
to him, and now he lives in us—God is incarnate in us—when we live in the power
of the Spirit.
Living
in the power of the Spirit makes a difference in our lives, a difference that people can see. It
determines what we believe to be important—it determines our values. We see the
world differently because we’re looking at the world through the eyes of Jesus.
As we see the world differently and live our lives differently from the rest of
the world, we give the world a taste of God’s
new world, the Kingdom.
If
we’re not the church in the power of
the Spirit, then we’re just another religion, and you might as well belong to
another religion as you had to Christianity. That’s no putdown of those other
religions. They simply don’t believe, or understand, that Jesus is the Messiah,
that he has the preeminent role in the salvation of humanity.
The
fact is that, among Christians who
live in the power of the Spirit, we have seen God in the face of Jesus, and his
Spirit lives in our hearts. That is
what Jesus promised his disciples. But if we don’t live so that others see
Christ incarnate in our lives—how we
live and for whom we live—we can talk
about Jesus till we turn blue in the face, but we’re not being a witness to the
unique thing God has done through Jesus the Christ. What a Filipino theologian
says is true, “The lack of a caring community that incarnates the Word makes us
more and more incapable of being heard” (Melba Maggay). We don’t have to sell our faith to others; we simply have a
message to tell and a Lord to follow.
I’m
so thankful to Luke for sharing with us Paul’s message to the Athenian
philosophers. You know why? Because, if you read on beyond our lesson in Acts,
you’ll discover that the immediate response to Paul’s message wasn’t so great. They all were right with Paul until he
explained Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Then
most of them scoffed and made fun of him. Some said, “If you’re back in town
later, we’ll listen some more.” And a few believed and were baptized into new
life in Christ—Only a few believed.
When
you read Luke’s account of Peter’s
Pentecost sermon in Acts, and how 3,000 people responded to the gospel, and
then in response to his second sermon 5,000 people accepted Christ, it can be
kind of discouraging when we get a rather indifferent response to our witness.
When
you compare sermons, in my opinion, Paul’s was a really better, more compelling
sermon than Peter’s. But Peter got an astonishing response,
and Paul got only a few. According to
Jesus’ parable of the sower, we’re not responsible for the harvest, but only
for sowing the seed. The Holy Spirit will do what we can’t do in the lives of
people, and that is to give them a new heart.
Yet,
God doesn’t want us to be passive and apathetic about the gospel.
The best news in the world has been
entrusted to those of us who have chosen to follow the call of Christ. So, in
such a diverse world, a world of so many religions and traditions, what should
we do as faithful Christians?
We
should treat others with the respect they deserve as God’s children, tell them
the story of God’s love in Jesus, live the gospel, and trust God for the rest. That’s being the Church in the power of
the Spirit.