The Spirit Comes

Numbers 11:24-29; Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

In every one of the scripture stories we hear today the Holy Spirit is brought or sent by God into a situation of stress or uncertainty.

Moses has finally got the people of Israel organized enough in the wilderness that they can start to make progress toward the land of promise and abundance God’s prepared for them. And immediately the whole thing dissolves again into complaints about the food and murmurs about returning to Egypt. Moses is too alone with all the responsibilities and leadership he didn’t volunteer for, and he storms off to hand in his resignation to God.

“Why is this my problem?!” he demands. “I quit. Kill me now.”

Maybe you’ve felt something like that in the past month or two?

The arrangement of seventy elders to get a share of the Spirit is God’s response to Moses’ angry exhaustion and overwork, and the stress of the people on the hard wilderness road.

The disciples praying together in Jerusalem, on the other hand, may be calmer than Moses – they’re all praying together, supporting one another – waiting as Jesus told them for the Spirit which will make them witnesses to the world of all God’s work.

Calm or not, though, they are feeling all the uncertainty of waiting for something that will determine the course of their lives; something entirely out of their control. They’re separated from the other devout Jews in Jerusalem, they don’t know exactly what to expect; only that God will do something, some time, which will change their world and life. Again.

Maybe that uncertainty sounds familiar to some of us, too.

And John tells a story of disciples awash in uncertainty, fear, and distress.  They’ve locked themselves in because the Temple leaders are probably out to get them, to sweep up and silence any friends of that rabble rouser Jesus the Romans just killed.

Plus, nobody knows what has happened to Jesus, either. He’s been killed and buried, but his body is now gone from the grave and maybe he’s alive, but that’s impossible, but….who even knows?

Even if there’s good to come, right now nothing is right with the world, everything we used to trust is broken, and just stepping outside the door could risk our lives.
The times and situation are quite different, of course, but some of us have felt those things recently, I know.

And into every one of those situations today comes the Spirit of God. The Spirit comes to unblock our human limits, yank us unstuck, and remove all the obstacles that keep us from sharing the abundance of life which God has planned for the whole world.

I don’t think stress and uncertainty are actually necessary conditions for experiencing the gift of God’s spirit. Inspiration – being filled with the spirit of God that gives life and purpose and connection – can happen at any time.

The Spirit of God may light us up with joy to share when we’re enjoying the company of friends or family; or when we’re praying in trust and hope.

God may empower us to lead, help, or care for others when we are perfectly content, or enjoying our work.

Jesus might breathe us full of trust and confidence in God and tell us to share it when we’re feeling pretty settled and comfortable with the world as we know it.

All of that happens, thanks be to God.

And whether God’s Spirit pours onto God’s people in the midst of uncertainty, stress and fear, or amid hope and contentment, every time the Holy Spirt kindles or pours into or breathes into us, it’s to unblock our limits, release our isolation, and move forward God’s work in the world and in our lives. 

Limits are pretty familiar right now. We’re overstrained, many of us, just trying to be our own support systems: to be the schools and barbers and routine physical care usually provided by others. We’re trying to be our own communities, distant from the friends or neighbors who keep us connected and sane.

Those may not seem like limits on proclaiming the gospel or limits on our faith and trust in God, like early disciples in today’s stories.  But the limits you and I face – all our human limits – are equally targets for the Holy Spirt however and whenever they disconnect us from the work of God in our own lives or the world. The Holy Spirit comes to break free any limit that keeps us from trusting or sharing God’s love, whether that’s “Zoom fatigue” or isolation; fear or physical fragility; exhaustion or misunderstanding – or things we just don’t know how to do.

The Holy Spirit can and does come to release anything that keeps you or me from belonging to God with a joyful heart and soul; any thing that keeps us from experiencing and participating in God’s overwhelming drive to heal the world. The Spirit comes to free us from the grip of evil, hatred, indifference, or despair, and connect us all in the love and trust and generous care that is the peace of God as Jesus brings it.

Sometimes, we see or feel those limits clearly. As the news fills with division and injustice and racism and economic peril, we may feel how big the problems are, and how small we are when we want to help move the world toward humanity, compassion, freedom and justice. We may feel the pain of not knowing how to help as people around us die and grieve; grow hungrier or sicker or more lonely. Sometimes we may feel the despair of being not-enough at home or work: not being able to meet the responsibilities we didn’t volunteer for but the world needs anyway; not being able to love those close to us as generously as God loves.

So sometimes the Holy Spirit comes to sweep us into the tide of God’s miracles and love that heal and save others and change the world, like those disciples lit on fire and speaking words they didn’t know in the streets of Jerusalem. The Spirit may come suddenly and clearly, like wind and fire; or slowly and subtly, with small shifts in our days and years.

Other times we don’t know why or how we feel alone or exhausted, anxious or fearful. And God coaxes or orders us, like Moses, to let the Holy Spirit flow through us, touching other people with insight and power, so that God’s tide of love can carry us into the promised healing and abundance and trust that God has made ready for you and me.

Sometimes the Spirit uses us to heal the world and comes to heal ourselves all at once, like Jesus passing through the locked doors of the house in Jerusalem, bringing peace and life and trust to heal his friends’ broken, fearful hearts and breathe into them the strength and Spirit to teach and heal others, empowering them to release limits for others.

In every case – every time – when the Spirit comes to release our limits, the Spirit also comes to assure us in heart and body and soul that we are not alone.

Not alone with the burden of leadership or citizenship or discipleship; not alone with the hunger in our souls or the losses we carry. Not alone with our joy and love for God’s world, not alone with the hope kindled deep in our souls.

The Spirit comes to release our limits so that we know, beyond doubt, that God is with us, seen or unseen: always closer and greater than we can imagine; always connecting us with all God’s people, however far away; always breaking us free to heal and love and rejoice.

The House That God Builds

1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

I remember spending some time as a child trying to imagine what God’s house could look like – a house that contained within it a whole bunch of other houses; “many mansions” in the good old “King James” text of this gospel.

Would the mansions fit one inside the other, like Russian nesting dolls?

Would you walk along a hall and open a door into what seemed to be one room, and find a whole other house inside it?  Are the houses alike, or all different in size and style and shape?

I enjoyed the speculation, but I never did manage to construct a satisfactory picture of the houses within God’s house, and eventually I stopped wondering.

Then later, I went to seminary, and found out that if you dig around in the Greek text, “my Father’s house” was as much “household” – a community of God’s leadership – as it was a building. And these mansions or dwelling places were really just awkward English for an “abiding” that is sort of verb and noun together.

You could say that Jesus’ Father’s household includes many options for “staying”, and Jesus has been setting those up for us.

Which is good to know, but I’ve come to think that the poetry of the “many mansions” or even “many dwelling places” actually matters more to our understanding of what Jesus is telling us.

It’s important to let Jesus tease our imaginations like this; important to stretch ourselves around something unimaginable. It’s essential, actually, to wonder about what God can build.

Because this is not a question of how fancy our residence in heaven will look someday; it’s a question about exactly what Jesus and God are up to, in relationship with us, here and now.

“Come to [Jesus], a living stone,” Peter says, “and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”

Let yourselves be built into the house of God.  Into a structure and a community that is shaped for God’s good news. A house of profound and powerful belonging.

This too, is a house that’s hard to imagine structurally. “Living stones” are building materials that can move and change and grow (not life become artificially rigid). So any structure built of living stones is going to continually change shape and size, and will not stay according to plan.

(You may have had some metaphorical experience with this yourselves recently, as our homes seem to be shrinking or changing around us depending on the number of people or animals trying to eat, cook, work, school, play, pray, and rest in them – or when we notice who’s missing from our dwelling places these days.)

A house like that is not one that’s especially easy to live in – but God, apparently, is a very flexible architect and householder. God can – and does – build with us continually as we ourselves change shape; grow stronger or more stressed, or shift around.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a cartoon making the rounds on social media. One figure, dressed in red with a pointy beard, announces “With COVID 19, I closed all your churches.”

“On the contrary,” says the other figure (white robed and white bearded), “I just opened one in every home.”

That cartoon reflects the same truth Peter is trying to convey today: that God is a flexible architect; that God builds us into God’s ongoing plan, no matter what changes we experience. It’s true, too, that the church is in more places than ever, making sandwiches in every kitchen to feed the hungry at Cathedral Kitchen; praying together in hundreds of scattered computers. The church is in every phone these days that calls a friend.

But there’s one equally important truth that that cartoon misses – or, actually, mis-represents. God didn’t just open a church in every home when we closed Trinity’s buildings in mid-March.

God opened that church in your home the day you were baptized, or even before.

Peter’s trying to remind us of that.

When he tells us to “Long for the life-giving “milk of the Word” with the all-consuming hunger of a newborn infant,” he’s inviting us to renew that longing for the living, life-shaping presence of God that was birthed when God first opened within us.

Because our longing for life-sustaining relationship with God is one important way God builds with us. That’s how God shapes us into that house of profound belonging, a living structure that’s laid out and built up by relationship.

That’s what Peter is telling us when he calls Jesus the cornerstone. The first block set into the building, at a corner, determines the alignment and relationship of every other stone, every other element of the structure. Even as living stones change and grow, we are held together and secured by our relationship with that cornerstone.

Jesus is saying the same thing to his disciples: “I am the Way,” he tells them. The Way you already know, even if you don’t know where we are going. The map to God’s presence isn’t a pre-set route we follow turn-by-turn. The map to God’s home and heart is a person we have a living relationship with.

Now, that relationship doesn’t always come naturally to all of us.

Conversations with Jesus can feel rather one-sided, often, now that Jesus is dead and risen and ascended, and not physically across the table from you or me as he was two thousand years ago when he said all this to his friends.

You can’t grab coffee with Jesus; go with him to see a movie or a baseball game, or join a book club or a gym with Jesus these days, even if you could do that with anyone at the moment.

It takes more intentionality, more planning and attention than we are used to just to enjoy and deepen a relationship these days, when the casual interactions of the office or church coffee hour or school drop off just aren’t happening.  Standing six feet apart when you drop off groceries on a doorstep, or struggling with electronics to catch a glimpse of an isolated relative you long to hug can make us self-conscious or awkward. But those connections seem to matter even more these days than they did when it was casual, accidental, and easy.

Hanging out with Jesus is like that, too. It’s not accidental; we have to plan some. We have to choose deliberately to read the Bible – not to achieve knowledge or accomplish a task, but just to hear Jesus’ stories, to spend a little time together.  Or make a time to pray, like scheduling a call. And some of the calls or prayers feel awkward, empty, or flat, yes. But they accumulate, and the relationship deepens, grows closer; living stones changing shape through time and trust and persistence.

Jesus makes that effort, too. God always has, before we ever start. We heard Jesus telling his friends that he has deliberately prepared a place – an abiding – for us. Deliberately prepared a wide variety of lasting, rooted relationship in the home of God for us. And that he’s going to make a special trip to bring us into that place, that relationship prepared, and won’t leave anyone out.

And God has been building that home out of you and me and people we don’t even know from before we began to imagine it. God has been building you and me into a house of belonging, a house that moves and lives and changes and grows, but never loses us however far we’re scattered. Because we are connected through the cornerstone.

You and I – and people we don’t really even know – are connected into God’s living house, The church was opened in our own homes and hearts before we ever asked. We are living stones, chosen and precious, built together by God to show God’s glory to the world, and make a home for all in the heart of God.

On The Road Away

Luke 24:13-35 (Acts 2:14; 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-23)

I wonder if they were trying to get “back to normal”?

It wouldn’t work, of course; things were never going to be the same for them, and Cleopas and his friend probably knew that.

But they were headed out of Jerusalem anyway; turning their backs to the place of change and expectation; of loss and uncertainty, and heading for the obscurity of Emmaus.

The big adventure of the charismatic, gifted rabbi they had been following has ended badly, and rather ambiguously. Jesus was killed, and the powers that be are running along, undisturbed and unchanged. Yes, there’s that odd thing that Mary and Joanna and Magdalene said about the tomb being empty and angels visiting, but… Nobody knows what’s really going on; what’s supposed to happen next.

It’s Monday morning soon, and mystery or not, there are obligations waiting.

Cleopas and his friend may have gone to Emmaus seeking relief from the tides of change and the strong and unpredictable emotions of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem: all that hope and disappointment, amazement and confusion. Or they may have been turning “back to normal” in despair: that miracle didn’t work out after all; there’s nothing to hope for.

You and I may also be looking toward “back to normal” or “re-opening” or just being able to follow through with our plans again with hope or with anxiety. It may seem like a relief to make plans to go back to business; or “back to normal” may be a road dark with disappointment and fear. Or all of the above at the same time.

Of course, just like Cleopas and his friend, you and I know that things have changed in the world and in ourselves that aren’t going to just change back. Normal isn’t going to be the same “normal” as before, whenever we get there.

But once we enter God’s story, it doesn’t really matter where we think we are going; or how eager or anxious we feel about getting there. Luke isn’t interested in any of those parts of the story; our story.

Luke only tells us what happened on the road.

Only tells us that Jesus comes up to Cleopas and his friend, and invites himself into their conversation, their journey. Jesus spends deliberate time drawing them deeper into the story, showing them where and how to look for the action of God.

They don’t recognize Jesus, and that’s on purpose. Luke suggests that God explicitly keeps Jesus’ identity hidden for a while. But they invite this intriguing person to dinner, and then…then he’s revealed. They recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. 

Luke is loading that moment with references to the Eucharist, to the holy meal we receive from God, and inviting us to see that ritual, and all our meals, as moments we share with the risen Christ.

And at the same time, Luke is telling us that God chooses our moments of revelation, God chooses when we recognize and respond to the presence of Jesus. God sets these up for us; we don’t do it for ourselves.

Luke is telling us that the moments of elation, connection, of knowing God with us, don’t necessarily happen where we’ve gone looking for them. Not in Jerusalem, not at the climax of our plans and hopes. Not in the center of the inner circle.

But at a small dinner table, with a couple of sort of mid-weight disciples, people who’d had to step out of the middle of those focused on Jesus’ death and the rumors of his resurrection, and go their separate way.

I find that comforting right now.

It’s comforting to remember that the first time the risen Jesus appears to anyone in Luke’s story, it’s to these two relatively unknown disciples, away from the religious center of things, separated from the rest of their fellowship.

When discomfort, loss, and fear around us are pressing us to find ways back to “normal”, and we also know that “normal” is dangerous right now, it’s comforting to think that these roads are exactly the ones Jesus can find us on. Will find us on.

Helpful to remember that Jesus finds us before we get back to normal, too. Finds us, and pours out extraordinary on us so that we forget we ever wanted “normal” and become joyous messengers of God’s newness and transformation.

When we can’t break bread together and share communion in the ritual we know conveys Christ’s presence with us, I find it comforting to remember that in this story, Jesus is around for hours before dinner. Jesus hangs out unrecognized, deeply interested in us, trying to help us be ready to encounter resurrection, teaching us what we’ll need to recognize something beyond our wildest imaginings.

I also find it helpful to remember that this revelation of Jesus’ resurrection and God’s loving care happen at what’s really an ordinary meal, with two disciples separated from their community – and that Jesus can show up unexpectedly at our separate or even solitary tables. Jesus appears at the breakfast table in pajamas; over home-baked quarantine sourdough, or takeout, or a disorganized meal scrounged from the back of the cabinet, just as readily as in the breaking of special bread at a decorated altar in a formal church.

When I find it hard to tell what God is up to, when I can’t imagine where Jesus is in this time of our great need, it’s comforting that this story tells us that God chooses the moments of connection, the moments when we get to see Jesus’ presence clearly, and that’s not in my control. Helpful to remember that Jesus might be with me and you unrecognized for the longest time, just setting up the moment God chooses as a gift.

It’s worth noting that while God does the choosing, while God makes the miracle of presence and connection happen on God’s own schedule, outside of the center of faith, Cleopas and his friend do cooperate with God.

They don’t leave their faith behind in Jerusalem. They stay open, and ready to hear, even on the road away. They tell the story they know and listen to a stranger’s story, too. They invite God’s storyteller into their lives and home, even if they don’t yet recognize God’s own self. 

It’s worth noting that those things are within our reach at home, outside the centers of our faith, in the middle of the uncertain road toward whatever might be normal next. We didn’t actually leave our faith behind in the pews of the church when the doors closed for a while. We still have a story about our hopes and longings to tell, and God comes close to us to listen, even if no one else happens by. We can – and do – invite God’s storytellers into our homes: reading scripture, joining online classes, talking about what matters most with our friends. And Jesus undoubtedly walks along with us, even if our eyes are kept from recognizing what God is doing among us right now.

This promise is for us, today; it always has been. God is setting up those moments of revelation for us, too: walking the road with us, hearing our stories and our questions, teaching as we go, setting up those glimpses of presence and love and blessing at tables far away from the center, where we will be connected again to all of God’s joy.