Here am I! Send Me                                                             

                                                            Isaiah 6:1-8

 

          Today is Pentecost, the day we remember from Acts 2 as that time when, according to Luke, “there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them, And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”

          Tomorrow is a national holiday, as we take time to remember those of our country who served us in the military and were called upon to give what Abraham Lincoln described in his Gettysburg Address as their “last full measure of devotion.”

          Do these two remembrances have anything in common? One is the day that Jesus’ disciples were empowered with the promised Holy Spirit. The other is a day Americans remember those fallen in battle in defense of this country.  Is there a common thread? I believe there are many. Today, I would like to explore one such common thread with you.

          Today, it is fashionable to call people heroes. We pay tribute to our first responders: firefighters, law enforcement, National Guard. We salute our men and women in the military. We are much more likely to recognize the service they render and the risks they take to do so than we used to be. This is a good thing. As a Vietnam era veteran, I can remember when being in a military uniform was just as likely to draw contempt as it was to draw praise. Our country has finally learned to separate its political views from those who wear the uniform and serve. So now, we hear the word “hero” more often, usually in conjunction with those who die or are seriously wounded in action.  

          The disciples wore the uniform of the cross, and under the definition just offered, they also became heroes. James, Matthias and Paul were beheaded, Philip, Peter, Nathaniel, Simon and Andrew crucified, Matthew and Thomas slain by a sword, and the list of martyrs, as they were then called, goes on.

          Is there a difference between a martyr and a hero? I don’t see much, except that you can be a hero without dying. To be a martyr, you must die. But the criteria for each description is pretty much the same: Give yourself to the cause; go and serve for what you believe in.

          Today, we look back at another hero, a hero of the faith. His name was Isaiah, and we all know him as one of the most important prophets of the Bible, the man from Judea, a man with aristocratic roots. He was a man who gave counsel to kings. His ministry lasted about forty four years He lived seven hundred years before Christ and yet many of his prophetic writings in the Old Testament seem to point to the coming of Jesus. 

          In the sixth chapter of Isaiah, we read that it was the last year of the reign of King Uzziah. This would have been about 740 BC. Isaiah has a vision. He sees the Lord sitting upon a throne. The train of his robe fills the temple and the temple is filled with smoke. God is surrounded by seraphim, the fiery angelic beings with six wings. It is a powerful and awesome sight. Isaiah realizes he is in the presence of God and he throws in the towel. He says “woe is me,” for a mortal man cannot see God and live through the experience. It is just too powerful.  Ask Moses. His hair turned white and his face shone just from being in the presence of the burning bush.

          The scene gets even more awesome, as the seraphim take a burning coal from the altar of God and touch it to the lips of Isaiah, saying that his guilt is taken away and that his sin is atoned for.  Then Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord. He is saying “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

          Over the course of history, many have heard some variation of those words. Abraham is called upon to leave his home and follow where God leads. Rebekah is called to leave her home at the beckoning of a servant of Isaac to go to marry this man yet unknown to her. Ruth is called to leave her home to follow her penniless mother in law. Moses is called back from the hills at the age of eighty to lead God’s people out of Egypt. A young man named Samuel hears the voice of God in the night and answers “Here I am…Speak, for your servant hears.”

          In Isaiah 6:8, Isaiah answers God. “Here am I! Send me,” says Isaiah. He doesn’t have to wait long for his commission. God answers: “Go. and say to the people…” What God asked Isaiah to say to his people is not the subject of this message, though it is notable that the message he carried was a dire warning that would make him very unpopular and would fall mostly on deaf ears. What is important here is that Isaiah answered the call. When God asked “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Isaiah answered. He didn’t stop to question whether he was qualified. He left that up to God. He just stood up and answered the call. And why not? God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

        The Bible is the story of God’s mission to redeem and restore his beloved creation to unity with him. Throughout our history, God continually comes to us through messengers who volunteer to go, from Abraham to Paul, from unnamed but not forgotten soldiers to martyrs of the faith. They are that cloud of witnesses to which the writer of Hebrews refers, the ones who stand up, who don’t measure the odds but rather extend their hands. They are our heroes. Sometimes, they are our martyrs as well.

        

          The Navy wants to be a “global force for good.” The Army wants you to be “Army Strong.” The Air Force wants us to “Aim High,” the Coast Guard to be “Always Ready.” The Marines want a few good men.  These are great slogans, great rallying cries for those who serve our country. But even they have to take a back seat to the most important pledge of allegiance in all creation. When God calls, what will be our answer?

          On that Pentecost day so long ago, the book of Acts tells us that Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed the crowd there gathered. This is the same Peter who cowered and lied to save his skin just weeks before.  His message ended with these words: “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”  The promise was for salvation, for forgiveness, for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

        “Here am I! Send me,” said Isaiah. When he calls, what will you say?

                           Opening the Eyes of Our Hearts

                                                     Ephesians 1: 15-23

 

 

          The last few weeks, we have been taking a look at the early church, the church that Jesus ordained as his instrument of evangelism until he returns. We have been looking at Peter and John and Philip…at some very courageous and creative and, most of all, spirit filled persons. After Pentecost, armed with the Holy Spirit, these men along with many others began a work that continues to this day, the work of making disciples for Christ.

          The second half of the book of Acts is largely devoted to the work of the apostle Paul, as he moved from persecutor of Christians to a champion of the faith. Near the end of his second missionary journey, Paul paid a brief visit to Ephesus. Priscilla and Aquila accompanied him and actually stayed behind when he went on to Jerusalem.  He later returned and stayed for about three years. Ephesus has been said to be Paul’s home base for the evangelization of Macedonia and thus Asia Minor.

          The book of Ephesians was written late in Paul’s ministry.  It is probably one of Paul’s prison letters, most likely written from Rome where he was confined. It appears to be a letter written for general circulation among the churches of the region, and it is a sublime and beautiful statement of the unity of the church and all creation in Jesus Christ.  In today’s passage, we can see from Paul’s view some of the implications of the Christian faith. It is a magnificent view.

          The first three chapters of Ephesians are doctrinal, but even so, they are written as a thanksgiving. The first half of chapter one forms a blessing and praise, while today’s passage acts as an intercession.  Paul’s intercessory prayer has a familiar ring to it, for he is praying that God might endow the Ephesians and all who hear with a “Spirit.” It is the spirit who can bring wisdom, the one who can bring revelation. This wisdom and revelation reveal to the Ephesian Christians to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So it is not just any spirit that Paul prays for, but the Holy Spirit. Paul prays for the Holy Spirit we read about in Acts, who infused Peter with such courage as he stood before the Sanhedrin and said in Acts 4 that “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Paul prays for the Holy Spirit who transported Philip to the desert of Gaza and the chariot of an Ethiopian government official to evangelize. He prays for the Holy Spirit who gives saving knowledge to the Ephesian Christians and to all who hear and believe. He prays that the eyes of their hearts will be opened.

          What are the eyes of the heart? What does Paul mean? Can the heart have eyes? Can the heart see? Paul thinks so. So does Matthew. In Chapter six of his gospel, he quotes Jesus: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?”[22. 23].  The writer of Proverbs four had something to say as well about the heart: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” John J. Parsons offers these comments: “How you choose to see defines the world you inhabit. The eyes follow the heart, and therefore seeing is a matter of inner attitude.”

          People are staying away from church in America today in record numbers. When interviewed, many say that the church people they know are hypocrites, that they lead double lives. The generation we call millennials doesn’t have a lot of patience with such people, and they are mistrustful of the church because of it. And yet others from that same generation do come to church and participate in church activities. What is the difference? Are those who come just a new generation of hypocrites? Paul would say that unlike their stay-at-home counterparts, those who come to church have had the eyes of their hearts opened. And when our eyes are so opened, we are enlightened, says Paul… “that we may know the hope to which he has called us.”

          But Paul knows that while the heart is the ultimate master of both logic and reasoning, the heart can be blinded to the truth. It is Paul’s prayer for the people of God that their eyes be opened by the Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that they can experience the hope of our calling, the richness of our inheritance as God’s children, and the power of Christ to fill us all as his body, the church, for we do not come to church—we are the church!

          George Carlin was a famous American comedian. He died in 2008, and in his passing, America lost a brilliant social critic. Carlin was brilliant but he wasn’t always right. When he took on God, he missed the mark. Carlin didn’t like all the things wrong in the world, so he surmised that there was no God. He said he would worship the sun, because he could see it and that gave the sun credibility. He might have taken some counsel from Paul, who had this to say about seeing God: “For what can be known about God is plain…God has shown it…For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made”  [Rom. 1: 18-22].

          Carlin ended his monologue about religion and God by saying that if there is a God, may He strike him dead. Of course, it didn’t happen. He took that as proof of no God, never taking into account not only how much God loved him, but also how little influence a mean spirited prayer will have on God.

          After all, isn’t it a matter of choice? We choose to see what we want to see [Jn. 12: 40]. If we do not see God, it is because we have turned away from his presence just as Paul pointed out. Seeing is, in the end, more an act of will than an act of perception. We cannot see God; we cannot feel the Holy Spirit, when the eyes of our hearts are closed.

          When I read about the great apostle Paul praying for the church of Ephesus, thanking them and praising them for their love and their faith, I take heart. Even though I am inspired by the likes of Peter and John and Philip and Paul, I need to know that all of us count. According to Paul, we count big time. The church of Ephesus had no big names, yet Paul used it for inspiration and prayed for its continued good health. We need to keep in mind that all those incredible acts of courage and strength we read about in Acts were made possible by one reason: every single time, every single person, was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what George Carlin was missing and what the Ephesian church had. The Carlins of the world look out into the darkness and the church looks out into the light.

          As Paul closes his intercession for these believers, he reminds them, and us, that while the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our hearts as believers to see Jesus Christ, while God makes Jesus head over all things to the church, it is the church which is the body of Christ. It is the church which is the fullness of Christ. While it is Christ who fills each and every one who believes, it is we who believe who are to act as the body of Christ. No one, not the millennials, or the generation which follows them; no one will come to a saving knowledge of Christ if we who are called to be the church do not act.

          So if your eyes are not open, you might want to ask why. The eyes of your heart are always looking, always seeing. The question is what they see. It you are having trouble seeing God, perhaps you need a dose of the Holy Spirit to clear your vision. Vance Havner, preacher and author, puts it this way: “Some are not filled because they must first be emptied. Even God cannot fill what is already full.” Empty yourself and receive the Holy Spirit, and you will receive a fullness that you have never known.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.

Open the eyes of my heart.

I want to see you.

I want to see you.

                                                Michael W. Smith

         

Here Is Your Mother

John 19: 25-27

 

 

          Today is Mothers’ Day. Merchants love it. Next to Christmas and Valentine’s Day, more cards, letters and flowers are sold than any other day of the year in America. Restaurant owners like it too. Sons and daughters take out Mom for lunch on Mother’s Day. Many countries observe some form of Mother’s Day, though most do so toward the end of Lent rather than in May. Growing up, I remember carnations being associated with the day. As men and boys entered the church on Sunday, someone was there to pin on a carnation, red if your mother was living, white if she had passed on to God. I suppose the relaxing of Sunday clothing had something to do with that custom fading.

          God thinks so much of motherhood and parenting that he gave us the Fifth Commandment. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you”[Ex. 20: 12]. There aren’t but ten commandments, so obviously God thought a lot of his creation of parenthood,

 particularly motherhood.

          I looked up Mother in the dictionary. Do you know there are ten definitions! Ten! And that’s just for the noun. It can be used as an adjective or a verb and then it has eighteen definitions. Mother is one of those words that have such deep meaning; the definitions don’t seem to really do it justice. Is it enough to say that a mother is a female parent? Of course not. How about a mother-in-law, stepmother or adoptive mother? No. They can be accurate, but facts don’t always qualify as truth. Here’s one: a term of address for a female parent or a woman having or regarded as having the status, function, or authority of a female parent. Well, that is certainly accurate, but that is not the person after whom President Woodrow Wilson named a national holiday in 1914. 

          What is a Mother? There are lots of mothers in the Bible. All kinds of mothers. There is Sarah, willing to undergo pregnancy at the age of ninety in order to have a child. There is Hannah, who so desperately wanted a son that she took a vow to God that if he would open her womb and bless her with a son, she would give him back to the Lord all the days of his life. Her prayer was answered and she kept her promise. She gave up her only child as soon as he was weaned.We know her son as Samuel, one of the great judges of Israel. Other mothers are prominent in the Bible, from Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth, to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Then there is Mary, Elizabeth’s cousin, barely of age and hardly ready for life. And yet, God chose her to bear his own Son in earthly form. For thirty three years, she was mother to humanity and divinity. She lived to see that child hanging on a cross like a common thief.

          What about that son? The last day of his life, he was pretty busy. He was dying a horrible physical death, saving the thief next to him, taking on the sin of humanity and doing it all sinlessly and with God turned away from all that sin. Yes, Jesus was busy. But he was not too busy not to try in his last hour to make provision for his mother. In the 19^th chapter of John’s gospel, we have this incredible scene. Jesus is on the cross. He is close to death. Four women are huddled close to him. The other gospels tell us that they stood at a distance. This is not inconsistent with John’s account. This was at a different time, a critical time. Jesus was close to death and the women huddled close to the cross. Mary was there. With her were most probably Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Salome, Mary’s sister and the wife of Zebedee, parents of James and John. John was there too. Jesus saw them and he said to his mother: “Woman, behold, your son!” He was not talking about himself, but his cousin John. His next statement was to John, to whom he said: “Behold, your mother.” It was both a request and a dying declaration to his cousin to take care of his mother. It was the eldest son trying to do his duty, upholding the fifth commandment. His mother was almost certainly widowed and probably in her early fifties with little or no personal income.  Why John? Jesus’ half-brothers were most probably in Capernaum and did not yet believe in him as the Son of God.  So John is commissioned to look after Mary.  According to John’s gospel, John took Mary that very hour into his home. Even at the very end of his life, Jesus was trying to honor his mother.

        So what is a mother? Certainly she is a caregiver. Certainly she sacrifices for the child in her care. Certainly she has the patience of Job, the brass of a trumpet, a love for that child or children so deep as to be the example we use to try to explain how God himself loves us.

          As I try to define what or who a mother is, it occurs to me that I have a few examples in my own family.  I have three grown daughters. Each of them is a mother in her own right, yet each of them is different in how they fill out their own definition of motherhood. One is a mother to her son, but now as she enters a new chapter in her life, she may find herself eventually being a stepmother as well. If she does, she will love just as hard and deep, but she will find that task different from the role she has played so far. Another daughter is a mother to her son in a traditional home, but she is the youngest and her role will continue to change as she and her family mature. A third daughter is neither married nor does she have children from her womb as yet, but she has spent the last decade devoting herself to hundreds of children from all over Africa and the United States. Is she less a mother than my other daughters? Hardly! Her title is different, but her role meets more than one of those eighteen definitions in the dictionary. My own family just goes to show that the term Mother is a whole lot easier to recognize than it is to define.

          What is a mother? A mother is someone who cares more about a child than she does herself. It may be hard to get the definition out of a dictionary, but it’s not hard at all to recognize a mother.

          Today, we can combine a very important Scriptural lesson that Jesus remembered to his last hour on earth—that of honoring our mother-- with a national holiday which celebrates motherhood and the women in our lives who bear that title. Many of you are here today, sitting with your mothers. Many more of you will be leaving in a hurry so that you can quickly get to your mother’s house to take her out to lunch or celebrate some of her home cooking. Either way, we do right to honor our mothers not just this day…but every day!

                                 And the Spirit Said…

Acts 8: 26-40

 

 

          Ever had a conversation with the Holy Spirit? I bet you have. Ever battled with your conscience? That’s an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Ever felt sorry for someone? Gone out of your way to help someone? Cried or hurt at the sight of someone else’s pain? That’s an encounter with the Holy Spirit. We have conversations with the Holy Spirit all the time. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Holy Spirit is talking to us. Sometimes we answer in the right way. Sometimes we don’t. But if we are Christian, if we have accepted Jesus as our Savior, then the Holy Spirit is within us and is working on us. Remember how the kids’ song goes? “He’s still working on me. To make me what I ought to be….”

          The Holy Spirit is that part of God that Jesus sent to us. The Holy Spirit is Jesus, but in another form, a form that we can absorb, who can live within us. The Holy Spirit is that part of us that is God within us. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to find all the things the Holy Spirit does. Just Google it. Things the Holy Spirit does. Here a just a few examples straight from scripture: The Holy Spirit regenerates us, leads us, sanctifies us, anoints us, empowers us, fills us, renews us, sets us free, supplies us, enables us, transforms us, strengthens us. Get the picture? All of these characteristics of the Holy Spirit and many more are found in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is that part of God that can become part of each of us and release us to be free to do God’s will. That’s what Jesus meant when he said “Abide in me, and I in you” (Jo 15: 4).

          In the eighth chapter of Acts, we see the early church beginning to move across the landscape. It started in Jerusalem and spread throughout Judea and Samaria. Today’s passage witnesses the next puzzle piece to Luke’s story of the church. The church is going out to the world and this time it is Philip who is the witness.

          Philip is a fairly well known member of the Apostles. While not in the inner circle of Peter, James and John, nevertheless he figures prominently in several passages in the gospels. Philip was another Galilean, hailing from Bethsaida with Peter and Andrew. At the Last Supper, it is Philip who asks Jesus to show them the Father, to which he is answered that to see Jesus is to see the Father, and Jesus is in the Father and the Father in him. And now, in the eighth chapter of Acts, it is Philip who is chosen as the first story showing the spread of the gospel beyond Palestine. In this passage, we can see firsthand yet another way that the Holy Spirit works in our lives to accomplish his purpose.

          First, let’s just set the stage for the work of the Spirit. In Matthew 28, Jesus has his last visit with the disciples on a mountaintop in Galilee where it all started for them. Jesus gives them what we now call the Great Commission: to go, to make disciples, to baptize them and to teach all nations his commandments, all in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Skip over to Acts 1, where Jesus’ last visit with the disciples is described this way: He says to them that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them; that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  Two different accounts have Jesus sending his followers out into the world to tell his story, but not before they are invested with the Holy Spirit.

          Now, in Acts 8, we see the Holy Spirit at work in Philip. First an angel speaks to Philip. Rise and go, says the angel. And Luke tells us that Philip rose and went. He asked no questions. He just got up and went. This is even more significant than it first sounds, for Philip was told to go to Gaza. Jerusalem was in the south. Samaria was to the north. Gaza was on the southeastern tip of Israel on the Mediterranean Sea. It was the last watering place before the desert on the road from Jerusalem to Egypt.  When Jesus told his disciples to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, Philip was asked to go to the doorstep.

          So Philip rose and went. Upon his arrival he met an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official, somewhat like running into a Cabinet member of the U.S. government.  Then the Spirit stepped in. The Spirit told Philip to go over and join the chariot. So Philip obeyed. What follows is this interesting sequence of Philip reading Isaiah aloud while walking or jogging to keep up with a moving chariot. Eventually, he gets invited long for the ride but not at first. However silly it may have looked, it worked.  The passage quoted in Acts 8 is part of the Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53, long connected to Old Testament prophecy of the coming Messiah. But such cannot be the case here, for the resurrection of Jesus was fresh. Messiah was not yet thought of with any connotation of suffering. It may well be that Philip was explaining the passage from Isaiah for the first time with an eye toward the suffering that awaited the Son of God.

          We cannot know for sure what Philip read to the Ethiopian, but we can be sure of the effect it had. Luke tells us that Philip opened his mouth and told him the good news about Jesus. This high ranking foreigner wanted to be baptized. He was already familiar enough with scripture and whatever Philip told him to know that baptism was connected to his declaration of faith. And here is a mini-lesson for all of us Christians. The Ethiopian said: here’s some water. They went down to the water and he was baptized. We don’t know if it was a river or a stream. We don’t know if he was sprinkled or immersed. We just know he was baptized. That’s all we need to know. He made an outward sign of his inward feeling. There was water, which symbolically represented a casting off of the old in favor of the new; a cleansing. That’s baptism.

          Then the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away. The eunuch went on his way rejoicing, presumably carrying the gospel of Jesus to Ethiopia. Philip found himself at Azotus, a town south of Caesarea, some fifty miles north of Gaza. He kept right on preaching the gospel until he got to Caesarea. There is no report of the passage of time. All we know is that Philip was there and then he was not.

          There is one more thing we should pay close attention to. The Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away. Three times in this passage, God intervenes in the life of his disciple. There are many other, important things one may glean from this reading, but right now, I ask you to focus on the interaction of God with his disciple, his follower. Three times there is divine intervention, divine guidance. An angel of the Lord speaks, the Spirit of the Lord speaks, and the Spirit of the Lord carries him away. Don’t miss the meaning of what Luke paints for us here. When you read this passage, it has three actors. There is Philip and there is the Ethiopian eunuch. But the star of the show is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who directs the action. Luke is telling us in no uncertain terms that God moves in the lives of his disciples and he moves through the Holy Spirit.  

          How silly we are to give ourselves star billing in the play of life. If we are the stars, the play will grow old and have a short run. But…if we understand our parts…we too, like the eunuch, can go on our way rejoicing. Philip obeyed. He got up and went. When the Spirit told him to jog along the road beside a moving chariot and read aloud to a total stranger, he did it. When God asked Noah to build a giant boat in the middle of dry land during a drought, he did it. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Abraham raised his sword to do it until God intervened. Once again the kids’ song reminds us:

                                  In the mirror of his word

                                     Reflections that I see

                 Makes me wonder why he never gave up on me

              But he loves me as I am and helps me when I pray

                       Remember He’s the potter, I’m the clay.

 

And the Spirit said…   When the Spirit speaks to you, what will be your answer?