Receiving God's Spirit

This morning I want to share with you a couple of times when I feel particularly blessed and joyful as a minister:  One of those times is when I call on a parishioner or someone in a nursing home, assisted living center or hospital, and talk with them about their condition and then pray for God’s blessing on them and their care-givers.  There is often a real sense of God’s spirit in the room. 

Another time is when I come to worship in Church and listen to the music of the choir, hear the Scripture readings, recite the prayerful words of the liturgy, and meet with members of the congregation during coffee hour.  The Spirit of God is present in worship.  Being fully present with others is to know that God is with us in all that we do.  I hope this is true for you as well.

To paraphrase the writer and theologian, Frederick Buechner in an article about Spirit,  “Like its counterparts in Hebrew and Greek, the Latin word spiritus originally meant breath and breath is what you have when you're alive and don't have when you're dead.  Thus spirit equals breath, the aliveness and power of your life, and to speak of a person's spirit is to speak of the power of life that is in that person.

“Spirit is highly contagious. When a person is very excited, very happy, or very sad, you can catch it easily. You can catch it from what someone says or does, or just from what happens to the air of a room when that person enters it without saying or doing anything. 

“Groups have a spirit, as anybody can testify who has ever been caught up in the spirit of a football or basketball game, or in a political rally or some other kind of group activity.”  Spirit is active within church congregations; it “can be good or bad, healing or destructive.  Spirit can also be transmitted across great distances of time and space.”

What is your experience of Spirit, of the Holy Spirit?  Do you recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life?  Do you experience it in the life of the Church when we worship?  Did you have a sense of its presence last week during our coffee hour reception?

The Book of Common Prayer in “An Outline of Faith” states, “We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.”  It is through the Holy Spirit that we are enabled to grow in the likeness of Christ.

In today’s Gospel of Luke we heard that when Jesus was baptized “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”  While Jesus was praying his unique identity and relationship to God was revealed to all the people.

The people who were gathered around John the Baptist were filled with expectation.  They yearned for the Messiah to come and set the world on a new path, “to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  In other words, they yearned for a new day of justice.  They questioned whether John was the Messiah, but he said to them, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

When Jesus was baptized with all the people he was joined to the new community in which baptism was stressed as entrance into the life of the Spirit.  The heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him.  Luke understood baptism and anointing with the Spirit as God's presence in Jesus for his mission and ministry of justice and healing.  All of us who are baptized with water and the Spirit are also called to this ministry of compassion, justice and peace.  We are all to work for the healing of those who are wounded, oppressed, broken, or diseased.

The theologian Walter Brueggemann tells us, “Something happened in the event [of Jesus’ baptism] that defies explanation…. In this event Jesus accepts a role with reference to God and to humankind.  His submission puts him in contradiction to the world in a way that will lead, eventually, to his execution.  His solidarity with humanity defines his ministry among the poor, the needy, the disabled, all those who wait for the gift of God’s rule that will override the way the world has been.  We cannot read about the baptism of Jesus without reading about the baptism of the church. … What happens to the church in baptism is what happens to Christ in baptism: submission to God’s intent and solidarity with the human community.”

We do two things in and through baptism.  The first thing we do is to name the person being presented.  A name sets a person apart from everyone else.  It gives a person her or his unique identity.  The second thing we do is to mark the person being baptized as an authentic child of God.  Those being baptized are to be nurtured by the Christian community so they will live out the meaning of this new reality.  They, along with all of us, are now to be ministers for healing, peace, justice, and compassion, what the Apostle Paul referred to as “ambassadors of reconciliation.”  Our baptism unites us with Jesus and his ministry.  By it we accept responsibility for the reconciling work that can unite all people to one another and to God.  "God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to God."

Baptism is also our response to the invitation of the Gospel.  Baptism does not depend upon individual faith, but upon the faith of the Christian community, the Church.  That is why we baptize infants and young children.  We accept responsibility to see that they are "brought up in the Christian faith and life," and that "by our prayers and witness [we] help them to grow into the full stature of Christ."

In our prayers and worship, in our statements of faith in God, in every service of baptism and Holy Eucharist we renew our covenant with God and one another.  If you are searching for your own identity as a person and for a foundation upon which to continue building your life, you will do well to reflect on the pledges we make every time we celebrate a baptism.  With God's help we vow: 

To continue in the apostles' teaching and

     fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the

     prayers;

To persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever [we]

     fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord;

To proclaim by word and example the Good News

     of God in Christ;

To seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving

     your neighbor as yourself; and,

To strive for justice and peace among all people,

      and to respect the dignity of every human

      being.

May all our lives be grounded in the life of God’s Holy Spirit and in relationship with the ministry of Jesus. Amen.