Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss

Today many spiritual seekers are trying to infuse their daily lives with a heightened consciousness of the sacred, striving to act as if each of their attitudes expressed their spiritual essence. Such conscious living is an invocation, a request for personal spiritual authority. It represents a dismantling of the old religious’ classic parent-child relationship to God and a move into spiritual adulthood. Spiritual maturation includes not only developing the ability to interpret the deeper messages of sacred texts, but learning to read the spiritual language of the body. As we become more conscious and recognize the impact of our thoughts and attitudes – our internal life – upon our physical bodies and external lives, we no longer need to conceive of an external parent-God that creates for us and on whom we are fully dependent. As spiritual adults we accept responsibility for co-creating our lives and our health. Co-creation is in fact the essence of spiritual adulthood: it is the exercise of choice and the acceptance of our responsibility for those choices.

          Managing our power of choice is the Diving challenge, the sacred contract that we are here to fulfill. It begins with choosing what our thoughts and attitudes will be. Whereas choice once meant our ability to respond to that which God has created for us, it now means that we are participants in what we experience – that we co-create our physical bodies through the creative strength of our thoughts and emotions.

SECOND LESSON

The second lesson is from Acts, Chapter 2, Verses 37 to 47

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “What should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom God calls.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And day by day God added to their number those who were being saved.

This Week's Sermon

Date: May 30, 2010

Title: Filled with the Holy Spirit

Message Delivered By: Rev. Dr. Joe McMurray

After a long illness, a woman named Grace died and arrived at the Gates of Heaven. While she was waiting to be greeted, she peered through the Gates and saw a beautiful banquet table, elegantly prepared. Sitting all around the table were her parents and all the other people she had loved and who had died before her.

They saw her and began calling greetings to her—"Hello, Grace! How are you! We've been waiting for you! It’s so good to see you at last!" When the caretaker of the gate came, the woman said, "This is such a wonderful place! How do I get in?"

"You simply have to spell a word," the caretaker said.

"Which word is that?" the woman asked.

The caretaker said, “The word is ‘Love.’"

A sense of peace came over the woman, and she closed her eyes and spelled the word “love.” Upon hearing her, the caretaker smile, pushed open the gate, and she sat at the table feeling that all the secrets of life lay before her.

About two years later, the caretaker came to the woman and asked her to watch the gate that day. While the woman guarded the gate, her husband, Jim, arrived.

He hardly seemed to notice her, as he peered through the Gates and saw the beautiful banquet table. Sitting around the table were his relatives and friends, and all the people he had loved who had died before him.

They saw him and began calling to him—"Hello, Jim! We've been waiting for you! So good to see you at last!"

"And I'm surprised to see you," the woman said. "How I have missed you. How have you been these past two years?"

"Oh, I've been doing pretty well," Jim said. "Three months after you passed on, I married the beautiful young nurse who took care of you while you were ill. And then, when I won the lottery, I sold the little house you and I lived in and bought a huge mansion.
“We traveled all around the world. In fact, we were on vacation and I went water skiing today. I fell and the ski hit my head, and here I am. Life is so short."

Looking again at the banquet table and all his friends beckoning him, he said, “So, Grace. How do I get in here?"

"All you have to do is spell a word," Grace said. “Just one word.”

"What word is that?" Jim asked.

Grace hesitated, and then she said, "The word is: Liechtenstein."
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Will you pray with me? God, as we have entered the season of Pentecost, the season when the gift of the Holy Spirit was given, let us be ready to receive you, receive your grace, and receive the benefit of your direction like tongues of flame above our heads. Guide us as we continue the work of our mission. Bring us clarity and resolve. Give us the faith that you will continue to lead us where you would have us go. May we trust the journey that lies before us. And may my words and all of our thoughts be filled with honor and praise to you. Amen.
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There is a long and ongoing scholarly debate about the origin of the theology of the Trinity: that God is contained within three persons that we have come to know well in our various religious training through the years—that is, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There are many misconceptions about the Trinity: some believe it was included in the Old Testament thinking of the ancient Hebrews; others believe it was conceived and can be born out in New Testament writings; others think that the concept of the Trinity was born from modern religious thought that came long after the books of both the Old and New Testament were written.

Each of these suppositions is either wrong or somewhat inaccurate. Nowhere in the Old Testament or in ancient or even modern Judaism is there a teaching or belief in the Trinity. The Jews believed in only one manifestation of God, the ultimate Creator and Being.
The first Christians, even Jesus himself, never spoke of a Trinity. In fact, Jesus never addressed or regarded himself as the only Son of God (except perhaps in John’s gospel which was written some 60 to 80 years after Jesus’ death), though Christians continue to repeat that belief within the Nicene, the Apostles’ and the Athanasian Creeds. In fact, nowhere in the New Testament is there mention of a triune God or any sort of Trinitarian belief.

Actually, the original concept of the Trinity goes far beyond Christianity. It’s roots are not Christian at all but it is an amalgamation of beliefs from within many movements and systems that preceded Christianity, including paganism and philosophy.

This should not be a surprise to us. Nor should it be a surprise that the modern church chooses to ignore the roots of these proscriptions. Though these historical facts may be taught in the somewhat more progressive or contemporary religious institutions and universities, they are not being taught from the pulpits in our churches, or in adult Christian Ed or catechism classes.

These things are not taught because they fly in the face of centuries of dogma and doctrine upon which the Christian church is built. To change its systems now would mean that the church would have to forfeit the power and authority of the hierarchy it has created to mirror those images. Many feel it would weaken or destroy the church, that people would lose faith in the church as we know it, though the church seems to be doing a good job of that without even exploring its theology. We wonder why change comes so slowly in Christian belief—this is one good reason—change means change.

But the purpose of my sharing this information with you this morning is not to erode or diminish faith. In fact, a person’s faith actually can be enhanced when it receives instruction based on a dose of reality and truth rather than on myth—myths that have been created to try to explain the mysteries of God and God’s working in the world—mysteries that are unexplainable.

Some wings of contemporary Christianity offers a somewhat new and different understanding of the Trinity. Some still maintain an identity of three levels of the Divine—God, either as parent or simply as Creator of the Universe; humankind, led by the example of Jesus and other prophets of the age who brought wisdom, understanding and a new interpretation of God’s love through our love of one another and of all God’s creation;
and the Spirit, which is the conduit of communication between God and humanity—that essence of knowing and feeling that each of us has when we feel God penetrate our consciousness and present options for us to choose who and what we wish to become.

Today, we honor the essence of the Trinity, whatever that means for us. And we examine our commitment to this church by exploring our relationships to God, to Jesus, and to the Spirit that connects us all. And in so doing, we can ask ourselves these questions: Are we true to our committed relationships both inside and outside the church community; and have we been faithful to the physical manifestation of God’s presence—namely, the church?

When we consider what faithfulness means in the Christian tradition, when we look at how and when the various manifestations of the Trinity are present and recognized and then applied to the stories we read in the Scriptures, it is impossible not to see the impenetrable bonds of those relationships as the centerpiece of faith. God promises again and again to be present to God’s people, and again and again, God’s promise is fulfilled.

Through the relationships of God to humankind, there are pledges made, guarantees that God will never abandon us. God promises to be present and active for future generations, for the children and grandchildren of the faithful. And for our purposes, in the telling of the disciples’ experience after Jesus’ death, we are encouraged to follow the Holy Spirit in our calling—which we understand to be God’s calling to us through Jesus’ example.

As part of the foundation of the church, we must realize this did not just happen. It was based on human experience of the Divine—God’s movement in our lives. It was based on belief and faith. It was based on trust and loyalty. It was based on hope. It was based on community. And above all, it was based in love—the unconditional love of God that was so vibrant and essential as a part of Jesus’ ministry. An unselfish love that transcended all other relationships—even those of family and life-long relationships.

In our reading from the Book of Acts, we saw that Peter, as a disciple of Jesus, assumed that his calling was to call others to Christ. The disciples went out to establish communities of the faithful, not just so they could “believe” but so they could act in the same way Jesus acted. They pulled together their resources; they sold many of their possessions and distributed the proceeds to those in need.
They broke bread together, as Jesus had done; they offered thanksgiving for what they had, and for what they’d been called to do—to make a real difference in people’s lives and to bring about change for good.

Ultimately, it was the people themselves who held themselves accountable. They made pledges to one another to follow by the example set before them in Jesus’ name; though I would say, through the centuries, Christians haven’t always done this so well. Of course there are many brands of Christianity, and we also know that none of them is perfect, least of all, ours. Yet we strive to hold ourselves accountable to our faith—to what we believe about God, Jesus, and God’s presence through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We have had to learn and relearn what the disciples of the early church learned: when you fragment people, one from another, when you categorize or stereotype people into configurations that fit your comfortable way of understanding, you deny the wholeness of God. You deny the possibilities of God’s future creation. You deem yourself to be above the wisdom of God.

Clearly, from the time of the early church to the present, this is one of the key issues that has kept the Christian church furthest away from realizing its full potential; that has kept the church from truly being filled by the Spirit—the fact that it has not, overall, a welcoming manifestation of God’s all-inclusive love.

Today’s broader church continually weighs in on what it considers to be the pressing issues of the day—yet often these are inconsequential and misguided issues are grounded in selfishness and lack of empathy and understanding with an emphasis on wealth, power and prestige. All the while, huge issues impacting the whole of humanity, such as hunger, poverty, starvation, war, destruction of the planet, are ignored and often rendered invisible.

In Anatomy of the Spirit, Caroline Myss reminds us that the sacred is inseparable from us. That these issues we neglect or ignore speak to the very essence of our faith; whether or not we engage, or how we engage determines our moral compass; and this is analogous to the type of faith we have, and whether or not our faith is true to the God to whom we claim allegiance. We are, as she says, co-creators—destined to work side by side with our unconditionally loving God.

When we refuse to acknowledge what God has created, when we decline the invitation to co-create our destiny, when we choose to destroy rather than to promote all of life, our relationship to God suffers and is broken. We thus isolate ourselves because we have betrayed God’s trust.

Sometimes we forget. We forget that it is never only about what we say we believe. It’s what we do to and for one another based on our beliefs. This is the direct correlation of these two aspects of our faith.

We plead with God to hear our prayers and guide us into our calling. We ask God to provide for us when we are in need. But do we listen to the answers God provides, even when those answers are only even deeper questions? Do we heed God’s voice—fulfill God’s desire—through our words and our deeds?

We turn to Jesus, our teacher and brother, to console us in times of trouble—to inspire us to speak and act as we should—to assist us as we participate in our own healing and the healing of humankind. And when we are not in trouble, do we still seek to communicate with Jesus and ask for guidance in the ways of his teaching? Or do we go it alone, thinking that was then, this is now, and we know best?

We turn to the Spirit to accompany us in our daily lives—to protect us from the temptation of turning away from God. We count on the Spirit to protect us from the unseen that keeps us from our true calling; or the failure in accepting our calling to leave it unfulfilled because of our own human inadequacy or weakness. Do we believe the Spirit is with us always, as Jesus promised—with us and within us? Is our faith strong enough to invoke the Spirit to drive away that which separates us from God? Have we invited the Spirit to fill us with God’s love?

Let us use the instruments available to us: our interactions with this Trinity in ways that speak to a strong faith, a deep trust, an impassioned devotion to all of God’s people, particularly those with whom we may find ourselves least invested. Let us be in relationship with and foster and care for God.
Let us continue to create within our community a caring, loving, transformational ministry—a ministry founded on the core beliefs of the social gospel. Let us remain true to our promises and our commitments to one another and to God so that in all ways our actions are spirit-filled. And may we continue to follow where God is leading. Amen.