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It is a privilege for me to be able to speak on Pentecost Sunday. This is, as you know, the Sunday each year that we really set aside to specifically focus on some of the mighty works of the Holy Spirit. If you look through Scripture you’ll see the Spirit does so many different things in our lives and is so active in God’s people down through history that there would be tons we could talk about if we were just talking broadly about the Holy Spirit.
You know also that we’ve been in a series here at Bethany looking at community and what it means for us to be community together—what it means to be Church. As part of that, we’ve talked about various communal practices:
- what it means to worship together
- what it means to do corporate prayer together
- how we as a community are called to restrain our tongues – talk a little less, listen a little more
So we’ve had a lot of good teaching already about community. There’s more to come.
But this Sunday I’d like us to focus on the intersection of these things—where the Holy Spirit intersects with community—and specifically to talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in building community…in building the Body of Christ.
Let me start with some broad theological statements.
- The work of the Holy Spirit, it says in Scripture, is to reveal (or point the world to) Jesus Christ. And the strategy (or one of the key strategies) in doing this is to take the believers and knit them together as one—to make them one body, the body of Christ—so that, in their oneness, they can reveal Christ to the world.
- And I suppose as a negative corollary of that is the statement that we could not be church but for the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now that might seem a little counter-intuitive to you initially. You might say:
“Well we can certainly gather together every week. That might make us church.”
“We could certainly continue to practice the same kind of liturgy. That might make us church.”
We’re church because we all believe the same thing.
We’re church because we at least have a professed loyalty and obedience to the same Lord, Jesus Christ.
And I would say that certainly all of those things are important pieces of what it means for us to be church together. But even if we had all those things, if we’re not poured out by the Holy Spirit, then we would not be church. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to make us one. And this morning, I want to talk about what it means to have unity in this community…or what it looks for us to be “one in the Spirit.”
Now, as I was thinking about this morning’s service, I was trying to decide what sermon text to use in the service. I had three that I was debating among all week, and I just couldn’t make up my mind. So I compromised and decided to do all three.
Reading #1: Acts 2:1-6
A Historical Account of Pentecost
Reading #2: Acts 2:42-47
The Church that emerges as a result of the Pentecost event
Reading #3: 1 Corinthians 12: 4, 7, 12-16, 24-26.
Paul’s theological reflections on the role of the Spirit in building the church
It seems pretty clear from looking at Scripture as a whole that after Pentecost—when someone decides to follow Jesus…to become a disciple…to become a Christian—then simultaneously at that decision the Holy Spirit is poured out on them and they are knit in some mysterious but very real way into the Body of Christ.
That is, something happens. We become part of the Body by the work of the Spirit, whether in fact we recognize it or not. This is a mysterious thing that happens at a spiritual level. That means in effect that the church isn’t really optional. You can’t check the Jesus box and decline church. They come together.
That’s why Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 can say,
Even if the foot says, “I’m not part of the body…”,
Nonsense. It still is.
It was made part of the body by the work of the Spirit. Or that’s why he can say so profoundly at the end of that section, When one member suffers, all suffer. When one is honored all rejoice. Because there is some kind of mysterious connection between us as members of Christ’s body.
But there’s another way you could look at it. And let me see if I can get you to think of it that way by giving you a different picture.
Imagine you are standing on the sidewalk and you’re looking at a car you admire driving down the road. I’d be willing to bet that very few of you are saying to yourselves at that moment, Wow, what a neat collection of hubcaps and hood ornaments and windshield wipers and tailpipes. No you’re saying, That’s a car. And it’s just one thing. It’s a car. It’s got a lot of parts, sure. But it’s one thing – the car.
I don’t think very many of you still standing on that sidewalk and seeing a person walk toward you would say, Uh oh, here comes the nostrils, kneecaps, earlobes and ankles. No, here comes a person. A single thing. One person. Sure, lots of parts, but you think of it first and foremost as a single unit.
Now, when Paul talks about the church, he talks about it first and foremost as a body—a single thing . Not a collection of individuals, but a single body. Sure…made up of a lot of individuals, but first and foremost a thing. The congregation here is one thing, one Body.
Now that would really start to change (it seems to me), the way we think about church. I’ll give you just a couple quick examples.
I’m with the church’s Mission Global Outreach committee right now. And we regularly have the privilege of having folks from our congregation come and say,
I feel like God is calling meto serve overseas in this or that ministry.
And we get to pray with these people. We get to:
- lay hands on them
- support them
- affirm their call
- send them out
- support them in terms of dollars
So it’s a very rich privilege to get to send individuals out.
But as a committee, we’ve also been asking the question,
What does it mean to say that we as a body – as a single unit – are called to mission?
Is there some place that God is calling this congregation as one into mission?
And actually as we’ve prayed about that it seems – for right now – that tends to be to Kenya or to Honduras. That isn’t in a sense to denigrate anyone else’s call to any part of the world, but as one Body, we are being called to those places. So part of our role as a mission’s committee is to find ways to incorporate all of us in those kinds of outreaches because we are functioning as a unit.
Here’s another question to think about; another way this might make a difference.
In your best moments when you come to church on Sunday (your worst moments, I don’t want to hear about), are you thinking to yourself,
I wonder what God is going to do in the congregation today?
I wonder how He’s going to stretch and grow this congregation?
Or, are you saying (frankly, as I most often do in my best moments),
I wonder what God’s going to dofor me today.
I wonder how God’s going to meet me today.
Because I tend to approach church – Sunday morning – individually:
I’ve had a tough week. I’ve been out, trying to be a diligent disciple for Jesus in the world. I’m kind of depleted. It’s Sunday morning and I get filled up. I get a little shot of the Spirit, I get a good word, I get some great praise singing, I get my batteries recharged…I tool out for the next week, ready to be a good disciple again.
Under that image, the church is reduced to a static service station. It doesn’t grow. It doesn’t change. It’s not being stretched. It’s not being taken anywhere by God. The only thing that matters in that picture is the little individuals who run through church.
But when Paul talks about church, he says, " No, the whole body is being stretched, taken and grown as a unit."
1. So the first thing I think in pondering what it means to be “one in the Spirit” is that it means changing our thinking about church. It is not association first and foremost of people. It is the body of Christ.
2. Being one in the Spirit will change the way we think about our involvement in church. Specifically, I think it will move us past thinking about church as a community of convenience. And let me see if I can explain what I mean by that.
I have a book that I would highly recommend to you, The Future of Success, written by a guy named Robert Reich who’s the former Labor Secretary under Clinton. It’s a very insightful book about what’s going on in our world today – not a Christian book, but a very insightful book about our culture.
In the first parts of the book, he talks a good deal about individualism in our culture that admires the individual. But in the back end, he has a chapter on community. And let me just read a quote or two from this chapter. He starts by saying,
There’s this recently heard lament…Americans lack community. We’re no longer joiners. We don’t know the people next door. We bowl along.
And then he goes on to comment on that.
But the view that we’re no longer joining with others is not quite correct. And it fails to account for the most important aspect of what’s happening. We are still joining together for childcare and elder care and schools and health care and insurance and health clubs and investment clubs and buying clubs and recreation facilities and private security guards and everything else that’s too expensive to purchase alone. But we’re not joining as participants, we’re joining as consumers.
And the title of the whole chapter is "The Community as Commodity." And I really think he’s describing a cultural tendency to see community as communities of convenience. That is, as long as what I’m being called to invest in community-wise is paying back to me about as much as I’m investing or more, I’m there. I’m in that community. But as soon (in a sense), as it tips the other way – my investment exceeds what I’m getting back out of it – well, I’m gone. That community doesn’t work for me anymore.
And I see at times that cultural trend slipping into the church…a tendency at times to say
Church isn’t working for me anymore. I’m going to go and do something else…find someplace else.
It seems to me that—when we think seriously about what it means to be one in the Spirit and listen to these passages we’ve just read—we’re called to move beyond communities of convenience to communities of commitment.
Paul talks about one of the ways that the Spirit builds the churches. He gives everybody gifts and abilities. That is, we all have some gifts and abilities that are gifts from God—gifts of the Holy Spirit.
- It could be your ability to greet people at the door.
- It could be your ability to cook.
- It could be your ability to teach, or pray, or any number of other things.
But it’s very clear from the text—though he doesn’t use this precise language—that when he gives us these gifts, he doesn’t give them to us to own outright. That is, they’re not what like we would say in law – You get “fee simple title” to your gift. You in fact are given these gifts in trust, to hold and to manage, it says, for the common good…for the building up of the body.
And that changes the picture. I’m now given some gifts by God to invest for the sake of the community.
Now I know that we live in a different time and world than they did in the first century. If you were a Christian back then and you wanted to go to the church in Corinth, you didn’t have lots of options. You just went to the church in Corinth. And we have, obviously, lots of options of where you can go to church in Seattle. So I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with checking out churches when you first come to the area, asking: Does this church feel right? Does this church work for me? At least not for awhile, anyhow.
But even as you’re doing that Does it work for me? kind of calculus, it seems to me that a big part of that equation should be,
Does this church have needs that I can address with the gifts and abilities that God has given me?
Not just
Am I enjoying the singing?
Am I getting good words out of the sermon?
But
Do I have something that I can invest to help grow this body?
I also think that this notion builds in a much stronger sense of longevity. I think there ought to be a very strong presumption of staying put in the church.
Now, I don’t mean that God never calls people out. I’m sure he does. I don’t mean to suggest that a church couldn’t go so far off the mark that it would be time to leave. But, buy and large (it seems to me), we ought to stick with the church for the long-haul.
Some of the people I’ve really admired the most here in our congregation—some no longer able to worship with us—have been people that were here years before I came to Bethany…and I’ve been here about 25 years. They would tell me what Bethany was like.
Bethany hasn’t always been just wonderful. Bethany’s had lots of ups and downs. They’ve said:
I stuck with this church when the senior pastor went for years and didn’t believe in Jesus.
I stuck with this church for years when the senior pastor could barely preach his way out of a paper bag.
I stuck with this church for years even when the pastor committed a serious moral failure.
I stuck with this church when they totally changed the style of worship, taking it away from something I had grown up and was comfortable with, and putting something else that felt weird and awkward in its place.
I stuck with this church because that’s where I was called. It’s my body. And I am called to bring to this body those gifts and abilities that God has given me to build it up.
And so, thinking of “one in the Spirit” moves us from communities of convenience to communities of commitment.
3. The third observation is that this sense of being “one in the Spirit” ought to change the way we think of ourselves being involved with the Church .I am—and I just know that many of you like me—very, very busy. We have lives that are packed full with various activities. And very frequently, I add church as an activity to my life. And very often there are events at church that would probably deepen my walk with God and deepen my relationship with you that I don’t go to because I’m too busy with something else.
And so my week might look like:
Monday night—home group
Tuesday night—some work event
Wednesday night—some other group that might be gathering.
And then, in older days...
Friday night—a basketball game
Saturday night—a Cub Scout meeting
Sunday—a church meeting.
And I am simply adding church as another activity to my very, very busy life.
As a result of that, it seems to me, our relationships with one another are more shallow than they should be. I think it should raise questions for us if we say, “I’m too busy to get together with a small group more than once every month or two.” That ought to say something to us. It tells us about the nature of these relationships.
Now I know again, we live in a very different world than the first century. But I was struck by how different it looked in that first church. They (in a sense) made church the center place for their relationships. It says,
They devoted themselves to koinonia – devoted themselves to the fellowship – to getting to know each other.
They spent time together. They spent tons of time along the way. In fact, if you read all the things they were doing together for church, it’s amazing that they had time to do anything.
It says, “And day-by-day as they spent much time together.” The word together, though our particular translation doesn’t pick it up, shows up 3-4 times in just these few verses. They were together. They were together.
What struck me was that—for the first church—church community became the organizational framework that held the rest of their lives. They might be able to do a few other things around the edge, but it was the church community that was the under girding framework…whereas it seems to me, so much of our time, we’re always just plugging things in around the edges.
I didn’t see this, actually, but I remember hearing about a cartoon that shows two elementary school kids – girls – talking to each other. Each of them looking at their Blackberries. And in the cartoon caption underneath it, one of them said,
“You know, about a week and a half from Thursday, I think I could push ballet back about a half an hour and cancel on pottery, and we might be able to get together and play for an hour.”
And this seems to be (in a sense) the way many of us are managing our lives. But the church community could serve this under girding function as a holding place for all the chaos and all the busyness.
4. Lastly, it seems this understanding of being “one in the Spirit” ought to change the way we think about who’s in this Body of Christ with us.
I think there’s a very natural tendency to say,
I get along best with people who are like me.
And then it’s a very short step from that to say,
The unity of the church would be enhanced by uniformity. It would be really good if we could all look more or less the same, believe more or less the same. Boy, we could a deep community then, couldn’t we?
But the picture that emerges from these first passages is exactly the opposite. In that first Pentecost event, the Holy Spirit comes down and lands with fire on all these heads, and they’re all speaking different languages. It says there were Jews from all over the world gathered there and they all heard the same message spoken through their own language.
A lot of the commentators on this will talk about how Pentecost is a reversal of the Tower of Babel. Remember, we read the Tower of Babel event. In the beginning, at the Tower of Babel, everybody spoke one common language and the whole human race was gathered together to build this tower into the heavens—really in a sense to challenge God. And God comes along and says, No, we’re not going to do that, and scatters them over the world and gives them all a separate language so they can’t communicate with each other.
Now, Pentecost is the first time when it says people from all over the world are gathered. And now for the first time since the Tower of Babel, they in fact can communicate again. So in one sense it’s a reversal. But in one very important distinction it is not. God does not at Pentecost give them back a common language. He keeps their same languages, but by the work of the Spirit, makes them able to understand each other.
What I think that tells us is that God loves the diversity. He sees His Body as being comprised of people from all the nations, from all ethnicities or all genders, of all backgrounds and all experiences, of all gifts and abilities, of all strengths and weaknesses…that whole big mix of diversity…by the power of the Spirit knit into one body. We do not move toward uniformity as we become more and more the Church. We move toward diversity that is knit together by the Holy Spirit.
It’s really an incredible privilege to be part of the church – to be a part of a community that is there over the long haul. To be a part of a community that…when I hurt… I know my burden is being carried by you, by others.
It’s a privilege to draw close as one to reflect to the world—to a world that is frankly pretty skeptical about the church, but hungry for the gospel—that oneness that will draw them to Jesus Christ. It’s an incredible privilege.
And today of all days, we get to stop and say “Thank you” and to praise the Holy Spirit for the work that He’s done in bringing us to this place.
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