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Locust Eater
Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11
It begins with ignorance. About 12 guys in Ephesus, one of the great early
places to be in Christianity, were busy being disciples, but they didn't
really know anything. Paul had run into others of this type before, so
he knew how to smoke them out. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you
became believers?" This was hardly cocktail conversation, or even a topic
for our coffee fellowship downstairs after worship.
What Paul sensed was that these guys were "religious" - just like 90%
of Canadians and Americans. They believed in God and morality; they just
didn't feel like they needed to be part of an institution.
Most "religious" people today do feel self-righteous in rejecting the
institution - the church - because it is so imperfect. Imperfect just
like ourselves and imperfect because we have made them that way, but our
role in the imperfecting of the church kind of gets lost in the rush to
be "0religious."
These
12 or so Ephesian disciple's, who perhaps thought they were imitating
the original 12 disciples of Jesus, were in fact only "half-way" or incomplete
Christians. Paul wanted to make sure that they were specific enough in
their Christianity. They didn't even know that the Holy Spirit existed.
Isn't knowing about God and John the Baptist adequate? Don't we all worship
the same God?
The Holy Spirit has been part of our faith since the very beginning. It
is the poor neglected sister of the Trinity and the Spirit/wind/breath
of God moving over the chaotic formless waters at creation before time
was. Modern inclusive language prefers God as the Creator, Jesus Christ
as the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, as the Sustainer
- God who keeps us going when we don't want to go.
I don't even have to ask: you are afraid of the Holy Spirit. It's not
part of your idea and practice of Christianity. Largely for us, this is
our reflection upon the excesses of the Pentecostal and Holiness movements.
If being taken over by the Holy Spirit means handling poisonous snakes,
then leave you out. Few of you feel comfortable in being "slain in the
Spirit," groveling around on the sanctuary floor, herking and jerking,
speaking in all sorts of incomprehensible "tongues of angels."
But from what do you think the Shakers and Quakers received their names?
Next time you are sitting at the breakfast table with a box of Quaker
Oats or Puffed Wheat, try to imagine that august figure of William Penn
in front of your face was thrashing about the floor in the ecstacy of
the Spirit at one point in time before he starting puffing wheat!
For the Baby Boomers among us, remember the Eisely Brothers song, "Shout!",
which regained its luster in the movie "Animal House"? You listen to that
song and its words: it's barely removed at all from the rejoicing in the
black church. The Shout is a direct response to the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the soul of a congregant sitting in public worship. We don't
want to be controlled by someone outside of us, so that we cannot be who
we are meant to be. We are afraid of the Holy Spirit, but doesn't this
lie in the face of our fervent and persistent prayers that we want God
to guide us, we want God to uphold us. We yearn to be "in-spired," to
change our deadened routines performed by rote into a revived way of life
that is bursting with joy, ingenuity, and charisma.
If you are afraid of being possessed by another person, that's legitimate.
If you are afraid of being possessed by God and still want to be a Christian,
then you're incomplete. You've only gone half-way. Our stories began today
with ignorance, but it begins again with baptism. John came out of the
wilderness eating locust and wild honey. Just be glad Jesus did come along
and share bread and wine at the Last Supper. If we had gotten stuck on
John the Baptist think of what our communion meals would be like - a lot
more crunchy. Eating locust and wild honey was a sign that John was more
than someone exotic, but special and therefore, set apart to be holy.
He practiced the baptism of repentance, but that's only half of what's
needed. It is necessary to realize that we have failed to fulfill what
God has wanted us to be, and so we repent and turn around and start over
again. We know that by ourselves we are condemned. But when the Holy Spirit
descended like a dove upon Jesus, he was made complete, for then he felt
how the grace of God takes away our sinfulness and enables us to do what
we can never do completely by ourselves. You probably didn't notice, but
every baptism has two elements: the pouring of water upon the child or
adult, and then the blessing of the Holy Spirit. It's no good starting
all over if you have no place to go and no way to get there, and most
importantly, no one to go there with you. The Holy Spirit be upon you,
Christopher, child of God, disciple of Christ, member of the church. Still
we are skeptical of how the Holy Spirit has been used in the past for
excesses of the Spirit. There are two principles in how the Holy Spirit
comes authentically into our lives.
The first is that it really is the Holy Spirit when you are inspired to
do or think or say something which benefits the life of someone else,
and just doesn't act to point you out as some sort of religious star.
The second is that the Holy Spirit works best in a crowd. When we are
gathered together as God's company in this place and we promise our love,
support and care to the ones baptized today, we are being sustained in
our resolve by the Spirit.
When as the Body of Christ we reach out and treat all manner of hurting
and wounded people as brothers and sister, when through our collective
energies we give significant aid to a foreign or domestic mission, when
we help a refugee family, when we unite to speak out against injustice
and violence, the Spirit is carrying us through it all. The history of
the Christian Church can be described as the story of how the people of
God were inspired and guided by the Spirit at each point in history.
The Spirit blows where it will, so we don't know exactly where we are
going, and we don't even know when we are going to be doing it. We do
know that we do not walk on our pilgrimage alone.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan
January 9, 2000
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