David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: June 4, 2006

A Community of Believers: III
"Led by the Spirit"

In our sermons in these few weeks together, we are thinking about the mission of our congregation and we are doing so with the help of our church’s focus statement which you can find, and I’d like to ask you to find it now on the front page of your bulletin, about two-thirds of the way down. Let’s read together in unison as we say,

Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers.
Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit,
we aspire to love and glorify God within and beyond the Church
through worship, study, fellowship and service.

This is a wonderful statement. It gives us our job description, in a sense. Second Presbyterian Church, a community of believers. Called by Jesus Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, we want to love and we want to glorify God. We want to do it within the community and beyond the community. We do it through worship, study. We do it through fellowship and through service.

So far, as we’ve looked at this statement in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the importance of living and functioning together. Not just as a gathering of individuals but as a true bone fide community.

1.  That’s what Jesus Christ has called us to be: a community. We cannot fulfill our commission unless we work together as a community, unless we speak together as a community, unless we resolve our problems together as a community. We cannot do by ourselves what we can do together. It simply is not possible. The calling is too much: among other things, to clothe the naked, feed to hungry, care for the stranger; to love our friends, and love our enemies. It’s all too much . . . by ourselves. But together, it’s a different matter. Together we can do what Christ calls us to do. And so first of all, we have been called to be a community. Together. And we must remain a community in the days ahead.

2.  I’ve already mentioned the second statement that we’ve looked at, and that is that we are a community that has been "called by Jesus Christ." Called together by Jesus Christ; given our marching instructions by Jesus Christ. A community of believers called by Jesus Christ, signifying that we are not our own. We do not set our marching instructions by ourselves. It’s not up to us to set the agenda for the church. Not first of all, at least. It is up to us to listen. To listen for God’s call coming to us through Jesus Christ. He calls us into existence, he sets before us our marching instructions. It’s too easy for a church to believe that it belongs to its pastor, or it belongs to its members, or it belongs to a small group or clique within the church that seems to run everything. That’s not the case. The head of the church is Jesus Christ. We belong to him and he is the one whose voice we need to listen to.

I think it’s fair to say that in the almost twelve years here in Lexington, I have watched for something that I have, fortunately, never found. This church is almost unique. There is no clique that I can find. There is no inner circle which ‘owns’ this church. It’s highly unusual. Not those who have been here forever. Not those whose families have been here forever. They don’t exercise ownership of this church. Not a few powerful people, or a few wealthy people who own this church. I do not find that. Which is wonderful. There are very, very congregations like that.

Which means we have the distinct possibility of putting these words into action. We belong to Jesus, called by Jesus, and in the days ahead, as we all think about God’s call, we can think again about what God’s call is for us as individuals and as congregation and give back to Christ the ownership of who we are as individuals and as a community. We are a community, called by Jesus Christ.

3.  And then, today, we go to a third aspect of the focus statement, one that is fitting for today, Pentecost, the day in which we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church (the presence of God not just ‘out there somewhere,’ but the presence of God ‘right here with us’), as we celebrate that together on Pentecost, we think of the fact that we as a community, called by Jesus Christ, we are also a group of people who are, and want to be, led by the Holy Spirit.

What a wonderful statement, to think of ourselves as being ‘led by the Holy Spirit.’ What a wonderful phrase. It speaks of God’s presence with us, always moving us own . . . Never static. Never leaving us alone. Never leaving us where we are, but always pressing us to something ahead. We are on a journey. And it is the Spirit who leads us.

• Sometimes way out front, saying, "Come, come and join me."
• Sometimes behind, pushing us, saying "Come on, move on, move ahead."
• Sometimes within us, bothering us, bothering our consciences, saying to us "Something’s not right here. There’s more to come. There’s a better way of doing this or that."

The spirit in one way or another wants to lead us ON!

Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers, called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit. That raises a question, of course. Where is the Holy Spirit leading us? If the Holy Spirit is our leader, if we are a community led by the Holy Spirit, where to? Where are we going?

I suppose, to begin with, from one point of view, there is no answer to that: we just don’t know where we’re going! Jesus says that the Spirit blows where the Spirit wants to blow, and we cannot control the Spirit of God! Maybe it’s just as well! God is God and we are not. The question is, will we align ourselves with what God is doing, where God is leading, even when we don’t know where that may be?

Will we simply trust, like Abraham setting out from Ur of the Chaldees, going to a land that God would show him (Genesis 12:1). Abraham our ancestor in the faith didn’t know where he was going, but trusted in God’s leadership. Do we trust like that?

Or, will we trust, like Columbus setting out for the new world (or for whatever lay at the other side of the ocean!), not knowing where he was going. With some people saying, "There’s nothing out there. There is no more beyond." And others saying, "Oh yes, there is something out there beyond, but I don’t want it. I’m happy where I am."

Led by the Holy Spirit means trusting that we are on a journey, we are happy to be on a journey, and God is leading us, and God knows where we’re going, and we’re saying we want to be on board the ship. We have a great God at the helm, a great shepherd who leads us, and we will go where the shepherd leads. And we will do so with confidence.

So, on the one hand, when we say that we’re "led by the Spirit," we might begin by saying, "Well, we don’t know where that is, we don’t know where we’re going." But we do know that we’ve got a great shepherd. We do know that we’ve got a great helmsman. And we do know this as well – that under the Spirit’s leadership, there are some things which will definitely happen on the way.

While there is much uncertainty, there are some things that will definitely happen when a congregation is open to the leading of the Spirit.

• There will always be a renewal of the life of the church.
• There will always be a sense of life within the church. Not death but life and even in the face of death, there will be a sense of life.
• And that life will manifest itself
  • in a renewal of graciousness,
  • in a renewal of gratitude
  • and a renewal of gifts and gifted-ness.

The Spirit, no matter where the Spirit leads, will always empower us to be gracious to others.
Will always empower us to have a sense of gratitude to God.
Will always empower us to see that every single one of us has gifts. Gifts that don’t make us proud but make us into servants which make us say, "How can I use my gift in the service of God?"

Graciousness. In the time we have, let’s look at each of these aspects of the Spirit’s work, beginning with graciousness. Where the Holy Spirit leads, where ever it may be, there is always the overflow of graciousness, a reaching out to others individually, one on one, and socially, within the community, where ever we live. There will be the propagation of justice and fairness and equity. There will be a graciousness which is not out to condemn others. No condemnation here. No blaming but healing. Healing is the issue. Life is the issue. Not what went wrong, but how we make it right!

Ruby Hewlett was a post office worker in Indianapolis, and maybe she still is. And she had the bad fortune of coming to work one day in her post office station in Indianapolis when the Indianapolis newspaper ran a report, the results of a study done, about the rudest post office stations in the city. And her post office was named the rudest one in the city (from Guideposts)

So, she got together there with her colleagues there and (of course!) they immediately concluded that it wasn’t their fault! It was the fault of all the customers who lived in that particular area of town. And then she remembered that she was a Christian. And she remembered that "what goes around comes around." So she decided to try something different in her reaction to customers. She decided to try to live graciously. And this is what she says:

She says, "After my lunch break, I imagined that my window was a mirror and the person on the other side would reflect my demeanor. `Lord,’ she prayed, `I’m going to need your help to make this work. (DR: the Spirit’s help). My first customer looked glum. While digging in her purse for her wallet, she mumbled her order. I felt awkward but she looked up to pay, I forced a smile. One side of her mouth curled up slightly. She’s trying too, I said to myself. For the rest of the week, I concentrated on getting to know my customers. Addressing them by name when I could and thinking of them as people just like me, with problems and worries and good news and bad news within their lives."

"By Friday, the smile on my face had become genuine. I felt better. And then I saw him, the dreaded Mr. Gee in line. The person who always gave everybody at the post office station a hard time. A true test, said Ruby. He walked up to my window and barked his order. While handling the transaction, I said, `How’s business, Mr. Gee?’ He looked startled. ‘Terrible,’ he growled. I placed his order on the counter. `It will get better,’ I said, smiling. He grumbled and walked away but I saw him glance back over his shoulder [DR:as if he were saying to himself, `What’s wrong with this picture?’]

Slowly Mr. Gee began to change and so did the clerks. A new mood of cheerfulness seemed to pervade the Station and Mr. Gee became one of our favorite customers.

Where the Spirit is, there is graciousness. The apostle Paul puts it like this in Galatians. He says, "Where the Spirit is, there you see the fruit of the Spirit. It’s love and joy and peace. It’s patience and kindness and generosity. It is faithfulness and gentleness and self-control."

These are not just about inner characteristics in our lives, though some of them are. They are about the way we relate to other people: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. How we need the help of God’s Spirit if this is who we are to be.

Where the Spirit is, says Isaiah, where the Spirit is, there is an overflow of this new life, not just one-on-one, but in society as a whole. Jesus picks up these words of Isaiah when he says (and I paraphrase):

"When the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, these are the kinds of things that happen. Good news is proclaimed to the oppressed. We find ourselves binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vindication of our God. We comfort those who mourn. We provide for those who mourn. We give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint Spirit.

Gratitude. Where the Spirit is, graciousness prevails. It abounds individually and corporately and so, too, does gratitude to God. The kind of gratitude to God that we see in the tenth verse of Isaiah 61, where Isaiah says,

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My whole being shall exalt in my God. It’s God who inspires us within him, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness (DR: no matter what happens, I feel as if God has surrounded me and clothed me and comforted me), as a bride groom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."

Surrounded by the blessing of God, overflowing with a sense of gratitude.

As I look back over my years in ministry, I can think of a number of people whose lives were very, very far from being easy, but who chose to be grateful to God, who chose to feel blessed by God, even when the circumstances made no sense at all.

In another congregation, for example, there was a friend whose husband died after a tragic accident. Whose oldest son was an alcoholic, who may have had treatment occasionally but it really didn’t make any changes in his life. And whose youngest son was brain-damaged after a fall from a building at a construction site. These were the main people in her life, day by day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Yet, she was not undone. In fact, she was one of the most joyful people I ever knew and if I wanted to be lifted up, she was the person I would go to. I have no clue how she did this. It was in no way fake. It was real to the very depth of her being. I can only think that it was God’s Spirit at work within her.

In our own congregation, I have seen this in some of your lives. Some of the things that you have borne, and I’ve said to myself, "I’m so grateful I don’t have to bear that. I don’t know how you do it," even as I encourage you to be sustained, I find myself receiving as much as giving.

And I’ve seen it in our life as a congregation as well, when we have faced set backs as we have from time to time. Instead of lingering in the mire, the congregation as a whole seems to rise up and say, "Let’s get going. Let’s deal with this. We are those who have been blessed by God and our blessing still remains. Let’s keep moving."

This is the Spirit’s work, leading us out of the mire to a gratitude to God that nothing takes away and to a graciousness to others that keeps on overflowing.

Giftedness. And third of all, when the Spirit leads us, the Spirit leads us to a sense of giftedness, to see that we are all gifted by God, that the ministry of the church is not just for the few, but it is for the many. It is for all of us, every one of us given a gift in some way or another. And when the Spirit is present we see that our gifts are not for the purpose of pride, but they are for using in the service of God. The Apostle Paul speaks of these gifts like this (1 Corinthians 12:4-7). He says,

How has the Spirit given you a gift for the common good? Are you asking? Led by the Spirit, we will ask. What is my gift? What are my gifts? How can I use them for God?

Ed White is a retired Presbyterian minister who has served as a consultant in many congregations. He tells of a highly gifted person using her gift in a supermarket, day by day. He says,

"There’s a wonderful little book entitled, Of Human Hands. A Reader in Spirituality of Work. It’s edited by Gregory Austin Pierce. It’s a series of testimonies from people who have discovered their call from God in the work of their everyday life. Among the contributors are an artist, a carpenter, an engineer, a mother, a letter carrier and a nurse. My favorite testimony is by a check-out cashier in a supermarket who has learned to discern the state of people’s spirits by their body language, as they come through the line [DR: and you know that sometimes there’s some strong body language when we go through the line, especially if we’ve been waiting awhile!]. She responds appropriately and carries on a pastoral ministry to folks as he checks out their groceries."

When is the last time you were pastored to by your check-out cashier? I know of one, actually, here in town who is exactly like that . . . The heart of our call, he goes on, is not simply to do a particular job. The heart of our call is to be a Christian in the midst of the work that God has given us to do all week long. And here’s the conclusion:

"In that work, God calls forth and develops the gifts and talents that we have been given so that our life can become a tapestry of gratitude to our maker."

God calls forth gifts. God gives them and calls them forth. Do you sense the Spirit working in this way? Do you move in line with the Spirit to ask what those gifts may be, and to find ways to use them?

• When the Spirit leads, we seek our gifts. We seek ways to use them.
• When the Spirit leads, we do not allow the circumstances of life to rob us of our gratitude to God but we find in a strange way, God empowering us to be grateful, despite the circumstances.
• When the Spirit leads, we receive grace from God, and having received we are enabled to give grace to others.

What a wonderful calling. Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers. Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit.

Who knows where? But we have a faithful guide and a shepherd and we trust that the destination is right. Where ever it is, along the way

God will cause our gifts to be made manifest. Sufficient for the task.
God will give us a sense of gratitude that nothing can take away, and
God will give us grace so that we may be gracious to others in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God! Let’s bow before God in prayer.

Come, O Holy Spirit, and lead us. May we know your fruit. May we know your passion within our lives. May we know your gifts. So make us to be grateful and gracious. Amen.