Surprised by the Spirit

It is the energy of a clock spring unwinding, of an arrow speeding to its mark, of the church moving off dead center and beginning to function as it should.

One writer summed it up: ...for too long the church has held potential Christianity.

We have been filled with great plans, beautiful plans, holy plans.

But so often they have remained just plans with great potential, but not carried out.”[Norman Lucas]

We've all heard the often true statement that the surest way to kill something is to send it to a committee for a feasibility study!

“Now is the time for us – high time for us – to covert our potential Christianity into kinetic Christianity.”

It is time for us to lift our feet and allow the toboggan to move forward.

There are several more bits that we can glean from this image of the toboggan and the hill.

We can try to steer the toboggan a bit by leaning one way or the other, but it often does not work out as we expect.; we are frequently surprised at where we end up.

There is danger, yes; but there is also the opportunity for great excitement, surprise, and a lively ride.

Thinking and planning alone will not produce it; it must be experienced.

This got me to thinking about another illustration.

In the Broadway musical The Music Man, the slippery salesman sells lots of musical instruments with the promise that everything will be so easy; all one needs to do is to think music, and gorgeous sounds will pour forth from the instrument, like magic.

It was a lie, of course, even though there are so many elementary students who apparently still buy that salesman's line.

It takes practice, lots of continual practice to make beautiful music.

I think it was the famous cellist Pablo Casals who, even as a person who had been performing in public for 80 years and more said: “If I were to miss practice for a day, I would know; if I missed two days, the audience would know, if I missed three days, the whole world would know.”

Thinking and planning alone will not produce it; it must be experienced.

I remember standing at the top of a particular hill at home, sled in hand.

If I went down the hill and over the field this way, it would be a nice, gentle ride, safe and predictable, no surprises, and a bit boring.

But if I turned a quarter turn and went down over the brow of the hill another way –well, who knows what might happen.

There were bumps to negotiate, thorn bushes to dodge, and a barbed wire fence at the bottom to avoid.

Oh, what a ride that was!

That particular spot is all grown up in trees 60 years later, so my grand-kids will have to find a different place to risk a ride.

Is there room in our picture of the church for surprise, for the unexpected, for the seemingly crazy chance?

I hope so, for this is of the very essence of what it means for the Holy Spirit to be present with us.

In our reading a interpreting of the passage from Corinthians today, we have toned it down greatly, we have perhaps covered over or ignored the great surprise there.

We have turned it from good news into ho-hum, indifferent news.

When we hear Paul say “There are varieties of gifts....” etc. I suspect that we usually think that Paul is talking about talents or abilities or skills: artistic talent, the gift of gab, an ear for music, mechanical skill.

We say that either you have it or you don't; one cannot do much about it except to use it or not use it.

But Paul is not talking about those things, however nice and important as they are.

Listen to his list: utterance of wisdom, utterance of knowledge, faith, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits.

These are not innate talents; these are gifts, stirred up by the one Spirit who gives them all.

Paul is saying to the Corinthians who love to fight and bicker, each thinking himself better than the next person....don't get prematurely swelled heads, folks.

The things that are really important are not your accomplishments, they are not what your skill has wrought.

The truly important things are gifts which the Spirit give wherever thew Spirit deems it best and wherever the Spirit is welcomed.

Perfectly ordinary, undistinguished people can be given special tasks to do.

Moses the stutterer becomes the great leader.

David, the scrawny shepherd lad, becomes the king.

Mary, the young peasant girl, becomes the Mother of God.

Again and again the Spirit surprises us.

He takes us down the slope in a way we could not guess; He leads us in a way we do not expect.

Perhaps for us are not the dramatic tasks of Moses, David, or Mary, but there are still the things which can change the lives of those whom we reach.

Perhaps by the gift of the Spirit, you have found just the right thing to say to quell a vile argument.

Perhaps by the gift of the Spirit, you have been able to steer teenagers away from choices that would destroy them.

Perhaps by the gift of the Spirit, you have been able to comfort the distressed.

Perhaps by the gift of the Spirit you have discovered that the touch of your hand in love is as powerful as much medicine from the doctor.

These are gifts which the Holy Spirit makes available generously to those who allow themselves to be open to God's future, to be surprised...yes, even the no-talent types.

“We do not cheer our own native abilities, but rather, wide-eyed, we are continually astonished by the Spirit's work in us.” [David Buttrick]

This is true for us as individuals, and together as a congregation.

What might happen if we were to take our feet out of the snow and put them on the toboggan?

To start down the slope, not quite sure of what will happen, but willing to be surprised where the Spirit will take us.

Oh, the bumps we will take and the thorn bushes we will dodge, but oh, the joy with which we can call to the world standing by: “Come this is the way; try it with us, and see!”

We dreamed up lots of plans last year, and the Council has been slowly considering them and moving some toward action.

It is four months until we need to do an annual review of those plans and their implementation.

Let's pick up our feet, with a prayer for the life-giving, ever-surprising Spirit to be with us.

What a day this is, and will be! Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.