Sunday 07/29/12 RWJ/Pottersville UMC
Sermon: “Encountering the Holy Spirit”
Scripture Lesson: Ephesians 3:14-21
Gospel Lesson: John 6: 1-21
Good morning brothers and sisters! I greet you in the name our risen Lord and savior Jesus Christ! I hope and pray that you have all had a blessed week, and as always it’s a great pleasure to be in worship with you today!
This morning, I am finishing my five week series on how I think our local United Methodist Churches and our larger denominational United Methodist Church can get back to its historical Wesleyan roots to re-vitalize and breed revival in our church. In my first week of this series, I talked about how a church is much stronger with a pastor who is committed to the people, follows the Bible, and is dedicated to the Lord. In my second week of this series, I talked about how our church should look to the saints of the past to study and learn from their faith. By learning from the believers and saints who went before us, our own faiths are informed and strengthened as we serve and grow the kingdom of God. In the third part of this series, I talked about the Latin term “Corpus Christi,” which means the Body of Christ. While a strong pastor and looking to our past is vital, the Methodist Church has always been the strongest when the body of Christ loves, is united, and is committed to serving God and growing His kingdom. Last week, I talked about the forth part of my five part series, which was on the mission of the Christian Church. Our mission as a church is to reach people in the name of Jesus Christ, and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. In doing so, these disciples are changed from the inside out and are made new creations, as scripture tells us. As Christians then, “we are in the business of changing lives.”
Today in this final part of this series, I am going to talk about the “hinge pin” that keeps this whole thing we call the church and Christianity together. This is the thing that moves us, this is the thing that inspires us, and this is the thing that drives us. The thing that changes hearts, the thing that changes minds, the thing that proves to people without a shadow of doubt that Christ is real, is alive, and is amongst us right now! This thing I speak of brothers and sisters is the Holy Spirit. For without the Holy Spirit the Christian Church is dead wood, and has no life. Only with the Holy Spirit can we fully be connected to God, and can we fully be the Christians and the church that the Lord has called us to be! It is also important to note that in addition to this sermon and the others I have preached in this series, I wanted to point out briefly other vital things that are necessary to grow and revitalize our church. These other things are daily prayer, daily devotion to reading the Word of God, fellowshipping with the Corpus Christi, or the Body of Christ, telling others about the Lord, and taking daily time to be with the Lord. All of these things are also vital to growing the church and very necessary.
The Holy Spirit though, as I said is the hinge pin of this whole operation of the Christian faith. It’s the turbine engine on the Navy battleship, it’s the jet engine in the F-17, it’s the strength in a weightlifter, it’s the wind on a hot day, and it’s the water in the desert! The Holy Spirit guides us and informs us. But just what is the Holy Spirit? I mean it is sort of an odd thing if you think about it. When Jesus was baptized as scripture says, he “was filled with the Holy Spirit,” and at that point from age 30-33 Jesus went around proclaiming the good news of His gospel. We believe that Jesus Christ was God who came to earth and took on flesh, and was therefore, both fully God and fully human. As the Apostle Paul talked about in the scripture reading from Ephesians this morning, the “riches” of God’s glory come “through the spirit.” In loving and following Christ then, having the Holy Spirit gives us the fullness of God. In the reading from the Gospel of John today, Jesus took bread gave thanks and feed the Five-Thousand people with five barley loaves and two fish. I can imagine that the spirit was flowing powerfully when this miracle occurred! Also in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus walked on water, and I can imagine that the Holy Spirit was flowing at this miracle as well. I mean after all, I can only walk on water in cold of the winter! This is because the water is frozen!
Here is how I would describe the Holy Spirit to you this morning. It is like an invisible bolt of lightning that comes in different amounts of power. It can hit you like a ton a bricks, it can be milder, and it can anywhere in between. But when you have experienced the Holy Spirit you know! Looking at our Holy Trinity in the typical format of an equal three sided triangle, we see that one side is the Holy Spirit. Yet in many churches today I do not hear the Holy Spirit preached. Sure I hear about Jesus and God, but not the Holy Spirit. You see as Christians we believe that God has revealed Himself to us in three forms, or if you want to think about like this, in three different costumes. All three costumes look and feel distinctly different, but all are truly the Lord on the inside. Much like water can be liquid, can be frozen solid, or can be stream, it’s all water. This is like the Holy Trinity, of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.
Given this, how can we experience the fullness of God without encountering the Holy Spirit? If you have never felt that warm tingly feeling, that feeling that gives you goose bumps, that feeling of tremendous love and peace, maybe you have never received the Holy Spirit. These examples, are the ways of course I have encountered the Holy Spirit, but yours maybe quite different than mine. This I know though, when you encounter the Holy Spirit, you know! As my Grandpa Winkelman told me once, “maybe it was just gas Paul!” I said, “No grandpa, I think I know the difference.” It’s that feeling of intense warmth, love, and power surging through you! Who here amongst us today has experience the Holy Spirit like that?
If you have never had an experience such as this, then it could be possible you have never encountered the Holy Spirit. If this true you might have accepted Christ in your mind, but without the spirit you might have never experience the touch and the power of God in your heart.
Last weekend, my wife was at camp Aldersgate here in the Adirondack Park. I know that some of you have heard of this United Methodist Camp, and maybe some of you have even been there. Camp Aldersgate is a great summer camp, just like our Skye farm, and it is doing great work for the Lord! I was interested one day though, on just how Camp Aldersgate got its name. I mean Aldersgate I thought, was this camp named after someone like John Aldersgate, who made a generous donation to the United Methodist Church? I couldn’t find any record of that. Surely then I thought, it must have been named after a famous bishop like Bishop Coke or Bishop Asbury, who are where we get our names for the Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and the popular Christian bookstore Cokesbury. Many of you have probably heard of or shopped at Cokesbury, which is literally the combination of Bishop Thomas Coke’s last name, and Bishop Francis Asbury’s last name. You know what though? I didn’t find a famous Methodist Bishop named Bishop Aldersgate. I wondered then, where did Camp Aldersgate get its name?
Well this name of many Methodist Churches and many other Methodist institutions was taken from an experience that John Wesley had on “Aldersgate Street” in London, England. In fact, John Wesley being an ordained clergy person in the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, was the not the most successful clergy person early on in his ministry. In fact, he returned to England in 1738 after a mission trip to Georgia that needless to say did not go well at all. Wesley now 34 years old had returned to London a largely broken man, feeling that he was not successful in ministry. I am sure that we can all relate to such setbacks and feelings that we have failed before we have succeeded.
As the story goes, as it is also written in John Wesley’s journals, Wesley attended a prayer and worship service one night in London in 1738. As Wesley wrote, he went to this meeting reluctantly, but decided to go to this meeting of “Moravian” Christians. This prayer and worship meeting changed his life. The great humor of this is that these Moravians were reading the great reformer Martin Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans. So the Moravians were reading the founder of the Lutheran Church Martin Luther’s instruction to the book of Romans. Not really anything exciting I would think the introduction to Romans that Martin Luther wrote from his own perspective. As Wesley wrote in his journal though, as he heard the words read by Martin Luther from his preface to Romans, he “felt his heart strangely warmed.” He felt something different, and new, and warm, and powerful, and exciting! For our church founder John Wesley for the first time in his life encountered the Holy Spirit! The spirit of the living God that filled him, changed him, and reinvigorated him!
From that point on John Wesley was a dynamo for Jesus Christ, and became responsible for the founding of the entire Methodist Movement. When you think about how big the United Methodist Church is and was you can imagine the thousands or even millions of lives that John Wesley touched in the name of Jesus Christ! He couldn’t do have this though without first encountering the Holy Spirit!
In my home church of Moravia, NY, the congregation loves this John Wesley story, partly because the town in called Moravia, but largely because it shows the power of the Holy Spirit. In the Moravia/Locke United Methodist Church we have a retired Pentecostal Pastor in the congregation named Reverend Wayne Hampton. He always reminds me of the power of the Holy Spirit, and in fact the Pentecostal movement was completely founded around the Apostles experience at Pentecost of receiving the Holy Spirit. Many churches in America right now are shrinking, but many Pentecostal churches are growing, and I think it’s because of the Holy Spirit! I always joke with Reverend Hampton who is originally from “Massoura,” which I think means Missouri. I corrected him and said, “You mean Missouri,” and he responded, “No it’s Massoura.” I said ok them Reverend Hampton! I would often tell Reverend Hampton in joking, “You see here in the United Methodist Church we look at the Holy Trinity triangle and three equal sides of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but in the Pentecostal Church, you have two little stubby sided of your triangle called the Father and the Son, then a massive triangle side for the Holy Spirit.” I then said, “Here in the United Methodist Church, we try to have equal sides of the Trinitarian triangle.” Reverend Hampton just said, “Well I can’t argue with that!” I wonder in some churches today if they even have a triangle at all, or if they just have two sides. Without the Holy Spirit we are lost, and we cannot fully experience the life changing power of God!
I want close with a story, a story that in fact happened to me this past Thursday. This story involved one of my students, who we will call Jim. Jim is 16-years old student, who is on probation, is court ordered to attended AA or Alcohol Anonymous, struggles with drug use, is at risk to be sent to drug rehab or something else, and is highly sexually promiscuous. For some reason though, Jim always wants to tutor with me. In fact, this is a private tutoring situation, where his mother is paying me to help Jim pass one of his high school Regents exams next month, and Jim only wants to tutor with me. Jim always busts on me for being a Christian, tells me I have no fun, and tells me that being a Christian is boring. He is not disrespectful when he does this, but it is clear that he is not a fan of Christianity. Jim is also an avowed atheist. On Thursday this past week, Jim actually also tried to, no joke, convince me to do drugs with him. The first thing I said to Jim was, “Don’t you have an AA meeting a few hours after this tutoring session!” He said, “Oh yeah I do!” Jim explained to me that if I went out into the woods with him and used marijuana and various hallucinogenic drugs that I would experience the world in exciting new ways. Jim then told me that he believed I would likely draw closer to God, because in my potentially stoned state that I would experience the faith like never before. He said, “Well you have never really been high and soaring like I have, so how could really fully experience God?”
I said to Jim, “Oh no I have experienced in my own way something bigger than any drug can offer.” I said, “Jim I have been to the mountain top, I have experienced the spirit of God, and that spiritual high in Jesus Christ that is more powerful than any drug I could ever do!” I told Jim, “I have seen men fall to the ground and tremor who have received the spirit of God, and I have seen people in states of heart and mind that far exceed anything you could ever buy from some pusher on the street!” I said, “So don’t get it crossed up Jim; I have been high on the Spirit of God! I have seen God in new ways, because Jim I have and continue to encounter the Holy Spirit!”
To me the Holy Spirit is an amazing thing to encounter! I wouldn’t say I am addicted to it, but I do not need a drug made by human hands, when what my heart and soul needs is the spiritual remedy from the Holy Spirit that lifts my soul to the mountain top. God created us, so how can something we created ever compete with God. And I say to you today, if you have never received the Holy Spirit, if you have called upon the spirit of God, if you have never raised your hands I high in worship, you need to ask yourself, have I received the Holy Spirit? If you have not called upon the Lord today, lower the barriers of your heart, and be filled with the spiritual fire that is the Holy Spirit! Reach out to the Lord, and I hope and pray that you all have your own “Aldersgate experience.” Praise God and Amen!
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