7 Pentecost 2013
Father Adam Trambley
July 7, 2013, St. John’s Sharon
The Discipleship Arm Dance –
Part 3:
He Came Up Out of the Water and He
Received Holy Spirit
(Part 1 here and Part 2 here)
This
week we are going to continue working through the Discipleship Arm Dance.
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He
heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
Last
week we discussed: “Jesus was baptized by John.” We focused on two pieces that were important
parts of Jesus’ baptism. The first was
his total commitment to die to his old life, even though his life was a good
life and even a sinless life, to be totally about his Father’s will and purpose
for his life. The second was his
willingness to make that commitment in the context of a particular local
community of faith. This morning we are
going to look at the next two of steps in the Discipleship Arm Dance, he came
up out of the water and he received the Holy Spirit, from the perspectives of
Jesus, of us, and of those we hope to disciple. Then we’ll continue through the
rest of the steps in the coming weeks.
He came
up out of the water. Now we may not
think much about Jesus coming up out of the water, but it wasn’t a given. Baptism, remember, is about dying to
ourselves, and baptism in the Jordan isn’t like having some water sprinkled on
our foreheads with a silver conch shell.
Baptism in the river was full immersion, being brought and held down
under the water by someone else. Such a
baptism is not just symbolic death to the old self – baptism could be literal
death if the person doing the baptizing doesn’t bring you back up. We are talking about total submission. When John baptized Jesus, he could have held
him under the water until he drowned. He
could have decided that he wanted the biggest TV ministry, to sell the most
CD’s, and to have the most Bible books written about him. But, thanks be to God, he didn’t. Jesus came up out of the water.
So
Jesus had that literal support of his local faith community after his baptism,
but he also had to choose to come up out of the water. He didn’t just keep thrashing about in the
water, hoping that he wouldn’t have to go into the wilderness or end up on a
cross. He didn’t just stop and say,
“Well, I can’t stay where I was, but the future looks too painful, so I’ll stay
right here.” No, Jesus came up out of
the water. He didn’t just die to his old
self, but he decided to live his new life.
That new life was launched out
of the ministry of John the Baptist and his disciples.
Now we
have to make the same decisions to come out of the water. Hopefully, none of us have felt drowned by
our church, at least not this church. I
do know that some of us here this morning have ended up at St. John’s the hard
way. Some folks have tried to offer
their lives to God at another local church and have been rejected for any number
of reasons, and I’m sorry for that.
Churches are supposed to help us come up out of the water, and one of
the gifts the Episcopal Church has had is helping people out of the water who
have been soggy and water-logged and nearly drowned in other faith
communities. We all are trying to help
everyone who comes come up out of the water, as well as continue to lift up all of
us who have been here a while. As either
current church members or the new people we hope to disciple come forward offering
their lives in new ways to God, we want to accept those gifts gratefully, and
lovingly lift people out of the water to go onto the next steps God has in
store for them. I would hope not only
some of our newer members have felt that support coming out of the water, but
also some of our long-time members have felt that same support when they have
decided to offer their lives more fully to God or to offer themselves in new
ways at new stages of life or by beginning new ministries.
With
that support of our local church, we also make the decision ourselves to get up
out of the water. Floundering around in
the river is not a fun place to be for an extended length of time. Treading water is utterly exhausting. But people do it all the time in various
areas of life. We find our current life
is totally unfulfilling, so we leave it, but we don’t do anything to get to the
next place. We decide we want to lose
weight or stop smoking or eat healthy or whatever, and we convince ourselves
our old life needs to go, but we don’t take the steps to be successful with the
changes we have decided to make. We
never join a program or a group or get our family to help us or whatever would
be necessary. We just flounder in the
water miserably. Or maybe we leave a
job, or a marriage, but don’t make the changes in our own life necessary so
that our next steps are more successful.
We all have seen people like that, or even been people like that at
times. We can make the same mistakes
when we decide we really need to commit to God, but don’t want to take the
steps necessary to live a life dedicated to God. We somehow delude ourselves into believing
that can keep the pain at bay by staying put, when all we do is wear ourselves
out little-by-little until we go under the water, exhausted. But when we get up out of the water, we are
ready to face, and perhaps even embrace, the life-changing possibilities God
has in store.
Those
we would disciple have the same struggles we have, but are often have even more
fear and trepidation about getting out of the water. They need the firm hand of a loving church
family on their back as they struggle to come up. Many people we want to reach haven’t been in
a church. They haven’t heard hundreds of
scripture readings and sermons, like we have.
(Even if we ignore them, we have some idea of what following Jesus is
about.) Once they make the difficult
decision to die to their old lives, we need to provide them with such love and
support that they can’t imagine not continuing their journey with us. We want everyone who comes to us to find God
to know that we can and will be lifting them up, not only out of the water, but
every step of the way.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
This
step of receiving the Holy Spirit is the most difficult one to talk about, I
think. The Holy Spirit blows where she
will, and isn’t constrained by somebody’s three guaranteed steps for getting
the Spirit in your life or whatever. The
Holy Spirit doesn’t come upon people in the Bible according to any particular
pattern. For the Apostles at Pentecost
it was tongues of fire, while Jesus received a dove in bodily form. I’ve seen various people receive the Holy
Spirit and have never seen either of those particular signs. Then some people
receive particular gifts, like speaking in tongues, when the Holy Spirit comes
upon them, but others experience other things.
Sometimes the Spirit comes upon a person in response to specific prayers
to receive the Holy Spirit, including in formal services like confirmation, and
sometimes she just shows up on people when they are ready.
But we
can say a few things about receiving the Holy Spirit that seem to ring true,
and they go equally well for Jesus when he received the Spirit, for us, and for
those whom we hope will receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit at St. John’s
in the future. The first is that we
can’t fully receive the Holy Spirit unless we want to give our lives entirely
over to God. God will take what he can
get from us and use us to the degree we are willing, of course. We all have gifts from the Spirit, and the
Spirit operates in all of us as we share those gifts for the building up of
God’s people. We can also see the fruits
of the Spirit in our lives – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – to the degree we allow the Spirit
into our lives. But to fully receive the
Holy Spirit, we need to make that entire surrender to God that Jesus made when
he was baptized by John, and we make at whatever point in our own walk of faith
that we can. When we are bringing others
to faith, part of why we want them to make a real commitment to God with their
lives instead of just putting their foot in the door the easy way, is so that
they can have the Spirit enter their lives fully.
Then,
when we commit ourselves to God and receive the Holy Spirit, we are set on
fire. That fire does two things in us.
The first is that the Holy Spirit warms every fiber of our being with the love,
joy and peace of God. The second is that anything sinful or evil in us gets
burned away. The second effect,
obviously, can be more painful in the short-term than the first, but both are
essential to live a life dedicated to God’s mission and purpose. These two effects correspond in our dance to
hearing the voice of God say, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased,” and going into the wilderness to defeat the devil. We’ll go on with those next week.
But
let’s finish this week by doing the entire Discipleship Arm Dance together:
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He
heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
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