For the past month, with a break last week due to my face
exploding on me, (which sounds dramatic
I know, but it’s better than saying because of a nick while shaving or an
ingrown hair resulted in an infected boil that landed me in hospital ) we’ve
been working our way through Jesus teaching on the Holy Spirit in John’s
gospel. We’ve been focusing on what’s known as the farewell discourse, Jesus
teaching on the night he was betrayed at that last supper with his disciples.
In which he prepares them for his death and resurrection and life and mission
after Jesus returns to his Father. The teaching on the Holy Spirit revolves
around the word ‘paraclete’, the friend who comes alongside to give trusted
advice.
We’ve been looking at it for two reasons. Firstly, for many
people lack of emphasis and good teaching on the Holy Spirit or an over
emphasis of the Spirit and associating it with a particular worship and church
style have meant that we don’t experience the fullness of what the Holy Spirit
has for us.
Secondly and most importantly, AS a church we have a vision…
“we are called to be an authentic, vibrant, sustainable community, growing as
followers of Jesus and inspiring others to join us on that journey” and while
we can work to make that a reality it is in reality as we allow the Holy Spirit
to work alongside us and we work alongside the Holy Spirit that we will see
that be a reality. My hope is that we may be renewed as we open ourselves up in
new ways to the Holy Spirit.
This week and next week we are moving on to look at how the disciples
received Jesus promise of another paraclete like himself, how they received the
Holy Spirit. I want to do this as a way of looking at how we can know more of
the spirit’s presence and power in our lives.
In the readings from John and acts this morning, you can see
that the various gospel accounts differ as to how the disciples received the
Holy Spirit. John has Jesus breathing on his disciples on the night of his
resurrection whereas in Luke’s account Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem
and they will receive power. This has led to various interpretations from
various scholars. I found Leon Morris’ comment on this matter very helpful he
says… “it is false to the New Testament and Christian experience to say that
there is one gift of the Holy Spirit. Rather the Spirit is constantly
manifesting himself in new ways.” The two accounts are consistent in tying the
coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus promise and being part of Jesus call on his
disciples to mission. We are going to focus this week on the John Narrative and
next week on the Luke narrative.
John’s narrative is a post resurrection encounter between
Jesus and ten of his disciples. It is on the evening of that first day, that
resurrection Sunday. The disciples are gathered together in a room with the
doors locked. The disciples are afraid, they are concerned about what the
religious authorities will do to them. Jesus appears amidst them. We are not told how
he does it but we are to understand that no locked door is a barrier to the
risen Jesus. Jesus show them his hands and his side. Luke’s account of this
appearance says it because the disciples thought he was a ghost, but in John’s
account we are not told why he did it except that the disciples are now overjoyed
because it is Jesus and he is alive. Just as with Thomas in the next section of
this narrative they realise that shows that Jesus is who he said he was.
When John tells us this was on the that first day, it could
easily simply be giving us the time of Jesus appearance, but as we saw at
Easter with Jesus encounter with Mary, on the first day in the garden, that
this is infused with meaning that is helpful for us in understanding Jesus
breathing on the disciples and saying receive the Holy Spirit. You remember we
talked about the creation thread that flows through John’s gospel. It starts with Jesus eternal existence with
God and his part in the creation of the world and with the resurrection there
is the sense of a new creation happening> here again in this passage we see
that parallel happening. In the creation narrative God forms the human out of
the earth and does what?... He breathes life into the clay form. Our life comes
from the very breath of God. Here now on
the first day Jesus again breaths on humanity and imparts new life not just
physical life, but life that comes from the very presence of God by the Holy
Spirit within.
All through John’s gospel the life that Jesus brings to us
is equated with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist, says that Jesus is the one
who will baptise not with water but with the Holy Spirit. In that amazing
dialogue with Nicodemus Jesus says that we must be born again, not that we go
back into our mother’s womb, but that we must be born of the water and the spirit.
Here is that new life being breathed into the disciples. The Christian life is
new and eternal because it is life that comes from the very presence in our
lives of the breath of God the Holy Spirit. When we come to believe in Jesus
Christ as our Lord and Saviour, God imparts his life to us by the Spirit.
The second thing that I draw your attention to in this
passage is the greeting that Jesus brings his disciples. “Peace be with you”…
It is on one level just the typical Jewish greeting of that time… Shalom. But in the narrative Jesus says it twice and
so we are to pick up that there is something important going on here. The word shalom, peace does not mean simply
calmness or a lack of conflict, but rather for the Hebrews it had the meaning
of right relationship, wholeness. Peace is having the right relationship with
God, with each other, both those who we belong with and those outside that
sphere, with the created order and with
our possessions. AS Jesus had taught
about the Paraclete he had told his disciples that he would leave his peace
with them, not like the world gives. Here Jesus is imparting that peace to his
disciples. He has just died on the cross and taken all the things that would
stop us from knowing God and his love fully in our lives to the grave and been
raised to life again. He has enabled us to have that right relationship with
God again, so God can come and dwell with and with us by the Holy Spirit. We
receive the spirit because of the peace that Jesus had made for us. We receive the Holy Spirit because God
desires to dwell with his people.
Jesus presence and peace may not be stopped by a locked door
but it does not allow us to remain locked up in our fear rather it calls us out
into the world. Jesus calls his disciples who have received his peace to be
part of what he has come to do in the world. Just as the father has sent me he
says so I am sending you… The disciples are called to continue the work that
Jesus had done, they called to go and share the love God has for the world. Luke
calls it to be my witnesses, but John expresses it more in terms of a ministry
of reconciliation that just as we have been forgive so we are to go and spread
that forgiveness and wholeness that is found in Christ with others.
I had the privilege of hearing my good friend Malcolm Gordon
speak yesterday at a presbytery Youth training event I helped organise and
Malcolm was sharing about all that we do comes out of a response to all that
God has done for us. He said that it was what he called a cycle of gratitude,
we are forgiven and loved and made whole because of what Jesus had done for us
and out of gratitude for that we share it with others. The Holy Spirit, the
paraclete, the one who comes alongside us enables us and empowers us to do
that. Again it is the graciousness of God that the Spirit invites us to come
alongside what the Spirit is doing in the world.
My son James is involved in the Auckland grammar, Epsom
grammar combined production of “Jesus Christ super star” You won’t see him
singing or dancing on stage, he’s not even playing in the band. What he’s doing
is a great illustration of what you and I are called to do . James is a follow
spot operator. He allows us to see Jesus on the stage by following him with a
spot light. Paul Metzger’s theatrical
metaphor of the work of the Holy Spirit was when the spirit takes centre
stage it does it to keep the spot light
on Jesus, you and I are invited to be on the follow spot.
How do we receive the Holy Spirit?
Secondly, we receive the Holy Spirit, because of what God
has done for us. It is a gracious gift.
We do not earn it it is not for the spiritual elite, the holy rollers.
In fact it is because we know that we are spiritually poor, remember from the
beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel. Blessed are the poor
of Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thirdly, we receive the Holy Spirit because God knows how to
give good gifts to his children. In the ask seek knock passage that we had read
from Luke 11, it tells us that if we know how to give good gifts to our
children then how much more will the Father who is righteous give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.
People have often asked the question when do we receive the
Holy Spirit, at salvation or is it a second experience. People often point to
the experience of John Wesley, who although he’d been a Christian all his life,
found his heart strangely warmed as an example of this second sort of
experience. With the rediscovery of presence and power of the Holy Spirit in
the charismatic and Pentecostal movement there was a move to see people be
prayed for to be baptised in the Spirit. Sadly it has the effect of sort of
making those who hadn’t had that sort of experience seem like second class
citizens in the kingdom of God. I by the way came into a new experience of
God’s presence in my life and received the gist of tongues when I group of
friends prayed for me a few months after I’d become a Christian. I want to finish today by saying that the
spirit lives within and gives new life to all believers, and as we are willing
to open ourselves more and more to the Spirit of God the spirit we find
ourselves more and more aware of the spirit’s presence and filling in our
lives. When we ask for more of the spirits presence in our life, again becuas
eit is the gift of a gracious and loving God, God sends his spirit In new ways.
Maybe we don’t experience the fullness of the spirit because we don’t ask.
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