“We keep the Spirit in the back room, not because she is shy, but because she is dangerous.”

John 20:19-23

At some point in the last few months, I started using the word “Coronapocalypse.”  Someone said it somewhere and I picked it up.  It was sort of used comically in social media, like “everyone is stocking up on toilet paper because the end of the world as we know it is coming!” It’s a coronapocalypse. Then as things started to get more tense, I heard it used around the stress of homeschooling kids and the anxiety of being alone and isolated, the stress of unemployment.  It’s a coronapocalypse.

The word “apocalypse” is actually a Greek word (apokalupsis). It means revealing.

When Mary and Joseph present baby Jesus in the temple, the church grandpa, Simeon takes the tiny child in his arms and sings that he is a light for revelation to the gentiles.  The word that is used is that Jesus is a little bundle of apocalypse. Apocalypse doesn’t mean the “end of things” or “destruction and judgement.” It means “uncovering” or “the lifting of a veil.”  Revealing. A light to the nations.

The church grandpa, Simeon, promised that Jesus would lift the veil and reveal the truth, and he did through his life.  Jesus sought out those who were pushed aside. Jesus showed love to those most people ignored.Jesus pushed back against unjust economics and laws.  He showed us real, live characteristics of who God is. He pulled back the veil, uncovered the truth, turned people around.

We think about how Jesus lived so much in our Christian tradition. And for good reason.  We should! We should imitate how Jesus lived. But there is more to the story of following Jesus than just imitating him in a life of faith. In today’s reading, Jesus appears to his disciples in a locked room.  They’re overjoyed. He wishes them peace and then Jesus sends his spirit to them. He literally breathes on them, the scripture says, and sends his Holy Spirit to them.

As the Breath of God blows into that locked room where the disciples are gathered, I think of the story we heard from Acts about the time when the Holy Spirit came down on the church.  The truth is, I have to think of that story of the wild and violent wind that rushes in as the almighty breath of God. Because there are things in this world that take our breath away with their evil and sinfulness. 

Like, a respiratory virus that affects more people black and brown communities.  Like a black man named George Floyd who violently died at the hands of police officers and who cried out “I can’t breathe.”  Like Jesus, a common, working-class man, who was asphyxiated on the cross at the hands of the state.  

When I say that there is more to our Christian tradition than imitating how Jesus lived, it is because when Jesus physically ascended to be with God, he sent the Spirit of the living God to actually be with us, to challenge us transform us, to abide with us.

Part of the life of faith is to pay attention to and respond to and abide with this Spirit in our midst. And that’s where things get a little uneasy. 

The Holy Spirit doesn’t always get as much air time in our Christian tradition as the other two members of the Trinity.  The Spirit of God or the feminine Ruach in Hebrew--which the book of Genesis tells us hovered over the deep, dark waters at the beginning of creation--She is mysterious.  

In the story from Acts, we hear of the spirit that came like the sound of a rushing, violent wind. This is no gentle inbreaking of the spirit “that intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” This is a mighty and fierce and fantastic tornado that ignites fire and unifies whole group of strangers together.  This passionate and provocative spirit tells the truth and mobilizes hearts in the name of Jesus.  This immense and powerful presence of God Sees into our souls and transforms our lives. Barbara brown Taylor says that “we keep the Spirit in the back room, not because she is shy, but because she is dangerous.”

I can think back on moments in my own life where the Holy Spirit beckoned me to step into another space and grow.  Sometimes, this space was a dangerous space. For example, there was moment a few months ago when I realized with total dread that I was going to have to film myself for on line worship and step into a new space.  I mean, I was probably mostly terrified of you all… Well friends, I’m still a little terrified. But here we are. Just the church, doing our best.

The Holy spirit has beckoned me into other spaces too. There have been moments in my marriage where I actually felt prodded by the Holy Spirit and called to turn towards my partner and work for a better relationship.  Or right along side with that, I know the Holy Spirit has called me to walk with a friend through a very painful and life giving divorce.

We can trust that the Holy Spirit is moving and working around us.  The good news is that we can trust the Holy Spirit to act. The tricky part is that although she is the great comforter, she is busy creating a new heaven and a new earth and wrapping us up in that work which is edgy sometimes uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s easier to believe in her activity in our lives if it’s comfortable, easy, and affirms what we want to hear. It’s those times that we are uneasy when it’s hard to believe and respond.  For example, sometimes we’re called to step out of the status quo and step into a holy, dangerous place that reckons with our privilege.  That’s not always an easy one to respond to, but it’s a holy step to take.

Where do you sense God’s spirit blowing in your life, ruffling feathers, guiding to you to reconcile, leading you to take a hard and humble look at yourself, challenging you to reckon with the brokenness and create something new? Sometimes, that call to step into a new space is so dangerous, so absurd, that we brush it off. In the story from acts, they brush it off and say, “they are drunk with new wine.” But it is a call that is before us.  Being a follower of Jesus isn’t just about imitating Jesus, it’s about paying attention to the living, breathing Holy Spirit that moves in our lives and where she is challenging us to journey.

We’ve got a lot going on right now in our world and nation.  I’m not sure where we’ll be by Sunday morning when we watch this message. As it turns out, the coronapocalypse is revealing more than the just the truth about the amount of toilet paper we need to get through a month.  After over 100,000 dead from the corona virus, after the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor and, and, and… The wind blows that there is a reckoning to be had. There is a call to answer.

Now, I don’t always understand how the Holy Spirit is working, but I trust her. And I trust that God will lead us to abundant life.

Blessed be the journey before us.

Remind me: how does prayer work again?

John 17:1-11

When I was a little girl, I would often stay by my Grandma if my parents went out of town for a weekend. One of my most consistent memories of her was waking up early and finding her at the kitchen table saying her prayers. She had this old envelope that was so worn, the paper was almost soft. It was full of prayers clipped out of devotional pamphlets, or prayer cards. I know in that little stack of prayers was the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi that she prayed every day “Lord let me be an instrument of your peace…” She also had a rosary with dark purply beads that she would pray.  She had handwritten lists of people that she mentioned in prayer by name.  She was one of those people who added prayer requests from her conversations in the check out line at Jewel. When my grandma said that she prayed for you, you can bet that she did.

I would like to say that I have a prayer routine like my grandma’s: that I wake before the sun each day and spend an hour in prayer.  Prayer has been something that has taken on different shapes at different phases of my life.  As a very little girl, I remember praying with my dad before bed. I don’t remember a lot about those prayers except that we always prayed for “teachers and pets.” 

Then, there was a period of time when I was in youth group and wore, oversized Jesus t-shirts under button down plaid flannel shirts.  And held hand with my youth group as we all prayed.  When my child was in the NICU after he was born, my prayers were different, spontaneous, urgent. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that there have been a lot  of periods of silence between me and God too over the years.

These day, my prayer life again looks differently. Sometimes I pray on jogs or walks with my dog.  Other times, I find myself sinking into the news I’m reading and just sort of mumbling “Lord have mercy” and shaking my head a lot.  I’m not really sure if that counts as prayer.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve actually done prayer right over the years and even now. Have I gotten the words right? Have I been too focused on myself?  Should I have had more of a prayer routine? Written them down in a journal?

In today’s bible story, we have a little moment into this world where Jesus is praying. It’s the Thursday night right before he is going to be arrested and then crucified. He has been talking with his disciples for hours about how it’s going to be after he physically ascends to be with the God, he told them how he’s going to send them the Holy Spirit. He’s preparing them for life and ministry without him.  And then, sitting at the table with his disciples right there after dinner and he prays. 

When I think back on the highlights from Jesus’ life that I love, I think of certain bible stories, (the Woman at the Well, or those guys who lowered that man through the roof to be healed, that time Jesus got up and calmed the stormy seas).  Or I think of his teachings, like that story he told us about the good Samaritan. In my top ten or even top 20 Jesus moments, I realize this week that I have to admit, I don’t always look at how Jesus prayed.

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, he taught us how to pray by saying “Our Father…” but in our bible story today from the gospel of John we see how Jesus himself actually prayed. 

At first, Jesus prays for himself: He is pretty down to earth, honest, he shares what’s hard in life, and asks for God’s help.  “Help me to glorify you,” Jesus says, which is kind of like saying. Help me to make you known in the world. 

Then he turns to what is on his mind, which is, as it turns out, his disciples. His friends, his followers gathered there with him. Now only does Jesus pray for himself, he also prays for his disciples. Jesus doesn’t pray that life for his disciples will get easier. He knows it won’t. He doesn’t pray that they will escape challenges, struggles, or persecutions or defeat their enemies.  He prays for them to hang in there together, for God to strengthen them, care for them, to protect them.

Now I don’t exactly know how prayer works.  I don’t think it’s some kind of deal where we put our order with God and back it comes piping hot to our table.  But I know that this week, when I got an email from someone on Friday that said that the person was praying for me and my family, that she was holding us in God’s presence, that it mattered.

Patrice Karts has a children’s book, “The Invisible String,” that suggests that when we hold one other in the presence of God we’re connected to God and one another through this “invisible string.”  That’s why we pray individually and we also pray here as a group in worship. Praying together connects us to God and to each other as the church. As we gather here today, I ask you: What is it that you would lift up to God right now? For encouragement when things are hard? For protection for someone you love? To be a better friend or a better parent? For courage or patience during this time of being sheltered at home? For hope when it feels like things are hopeless? For companionship during this time when so many of us feel lonely? For healing? For forgiveness? What are the honest things that you would lift up to God?

While a life of faith has to do with thinking and reflecting about God, it also has to do with connecting to God. Prayer is a connection to God. Maybe we don’t get the words right, maybe we’re clumsy, maybe we fall asleep if we pray late at night, maybe we pray for a minute here and there between email and making dinner, But prayer connects us to God and prayer connects God to the world, “that God so loves” (John 3:16). And this is very good news.

We don’t know exactly how prayer works, but we know that the Holy Spirit animates life around us  in ways that we cannot explain or understand. We know that prayer connects us to God and to one another in ways that are powerful and mysterious. We know that Jesus prayed and encourages us to pray.

Reflecting on that idea of an invisible string that connects us all in prayer, Nadia Boltz Weber says that “Maybe these silken threads of prayer which connect us to God and one another and even our enemies are how God is how is stitching our broken humanity back together.”

Maybe, just maybe.