The Spirit is Upon Me

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When our children grow up and first leave home, perhaps to go to university, or to go to work, it’s lovely when they come home for the weekend, or for the holidays, isn’t it? And often they will come to church with us, and see all their old friends, and talk about how they are getting on. And it has been known for the minister or preacher to ask them to come up and talk about what they’ve been doing, especially if they’ve been away on some kind of mission work.

Our reading is set very near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He has been baptised by John, and then led into the desert to be tempted, and basically to come to terms with who he is and what his mission is. He has been wandering around Galilee, collecting disciples, healing the sick, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And now he has come home to Nazareth and, of course, goes to his home synagogue on the Sabbath. And he is asked to read a passage of scripture, which was the norm – Jewish men were, and I believe still are – and, of course, women in some Jewish traditions, but not all – apt to be dropped on to read at a moment’s notice.

And what Jesus reads is the very passage we had for our first reading this evening, from Isaiah:
“The Sovereign Lord has filled me with his Spirit.
He has chosen me and sent me
To bring good news to the poor,
To heal the broken-hearted,
To announce release to captives
And freedom to those in prison.
He has sent me to proclaim
That the time has come
When the Lord will save his people
And defeat their enemies.”

So far, so very good. It’s lovely, isn’t it, to think that we have just read a passage of Scripture that we know that Jesus himself read, allowing for differences in translation!

The tradition was that if you read the Scripture, you could comment on it, but having stood to read – much as in some churches we stand to read the Gospel – you then sat down. And Jesus sat down, and they all looked at him attentively, wondering what he was going to say.

After all, they’d known him since he was a very small boy, when the family had moved to Nazareth after King Herod died. And he’d grown up with them, gone to school with them, worked with his father – until suddenly he’d gone off, some months ago now, with barely a word of farewell. You can hear the aunties in the gallery, can’t you: “Hmph, don’t know what he thought he was doing, leaving his Mum in the lurch like that. I did hear he’s been doing miracles and healings and so on, out in the back country, but I don’t believe a word of it, do you? Well, he’s home now. Let’s see what he’s got to say for himself!”

What he said was the last thing anybody expected:
“This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.”

“This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.”

I can’t help wondering whether he knew he was going to say that, or whether it just came out. It’s so unclear how much Jesus knew about Who he was, and what he had been sent to do. He had been coming to terms with it a bit in the desert, of course, but it’s clear from Scripture that he gradually appreciates things more and more as time goes on. I do hope he was able to grow up as an ordinary boy, learning and playing with his friends, without any special knowledge hanging over hime. Anyway, at this stage, he does know that he has been sent to heal people, to minister to the sick, to proclaim the Kingdom of God, and, above all, to follow the promptings of God’s spirit. And maybe, when he read the bit from Isaiah, it suddenly spoke to him, and showed him that it was he to whom it applied.

We didn’t go on to read the rest of the story, but it’s rather sad. They were impressed by his authority – but – but – this was Joseph’s son, surely? How could the Isaiah passage apply to him?

And Jesus says, probably slightly annoyed, “Well, they do say a prophet is without honour in his own country!” which, of course, infuriates them, and they drag him up to the cliff edge with some thought of throwing him over, but he escapes and goes away.

You see, it’s very difficult when God doesn’t do what you expect. And nobody in Nazareth expected God to come in the person of the carpenter’s son! Not Mary’s eldest, who’d gone off so suddenly like that!

Sometimes, when we call upon God for help, we expect him to come in some kind of miraculous way. My father used to tell of a man whose house was menaced by floods, and who was on the roof, praying for God to save him. He really expected God to sweep him away in a whirlwind or something, so when the fire services came along in a rowing-boat, he refused to get in, saying “God will save me!” A little later, another boat came along, but again he refused. The waters continued to rise, and a coast guard helicopter came to try to persuade him to come to safety but no, “God will save me.” And, inevitably, he was swept away and drowned.

So, in Heaven, he seeks the throne of grace, and demands, “How could you let me down like that? I prayed for you to save me, and you didn’t!”
But God answered, “My dear son, I sent you two boats and a helicopter – what more could you want?”

The man didn’t recognise God’s hand in the boats and the helicopter, and the people of Nazareth didn’t recognise it in Jesus.

But for Jesus, this passage, and similar ones from Isaiah, were the touchstone of his ministry. You remember, some time later, how his cousin John was imprisoned and suddenly had a crisis of faith. He sent his disciples to Jesus to ask “Are you the one John said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?” and Jesus replied, “Go back and tell John what you are hearing and seeing: the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are brought back to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor.”

Jesus became more and more certain that he was the Messiah, the chosen one. Even if his childhood friends didn’t recognise this. His disciples did, most of the time, but even they had moments….

But why does this matter? What does this passage have to say to us tonight?

Well, on Thursday it was Ascension Day, the day when we remember Jesus’ final parting from his disciples. The Book of Acts tells us that he was “taken from their sight”, and it is certainly clear to them, in some way, that he will not now return as the Jesus they knew and loved. But they have been told to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes. Which, as we know, happened on the Day of Pentecost, which we will be celebrating next Sunday.

And when the Spirit came, of course, what had happened was instantly recognisable. It wasn’t just the tongues of fire, or the rushing mighty wind. It wasn’t just the way the disciples were enabled to speak in tongues, and the listeners to understand what was being said. It wasn’t just the way that Peter was able to preach so powerfully that three thousand people were added to the church that day.

It was all that, and then it was the fact that they were able, in Jesus’ name, to heal the sick, to perform miracles, and, perhaps especially, to
“bring good news to the poor,
To heal the broken-hearted,
To announce release to captives
And freedom to those in prison.
. . . . to proclaim
That the time has come
When the Lord will save his people
And defeat their enemies.”

And again, that is not just something that happened long ago in history; it is something that can, and should, happen to all believers today. To you, and to me.

We can be, and should be, filled with the Holy Spirit; I’m sure we can all remember times when we know this is what has happened. Some believers talk of being “baptized with the Holy Spirit”, from John the Baptist’s pointing out that he, John, can only baptize with water, but Jesus can and will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And maybe you have experienced something you can describe as such.

But the problem with being filled with the Holy Spirit is that we tend to leak! It’s not, I find, a once-and-for-all experience; it’s something that we need to ask God to do daily, sometimes even hourly! The Spirit comes to burn out that which is not of God in us – what St Paul would probably call “the flesh”; to enable us to speak God’s word, whether we know we’ve done so or not, and above all, to help us become the people God created us to be, the ones we have been designed to be.

My friends, right now this minute we may be full of the Holy Spirit, or we may feel empty and forlorn. Or somewhere in between. So let’s ask God to fill us anew, using the lovely song “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.” Let’s sing it through twice.

Cornelius

I do wish the people who compiled the lectionary wouldn’t start us off right in the middle of a story!
You never know quite what is going on.
I do see that they wish to take pity on those whose turn it is to read the Scriptures aloud, but even still!

And this story in Acts, that was our first reading today,
starts off bang in the middle of things.
What is Peter up to, and, more to the point,
what has he been up to?

Well, the story began when Cornelius, a Roman official, wanted to learn more about God, so God sent an angel to him saying, in effect,
“The man you want is called Simon Peter, and he’s staying at the house of Simon the Tanner, here in Joppa –
why not send for him?”

Snag was, it was going to take more than an invitation to persuade Peter to go round to the Cornelius’ place.
If you were Jewish, you didn’t associate with unbelievers, end of.
You certainly never went to their homes –
you might speak to them in the street, if you absolutely had to,
but going to their homes would have made you what was known as “unclean”, and you would have had to have had a ritual bath
before you could associate with your friends and family again.
That’s one of the reasons why the Priest and the Levite walked past the dying victim in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan –
if the man was actually dead, and they touched him,
they’d have made themselves unclean for no good reason.
Far better to pass by on the other side of the road, and pretend you hadn’t noticed.

So because God wants Peter to go and see Cornelius, Peter, too, gets a vision.
Or, just possibly, a dream –
he’s gone up to sit on the flat roof to pray for awhile before lunch, and he might easily have nodded off.
Anyway, whatever, what he sees is a large sheet, full of the kind of animals he simply wouldn’t have dreamt of eating in a million years.
The sort of animal he’d always considered unclean, and probably made his stomach churn to think of eating it –
rather like we might feel about ants’ eggs or sheep’s eyeballs.
But three times he was told to do this, and three times he was told not to call anything unclean that God has called clean.

When he woke up, or came to himself, or whatever, he was still inclined to wonder what God meant by it all.
So you can imagine how surprised he was when he found Cornelius’ servants waiting downstairs, asking him to come along.
Now, Peter, since the Holy Spirit came, is a changed man.
But at times there are still traces of the old Peter there, like now, because the first thing he said was "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile."

So kind. So polite. Contrast this with last week’s story, where another man who was a total outsider wanted to know more about God, and God sent Philip to talk to him. Philip wasn’t in the least worried about chatting to the man, and even baptised him when he was challenged to do so. But Peter is a different kettle of fish.

“Your yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile!”

Yeah, right. I wonder how that made Cornelius feel. I wonder how it makes you feel. Some of you will have experienced far deeper rejection than I can ever know or understand. Peter might just as well have said something along the lines of “Your kind of people are generally lazy and just come here to sponge off of social security.
You people all have lots of babies so you can get more money from the Government without having to work.
I shouldn't be crossing the picket lines to talk to you scabs.
I am fully aware that God does not approve of your life style and that you are an abomination to God.
I don’t know what I’m doing talking to the likes of you….
But hey, here I am.
Aren't you impressed?"

Oh Peter….. not good. But fortunately, Peter has learnt a bit in recent weeks or months, and he has learnt to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and suddenly realises what his vision meant.
He rightly concludes, "God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean."

Peter is slowly realizing that he had been sent to this particular household for a reason.
Until then, the disciples had thought that they were only meant to be preaching to the Jews, and the Good News wasn’t for everybody.
Jesus had tried to show that it was, but I have a feeling he wasn’t altogether too clear on that one while he was on earth, so it became an issue to be addressed primarily after the resurrection, like now.
Peter suddenly sees the light:
"I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."

It’s the same as last week’s story, isn’t it. The treasury official, rejected by the Jews because of his mutilation – he wouldn’t have been allowed to convert, even had he wanted to – challenges Philip to baptise him. Would this new religion reject him, too? “Here is water,” he says. “What is to keep me from being baptised?”

And, of course, there was nothing. This man, whose skin was a different colour, who came from a completely different country, whose sexuality was, forcibly, different from most people’s – there was no reason at all why he shouldn’t be baptised, and Philip baptised him.

But somehow that news hadn’t reached Peter yet, or if it had, Peter hadn’t really taken it in. I think he must have apologised to Cornelius for having been rude, but he must have been utterly gobsmacked.
Right from his earliest childhood, he had been taught to thank God each day that he had not been born a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.
And now God is telling him that who people are doesn’t matter –
if they want to know Jesus, if they want to be baptised, they can.
And while he is beginning to say something of this to Cornelius and his family, the Holy Spirit takes over, and Cornelius and his household all begin to pray in tongues and to rejoice in God’s love. So Peter baptises them with water, and henceforth they are members of the church.

And so Peter tells the believers in Jerusalem, when they send for him and ask what on earth he thinks he’s been doing.
For Peter, this is a start of a whole new journey of discovery, of what God is doing among other people, people who aren’t Jewish.
He does have his moments of backsliding –
St Paul tells us, in the letter to the Galatians, that he had to remind Peter that he was perfectly able to eat with Gentiles and not to be so stupid about it.
But, by and large, the early church had turned a huge corner.

The snag is, it hasn’t stayed turned, has it? St Paul may have written that “There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” –
but the Church doesn’t believe it and never has!
Peter may have learnt that God shows no partiality,
but God’s followers most certainly do.
Philip may have found no reason not to baptise the treasury official,
but too many people who came over on the Empire Windrush and its successors found themselves unwelcome in our churches.

Look, we’re always going to associate mostly with people who are more like us –
we have more in common with people who come from the same sort of background, went to the same sort of school, enjoy the same sort of hobbies.
Christian folk may well prefer the company of other Christians.
That’s okay.

But it can all too easily become toxic, become a matter of “them and us”. I am ashamed that it was not until this year that I realised, thanks to the television advertisements –
I expect you’ve seen them, too –
that Muslims believe, just as we do, that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer.
And I simply hadn’t known that before, and I should have known.

God shows no partiality. We are all equally loved and cared for, whatever our race, or religion, or skin colour. Many centuries ago, John Donne, a clergyman poet wrote this:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

We are all involved with one another.
Because God shows no partiality, and neither must we.
We are all accepted by God, loved by God, and, as Christians, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit.
Each and every one of us.
Even you.
Even me.
We may be rejected by the world, we may even –
although I do hope not –
be rejected by the church, but God will never, ever reject us. Amen.