1

The Message for Sept 27, 2015 Creed 4

I Believe in the Holy Spirit… Come Holy Spirit

John 14:16-20

Rob Miller, Pastor

I believe we all have it in our house somewhere. It’sin the kitchen or thefamily room or the home office. I know we have it here in the church building. It’s even labeled. It’s in the kitchen. I found it the other day.

I’m referring tothe drawer. You knowthe junk drawer that you throw everything into when you can’t find a place for it anywhere else. It’s where those thingsgo when you’re not sure where to put them. “Check the junk drawer.”

We could be tempted to see the last section of the Apostles’ Creed in a similar way. It feels like an ecclesiastical junk drawer -- where someone threw all thosechurchy things that are important to our faith but we’re not sure where to put them.

It’s as if the writers of the Creeddid a great jobin the first two sections – describing what we believe about God, the Father andSon. Butwhen it comes to the Holy Spirit, they seem to put a bunch of random thingstogether because they weren’t sure where to put them.

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

The holy catholic church.

The communion of saints.

The forgiveness of sins,

The resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

The truth is –the Holy Spiritmakes all of these things possible. That’s why they were put together. They weren’t thrown into some ecclesiastical drawer, they are essential for our faith through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the Bible the Holy Spirit is very active for life.

  • Mary is pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
  • Jesus baptized with the Holy Spirit.
  • The Holy Spirit descended onto Jesus like a dove when he was baptized.
  • We are to make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  • Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit where he is tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. The Spirit sustains him. Full of the Spirit Jesus begins his kingdom work in the world – restoring and redeemingthe broken. We learned about Jesus and his kingdom work last week.

Today we consider what we believe about the Holy Spirit as described in the third article of the Apostles’ Creed.

Prayer

Reading John 14:16-20

Jesus says that he will send another advocateto help his disciples andto be with them… That’s the job of the Holy Spirit… to be at work in our lives helping us…helping us live our lives the Jesus way, by faith, hope, and love.

An advocateis defined as: a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy.

We could say that the Holy Spirit is the person who publicly (not privately but publicly –the activity of the Holy Spirit is open for all to see)the person who publicly supports or recommendsa way of life according to the cause or teachings of Jesus.

What was Jesus’ cause? What did he teach?

Love – plain and simple – to love God and to love people.

Love changes people. Have you noticed that? If you want to change someone, love them. That’s what Jesus did. Sometimes it was a tough love but it was love none the less.

St. Paul says that it doesn’t really matter how much we know or how much we do or how much we have or how much we give. Paul says we are nothing if we do not love… The Holy Spirit at work in our lives makes it possible for us to love God and love each other…

In Romans St. Paul tells us thatGod’slove has been poured into our hearts through theHoly Spirit... I love that image…God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

That love in our hearts is captured in the hymn we just sang. Hymn #800,Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart. I did a little research on this hymn. Here’s what I learned.

This hymn isa prayer, believed to be the most passionateprayer inhymn form. In the first line, the poet invited the Holy Spirit to “descend upon his heart.” to “wean it from earth;” to “move” through the very pulsing of his heart. In other words draw him away from worldly things.“stoop to my weakness” and “make me love you as I ought to love.”

The poet is saying that nothing else matters. Come down to me through your Holy Spirit, O God, and make me do what I am supposed to do. Oh… if we started every day with those words. “God make me do today, what I am supposed to do.

In the second stanza the poet is not looking for some life revealing dream, or ecstatic experience, or dramatic encounter, but simply that the Spirit would “take the dimness of his soul away.” Remove the dark barriers in my soul, O God.

In stanza three the poet remembers that he is to love God with “all his own, his soul, his heart, his strength, and his mind.” He sees the cross as the source of peaceful support in doing so. Seeking God through the cross is a way to experience God’s abiding presence. He clings to the cross. The cross is a sign of God’s love poured out for us.

The fourth and final stanza the poet seeks to love God “as the angels do.” The Pentecost image of “the heaven-descended dove” is evoked here. This final line of the hymn comes to a climax when the poet envisions a perfect union with God: “my heart the altar, and your love the flame.”

George Croly (1780-1860) wrote the words to this hymn. He was an Anglican minister born in Dublin, Ireland, and served in London.

Croly accepted the challenge to reopen a church in 1835 in one of the worst slums of London. The church had been closed for over a century. His theology… and charisma… and preaching, attracted large crowds to St. Stephen’s Church. It was reborn through the Holy Spirit.

Croly had a gift for writing and in 1854 he prepared a new hymnal for the congregation. It was titledPsalms and Hymns for Public Worship. In that hymnal this hymn first appeared under the title “Holiness Desired.” It is the only hymn written by Croly that survived to this day.

Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart.

This hymn is based on Galatians 5:25 which reads,25Since we live by the Spirit,let us keep in step with the Spirit.

What a great way to live our lives in step with the Spirit. That’s what the third article of the Apostles’ Creed is all about, staying in step with the Holy Spirit.

I like to walk my dog. And most of the time she is right there in step beside me. But sometimes she will pull ahead and I have to pull her back. Sometimes she lags behind and I have to pull her forward. That’s how the Holy Spirit is in our lives. Sometimes the Spirit needs to pull us back or forward to get in step.

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit refers to the special presence of God. Of course, that soundsa bit strange since we know that God is present everywhere - omnipresent. There is no place where God is not. There is a tweetable tweet.

We could say that God is like the air we breathe. That’s a great analogy because the Spirit’s presence is like air. Air is present everywhere. The Spirit is present everywhere. And like air which can beespecially present and a very powerful way -- in a hurricane, in a tornado, in a microburst - so too is the Holy Spirit.

The Hebrew word for Spirit is Ruah - the same word for Breath and Wind. The Holy Spirit is the sustaining breath of God. What a great image, the breath of God. God, the Holy Spirit, gives us life and is as important as the air we breathe. We can’t live without it.

The God we worship is a God of relationships three in one. That’s part of the mysteries of the faith. We cannot comprehend God let alone comprehend God in three persons. We do believe that our God is a personal God who relates to us in a person way – as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So beginning with the Holy Spirit we turn to the kind of life we live in step with the Holy Spirit.

The holy catholic church

The word “catholic” with a small “c” means “universal.” “Catholic” with a large “C” means the Roman Catholic Church. More people have thanked me for clarifying that than anything else I have ever said. It can be confusing.

It’s important for us to understand that the church is universal. That means we are not a club. We are not restricted. We don’t claim some limited membership. We don’t have dues. We exist for all. We exclude no one: not on account of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual orientation, wealth, class, status, occupation. Nothing.

We say - Whoever you are and wherever you are in your journey of faith you are welcome here. We are the church here it his place AND we are the churchwherever we go. The church is universal. The Holy Spirit makes church possible.

The communion of saints

When we talk about the Saints, we are not talking about a football team. We’re talking about a different team, the team of the faithful. The word “saints” wasa way ofreferring to Christians in the early church.

We say that we are both saint and sinners simultaneously - two sides of the same coin. In other words Godloves us the way we are – as sinners, but loves us too much to leave us that way. Come as you are but don’t leave the same way.

The communion of the saints refers to that union, that fellowship, that team of believers who come together united for a common identity and common purpose in Christ Jesus. Thesewords remind us that we are not Christians all by ourselves. We are not in this faith journeyalone. We are in this together with every other church in the world -- the more the merrier. The Holy Spirit makes the communion of saints possible.

The Forgiveness of Sins

Forgiveness is central tobeing Christian. We confess that we are sinners. That we are disobedient to God and we can’t help it, but God can. We believethat we are forgiven by grace through faith. We are forgiven because of what Jesus has done on the cross not because of what we do.

To say that we belief in the forgiveness of sins means so much.

  • It means new life.
  • It means the Spirit empowers us to forgive one another.
  • It means Goddesires reconciliation with us and each other.
  • It means God will not leave us in our disobedience state, but reaches out to us through word and sacrament, offering us the opportunityto begin a new -- again and again and again, to live in a right relationship with Godand each other every day.

God, not sin, rules the world. God does not lose faith in us – thank God! God does not give up on us – thank God! No matter what sin we may have committed, there is room for forgiveness. God has the power to restore what sin destroys. The Holy Spirit makes forgiveness possible.

The Resurrection of the Body

We believe that after death there is new life for us and for all of creation. That new life includes a new body.

In Jesus’ day people scoff at the idea of being raised with a new body… Instead it was believed you received a spiritual body like an angel with wings. There was no way to conceive anything else, until Jesus was resurrected. Jesus taught that this new life isa transformed life, different than our present life. We will get a new body in this new life. Some people can’t wait to get their new body.

And not just us,but all creation. God created out of love. God is in the process of redeeming all of creation, restoring it to the wholeness it was intended to be in the beginning. We believe that someday we will be raised to new life along with the rest of the creation. The Holy Spirit makes the resurrection of the body possible.

The Life Everlasting

On the day we are raised to a new life, we will be raised eternally, to be in the presence of God forever. I can’t even imagine what that might be like.

In the meantime and we are living in mean times. In the meantime we participate in the Kingdom of God right here, right now as the church. The church is to be a foretaste of the feast that is to come. Jesus often referred to this everlasting life as a party, a glorious celebration that fulfills God’s purpose for all eternity. The Holy Spirit makes everlasting life possible.

The third article of the Apostles’ Creed is about the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us.

The church was formed by power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. A movement started that day with the church being a vehicle for God’s mission in the world.

On that day the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and with a burning passion to share God’s grace in the world. The Spirit descended on thosedisciples empowering them and making of them a community of faith -- to reach out to the world with God’s amazing grace. And the world hasn’t been the same since. We are part of that amazing kingdom work in the world. Come Holy Spirit you are welcome here. Amen.