Galatians 5:13-25
June 27, 2010
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
Nan Durny has a story to tell, and I feel very, very privileged to share her story with you this morning. If you don’t know Nan, she’s Calvin Church’s clerk of session. Her husband, Peter, is an elder and the co-chair of our Personnel and Finance Committee.
I want to take you back to the spring and summer of 1996, which was when the lights went out in Nan’s life. Prior to February of 1996, Nan had been married to the love of her life, David Emerick. Nan had met David when they were both teens. She was from Evans City, he was from Ambridge, and they met at the Dairy Queen in Cranberry when their two group of friends started talking. When Nan’s friends left the Dairy Queen, Dave and his friends followed, and from there their romance blossomed. It wasn’t too long before they were married, and then had kids—first Nick, who is now attending Penn State, and then Kayla, who is at West Chester University.
As Nan has said, they were living the American dream. They had two beautiful kids, and they had both designed and built their own house. David was 34, Nan was 33, and life seemed great. During the summer of 1995, though, David started feeling ill. He was having stomach pains. At first they diagnosed it as ulcers, and put him on medication, but that didn’t seem to help. Then they suspected that he might have some sort of intestinal autoimmune disease such as Crohn’s Disease. So they put him on prednisone, and that did the trick. He felt better than he had in a year. Once again, life seemed great, until right around Thanksgiving. Dave came downstairs to talk to Nan and said that he felt terrible. He was all white and was physically shaking. They went to the doctor and took a CAT scan of his abdomen, where the doctors discovered that his liver looked like Swiss cheese. There was cancer everywhere. They also detected a walnut sized tumor on his colon, which was the original site of the cancer. The doctors were grim. They told Nan and Dave to get their affairs in order and to spend as much time as possible with their children because Dave only had about two months to live.
In front of their children they tried their best to act as though everything was normal. Dave immersed himself in spending time with Kayla, Nick, and Nan. There was very little hope. Despite all their efforts to hold on, Dave died in February, 1996, little more than two months after his diagnosis.
There was one point right before Dave died in which Nan felt truly hopeless. She had been working so hard to hold it all together in front of others, to be strong and cheerful in the face of it all, but it was getting harder. She was in the shower one morning and began sobbing. She was overwhelmed by everything that was going on—not only Dave’s impending death, but also with how she would pay the bills, how she would raise children alone, and how she would cope. In the midst of her sobbing she heard a voice. It was a genderless voice that seemed to be both inside and outside of her at the same time. It had an amazing clarity, and she could feel LOVE in that voice that let her know that she was loved more than she could ever know. The voice said, “I am here with you. I cannot heal David. That’s not what’s meant to be, but I will be with you and him. Pray for strength and know that I will be with you no matter what.” Nan felt a deep, deep warmth and peace that filled her body and soul. She knew that she could make it.
After Dave died, Nan tried to hold onto a sense of normalcy, but it was hard. What was hardest was going to worship on Easter after Dave died. Looking around at all the couples with young families was hard. Nan felt alone. It became harder each week to go to church because of the pain she felt, and because of her increasing sense of isolation. So she stopped going to church. And she began to question whether God even existed. Now, you might be tempted to think to yourself, “But didn’t she hear God’s voice? Shouldn’t that sustain her?” A lot of people who hear God’s voice have a hard time holding onto it when they are in deep grief and pain. It’s not that they forget. It’s that the grief is so much louder than the memory of God’s voice.
The Rev. Dr. Steve Polley, who is now our parish associate for pastoral care, had that same position in the church in Cranberry at the time. He noticed that she hadn’t been to church in a while, so he visited her that summer. The exchanged some small talk for a while, and Steve asked her how she was. She said that she was okay. He paused and said, “No, how are you really?” Nan paused for a bit, and said, “I’m angry! I’m angry at my situation, I’m angry that Dave died, and I’m angry at God for letting this happen!” Steve, in his infinite wisdom, said, “That’s okay, Nan. God knows you’re angry, and it’s okay to be angry at God. God knows that you have a lot to be angry about, but God’s still going to love you and be with you. That’s what church is for. It’s supposed to be a place where you can work out your anger with God.”
That wasn’t the response Nan was expecting. It made her feel better, and she felt more hopeful after he left. In fact, he helped her to remember the voice she had heard in the shower months before. Going back to church on a regular basis she slowly started feeling better, even if the grief never really left her. She also started attending a young widows group and a grief support group, which is where she eventually met Peter Durny, whose own wife, Mary Ann, had died from cancer almost a year earlier after a five-year struggle. They started dating, but it wasn’t easy. Both felt guilty about dating. Were they dishonoring Dave and Mary Ann by dating, let alone falling in love? Is this what their spouses would want? Both struggled
Then one night Nan had a dream. It was the kind of dream I mentioned several weeks ago when I told you the story of one of my classmates from high school whose son had died. That woman, Kelley, had had a dream in which she was with God and was given the answer to all the questions she had about the universe, life, death, and beyond. Nan had that same dream, and just like Kelley, she woke up not remembering the answers, but knowing that God was with her. She told Peter about her dream, and amazingly he said to her, “I know,… I had the exact same dream last night.” They were married that same year and came to Calvin Church after moving to Zelienople.
Nan had definitely experienced both darkness and God’s presence. The fact is that for a long time Nan teetered on the edge of a cliff that many of us teeter on in life. It’s a cliff that overlooks the abyss of darkness. When we stand there we sometimes have the ability to gain perspective on what really matters in life, and adjust our lives accordingly; but just as often people slip and fall into the abyss, and struggle to get out.
What makes the abyss of darkness so hard in is that it is a place of despair in which people lose hope. So often, when people go through traumatic difficulties—the death of someone close, a divorce, an illness, loss of a job—they become despairing. Many people only have compassion for those who have had a loved one die, but going through a divorce can lead us just as deeply into despair because there still is a death—the death of a relationship. I have great compassion, rather than judgment, for people of divorce, both spouses and children, because often the judgment of others deepens their despair. We also can feel despair when we lose a job, especially in our work environment of today. People can become hopeless, wondering if they’ll ever get another job.
This despair can lead us into what Paul calls, “the works of the flesh,” which are “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” These acts are all symptoms of the problem, not the problem. They are symptoms of people feeling like they are trapped in darkness, and who engage in these works of the flesh trying to get relief from their pain. They get drunk, or enter serial relationships, or get into fights as a way of trying to relieve the darkness of despair, not realizing that their actions actually lead them deeper into despair. Their pursuit of the relief of pain actually causes more pain.
There is a way out of all this, and Paul talks about it in our passage. The way out is by being led by the Spirit, but to be led by the Spirit we have to be open to the Spirit, which is hard to do from the bottom of the abyss. When we are at the bottom, we often feel too hopeless to become open to God. But Nan became open to God. She became open to being led by the Spirit, and it made all the difference. It took a while, and some prompting from God’s hands and feet—Steve Polley—but she did it.
The secret of overcoming darkness is to actively seek the light that the Spirit offers—to trust in what’s possible, not what’s in the past. This is hard stuff, because, as I said last week, negativity and despair have their own energy and allure, and it’s easy to give ourselves over to the energies of anger, cynicism, skepticism, and despair. And the more we give ourselves over to that power, the more it isolates us from God by building a moat around our lives.
I do realize that in talking about Nan hearing God’s voice this morning, and often in other stories I’ve told, it can cause frustration in us because most of us don’t hear God’s voice at all. What I’ve noticed is that the people who hear God’s voice tend to have certain attributes that open them to God. Either they are in despair and God responds to them through the gift of speaking to them, or they live lives in which they intentionally cultivate a listening heart and mind. In other words, they are dedicated to daily practices that open them to God—they pray every day, read scripture or spiritual books on a regular basis, and actively listen for God’s voice in their minds, in what they are reading, in what other people say, and the like. They are intentional, and it opens them to sensing and hearing the Spirit.
If we are willing to open up to the Spirit, and to be intentional in trusting that God has something better in store, we plant seeds of fruit that get us out of the bottom. Paul talks about these seeds. He says that they are “ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” When we become intentionally open to God’s Spirit, these seeds grow in our lives and transform our lives. They move us from darkness to light.
There is a way out of darkness, but it requires looking up, not down. It requires looking for what’s good, not what’s bad. It requires looking for what’s possible, not what’s in the past.
Amen.
Overcoming Darkness: Dealing with Our Demons
Luke 8:26-39
June 20, 2010
Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Over the years I’ve noticed an interesting conundrum when it comes to church, and especially church attendance. This isn’t a conundrum that many of you are caught in, but it is one that a significant number are. Here’s the conundrum. The church is meant to be a place for people who are struggling in personal darkness, but often when people go through struggles, they don’t want to go to church. So the very place that is set up to help them is the place they avoid. They avoid it because they don’t want people to see them cry, or they don’t want people to know they are going through difficulty, or they don’t want to have to explain what is going on in their lives. The problem is that these people end up pushing away a possible beacon of light for them. The fact is that the church is made for hurting people, but when people are hurting they often don’t want to be seen in church.
I think that the root cause of this conundrum is an American affliction. All of us Americans have a basic problem, which is that we suffer from a denial of darkness. It afflicts all of us. Americans hate pain and suffering, and we run from it constantly. We take drugs, whether prescription or illegal, to push away our pain. We drink too much alcohol to help us repress the pain. We’ve created a glittering entertainment culture to mask darkness and suffering. And we worship and celebrate the wealthy because they seem to have overcome darkness with glitzy and glamorous homes, cars, possessions, and lives. We do a lot to gloss over the darkness of life.
I really wasn’t aware of how pervasive our denial of darkness was until I had a conversation with five fellow students over lunch one day while I was in graduate school. I was studying for my Ph.D. at Duquesne University, and I was lunching with two white Protestant pastors (one Methodist and the other Episcopalian), and three African men (one a priest from Kenya, one a priest from Uganda, and another an Augustinian friar from Ghana). The three of us Protestants were complaining that on Easter Sunday our churches are packed to the rafters, but we can’t convince people to come on Good Friday. The Africans looked at each other, and then at us with puzzled faces. When we asked why they looked like that, they said, “That’s really odd because in Africa our churches are overflowing on Good Friday, and we can’t get anyone to come on Easter.” We talked about this, and the Africans were the ones that pointed out that in Africa suffering is a constant reality and so they relate to the suffering Christ on the cross. But their experience in the U. S. was that we were a people who can’t deal with suffering, and so we hide from it with our possessions. They pointed out our American affliction, which is a denial of darkness.
This denial is sad because Christianity is mean to be a faith for people struggling with difficulty, darkness, and demons. If you look at the Bible, all of its stories are of people struggling through and overcoming darkness. Abraham was lead by God from the city into the desert, where he struggled. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery, and then was thrown into prison. Moses, after killing an Egyptian soldier, had to leave his life of pleasure as part of the royal family to live in the desert for forty years, and then came back to lead the Israelites into the desert for forty years. David, despite being anointed as king of Israel, and being celebrated as the slayer of Goliath, had to live as an outlaw in the desert for forty years. The prophets spoke in times of darkness, whether under threat from an invading army or in Babylonian exile. And Jesus, despite teaching people how to find light in their lives, was criticized and attacked for his teachings, and eventually arrested, flogged, and killed for it. Darkness is all through the Bible.
It’s for this reason that I say that Christianity is a faith for people in darkness. In fact, it is the only faith with a religious symbol that’s a symbol of suffering. Think about the symbols of other religions, whether it is the yin-yang symbol of Taoism, the statue of Buddha, the crescent moon and morning star of Islam, or the star of David in Judaism, none are suffering symbols. Our symbol is one that transforms suffering. The cross is a symbol of suffering and execution. The modern-day equivalent would be if we used a hangman’s noose or an electric chair as our religious symbol. Christianity is a faith that embraces the reality of darkness, but also the reality of God’s light transforming that darkness into something else.
The reality of life is that there is a fair amount of darkness, which seems to be part of the way God created the world. But there’s also great beauty and pleasure, which is also how God created it. And I believe that the task of life is to make a choice between whether we’ll let darkness rule our lives, or light.
Hilbert Caesar has lived through tremendous darkness, and through it discovered light. Five years ago Caesar was a master sergeant overseeing a squad in Iraq. He was in charge of a 155 mm mobile howitzer, which is something like a long tank with a huge artillery gun attached. The squad had been mobilized, and while en route, was ambushed as an IED exploded under the howitzer, flipping it over. When Caesar came to, he looked down at his leg, and it was a mangled mess. He knew that his leg would have to be amputated. He spent months in rehab, which were months of darkness, a darkness made worse when he learned that of the ten people in his squad, eight had been killed. He felt responsible, even though he knew that there was nothing different he could have done. He wondered if his life was over. He wondered what woman would ever be interested in a man with only one leg.
Caesar was at a critical junction. It would take very little for his life to plunge into never ending darkness. The fact is that about ¼ of all vets coming back from combat suffer symptoms of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and he was moving in that direction. What is less known, though, is that despite these odds, another ¼ seem to come through trauma like Caesar did, and experience PTGS, which is post-traumatic growth syndrome. About ¼ of all people who undergo traumatic experiences actually sense their lives becoming better because of it. They find that their trauma helps them reprioritize their lives. They become better than they were. Often they grow spiritually, and experience God more intimately in their lives. This is what happened to Caesar.
Despite his darkness, he started talking with other vets who had gone through similar experiences. Together they looked for the positive, rather than dwelling on the negative. He began to pray. He says that he became wiser, richer, more compassionate, and more appreciative of life. He noticed other people more, and said, “I’m the same person, but I’m a different person now.” Caesar left the military, but now works for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs at a job focusing on helping others like him. He went through darkness, and in the midst of it found the light (adapted from an article, “Moving On,” from The Washington Post, December 5, 2005).
It’s hard for many people to make the choice for light over dark. There are lots of reasons, but one I believe in is that there is actually a force for darkness in the world, a force that is incredibly subtle. I believe that there is a demonic darkness that stalks us. Now, I realize that as a good, rational Presbyterian, I’m not supposed to believe in the demonic. And the truth is that for many, many years I didn’t. And that disbelief was supported by my seminary training. The fact is that we never once talked about the demonic in all my years there. In checking with other Presbyterian pastors, it’s hard to find any who were taught anything about the demonic. We just don’t believe in it.
My belief in this power grew while working on my Ph.D., which is odd, since you would think that working on that degree would make me more sophisticated and less likely to believe in stuff such as the demonic. Adrian van Kaam, a professor and Catholic priest, in one of his classes, talked about the demonic. God bless the Catholics. There may be many things we believe that we do or believe better than them, but there are also many things that they believe and do better than us. I believe that the Catholic Church, in many ways, has a much better, and more balanced, understanding of the demonic than we do. Van Kaam taught that the demonic is a force of darkness with one goal in mind: to pull us away from God and divide us against each other and God. But he also taught that this darkness is essentially powerless, except for the power we give it. He said that those kinds of vomit-spewing, body-levitating possessions are extremely, extremely rare. Instead, what the demonic does is to take our negative feelings and fan them to grow them stronger. So, if we are angry about something small, the demonic fans that anger so that it grows and causes us to act on it in destructive ways. The demonic does the same thing with passion, lust, cynicism, skepticism, ambition, and other self-focused emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling these things, but the demonic fans them so that they take over our lives. And you’ve experienced something like this in others.
Have you ever been with an extremely negative person who starts going off on how bad the government is, kids today are, teachers unions are, big business is, and the like? They start going off, and you feel trapped. Their anger or outrage grows hotter and hotter. Meanwhile, they suck the energy and life right out of you. And you can’t get away. That’s the kind of fanning of the flame the demonic does, and it does it with an eye toward dividing us against each other and God. There’s an energy to negativity, but instead of giving life it sucks life.
Here’s the thing, though, about both darkness and the demonic. Both only have the power we give them. If we let the demonic and darkness fan us, then we will be consumed by both. But we do have a choice in the matter. If we choose to refuse to let darkness grow, and if we choose to seek what’s good rather than what’s dark, we can overcome darkness. While Christianity is a faith that recognizes the reality of darkness, it also recognizes that darkness is a choice, and we can choose to seek God’s light.
The secret to overcoming any darkness is to decide what kind of power we are going to give it. Are we going to let it grow? I’ve learned over the years that what contributes to darkness is a problem that researchers are finding in many people who suffer from depression. They are noticing that many people with depression suffer from chronic rumination. What do I mean by that? Rumination is something that cows do. They have four stomachs, and so have to keep regurgitating what they’ve eaten to chew on it again, and then send it to the next stomach. They chew and swallow; regurgitate, chew and swallow; regurgitate, chew, and swallow; and regurgitate, chew and swallow. Many people in darkness do the mental equivalent of this. They start to go into darkness, and then they start thinking negative thoughts associated with it. They might think about mistakes they’ve made, or about actions they didn’t take. Where we might think those thoughts for several hours or a day, they think about them for weeks and months at a time. The thoughts never change. They may berate themselves for decisions in the past, or for their situation in the present. They chronically ruminate, and they can’t break the cycle long enough to see other possibilities.
It’s not just people suffering with depression who do this. Most of us, when in darkness, do this. Rumination, whether depression related or not, creates the opening for darkness to reign. Whatever our situation is, rumination on how bad it is can immerse us and keep us in darkness. But God does offer a light, if we’re willing to take it.
Personally, I’ve had to struggle through chronic rumination for much of my life simply because I’m a pastor. The fact is that pastors get criticized on occasion. We can be criticized for something we say or do, or for something we didn’t say or do. Most of the time people are caring enough to either keep their concerns about this to themselves, or if they do share them, they do so in gentle and caring ways. But occasionally people aren’t very nice about it, and their comments can be devastating. I was devastated by a number of these kinds of comments early in my ministry and it traumatized me so much that for a period of time I wouldn’t answer my phone at the church unless I knew who was calling and why. In my first year in ministry I had received one too many critical phone calls, and I became phone-shy.
There was one particular incident when a woman yelled at me publically in front of fifteen junior high kids on a retreat, and then she met with me in my office the following week and yelled at me again. And she was yelling at me for something I was powerless to prevent. It’s hard to distill this down to a short story, but basically I was overseeing the youth program on a retreat for junior and senior high schoolers, and I was supposed to go up a trail to a campfire to tell stories to the junior highers. The problem was that I was at another campfire with the older teens, and two of them wanted me to leave so they could sneak off into the woods and do things young men and women like to do. I was stuck because all the other adult volunteers had disappeared. I was worried about leaving, but I had no way of telling the junior high adult volunteers I was stuck. When the other adult volunteers finally showed up, I ran up the trail to join the junior highers, but the woman with them had already brought them down the trail, and proceeded to berate me in front of all of them.
I was devastated, and I became somewhat of a recluse for a time, worrying about doing something else I’d be yelled at for. But after a lot of prayer I finally realized that I couldn’t spend my career this way. So I developed a rule. The day that someone berates me or criticizes me, I’m allowed to obsess about it, as long as I’m also praying about it. The second day I’m allowed to pray about it a lot, but only think about it a little. By the third day I have to give it over to God and move on. In other words, I can spend a little time in darkness, but in due time I have to move toward the light.
We do have a choice over whether we will live in darkness or light. There is darkness in the world, and it can be very powerful, but we can make a choice for light. And if you are interested in learning further how, come back next week and I’ll talk about how to make that choice.
Amen
June 20, 2010
Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Over the years I’ve noticed an interesting conundrum when it comes to church, and especially church attendance. This isn’t a conundrum that many of you are caught in, but it is one that a significant number are. Here’s the conundrum. The church is meant to be a place for people who are struggling in personal darkness, but often when people go through struggles, they don’t want to go to church. So the very place that is set up to help them is the place they avoid. They avoid it because they don’t want people to see them cry, or they don’t want people to know they are going through difficulty, or they don’t want to have to explain what is going on in their lives. The problem is that these people end up pushing away a possible beacon of light for them. The fact is that the church is made for hurting people, but when people are hurting they often don’t want to be seen in church.
I think that the root cause of this conundrum is an American affliction. All of us Americans have a basic problem, which is that we suffer from a denial of darkness. It afflicts all of us. Americans hate pain and suffering, and we run from it constantly. We take drugs, whether prescription or illegal, to push away our pain. We drink too much alcohol to help us repress the pain. We’ve created a glittering entertainment culture to mask darkness and suffering. And we worship and celebrate the wealthy because they seem to have overcome darkness with glitzy and glamorous homes, cars, possessions, and lives. We do a lot to gloss over the darkness of life.
I really wasn’t aware of how pervasive our denial of darkness was until I had a conversation with five fellow students over lunch one day while I was in graduate school. I was studying for my Ph.D. at Duquesne University, and I was lunching with two white Protestant pastors (one Methodist and the other Episcopalian), and three African men (one a priest from Kenya, one a priest from Uganda, and another an Augustinian friar from Ghana). The three of us Protestants were complaining that on Easter Sunday our churches are packed to the rafters, but we can’t convince people to come on Good Friday. The Africans looked at each other, and then at us with puzzled faces. When we asked why they looked like that, they said, “That’s really odd because in Africa our churches are overflowing on Good Friday, and we can’t get anyone to come on Easter.” We talked about this, and the Africans were the ones that pointed out that in Africa suffering is a constant reality and so they relate to the suffering Christ on the cross. But their experience in the U. S. was that we were a people who can’t deal with suffering, and so we hide from it with our possessions. They pointed out our American affliction, which is a denial of darkness.
This denial is sad because Christianity is mean to be a faith for people struggling with difficulty, darkness, and demons. If you look at the Bible, all of its stories are of people struggling through and overcoming darkness. Abraham was lead by God from the city into the desert, where he struggled. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery, and then was thrown into prison. Moses, after killing an Egyptian soldier, had to leave his life of pleasure as part of the royal family to live in the desert for forty years, and then came back to lead the Israelites into the desert for forty years. David, despite being anointed as king of Israel, and being celebrated as the slayer of Goliath, had to live as an outlaw in the desert for forty years. The prophets spoke in times of darkness, whether under threat from an invading army or in Babylonian exile. And Jesus, despite teaching people how to find light in their lives, was criticized and attacked for his teachings, and eventually arrested, flogged, and killed for it. Darkness is all through the Bible.
It’s for this reason that I say that Christianity is a faith for people in darkness. In fact, it is the only faith with a religious symbol that’s a symbol of suffering. Think about the symbols of other religions, whether it is the yin-yang symbol of Taoism, the statue of Buddha, the crescent moon and morning star of Islam, or the star of David in Judaism, none are suffering symbols. Our symbol is one that transforms suffering. The cross is a symbol of suffering and execution. The modern-day equivalent would be if we used a hangman’s noose or an electric chair as our religious symbol. Christianity is a faith that embraces the reality of darkness, but also the reality of God’s light transforming that darkness into something else.
The reality of life is that there is a fair amount of darkness, which seems to be part of the way God created the world. But there’s also great beauty and pleasure, which is also how God created it. And I believe that the task of life is to make a choice between whether we’ll let darkness rule our lives, or light.
Hilbert Caesar has lived through tremendous darkness, and through it discovered light. Five years ago Caesar was a master sergeant overseeing a squad in Iraq. He was in charge of a 155 mm mobile howitzer, which is something like a long tank with a huge artillery gun attached. The squad had been mobilized, and while en route, was ambushed as an IED exploded under the howitzer, flipping it over. When Caesar came to, he looked down at his leg, and it was a mangled mess. He knew that his leg would have to be amputated. He spent months in rehab, which were months of darkness, a darkness made worse when he learned that of the ten people in his squad, eight had been killed. He felt responsible, even though he knew that there was nothing different he could have done. He wondered if his life was over. He wondered what woman would ever be interested in a man with only one leg.
Caesar was at a critical junction. It would take very little for his life to plunge into never ending darkness. The fact is that about ¼ of all vets coming back from combat suffer symptoms of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and he was moving in that direction. What is less known, though, is that despite these odds, another ¼ seem to come through trauma like Caesar did, and experience PTGS, which is post-traumatic growth syndrome. About ¼ of all people who undergo traumatic experiences actually sense their lives becoming better because of it. They find that their trauma helps them reprioritize their lives. They become better than they were. Often they grow spiritually, and experience God more intimately in their lives. This is what happened to Caesar.
Despite his darkness, he started talking with other vets who had gone through similar experiences. Together they looked for the positive, rather than dwelling on the negative. He began to pray. He says that he became wiser, richer, more compassionate, and more appreciative of life. He noticed other people more, and said, “I’m the same person, but I’m a different person now.” Caesar left the military, but now works for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs at a job focusing on helping others like him. He went through darkness, and in the midst of it found the light (adapted from an article, “Moving On,” from The Washington Post, December 5, 2005).
It’s hard for many people to make the choice for light over dark. There are lots of reasons, but one I believe in is that there is actually a force for darkness in the world, a force that is incredibly subtle. I believe that there is a demonic darkness that stalks us. Now, I realize that as a good, rational Presbyterian, I’m not supposed to believe in the demonic. And the truth is that for many, many years I didn’t. And that disbelief was supported by my seminary training. The fact is that we never once talked about the demonic in all my years there. In checking with other Presbyterian pastors, it’s hard to find any who were taught anything about the demonic. We just don’t believe in it.
My belief in this power grew while working on my Ph.D., which is odd, since you would think that working on that degree would make me more sophisticated and less likely to believe in stuff such as the demonic. Adrian van Kaam, a professor and Catholic priest, in one of his classes, talked about the demonic. God bless the Catholics. There may be many things we believe that we do or believe better than them, but there are also many things that they believe and do better than us. I believe that the Catholic Church, in many ways, has a much better, and more balanced, understanding of the demonic than we do. Van Kaam taught that the demonic is a force of darkness with one goal in mind: to pull us away from God and divide us against each other and God. But he also taught that this darkness is essentially powerless, except for the power we give it. He said that those kinds of vomit-spewing, body-levitating possessions are extremely, extremely rare. Instead, what the demonic does is to take our negative feelings and fan them to grow them stronger. So, if we are angry about something small, the demonic fans that anger so that it grows and causes us to act on it in destructive ways. The demonic does the same thing with passion, lust, cynicism, skepticism, ambition, and other self-focused emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling these things, but the demonic fans them so that they take over our lives. And you’ve experienced something like this in others.
Have you ever been with an extremely negative person who starts going off on how bad the government is, kids today are, teachers unions are, big business is, and the like? They start going off, and you feel trapped. Their anger or outrage grows hotter and hotter. Meanwhile, they suck the energy and life right out of you. And you can’t get away. That’s the kind of fanning of the flame the demonic does, and it does it with an eye toward dividing us against each other and God. There’s an energy to negativity, but instead of giving life it sucks life.
Here’s the thing, though, about both darkness and the demonic. Both only have the power we give them. If we let the demonic and darkness fan us, then we will be consumed by both. But we do have a choice in the matter. If we choose to refuse to let darkness grow, and if we choose to seek what’s good rather than what’s dark, we can overcome darkness. While Christianity is a faith that recognizes the reality of darkness, it also recognizes that darkness is a choice, and we can choose to seek God’s light.
The secret to overcoming any darkness is to decide what kind of power we are going to give it. Are we going to let it grow? I’ve learned over the years that what contributes to darkness is a problem that researchers are finding in many people who suffer from depression. They are noticing that many people with depression suffer from chronic rumination. What do I mean by that? Rumination is something that cows do. They have four stomachs, and so have to keep regurgitating what they’ve eaten to chew on it again, and then send it to the next stomach. They chew and swallow; regurgitate, chew and swallow; regurgitate, chew, and swallow; and regurgitate, chew and swallow. Many people in darkness do the mental equivalent of this. They start to go into darkness, and then they start thinking negative thoughts associated with it. They might think about mistakes they’ve made, or about actions they didn’t take. Where we might think those thoughts for several hours or a day, they think about them for weeks and months at a time. The thoughts never change. They may berate themselves for decisions in the past, or for their situation in the present. They chronically ruminate, and they can’t break the cycle long enough to see other possibilities.
It’s not just people suffering with depression who do this. Most of us, when in darkness, do this. Rumination, whether depression related or not, creates the opening for darkness to reign. Whatever our situation is, rumination on how bad it is can immerse us and keep us in darkness. But God does offer a light, if we’re willing to take it.
Personally, I’ve had to struggle through chronic rumination for much of my life simply because I’m a pastor. The fact is that pastors get criticized on occasion. We can be criticized for something we say or do, or for something we didn’t say or do. Most of the time people are caring enough to either keep their concerns about this to themselves, or if they do share them, they do so in gentle and caring ways. But occasionally people aren’t very nice about it, and their comments can be devastating. I was devastated by a number of these kinds of comments early in my ministry and it traumatized me so much that for a period of time I wouldn’t answer my phone at the church unless I knew who was calling and why. In my first year in ministry I had received one too many critical phone calls, and I became phone-shy.
There was one particular incident when a woman yelled at me publically in front of fifteen junior high kids on a retreat, and then she met with me in my office the following week and yelled at me again. And she was yelling at me for something I was powerless to prevent. It’s hard to distill this down to a short story, but basically I was overseeing the youth program on a retreat for junior and senior high schoolers, and I was supposed to go up a trail to a campfire to tell stories to the junior highers. The problem was that I was at another campfire with the older teens, and two of them wanted me to leave so they could sneak off into the woods and do things young men and women like to do. I was stuck because all the other adult volunteers had disappeared. I was worried about leaving, but I had no way of telling the junior high adult volunteers I was stuck. When the other adult volunteers finally showed up, I ran up the trail to join the junior highers, but the woman with them had already brought them down the trail, and proceeded to berate me in front of all of them.
I was devastated, and I became somewhat of a recluse for a time, worrying about doing something else I’d be yelled at for. But after a lot of prayer I finally realized that I couldn’t spend my career this way. So I developed a rule. The day that someone berates me or criticizes me, I’m allowed to obsess about it, as long as I’m also praying about it. The second day I’m allowed to pray about it a lot, but only think about it a little. By the third day I have to give it over to God and move on. In other words, I can spend a little time in darkness, but in due time I have to move toward the light.
We do have a choice over whether we will live in darkness or light. There is darkness in the world, and it can be very powerful, but we can make a choice for light. And if you are interested in learning further how, come back next week and I’ll talk about how to make that choice.
Amen
The Holy Spirit and You: Acting with the Spirit
Acts 13:1-12
June 6, 2010
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John also to assist them. When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now listen—the hand of the Lord is against you, and you will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun.’ Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord.
I had a really interesting and wonderful conversation this past Friday afternoon. I was on the phone with a classmate from high school, Kelly, who I probably hadn’t seen in over twenty years. We were talking because of an experience my cousin told me that Kelly had had four years ago. It was a story that I found inspiring, and I wanted to find out a little bit more, so I had contacted Kelly to see if she would be willing to talk with me about it. Kelly agreed, and we have a very long conversation on Friday afternoon. She gave me permission to share it with all of you, which I feel very privileged to do.
Kelly had an experience of the Spirit during one of the most tragic experiences imaginable. You see, four years ago Kelly’s son, Michael, died after a car accident, and as you can imagine it turned both her and her husband Jeff’s life around in an instant. Yet even in the midst of this tragedy, Kelly discovered one of the ways God’s Spirit can act in our lives.
When Kelly and Jeff got to the hospital in Savannah, Georgia, the doctor told them that Mike’s injuries were severe, and that there really wasn’t anything they could do for him. He asked them if it was okay to let him go. After Kelly and Jeff said that it was okay, the doctor said, “Please give us a few minutes and then we’ll come back and get you.”
You can imagine the kind of pain Kelly and Jeff were in, and Kelly found that in that moment all the words of the Bible and of traditional faith just weren’t enough. She needed something more concrete. She was thinking to herself that she wasn’t going to make it if she didn’t get some tangible sign that it would be okay, that Mike would be okay. Even though Mike had died, she was still his mother and she still needed to know that Mike was safe and that they’d be together again. As she walked into the room where Mike was laying, she experienced the Spirit.
Walking into the room behind Jeff, she was looking down, wanting so much to get a sense that everything would be okay. Suddenly, she felt as though someone had pushed her head back with the palm of a hand, even though there was no one there. Her head snapped back, and as it did she reflexively closed her eyes. The darkness of shut eyelids quickly yielded to the most brilliant turquoise she had ever seen. The color may have been turquoise, but it wasn’t a turquoise found on earth. It was the color of joy or grace or the Spirit—something beyond this world. Then she heard the sound of rushing wind in her ears, like the rushing wind when you put your head out a car window. In the wind she heard a voice, several times, saying, “Class ring!”
This all lasted about five seconds. She wondered what it meant, and then she knew. One of Mike’s proudest possessions was his class ring. He had been a really good student, and he was especially proud of graduating from high school. Kelly responded to the voice, thinking to herself, “I got it Mike.”
Kelly said to the nurse, “Can I have his graduation ring?” The nurse said that there was no jewelry on Mike when he came in. Laying on the bed, Mike had nothing on, no personal effects, yet for some reason both his hands were wrapped in plastic wrap. Kelly pointed to his hands and said to the nurse, “Get the ring!” The nurse unwrapped the hands, and was shocked to find that the graduation ring was on his finger. Taking the ring, Kelly said to Mike in her mind, “That’s it, Mike? No ‘I love you?’” But she knew that Mike was there with her. It took her a day to understand all of this, and she realized later that if she hadn’t asked for the ring, it would have disappeared when his body was cremated. Kelly experienced not only as her son’s presence in that place, but also as the Spirit’s presence.
Since that time Kelly has had over a dozen experiences that have comforted her and revealed to her that Mike is still alive with God, and that everything really is okay for him. There are still times when she is overcome with missing him, and almost always she sees a hawk—either a live one, or a picture of one—which tells her that Mike is okay. Why a hawk? It was the mascot for his school, and since Mike so identified with his school, it makes sense that it would comfort Kelly to see one.
It hasn’t just been Kelly who’s had these experiences. Her husband Jeff also has had one really significant experience. Some time after Mike had died, Jeff took his truck to a dealership for an oil change. Normally he would have stayed and waited for the thirty minutes it took, but this time he decided to leave it and come back later. When he returned, and as he went to get his car, a tractor-trailer with new cars backed right in front of him blocking his way. His eyes immediately went to one of the cars on the back, a black Z06 corvette with specialized trim and decals. He was stunned. This was the exact car that his son, Mike, had a poster of in his room. Mike had always said that one of his dreams was to get a black Z06 corvette with specialized trim. There it was in front of Jeff.
Then the truck driver released a lever and the car rolled down off the racks and rested literally right in front of Jeff’s feet. One of the managers of the dealership was standing there, and so Jeff asked him who the car was for. The manager told him that it was a very specific, special order that had taken some time to put together, but that the man ordering it had called the dealership two days ago to cancel it. Then the manager said to Jeff, “I don’t know what we are going to do with it. It’s such a specialized car that we’ll have a lot of trouble selling it.” Jeff said, “No you won’t. it’s mine. I’ll buy it.” It has become Jeff’s special connection with his son, Mike. Whenever he is really feeling the loss of his son, he gets in the car and drives. He says that he can feel Mike’s presence next to him as he drives.
As I mentioned before, Kelly says that since her initial experience with Mike’s ring she has had literally dozens of experiences of Mike and God’s Spirit. One significant experience she had was a dream in which she was with God and was able to ask questions not only about Mike, but about life, our purpose, and why things are the way they are. In this dream God revealed everything to her. She had been given all the answers to every question. When she awoke she could remember only a few answers. She knew that even though God had revealed everything, it was not God’s will that she remember everything. There are things that meant to remain mysteries to us while we are alive. What’s interesting about Kelly’s dream is that after I gave this sermon in the first service, I had several people in the congregation who had lost spouses or children (including Connie Frierson, our program director), tell me that they had had that same dream. Apparently Kelly is not alone.
Kelly’s experience is a testimony not only to the fact that there is life beyond this life, but also that God’s Spirit can act in our lives in incredibly amazing and loving ways. The fact is that the Holy Spirit wants to be in our lives and act in our lives. Our passage is testimony to that. It’s a passage about the Spirit acting in the lives and ministry of the early Christians.
Kelly’s experience of hearing wind acts as a great reminder of just how the Spirit act sin our lives. I believe that one of the best metaphors for how the Spirit acts is like the wind moving sailing ships across the ocean. The wind is always there. It is always blowing across the surface. We are like sailing ships moving across the ocean, and the question is whether or not we are willing to put our sails up to catch the wind and let it move us, or if we are like rowers, determined to move by our own powers. The wind can move us, but are we willing to let it? Are we putting up our sails, and if we are, are we putting it up in the right direction to be moved by the wind? Just because a ship puts up a sail doesn’t mean that it will catch the wind. If we open our sails with an edge to the wind, the wind just blows around the sail, doing nothing. But if a sail is put up flat to the wind, it can be blown to new and wonderful shores.
Just as a wind moves a ship, the Spirit can move us, but only if we are receptive in the right way. If we are willing to work with the Spirit, it can move us. But if we are closed to the Spirit, or are only receptive in cautious and tentative ways, the Spirit can’t do anything with us.
It’s not only important to put up our sails, but also to avoid the Doldrums. Do you know what the Doldrums are? It’s where we get the term, “feeling like we are in the doldrums” from. The Doldrums are a region of the ocean both immediately above and below the equator. It’s a humid, hot area that often gets little or no wind for days, weeks, and even months. Sailor traveling between the northern and southern hemispheres can get caught in the Doldrums, sweltering while they agonizingly wait for any wind to pick them up and move them north or south. We can get caught in spiritual doldrums, places where the Spirit cannot blow, when we live in ways that the Spirit just won’t follow. When we live cynical, skeptical, or critical lives, the Spirit won’t blow in our lives. When we engage in activities or lifestyles bereft of God’s purpose, the Spirit will not follow.
Still, if we are willing to put our sails up in the right direction, and avoid living in the doldrums, the Spirit does act in our lives. The question is, though, just how does the Spirit act in our lives? I want to share with you three basic ways. The Spirit acts in our lives through guidance, providence, and presence.
Let’s look first at Guidance. Whether we truly believe it or not, God can guide us if we choose to listen. The basic problem is that not everyone is willing to listen. In fact, I believe that few, even among Christians, are truly committed to listening for God’s voice. Why? For a simple reason: we don’t think to listen because we don’t live in a culture that encourages us to listen. We are so used to not listening that listening seems odd and even impossible. Yet just because we don’t hear doesn’t mean that God isn’t speaking. In my experience, our failure to hear God says more about how we listen than about how God’s speaks.
In fact, it’s this belief that God speaks that underlies our whole approach to ministry at Calvin Church. We’ve been very intentional about saying that we want to listen for God’s voice. For example, we do something here in the leadership of Calvin Church that is very rare in the Presbyterian Church (USA). We make decisions based on prayerful listening. And you can see it in how we vote on issues. Think about how most churches make decisions. When dealing with an issue, most church boards discuss the issue, then prepare the vote. The moderator of the board or session says, “All in favor say aye; all opposed say no.” When churches vote like that, who’s voice are they listening for? Their own. They are voting about what to do in a church and basing the decision on what they want, not what God wants. This is what I mean when I say we don’t even put up our sails, or we put them up parallel to how the wind is blowing. Here at Calvin Church, we use a different process. When making a decision we pray, and then vote using the question—whether in session, a committee, or the congregation—“All who sense this may be God’s will say aye; All who don’t say no.” This is a radical difference because we are being intentional about putting up our sails so that the Spirit can move us.
This ability to listen for God’s voice isn’t just apparent in church decisions. It can be apparent in your own life, if you are willing to listen. You won’t get a loud, booming voice from God in response. The way God often speaks is through a slight nudge or feeling of rightness or wrongness. The Spirit often speaks through subtle promptings. This is why it’s so hard to listen. The world shouts at us. God softly nudges us. But God does give us guidance, if we are open to it.
The Spirit also acts in our lives through Providence. Providence is a fancy word for grace and God’s blessings. Providence is God acting tangibly, and often amazingly, in life. Providence is simply God’s blessings that can lead to coincidences, healings, gifts of grace, and so much more. One reason we have such a strong emphasis on healing prayer at Calvin Church is that we believe in God’s providence. We believe that God can act in these miraculous ways.
You heard providence in Kelly’s story, but I found it even more in the fact that I heard the story first from my cousin Althea, who had visited Kelly two months ago. A little over a month ago I was gone for a weekend celebrating a family reunion around my father’s 80th birthday. It was at the party on Saturday night that Althea told me about Kelly’s story. And here’s even more providence: it took Kelly and me till this past Friday to connect, and that was the perfect timing for me to share it with you this morning. If she had shared it with me one or two weeks before, I would probably have forced it into my previous sermons, where it wouldn’t have quite fit. If we had waited till next week, I don’t know when I would have shared it with you. There was both providence and God’s coincidence in the timing of Kelly’s and my speaking.
Finally, God’s Spirit works in our lives through being a Presence. Sometimes God doesn’t speak to us, nor act tangibly. Sometimes God just lets us know that the Spirit is with us. That’s what you really saw in Kelly’s and Jeff’s experiences. They were blessed with a gift of the Spirit’s presence that helped them sense Mike’s presence. And they aren’t alone. I know of so many people who have ways that they can tell when God is with them.
For example, often God speaks to us through personal symbols to say, “I’m here, and I love you.” I’ve experienced this over and over with the numbers 3 and 7. It all started for me many years ago before I came to Calvin Church. I had been exercising on a machine, and struggling with questions about my future. I was praying to God and asking how long it would be before God acted. I stopped as I prayed and looked down at the odometer. It said 3.33. Since then I’ve seen that number, and other similar numbers, a lot: 733, 337, and 777. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night stressing about something, and I’ll roll over and see that it is 3:33 a.m. I’ll be driving along and praying, and see that the number on the license plate in front of me is 337. Or I’ll be watching television and look at the clock and it will be 7:33. This doesn’t happen merely every once in a while. It happens many times every week. Each time it amazes me.
I’m not alone. David Sloat, one of our members, has a similar experience with the number 444. He said that this past week his son’s bus broke down and the replacement bus was #444. He also said that for his past three jobs he’s noticed that the exchange number on the telephone number has always been 444. The area code is always different, but the exchange has always been the same.
Kelly told me that when she struggles she sees the number 11:11, or 1111. Her whole family sees it. Kelly’s older sister, Kim, attends Calvin Church and has told me that she sees it, and her daughter, Katie, now is seeing it quite often. And since I’ve preached this sermon I’ve received several e-mails from members telling me about their numbers, including one member who told me that he was having a medical procedure this week, and he looked down at the heart monitoring device and the serial number was 07003703. He said he could sense God saying, “I’m with you and it will be okay.”
The Spirit really can act in your life, but there are major questions we have to ask ourselves: Am I in a place where the Spirit can act? Am I in a state of mind and heart where the Spirit can act? Are my sails up and set for the Spirit to act?
Amen.
P.S. (I’ve looked down at the word count on my computer and the total number of words is 3333).
June 6, 2010
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John also to assist them. When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now listen—the hand of the Lord is against you, and you will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun.’ Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord.
I had a really interesting and wonderful conversation this past Friday afternoon. I was on the phone with a classmate from high school, Kelly, who I probably hadn’t seen in over twenty years. We were talking because of an experience my cousin told me that Kelly had had four years ago. It was a story that I found inspiring, and I wanted to find out a little bit more, so I had contacted Kelly to see if she would be willing to talk with me about it. Kelly agreed, and we have a very long conversation on Friday afternoon. She gave me permission to share it with all of you, which I feel very privileged to do.
Kelly had an experience of the Spirit during one of the most tragic experiences imaginable. You see, four years ago Kelly’s son, Michael, died after a car accident, and as you can imagine it turned both her and her husband Jeff’s life around in an instant. Yet even in the midst of this tragedy, Kelly discovered one of the ways God’s Spirit can act in our lives.
When Kelly and Jeff got to the hospital in Savannah, Georgia, the doctor told them that Mike’s injuries were severe, and that there really wasn’t anything they could do for him. He asked them if it was okay to let him go. After Kelly and Jeff said that it was okay, the doctor said, “Please give us a few minutes and then we’ll come back and get you.”
You can imagine the kind of pain Kelly and Jeff were in, and Kelly found that in that moment all the words of the Bible and of traditional faith just weren’t enough. She needed something more concrete. She was thinking to herself that she wasn’t going to make it if she didn’t get some tangible sign that it would be okay, that Mike would be okay. Even though Mike had died, she was still his mother and she still needed to know that Mike was safe and that they’d be together again. As she walked into the room where Mike was laying, she experienced the Spirit.
Walking into the room behind Jeff, she was looking down, wanting so much to get a sense that everything would be okay. Suddenly, she felt as though someone had pushed her head back with the palm of a hand, even though there was no one there. Her head snapped back, and as it did she reflexively closed her eyes. The darkness of shut eyelids quickly yielded to the most brilliant turquoise she had ever seen. The color may have been turquoise, but it wasn’t a turquoise found on earth. It was the color of joy or grace or the Spirit—something beyond this world. Then she heard the sound of rushing wind in her ears, like the rushing wind when you put your head out a car window. In the wind she heard a voice, several times, saying, “Class ring!”
This all lasted about five seconds. She wondered what it meant, and then she knew. One of Mike’s proudest possessions was his class ring. He had been a really good student, and he was especially proud of graduating from high school. Kelly responded to the voice, thinking to herself, “I got it Mike.”
Kelly said to the nurse, “Can I have his graduation ring?” The nurse said that there was no jewelry on Mike when he came in. Laying on the bed, Mike had nothing on, no personal effects, yet for some reason both his hands were wrapped in plastic wrap. Kelly pointed to his hands and said to the nurse, “Get the ring!” The nurse unwrapped the hands, and was shocked to find that the graduation ring was on his finger. Taking the ring, Kelly said to Mike in her mind, “That’s it, Mike? No ‘I love you?’” But she knew that Mike was there with her. It took her a day to understand all of this, and she realized later that if she hadn’t asked for the ring, it would have disappeared when his body was cremated. Kelly experienced not only as her son’s presence in that place, but also as the Spirit’s presence.
Since that time Kelly has had over a dozen experiences that have comforted her and revealed to her that Mike is still alive with God, and that everything really is okay for him. There are still times when she is overcome with missing him, and almost always she sees a hawk—either a live one, or a picture of one—which tells her that Mike is okay. Why a hawk? It was the mascot for his school, and since Mike so identified with his school, it makes sense that it would comfort Kelly to see one.
It hasn’t just been Kelly who’s had these experiences. Her husband Jeff also has had one really significant experience. Some time after Mike had died, Jeff took his truck to a dealership for an oil change. Normally he would have stayed and waited for the thirty minutes it took, but this time he decided to leave it and come back later. When he returned, and as he went to get his car, a tractor-trailer with new cars backed right in front of him blocking his way. His eyes immediately went to one of the cars on the back, a black Z06 corvette with specialized trim and decals. He was stunned. This was the exact car that his son, Mike, had a poster of in his room. Mike had always said that one of his dreams was to get a black Z06 corvette with specialized trim. There it was in front of Jeff.
Then the truck driver released a lever and the car rolled down off the racks and rested literally right in front of Jeff’s feet. One of the managers of the dealership was standing there, and so Jeff asked him who the car was for. The manager told him that it was a very specific, special order that had taken some time to put together, but that the man ordering it had called the dealership two days ago to cancel it. Then the manager said to Jeff, “I don’t know what we are going to do with it. It’s such a specialized car that we’ll have a lot of trouble selling it.” Jeff said, “No you won’t. it’s mine. I’ll buy it.” It has become Jeff’s special connection with his son, Mike. Whenever he is really feeling the loss of his son, he gets in the car and drives. He says that he can feel Mike’s presence next to him as he drives.
As I mentioned before, Kelly says that since her initial experience with Mike’s ring she has had literally dozens of experiences of Mike and God’s Spirit. One significant experience she had was a dream in which she was with God and was able to ask questions not only about Mike, but about life, our purpose, and why things are the way they are. In this dream God revealed everything to her. She had been given all the answers to every question. When she awoke she could remember only a few answers. She knew that even though God had revealed everything, it was not God’s will that she remember everything. There are things that meant to remain mysteries to us while we are alive. What’s interesting about Kelly’s dream is that after I gave this sermon in the first service, I had several people in the congregation who had lost spouses or children (including Connie Frierson, our program director), tell me that they had had that same dream. Apparently Kelly is not alone.
Kelly’s experience is a testimony not only to the fact that there is life beyond this life, but also that God’s Spirit can act in our lives in incredibly amazing and loving ways. The fact is that the Holy Spirit wants to be in our lives and act in our lives. Our passage is testimony to that. It’s a passage about the Spirit acting in the lives and ministry of the early Christians.
Kelly’s experience of hearing wind acts as a great reminder of just how the Spirit act sin our lives. I believe that one of the best metaphors for how the Spirit acts is like the wind moving sailing ships across the ocean. The wind is always there. It is always blowing across the surface. We are like sailing ships moving across the ocean, and the question is whether or not we are willing to put our sails up to catch the wind and let it move us, or if we are like rowers, determined to move by our own powers. The wind can move us, but are we willing to let it? Are we putting up our sails, and if we are, are we putting it up in the right direction to be moved by the wind? Just because a ship puts up a sail doesn’t mean that it will catch the wind. If we open our sails with an edge to the wind, the wind just blows around the sail, doing nothing. But if a sail is put up flat to the wind, it can be blown to new and wonderful shores.
Just as a wind moves a ship, the Spirit can move us, but only if we are receptive in the right way. If we are willing to work with the Spirit, it can move us. But if we are closed to the Spirit, or are only receptive in cautious and tentative ways, the Spirit can’t do anything with us.
It’s not only important to put up our sails, but also to avoid the Doldrums. Do you know what the Doldrums are? It’s where we get the term, “feeling like we are in the doldrums” from. The Doldrums are a region of the ocean both immediately above and below the equator. It’s a humid, hot area that often gets little or no wind for days, weeks, and even months. Sailor traveling between the northern and southern hemispheres can get caught in the Doldrums, sweltering while they agonizingly wait for any wind to pick them up and move them north or south. We can get caught in spiritual doldrums, places where the Spirit cannot blow, when we live in ways that the Spirit just won’t follow. When we live cynical, skeptical, or critical lives, the Spirit won’t blow in our lives. When we engage in activities or lifestyles bereft of God’s purpose, the Spirit will not follow.
Still, if we are willing to put our sails up in the right direction, and avoid living in the doldrums, the Spirit does act in our lives. The question is, though, just how does the Spirit act in our lives? I want to share with you three basic ways. The Spirit acts in our lives through guidance, providence, and presence.
Let’s look first at Guidance. Whether we truly believe it or not, God can guide us if we choose to listen. The basic problem is that not everyone is willing to listen. In fact, I believe that few, even among Christians, are truly committed to listening for God’s voice. Why? For a simple reason: we don’t think to listen because we don’t live in a culture that encourages us to listen. We are so used to not listening that listening seems odd and even impossible. Yet just because we don’t hear doesn’t mean that God isn’t speaking. In my experience, our failure to hear God says more about how we listen than about how God’s speaks.
In fact, it’s this belief that God speaks that underlies our whole approach to ministry at Calvin Church. We’ve been very intentional about saying that we want to listen for God’s voice. For example, we do something here in the leadership of Calvin Church that is very rare in the Presbyterian Church (USA). We make decisions based on prayerful listening. And you can see it in how we vote on issues. Think about how most churches make decisions. When dealing with an issue, most church boards discuss the issue, then prepare the vote. The moderator of the board or session says, “All in favor say aye; all opposed say no.” When churches vote like that, who’s voice are they listening for? Their own. They are voting about what to do in a church and basing the decision on what they want, not what God wants. This is what I mean when I say we don’t even put up our sails, or we put them up parallel to how the wind is blowing. Here at Calvin Church, we use a different process. When making a decision we pray, and then vote using the question—whether in session, a committee, or the congregation—“All who sense this may be God’s will say aye; All who don’t say no.” This is a radical difference because we are being intentional about putting up our sails so that the Spirit can move us.
This ability to listen for God’s voice isn’t just apparent in church decisions. It can be apparent in your own life, if you are willing to listen. You won’t get a loud, booming voice from God in response. The way God often speaks is through a slight nudge or feeling of rightness or wrongness. The Spirit often speaks through subtle promptings. This is why it’s so hard to listen. The world shouts at us. God softly nudges us. But God does give us guidance, if we are open to it.
The Spirit also acts in our lives through Providence. Providence is a fancy word for grace and God’s blessings. Providence is God acting tangibly, and often amazingly, in life. Providence is simply God’s blessings that can lead to coincidences, healings, gifts of grace, and so much more. One reason we have such a strong emphasis on healing prayer at Calvin Church is that we believe in God’s providence. We believe that God can act in these miraculous ways.
You heard providence in Kelly’s story, but I found it even more in the fact that I heard the story first from my cousin Althea, who had visited Kelly two months ago. A little over a month ago I was gone for a weekend celebrating a family reunion around my father’s 80th birthday. It was at the party on Saturday night that Althea told me about Kelly’s story. And here’s even more providence: it took Kelly and me till this past Friday to connect, and that was the perfect timing for me to share it with you this morning. If she had shared it with me one or two weeks before, I would probably have forced it into my previous sermons, where it wouldn’t have quite fit. If we had waited till next week, I don’t know when I would have shared it with you. There was both providence and God’s coincidence in the timing of Kelly’s and my speaking.
Finally, God’s Spirit works in our lives through being a Presence. Sometimes God doesn’t speak to us, nor act tangibly. Sometimes God just lets us know that the Spirit is with us. That’s what you really saw in Kelly’s and Jeff’s experiences. They were blessed with a gift of the Spirit’s presence that helped them sense Mike’s presence. And they aren’t alone. I know of so many people who have ways that they can tell when God is with them.
For example, often God speaks to us through personal symbols to say, “I’m here, and I love you.” I’ve experienced this over and over with the numbers 3 and 7. It all started for me many years ago before I came to Calvin Church. I had been exercising on a machine, and struggling with questions about my future. I was praying to God and asking how long it would be before God acted. I stopped as I prayed and looked down at the odometer. It said 3.33. Since then I’ve seen that number, and other similar numbers, a lot: 733, 337, and 777. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night stressing about something, and I’ll roll over and see that it is 3:33 a.m. I’ll be driving along and praying, and see that the number on the license plate in front of me is 337. Or I’ll be watching television and look at the clock and it will be 7:33. This doesn’t happen merely every once in a while. It happens many times every week. Each time it amazes me.
I’m not alone. David Sloat, one of our members, has a similar experience with the number 444. He said that this past week his son’s bus broke down and the replacement bus was #444. He also said that for his past three jobs he’s noticed that the exchange number on the telephone number has always been 444. The area code is always different, but the exchange has always been the same.
Kelly told me that when she struggles she sees the number 11:11, or 1111. Her whole family sees it. Kelly’s older sister, Kim, attends Calvin Church and has told me that she sees it, and her daughter, Katie, now is seeing it quite often. And since I’ve preached this sermon I’ve received several e-mails from members telling me about their numbers, including one member who told me that he was having a medical procedure this week, and he looked down at the heart monitoring device and the serial number was 07003703. He said he could sense God saying, “I’m with you and it will be okay.”
The Spirit really can act in your life, but there are major questions we have to ask ourselves: Am I in a place where the Spirit can act? Am I in a state of mind and heart where the Spirit can act? Are my sails up and set for the Spirit to act?
Amen.
P.S. (I’ve looked down at the word count on my computer and the total number of words is 3333).
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