Fairhaven Sermon 5-25-2025

All through the Easter season, you might have noticed the lectionary moves away from the Old Testament. We don't have any appointed Old Testament readings except for the psalm in the Easter season. And instead, we get these snippets from Acts of what life for the church, for the apostles after Jesus' ascension looks like. And I don't totally understand why the lectionary does that, why it goes ahead of what's happening during Easter.

But it's sort of fascinating to be reading on one hand what Jesus is promising the apostles while he's still with them, which is what we just heard from John, and see all that alongside the fulfillment of those promises, which is what we just heard in Acts 2. And that's very much what we're seeing here. In John 14, Jesus tells the apostles not to be afraid because the Father will be sending the Holy Spirit. In Greek, he calls the Holy Spirit the paraclete.

Sometimes you see that untranslated. It means comforter, as it was in Flo's translation. It means advocate. It means companion.

Most literally in Roman Latin, it would be Roman Greek, it would mean defense attorney. That was the most literal reading of what a paraclete was. It's the defender between you and God in the world, the one who advocates for you. And then in Acts 16, we see this Holy Spirit at work, first sending a vision to Paul in the night, calling him to ministry in Macedonia.

Macedonia is a region in the Balkans. It's northern Greece today. And then the Spirit works on Lydia's heart, this seller of purple cloth. She would have been a very wealthy woman.

That was a really luxury good in those days. But the Spirit works on Lydia's heart to enable her to hear, to embrace Paul's proclamation of Jesus' good news. And now this instance of the Spirit's movement in Acts is not a particularly dramatic one by the standards, excuse me, of the book. It's notable that Lydia becomes the very first Christian in the European continent.

So whenever Lydia is converted in Macedonia, that's our first Christian in Europe. Everyone else has been in Asia so far. And that's important, right? But throughout Acts, we see the Spirit do much more dramatic things than that. The tongues of fire that we're going to remember at Pentecost in two Sundays that enable the gospel to be miraculously heard in every language, that's a little bit more dramatic.

Then there's that sudden conversion, that mystical conversion of Saul from a murderer of Christians into an apostle of Christ as he's knocked to the ground on the road, and As you probably know, Acts is abbreviated. That is not the entire name of the book. In almost any Bible, if you turn to the first title page of Acts, you'll find it referred to by its full name, the Acts of the Apostles. But the pastors and professors Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand point out, they say this, the title of Luke's sequel, and remember that's what Acts is, it's the second volume to Luke's gospel, the title of Luke's sequel is all wrong.

It's not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of God, The apostles wait and God acts. In the biblical scholar, Christopher Matthews says something really similar. He says, as a descriptive title, Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer. And his reasoning is a little bit different, but it points out something that also should be obvious.

The only one of Jesus' 12 apostles who really even plays a role in the whole book is Peter. Peter. Paul doesn't even claim that title in the book, so calling it the Acts of the Apostles is a little strange whenever there's like one and a half apostles in the whole book out of 12. It's really not the apostles who are acting.

It is the Holy Spirit that is acting in the book. It's the Holy Spirit through the early Christians around them. They, whether it's the apostles of Jesus or a disciple converted later by the apostles, they aren't the ones acting. The people aren't the main focus of this book.

God is. The people are just putting themselves in the position to tag along for the ride. And it's ironic for us, I think, especially given our history as Methodists, but my experience is that we tend personally and collectively to steer clear of the Holy Spirit as much as we can. The Father and the Son are comfortable to us.

The Holy Spirit... And this is really bizarre if you think about it.

And not just because of the stories we see in scripture. Last week, I don't know how much Pastor Peg focused on it, but we remembered Aldersgate Sunday. That was the day in 1738 when John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed, he said, at a London prayer meeting. He felt Jesus' love for him at a deeply personal level.

This was a spiritual experience. Yeah. That wasn't something that he was trying to make happen that evening. And I think that's very important.

He wasn't trying to make it happen. This experience was something that was a work of the Spirit. It came upon him. It happened to him in spite of him.

And that becomes very clear when you know the guy's biography. Right? By 1738, when this happens, he has been striving for years to really get to know God, to have an experience of God's love. He's already 35. He's been an Anglican priest for about 15 years before he has this experience, this overwhelming experience of God's love.

And in that moment, he's transformed by the Spirit. He had no say whatsoever in when or where or how it was going to happen. God did it when and how God was going to do it. And that moment marked this turning point for him in the Methodist movement that would ignite the whole English speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic.

This was a moment the spirit decided something was going to happen. Amen. And the thing is, I don't really like that very much. And maybe you feel the same way.

I've been dwelling on this for a long time now, months, a year maybe, to really get personal about what I've been feeling. Every time I come upon the Aldersgate story, and this happened as I stood in that spot in London last summer. I find myself wanting that very same sort of unambiguous, clear encounter with the Holy Spirit that Wesley got that I can mark on my calendar and say that was the day. There it was.

I felt God just the way I needed to that day. I want to see a complete transformation in that moment in my life. I want to have the same moment in your lives, in this church. I want to see the miraculous healing of the kind we see across the New Testament.

I want to see the revival that the Wesleys saw of people flocking in the doors. And then we go pouring out to show people the love of Christ, just like what God did in the wake of Pentecost. Thousands of people were added to their number. Amen.

I want to see these powerful church-led movements for justice, like we saw the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement. And I really want all that to happen right now. If there was something that I thought I could propose at church council or at annual conference that would help us get to any of those goals, I would. I would.

We could have a fundraising campaign for it, maybe. We could strategize about how to make all that happen. We could make plans. We could advertise.

We could do all that we could to make it as successful as it could be. But that's not how it works, as it turns out. No more than Wesley planned to have his heart strangely warmed that evening in May 1738. No more than Paul planned to evangelize in Macedonia.

God decides when the Spirit will move. We can't plan for that. We can't light that fire ourselves. We can't catch it.

We can't tame it. And as far as revival and conversion go, you and I can't preach that into anybody. You can't make anyone care. You can't make anyone love Jesus.

And we get to this here in this Acts reading. Because Lydia, you might have heard, was enabled by the Lord to embrace Paul's message. She didn't decide, and Paul didn't decide. It had very little to do with how good or bad Paul's preaching was, right? Right? And the quality of my preaching has very little to do with whether you'll change your hearts and lives or go home as if you never worship this Sunday.

All we can do is get ourselves into the right position to wait on God, to act with openness, with willingness, with anticipation in the way that we interact with God, just being open and ready. That seems to be where Lydia was, doesn't it? Your work as a Christian and our collective work of ministry, which is partnering with God, only works whenever we're trying to be aligned with the movement of the Spirit, whatever the Spirit is doing in this moment and in the time to come. It doesn't work when it's independent, when it's self-driven, when we're following our own visions. Right? So consider that if Paul had stuck to his own plans in Acts 16, none of this would have happened.

All of this would have fallen apart. They'd have never encountered Lydia. They'd have never sparked the founding of the church on the European continent. Paul had not planned to go to Macedonia.

He had not planned to go to Europe. It's worth rewinding. This is just going back two verses from where we started today because I think it gives some helpful context. When they approached the province of Mycenae, they tried to enter the province of Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus wouldn't let them.

Passing by Mycenae, they went down the Troas instead. Okay. Isn't that amazing? That so in tune with the Spirit are Paul and his companions in ministry that they are literally not able to do what the Spirit does not want them to do. The Spirit will not let them do something that God is not planning for and ensures that they're directed on the right path.

The Spirit turns them around at that border and says, Hold it. You're not going here. Not right now. There's somewhere else you're supposed to be.

So wait. And then God gives Paul a dream, tells him exactly what to do in this vision of this man from Macedonia. So think about how close of a relationship with God all of them must have cultivated, but especially Paul. And compare that to how you experience God, how you approach God, and how that might change so that you can hear God better.

Think about this. How often do you feel like prayer, whether that's before a council meeting, whether that's at the start of your day, whether that's before a meal, does that feel like it's a ritual or a one-way conversation? Do you actually expect that God's going to say anything? Because if you don't, well, maybe he won't. Maybe you won't hear it if he does. but what if you expected that God really was going to answer you, and you listened for that, whether or not it ended up happening, because it won't a lot of the time.

And I know how hard this is. Who in their right mind actually expects, you know, whenever we're talking at 8.15 on a Sunday morning at a church council meeting, that God's going to show up there and do something? Right? but we have to expect that or there's no point. You know, if the church is Christ's body, if it's empowered by the spirit, certainly God is interested in guiding us on the right path.

No less than in sending Paul to Macedonia. We're involved in the same ministry Paul was. So God's still not going to leave us alone to figure things out for ourselves. And if we're not hearing, maybe we're not listening.

Okay. And if we're not receiving vision and promise, maybe we're too focused on our own preferences, on crafting our own plans, tending to our own fears, our own anxieties. And so I invite you today, as I think the Spirit does, to get yourself in the right position for God to get to work. Open yourself up to receiving that, to setting aside your own plans, your own worries, your own hesitations, and instead waiting for the Holy Spirit to move in power, expecting it.

Whether that's for healing, whether that's for vision, We're in a far more faithful place if God doesn't have to knock us to the ground on the road like he did to Paul. If instead we're reaching for what God is offering, hoping for it, expecting God to do something the way that God wants to do it. Now see the difference here. Here.

It's not desperately trying to make what we want happen. It's not saying, God, do this. God, do this. God, do this.

Instead, it's wanting God to get to work in our lives in whatever form that takes, leaving it open. It's a very open-ended ask. Every year at annual conference, one of my favorite traditions that we do is during the ordination service, the close of the ordination service. The bishop will stand up at the end, play some music, and will invite anyone who's feeling a call to ministry to come down, to be prayed for at the front, to discern what God has for them.

Amen. And that's exactly the kind of moment that I'm talking about. How do we live like that every day with our hearts open? What is God calling me to, offering me right now? This service is just so moving to me every year. I try to get down there as fast as I can.

Sometimes I'm trapped in the middle of an aisle. But I try to get down as fast as I can, hopefully to be in the position to pray for somebody. I've prayed for youth, kids that are 13, We prayed for retirees, people who are going on their second career in ministry. All these people who feel like God is speaking to them, and we go down and try to amplify that for them, to pray for them, to pray with them.

The same thing happens, you know, when we dare to pray for healing. There's something powerful about opening ourselves up to God and saying, I know you can do this. I know you're doing something. And not demanding anything, not on our own terms, not on our own timetable.

And lo and behold, miracles happen when we open ourselves to receive those. So this day, like Paul, like Lydia, put yourself bodily, spiritually, where the Holy Spirit, the companion, the advocate, the comforter, can move you. Where you can hear God if God has something to say to you. Where you can receive a calling or a gift or simply the assurance of Jesus' love for you like Wesley got.

invite in the advocate, the companion, and receive the peace that is given to you through Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.