Building God's House

What kind of building materials do you need to build a house for God? If you answered "lumber and siding," you're not wrong... but that's not the kind of house that I'm talking about. In this house, you are a part of the building materials! Interested? Read on!

I recently had the honor of giving the prayer of dedication for the new Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Troy. For those of you who may not know, the ReStore sells building supplies, furniture, and decorative items that have been donated; and the profit goes to the work of Habitat for Humanity. I was asked to offer the prayer because our own Ralph Craig started the very first ReStore in Troy (which was originally called Uncle Ralph’s ReStore in his honor). After the official opening ceremonies were over, I strolled around the store looking at the many kinds of supplies that are necessary to build a house. You need to have materials to set a good, solid foundation before you even begin on the house itself. Then you’ll want to build the walls, so you’ll need supplies like lumber, drywall, and siding. You’ll probably want windows in those walls, so you’ll have to get those. Finally, you’ll need roofing supplies so you can cover the whole house. And if any of those things are missing, the whole building project suffers.

It got me to thinking that God has a house, too. I’m not talking about a physical church building. I’m talking about the spiritual house that is embodied in the community of any group of Christians. Our own congregation is one of God’s houses! Within that house is a church family that laughs together, cries together, eats together, plays together, and plans together just like any other family does. But that house isn’t built of lumber; it’s built on the way that each one of us responds to the moving of God’s Spirit in our hearts. And each one of us adds something to that spiritual house to keep it in good shape.

Here’s what I mean. Any house has a foundation, right? You can’t just build a house in a field without giving it a good strong foundation. If you try to do that, it won’t last too long. Our spiritual house needs a good foundation, too! Our house is founded on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and on surrendering our lives to him. If that isn’t our foundation, then we aren’t the church of Jesus Christ. We may be an organization that does great mission work, or a friendly social club; but we’re not the church. You remember Jesus’ warning about building your house wisely. If we build it on the shifting sand of fads and public opinion, it will fall down in short order! Instead, Jesus said, build that house on the rock where it will withstand all kinds of storms! There are people in every congregation who are moved by the Spirit to remind us of that foundation. When we start getting sucked into some of the things that our society does, they whack us on the head and remind us who – and whose – we are. Now, we may not always appreciate that! But they are vital parts of any congregation and I thank God for them!

A house has to have walls, too. It’s very uncomfortable living on just a foundation. So we have walls that holds the whole house up. The people who build those walls are the folks who do the routine work of the church. They help with worship, they take care of the bills, and they serve on ministry teams. They donate regularly to help keep the church doors open, and they give to offerings that go towards special needs such as disaster relief. They make salads, side dishes, and desserts to carry-in meals; and some of them even look around to see what else they can do! Without these folks, we would be a bunch of Christians standing on a firm foundation, but we wouldn’t be much of a house where God can live.

Those walls have windows in them. If we don’t have any windows, we have no way to see the outside world. In our spiritual home that we build for God, the windows are the people who look at the world around us and remind us of what’s out there. They’re the folks whose hearts are moved to mission. Every time they read an article about the opioid epidemic, or hear a news report about destruction caused by a hurricane, or see a homeless man begging on the streets, they remind us that Jesus wants us to do something about it! Without these saints, we are tempted to sit back in our pews on Sunday morning and congratulate ourselves on how holy we are. You know what Jesus said about that! He condemned the praying Pharisee who thanked God that he was better than everybody else! The people who help us see beyond our own walls keep us from falling into that trap.

Finally, every house has a roof. Without one, even the most well-constructed house will be ruined very quickly. Our spiritual house has a roof, too: the people who remind us to care for one another. Just like a roof protects a house, these saints help us protect one another. Sometimes, they take a homemade casserole to a family who is grieving a loss. Other times, it’s a greeting card that is sent at just the right time. On rare occasions, it’s an envelope of cash slipped quietly into a mailbox; and the recipient never knows where it came from. But regardless of exactly what they do, they do it out of love for other people in their spiritual family. They are the very best kind of roof!

So, now I have a question for you to ponder: which kind of building material are you? Where do you fit in to God’s spiritual house? Does the Spirit prod you to remind others that we are not the Church of the shopping mall, or the Church of a political party, or even the Church of the United States – we’re the Church of Jesus Christ! If that’s on your heart, then you’re part of the foundation! And thank God that you are! Does your heart burn with compassion when you see others suffering? Do you look around and say, “Somebody ought to do something about this!” Then you’re a window. You help the rest of us to take a good look at what’s around us, and you keep us from focusing only on what’s right under our noses. Thank God for you! Do you look around you and see needs right here in our congregation? Do you say to yourself, “The church should always be ready to help its own”? Then you’re part of the roof, that great cover that spreads its protective umbrella over the people under it. You remind us that even though the wider world has needs, we have needs right here, too. You show us what’s right under our noses. Thank God for you! Are you always ready to help on behalf of the church? Then you are part of the walls. You may be only one brick, but you’re an important one! In fact, all of us need to be part of the walls of God’s house, no matter how much or how little we may do. We’re all necessary for God’s house to stand strong.

Take a moment this week to listen to the Spirit moving in your heart and in your life. What part of God’s house are you called to be right now? Whether you are a foundation, a window, a roof, or a wall, God needs you! As Ephesians reminds us, we are all “being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (2:19-22). And that is the very best kind of house that we could ever hope to build!

Drunk

What happens when we are really filled with the Holy Spirit? If we can trust the description of Jesus' disciples on Pentecost, it is similar in many ways to being drunk! Don't believe me? This sermon might change your mind!

The Bible takes a dim view of drunkenness. That should be a surprise to no one. And it’s not a recent development, either. It started with Noah, way back in the book of Genesis. You may not know that after the great flood, one of the first things that Noah did was to plant a vineyard. Now, there’s nothing wrong with planting a vineyard. When that vineyard produced grapes, he made wine from them. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. (You wine lovers don’t have to worry!) The problem was not that Noah drank wine, but that Noah drank too much of that wine; and he got so drunk that he passed out, which caused a huge problem for his family. (Interested in the details? You can read the story in Genesis 9:20-27.) And that’s not the last time that drinking too much got someone in trouble. The book of Daniel tells us that King Belshazzar of Babylon got drunk and decided to use the goblets from the Jerusalem Temple for his feast. That made God so mad that he took the kingdom away from Belshazzar and gave it to the Persians (Daniel 5:1-31). If you know the story of Judith (which is in the Apocryphal book of Judith), you know that the Persian general Holofernes got drunk; and when he passed out, Judith cut off his head! One of Jesus’ parables even warns us not to behave like servants who get drunk and aren’t ready to serve their master when he comes home (Luke 12:42-46).

Yeah, getting drunk can lead to real problems. It can cause you to do all kinds of crazy things, because when we get drunk, we lose our inhibitions. We do things that we would otherwise never do. Think you wouldn’t dance on a table with a lampshade on your head? Get drunk and see what happens! And when we’re drunk, we say what we’re really thinking. You might even tell your boss that he’s an arrogant, boated windbag with terrible fashion sense and a worse management style! Getting drunk leads to folks doing and saying things that they would not usually do or say. That’s why some of the people who witnessed the behavior of Jesus’ disciples on the first Pentecost were convinced that they were drunk. After the disciples began speaking in other languages, “Some [people] made fun of them and said, ‘They have had too much wine.’” (You can read the whole story in Acts 2:1-13.) Peter was quick to respond that they weren’t drunk, because it was still early in the morning. But, you know, Peter was wrong. The disciples were drunk! Oh, they weren’t drunk with wine. They were drunk with God’s Spirit. It filled them after the Spirit’s wind swept through the room where they were gathered and the Spirit’s fire settled on each one of them. They were as drunk on the Spirit as some folks get on Margaritas at La Fiesta!

And it got some of them into trouble. I’ll bet that you know the story of Stephen (Acts chapters 6 and 7). Stephen was one of the first Christians. The book of Acts tells us that he was “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5), and that he did “great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.” (Acts 6:8) But because the Jewish authorities didn’t like Stephen preaching that Jesus was the Messiah, he was arrested and put on trial. When he was asked what he had to say for himself, he gave a magnificent sermon that related the entire story of the Jews beginning with Abraham. But he didn’t end his story by praising the ones who had arrested him, even though that would have been the smart thing to do. No, because he was drunk on the Spirit, he told them exactly what he thought of them: that they were stupid, stubborn, and violent; that they had ignored what the prophets had to say; and that they had murdered the Messiah! Oh, he spoke his mind, all right! And after that… well, things didn’t go so well. They dragged Stephen outside and stoned him to death. And it just so happened that a young Jew named Saul was in the crowd. He approved of what they did to Stephen. Later, though, when Saul was on the road to Damascus, he met the risen Christ. When he did, he must have recalled the day that Stephen was murdered. He must have remembered Stephen’s courage in speaking his mind despite knowing that it would get him into trouble. And soon enough, Saul would be drunk with the Holy Spirit himself. He changed his name to Paul; and he traveled all over the world doing things that got him into trouble and saying things that he never in a million years thought that he would say. That’s what happens when you get drunk with the Holy Spirit.

Now, even though the Bible warns us against getting drunk on wine, it is delighted with folks who get drunk with the Holy Spirit! “Do not get drunk on wine…” says Ephesians (5:18). “Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” In other words, don’t put a lampshade on your head and dance on the table; but do go do things in the name of Jesus Christ that you might not otherwise do! And say things that you would normally keep to yourself. But don’t insult the neighbor you can’t stand. Talk to the man in line at the grocery store, instead! He might be looking for a new church home. And for goodness sake, risk getting into trouble for the sake of the gospel! If you are offended by a joke that makes fun of blacks or Hispanics, don’t laugh. Say that you don’t like it; and say why you don’t like it. You might be opening someone else’s eyes to the fact that God loves other people who aren’t just like we are. If you see that other people are being mistreated because of their economic status or their ethnic heritage, speak up! Remind other people that God is on the side of those who are the most vulnerable. And if you are concerned about hungry children or homeless families, get involved with something that can help them! There are all kinds of ways to do that.

When was the last time that you were drunk with the Holy Spirit? Was it last week? Last month? Last year? When did you last do what you had to do and say what you had to say without worrying where the chips would fall after you did? This week, I invite you to have a Happy Hour with the Spirit. It may be one of the best things that you ever do!

Can You Hear the Wind Blowing?

On Pentecost Sunday, we often concentrate on the fire of the Spirit. But we mustn't forget about the wind of the Spirit! My sermon today considers what that wind is like, and what marvelous things it can do!

Today is Pentecost, the day that Jesus’ followers were changed from a group of frightened disciples into the Church of Jesus Christ. Those men and women began the day as people who locked themselves into their room and concentrated on encouraging one another; but they were changed into courageous travelers who journeyed all over the known world spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. What caused such a radical transformation? It was certainly the fire of the Spirit that filled them on that Pentecost morning; and there are many pictures of the tongues of fire that rested on their heads that day. But it was also a result of the wind of the Spirit that blew through their gathering place in a mighty way.

Jesus knew that Spirit well. He had tried to explain it to Nicodemus years before (John 3:5-8), but Nicodemus was too set in his old, familiar ways to understand what Jesus was talking about. “The Spirit is just like the wind,” Jesus said. “You can hear the wind, but you don’t know where it came from or where it’s going. The Spirit works in the very same way.” Nicodemus didn’t understand a Spirit that stirred people into new ways of doing things. But that’s exactly what happened on that first Pentecost. When the Spirit swept in, the disciples were blown out of their comfort zone and into situations that they had never even imagined. Peter, who had never been known for his speaking ability, stood up on Pentecost morning and gave a sermon worthy of Billy Graham. You can read it in the second chapter of Acts. It was such a good sermon that three thousand people converted to Christianity on one day! (That sets the bar pretty high for preachers!) That same Spirit blew Philip onto the road out of Jerusalem, where he met an Ethiopian eunuch and baptized him into the Christian faith – the very first non-Jew who became a Christian. (Acts 8:26-39) And Paul – well, Paul was literally blown away by the Spirit when he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:1-19) He realized that he had to rethink everything that he had been taught about the Messiah. That encounter with Christ eventually sent him all over the known world with Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness.

Oh, yes, the wind of the Spirit blew those men and women into places they thought they’d never go. And it’s been blowing during the 2,000 years since that time. It blew a young man back to the place where he had been enslaved as a young boy; and because it did, he brought Christianity to a whole nation. Today, we call that young man Saint Patrick. It blew a music scholar and master organist into medical school, and from there into Africa, where he spent the rest of his life offering medical care to those who were in most need of it. Because of that work, Albert Schweitzer was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. It even blew a young, genteel schoolteacher from her home in Massachusetts to the battlefields of the Civil War where she tended to thousands of wounded men. Today, the organization that she began, the American Red Cross, provides humanitarian aid to all kinds of disaster situations, and it’s all because the wind of the Spirit blew Clara Barton to places that no woman had not dared to go before.

I offer all these examples not just so we can give thanks for what the Spirit has done in the past (although I hope that we do), but so that we can recognize the wind of the Spirit as it blows today. A modern Christian writer has said that on Pentecost, we should replace our frilly church hats with crash helmets; because the wind of the Spirit is not always as gentle as we would like it to be! The fact is that the wind of the Spirit sometimes behaves very much like the gales that can sweep through a summer storm. Those winds move all kinds of things around! The grill cover ends up over here, and the lawn chairs end up over there, and the tiki torches are scattered all over the yard. We never know quite how those winds will rearrange things. The wind of the Spirit is just like that, and it’s blowing right now in the lives of the young people that we honor today: our graduates Jenny and Sierra and Holly; and Deanna, who was just baptized and confirmed into church membership. We don’t have any idea where the Spirit will take them. It might blow them to Brazil, or to the Middle East, or to Africa – or to the town just down the road. But even though we don’t know where the Spirit will take them, we can be sure that its guidance will never fail.

So, Deanna and Jenny and Holly and Sierra: we wish you well as the wind of the Holy Spirit fills your sails and blows you into the future! Don’t be afraid when new experiences challenge you. The Spirit will fill you as well as guide you; and Jesus will be right there beside you, helping you to make wise decisions and to adjust to whatever the future brings. And we’ll be praying for you all along the way. Listen! Can you hear the wind blowing? We can give thanks to God that it urges all of us into the future, where the fullness of God’s kingdom awaits us!