Experiencing The Reality Of God
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
The story of the Day of Pentecost tells of a pivotal event in the history of God's work in the world. It tells of the emerging of a very important aspect of the Christian faith and of the birth of the church.
It is a story that is exciting to some people. But, quite frankly, it is a story that scares some other people and makes them want to back away. All of this talk about wind and fire and speaking in foreign tongues excites some people but it turns some off. It may be that we have focused our attention on the wrong aspect of the story. What was actually happening to those first followers of Jesus as they gathered in Jerusalem? It was something that a great many people in our own day want and need to fill a big empty spot in their lives. Those who were gathered there experienced the reality of God. They discovered the living God, present and at work, right in the midst of their own living space. They found themselves living in interaction with someone greater than themselves, someone who loved them. That changed the whole shape and quality of their lives. That is something that we all need, and the good news from the Day of Pentecost is that it is something that can happen to us.
The disciples who were gathered there on that day had once shared a unique experience of the presence and reality of God. They had been with Jesus. They soon came to know Jesus as one who represented God to them in a very special way. But then, Jesus had been crucified. He had been taken from them. That must have been a terrible, life--emptying experience. Those few days after Jesus died must have been days of abysmal grief. They must have felt that they had lost everything. But then the resurrection happened. Jesus appeared to them several times and made them know that the story of their relationship with God was not over. When Jesus appeared to them for the last time, he said something they couldn't yet understand. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). There was expectancy, but they did not know what to expect.
On the night before he died, Jesus had told the disciples many things that they would need to know but that they could only come to understand later. At that time, Jesus gave them a promise that God would send another someone to be with them, the Holy Spirit, who would teach them everything they would need to know and who would remind them of all of the things Jesus had taught them (John 14:26).
On the Day of Pentecost, that happened. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and they became aware that God, who had been a living presence with them in Jesus, was still a living presence in their world and in their lives. The invisible reality of God became real to them, more real than all of the little visible and touchable things that crowded around them. That changed everything. They shared their discovery with others and the others experienced it, too. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples and many others came to experience the presence and the reality of the God who had been made known through Jesus Christ. That is what all of the commotion was about.
That is something that we all need. Most of us are not what people call "charismatic" Christians. We have never spoken in unknown tongues or had any desire to. But we should be able to understand why some people want that experience and why some who have it value it so highly. To them, it is an experience of the reality of God. They believe that they can know that God is alive and present because they have experienced God doing something. Paul said that the experience of speaking in tongues is not for everybody (1 Corinthians 12--14). But, there are lots of other ways of experiencing God's presence and of expressing it. We all need some kind of an experience of the reality of God.
Lots of people feel that need very painfully. We live in a secularized world where many people live lives that are shaped only by their relationships with the things they can see and touch. Some live their lives primarily in relationship with the things they can put in the bank. For good reasons or for bad ones, our culture, our jobs, our government seem to require us to live that way. That leaves us living in a flat, two--dimensional world with very little to give it richness of meaning or adventure. We may have philosophies or ethical principles. We may even have philosophies and ethical principles learned from Jesus. But, separated from the greater reality they represent, they have little ability to change very much. They can demand, but they can't enable, and it is easy for us to feel that we can, or even that we should, compromise those principles when they become cumbersome. Life in our secularized culture can be, at one and the same time, frantic and boring. Lots of people feel that something is missing from their lives.
This secular way of life can encapsulate us so that nothing else can get in. There was a certain young man named Fred, a journalist and writer who lived the secularized life of young adults in a big city. He became acquainted with another author, Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest whose devotional writings have been very meaningful to thousands of people. The two men became friends. Fred became aware that Henri had something special going in his life. Finally he asked him, "Why don't you write something that will explain the spiritual life to people like me?" Henri accepted the invitation and wrote Life Of The Beloved,1 a book about spiritual living in a secular world. Fred appreciated the effort. He studied the book seriously. But ultimately, it didn't work. He was so completely enveloped within the secular lifestyle that nothing written about the spiritual life could be meaningful to him. Both men were disappointed.
Many people yearn for something more than the flat and meaningless life that comes from living just in relationship with the things we can see and touch. Some seek that something more in the world of fantasy or science fiction, the world of Star Trek or Star Wars, Tolkien's world of "the middle--earth," or in the religious fantasy of the Left Behind series. Some seek it by moving into the virtual worlds created by certain computer games, Dungeons and Dragons or others. Many are desperately hungry to add another dimension to their lives.
But it is not necessary to go adventuring in the world of the unreal to discover a spiritual dimension for your life. The religion in which most of us grew up can supply what is missing from our lives. It can help us get in touch with a greater reality who is actually there in our real world, one who is alive, one who loves us and enables us, one who is always calling us out into a kind of life that is a real adventure, one who will relate to us like Jesus related to the disciples. When we live our lives in relationship with one who is like that, our lives will be different.
But how can that happen? There is no easy formula for making it happen, no magic word that you can say and, presto, there will be God. Our lives are unique and complex. Our life experiences have led us into many different places in life. Our abilities - and disabilities - to perceive and to relate are all different. The experience of the reality of God is likely to come to each of us in a way that is uniquely our own. It is always a mistake to try to have a religious experience just like someone else had, and it is always a mistake to try to require someone else to have an experience just like ours.
Our religious experiences are unique and personal. But there is a possibility for each of us. Each in our own way, we can experience the reality of God. The invisible reality of God is all around us. The Bible tells us that God is always trying to get through to us so that each of us can have an experience of the reality of God and live a life shaped by a relationship with God. That active presence of the invisible God is what the Bible calls the Holy Spirit.
We can know that experience is there for us because so many other people have gotten in touch with God and told about the experience. Lots of people have gotten in touch with the invisible God by looking at the visible world around us and realizing that it is so awesomely ordered and so beautiful that there must be some greater reality behind it. Other people have encountered God in the experiences of their interactions with life. Some of the stories of those people are in the Bible. The writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews recalled some of the stories of Old Testament people who lived by faith and said that they had "... persevered as though they saw him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:29). There are others who live in our own day and in our own world who have gotten in touch with God and who live as seeing the invisible. You probably know some of them.
One young man told about his unique experience of the reality of God. He had grown up in the Christian faith, but he said that the greatest religious experience of his life came when he was involved in scientific research. As a doctoral student in the field of chemistry, he and a team of researchers were working to fill in one of the blank spaces in the table of chemical elements. One night, he was working late. He was alone at the computer console when he began to see the numbers coming up that meant his team was approaching the discovery they were seeking. He felt the excitement rising within him. Then, all of a sudden, it was there. He knew that his team had been successful in making a real discovery and pushing back the limits of human knowledge. In that moment, he said that he experienced the reality and the presence of God as he never had before. He felt that he had gotten in touch with the one who is holding all things together and making them work.
A young woman shared a very different kind of an experience. She had been on a religious retreat during which she came into a very intimate relationship with the God who loves her. She explained that she was a person who pays more attention to smells than most people do. The smell of flowers, the smell of food cooking, the smell of freshly turned earth in her garden, the smells of her husband and her children are all uniquely special to her. In sharing her witness to what the retreat had meant to her, she told of falling off to sleep on her sofa one day and dreaming. She dreamed that she saw God coming toward her. She ran to meet God and God swept her up in a warm and loving embrace - and she said she dreamed that she could smell God.
These people experienced the reality of God in their own unique ways. The things that happened to them were the same thing that happened to the early Christians on the Day of Pentecost. It would be a mistake for you to try to have an experience like theirs. But you can experience the reality of God in a way that is uniquely your own.
A few lines written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning tell what an awareness of the reality of God meant for one person.
Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush is ablaze with God.
Those who see take off their shoes.
The rest just sit around and pick blackberries.
The experience that made such a big difference in the lives of the early Christians on the Day of Pentecost is there for you. God is there, all around you, trying to get through to you. And the God who is there is a God who loves you and who wants for you a life that is the very best that human life can be. The experience of the reality of God is there for you. Keep on wanting it. Keep on reaching out for it. If you are open to it, eventually it will find you.
____________
1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life Of The Beloved (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997).
It is a story that is exciting to some people. But, quite frankly, it is a story that scares some other people and makes them want to back away. All of this talk about wind and fire and speaking in foreign tongues excites some people but it turns some off. It may be that we have focused our attention on the wrong aspect of the story. What was actually happening to those first followers of Jesus as they gathered in Jerusalem? It was something that a great many people in our own day want and need to fill a big empty spot in their lives. Those who were gathered there experienced the reality of God. They discovered the living God, present and at work, right in the midst of their own living space. They found themselves living in interaction with someone greater than themselves, someone who loved them. That changed the whole shape and quality of their lives. That is something that we all need, and the good news from the Day of Pentecost is that it is something that can happen to us.
The disciples who were gathered there on that day had once shared a unique experience of the presence and reality of God. They had been with Jesus. They soon came to know Jesus as one who represented God to them in a very special way. But then, Jesus had been crucified. He had been taken from them. That must have been a terrible, life--emptying experience. Those few days after Jesus died must have been days of abysmal grief. They must have felt that they had lost everything. But then the resurrection happened. Jesus appeared to them several times and made them know that the story of their relationship with God was not over. When Jesus appeared to them for the last time, he said something they couldn't yet understand. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). There was expectancy, but they did not know what to expect.
On the night before he died, Jesus had told the disciples many things that they would need to know but that they could only come to understand later. At that time, Jesus gave them a promise that God would send another someone to be with them, the Holy Spirit, who would teach them everything they would need to know and who would remind them of all of the things Jesus had taught them (John 14:26).
On the Day of Pentecost, that happened. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and they became aware that God, who had been a living presence with them in Jesus, was still a living presence in their world and in their lives. The invisible reality of God became real to them, more real than all of the little visible and touchable things that crowded around them. That changed everything. They shared their discovery with others and the others experienced it, too. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples and many others came to experience the presence and the reality of the God who had been made known through Jesus Christ. That is what all of the commotion was about.
That is something that we all need. Most of us are not what people call "charismatic" Christians. We have never spoken in unknown tongues or had any desire to. But we should be able to understand why some people want that experience and why some who have it value it so highly. To them, it is an experience of the reality of God. They believe that they can know that God is alive and present because they have experienced God doing something. Paul said that the experience of speaking in tongues is not for everybody (1 Corinthians 12--14). But, there are lots of other ways of experiencing God's presence and of expressing it. We all need some kind of an experience of the reality of God.
Lots of people feel that need very painfully. We live in a secularized world where many people live lives that are shaped only by their relationships with the things they can see and touch. Some live their lives primarily in relationship with the things they can put in the bank. For good reasons or for bad ones, our culture, our jobs, our government seem to require us to live that way. That leaves us living in a flat, two--dimensional world with very little to give it richness of meaning or adventure. We may have philosophies or ethical principles. We may even have philosophies and ethical principles learned from Jesus. But, separated from the greater reality they represent, they have little ability to change very much. They can demand, but they can't enable, and it is easy for us to feel that we can, or even that we should, compromise those principles when they become cumbersome. Life in our secularized culture can be, at one and the same time, frantic and boring. Lots of people feel that something is missing from their lives.
This secular way of life can encapsulate us so that nothing else can get in. There was a certain young man named Fred, a journalist and writer who lived the secularized life of young adults in a big city. He became acquainted with another author, Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest whose devotional writings have been very meaningful to thousands of people. The two men became friends. Fred became aware that Henri had something special going in his life. Finally he asked him, "Why don't you write something that will explain the spiritual life to people like me?" Henri accepted the invitation and wrote Life Of The Beloved,1 a book about spiritual living in a secular world. Fred appreciated the effort. He studied the book seriously. But ultimately, it didn't work. He was so completely enveloped within the secular lifestyle that nothing written about the spiritual life could be meaningful to him. Both men were disappointed.
Many people yearn for something more than the flat and meaningless life that comes from living just in relationship with the things we can see and touch. Some seek that something more in the world of fantasy or science fiction, the world of Star Trek or Star Wars, Tolkien's world of "the middle--earth," or in the religious fantasy of the Left Behind series. Some seek it by moving into the virtual worlds created by certain computer games, Dungeons and Dragons or others. Many are desperately hungry to add another dimension to their lives.
But it is not necessary to go adventuring in the world of the unreal to discover a spiritual dimension for your life. The religion in which most of us grew up can supply what is missing from our lives. It can help us get in touch with a greater reality who is actually there in our real world, one who is alive, one who loves us and enables us, one who is always calling us out into a kind of life that is a real adventure, one who will relate to us like Jesus related to the disciples. When we live our lives in relationship with one who is like that, our lives will be different.
But how can that happen? There is no easy formula for making it happen, no magic word that you can say and, presto, there will be God. Our lives are unique and complex. Our life experiences have led us into many different places in life. Our abilities - and disabilities - to perceive and to relate are all different. The experience of the reality of God is likely to come to each of us in a way that is uniquely our own. It is always a mistake to try to have a religious experience just like someone else had, and it is always a mistake to try to require someone else to have an experience just like ours.
Our religious experiences are unique and personal. But there is a possibility for each of us. Each in our own way, we can experience the reality of God. The invisible reality of God is all around us. The Bible tells us that God is always trying to get through to us so that each of us can have an experience of the reality of God and live a life shaped by a relationship with God. That active presence of the invisible God is what the Bible calls the Holy Spirit.
We can know that experience is there for us because so many other people have gotten in touch with God and told about the experience. Lots of people have gotten in touch with the invisible God by looking at the visible world around us and realizing that it is so awesomely ordered and so beautiful that there must be some greater reality behind it. Other people have encountered God in the experiences of their interactions with life. Some of the stories of those people are in the Bible. The writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews recalled some of the stories of Old Testament people who lived by faith and said that they had "... persevered as though they saw him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:29). There are others who live in our own day and in our own world who have gotten in touch with God and who live as seeing the invisible. You probably know some of them.
One young man told about his unique experience of the reality of God. He had grown up in the Christian faith, but he said that the greatest religious experience of his life came when he was involved in scientific research. As a doctoral student in the field of chemistry, he and a team of researchers were working to fill in one of the blank spaces in the table of chemical elements. One night, he was working late. He was alone at the computer console when he began to see the numbers coming up that meant his team was approaching the discovery they were seeking. He felt the excitement rising within him. Then, all of a sudden, it was there. He knew that his team had been successful in making a real discovery and pushing back the limits of human knowledge. In that moment, he said that he experienced the reality and the presence of God as he never had before. He felt that he had gotten in touch with the one who is holding all things together and making them work.
A young woman shared a very different kind of an experience. She had been on a religious retreat during which she came into a very intimate relationship with the God who loves her. She explained that she was a person who pays more attention to smells than most people do. The smell of flowers, the smell of food cooking, the smell of freshly turned earth in her garden, the smells of her husband and her children are all uniquely special to her. In sharing her witness to what the retreat had meant to her, she told of falling off to sleep on her sofa one day and dreaming. She dreamed that she saw God coming toward her. She ran to meet God and God swept her up in a warm and loving embrace - and she said she dreamed that she could smell God.
These people experienced the reality of God in their own unique ways. The things that happened to them were the same thing that happened to the early Christians on the Day of Pentecost. It would be a mistake for you to try to have an experience like theirs. But you can experience the reality of God in a way that is uniquely your own.
A few lines written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning tell what an awareness of the reality of God meant for one person.
Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush is ablaze with God.
Those who see take off their shoes.
The rest just sit around and pick blackberries.
The experience that made such a big difference in the lives of the early Christians on the Day of Pentecost is there for you. God is there, all around you, trying to get through to you. And the God who is there is a God who loves you and who wants for you a life that is the very best that human life can be. The experience of the reality of God is there for you. Keep on wanting it. Keep on reaching out for it. If you are open to it, eventually it will find you.
____________
1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life Of The Beloved (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997).
