Life in the Spirit
Life in the Spirit by Rev. L. John Gable
June 12, 2022
Perhaps you are aware that the Church operates on a different calendar than does the rest of society. Rather than our following a calendar that goes from January 1 to December 31, the Church follows a calendar laid out by the liturgical seasons of the year, not winter, spring, summer and fall, but Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. This particular Sunday, for instance, is designated as Trinity Sunday or the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. Given the events we celebrated last week we are now in the season of the Church year called Pentecost and we will be until November 20th, which is designated as Christ the King Sunday and marks the beginning of Advent. During most of my ministry this longest season on the Church year was called “ordinary” time, a title which I think lacked both creativity and understanding. We now call it the season of Pentecost, which I commend, because there is nothing “ordinary” about what happened on that first Pentecost day or that has happened since. If anything, this should be called “extraordinary” time” since the whole of the Christian life from that day on has been lived in the light of the Easter event and the power of Holy Spirit.
Recall on the Day of Pentecost, Peter began to preach to the international crowd that had gathered there to find out what was going on. In an “extraordinary” display of the Spirit’s power, each of those visitors to Jerusalem heard that message of God’s love and saving grace in their own native language. And when he had finished preaching Peter called the people to repentance and faith, saying, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” He invited them to enter in to this new life of faith through repentance, the act of turning away from sin and to God, and baptism, the symbol of our dying and rising with Christ. This was an invitation to enter in to new life in the Spirit, and the response was overwhelming. Consider how pleased we were to receive 11 new members to our church family today; Luke tells us that that day 3000 people came to faith in Jesus Christ and were baptized. There was nothing “ordinary” about that. It was extraordinary!
That crowd’s eager response that day was more than a passing moment of excitement. It was the beginning of a whole new movement that would eventually influence the whole of human history. This was more than the kind of “thrill seeking”, “emotional high”, “adrenalin rush” that plagues much of our contemporary religious experience or even the individuality that many refer to as their spirituality. This was something different; something out of the ordinary. This enthusiasm, which literally means “filled with God”, “en theos”, was immediately embodied in to the life and practices of the early church. Pentecost was more than a moment of individual ecstasy; it was the beginning of a new way of life shaped by the presence of the Spirit of Christ.
One of the many challenges facing the contemporary Church today is that there is good evidence that our society has more influence on the way we think and live than does our faith. Recent studies have found that even those who profess to be Christian are influenced more by their political/partisan affiliations than they are by the teachings of Christ and His Church. As one has put it, “The Church has been captured by a secular ideology” rather than a Christian theology. Part of what it means to be a follower of Christ is to be “set apart”; to be distinct from our culture, individually and collectively; to be “in the world but not of it” out of obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Perhaps one of the reasons the Church has lost its voice on the moral, social, ethical issues of the day is because we have lost our distinctiveness as a people set apart for God. We are treating these “extraordinary” times as though they were “ordinary.”
In our study of Acts in the past couple of weeks we heard the disciples asking, “Now what do we do?” and they were given the answer, “Wait, watch and pray”. Now, with this empowering of the Holy Spirit and this new enlistment of believers, we hear them asking, “Now, what do we do with all these people?” and the answer they were given is captured in verse 42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
As we look at these few verses we can clearly see that the first efforts of those first followers of Christ were to establish ways to embody the Gospel into their everyday way of living. Likely not, but some of you may remember me recommending a book to you several years ago titled “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church” by Alan Kreider. BTW: I loaned that book to one of you. If you happen to have it, I’d love to have it back! In it, Mr. Kreider carefully demonstrates that the early church didn’t make attempts to grow by demonstrations of signs and wonders, but by instilling into every new believer these basic practices of the faith, and as a result the church grew substantially, which is not only counter-intuitive to us in this age of hype and hyperbole, but really is quite extraordinary.
First, we read that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” This teaching had a two-fold purpose. Their “preaching” of the Gospel message was conducted outside the boundaries of the fellowship in order to win new converts. Their “teaching” was conducted within the fellowship in order to instruct new believers in their new-found faith. From the beginning all believers devoted themselves to understanding the implications and applications of the Christian life.
This must also continue to be a characteristic of a Spirit-led church today. We gather to worship, to hear the Word of God proclaimed, in order that we might take that same message out into the world as we leave this place. Beyond worship, we gather in classes on Sunday mornings and throughout the week to be instructed in the faith. Many of us live with the mistaken notion that Sunday School is for children, “We did that, we’ve done that.” Not so. We all need to continue to be fed and instructed on the Word and ways of Christ. Consider this, assuming, at best, you were in worship every week and then attended an adult Sunday School class for an additional hour, every week of the year. That would be a total of 104 hours of worship and teaching a year. Then consider how many hours you listen to talk radio or the 24 hour a day news feed? Which of those do you think is shaping your world view and way of thinking? We, as followers of Jesus, must be very intentional about devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teaching.
The second characteristic of the early church is fellowship. The Greek word is “koinonia”. Some have said this is the real miracle of Pentecost, that such a diverse group of people “from every nation under heaven” could form such a unified body of believers. Such unity is not a human convention; it is the “extraordinary” characteristic of life in the Spirit.
One of the great dis-eases of contemporary American society is that of loneliness and isolation, and the pandemic has only added an accelerant to it. Blame it on fear, tribalism, social media or disease, the impact is real and devastating. One of the keenest and most effective remedies to the effects of isolation is fellowship with others. Years ago, Elton Trueblood, professor at Earlham College, wrote, “The necessity of a redemptive society came to me with great vividness in my last years at Stanford University, 1944-45. We were still involved in the war and the threat to civilization was real. I began to believe that the most practical hope for the world lay in the creation of small groups of loving persons who would infect the world around them. I moved in this direction as I contemplated Christ’s chosen method of changing the world. He relied, I realized, not on separate individuals, but on persons involved in a fellowship. The persons are imperfect, but as parts of committed fellowships they actually change the world. They do it as a loving group. It is impossible to be a Christian alone.”
Christianity is essentially a community affair. The Christian faith is grounded in an individual’s relationship with God, but that relationship can only be realized and lived out within the fellowship of the larger community we call the Church.
The third characteristic of the early church is that believers “devoted themselves to the breaking of bread together.” That doesn’t sound like such an “extraordinary” thing, but in the first-century Greco-Roman world it was. A willingness to break bread with those who were once considered enemies, outcasts, others, is a tangible, visible evidence of the work of the Spirit.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry He was criticized more often for this than for any other reason, for the company He kept at the table. Remember, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them”. Eating with someone is a mark of unity, of solidarity, of friendship. To break bread with someone is a sign of acceptance and approval. It is a sign that all of the social biases and barriers that separate and divide individuals have been removed. To break bread together is an “extraordinary” thing and those early Christians did so, with glad and generous hearts.
Perhaps you are aware that our Open Door Soup Kitchen has undergone a transformation recently. Under Terri’s leadership it is now the Open Door Café. No longer do our neighbors come in, stand in line, get their food and either sit or leave. Our guests are now welcomed at the door by a Tab member and escorted to a table where another Tab member greets them and sits to visit with them. Yet another Tab member comes to take their order from a menu of options prepared by Chef Andre, and the meal is delivered to them at their seat, like in a café. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday bread is broken and fellowship is enjoyed. Talk with Terri if you would like to be a part of that ministry.
Such fellowship at the table is, we believe, a foretaste of the great banquet feast we will one day enjoy together in the Kingdom of God. That day when all followers of Christ will come from east and west, from north and south and eat together at the table of our Lord. Our fellowship today is a partial fulfillment of a greater glory yet to come.
The fourth and final characteristic of the early church was the practice of prayer. Those early believers modeled their lives after the example of our Lord and made prayer a priority. The act of prayer reminds us of who we are and Whose we are. It is the foundation of everything else we do. It is prayer that saves us from simply being yet another social service agency trying to meet the needs of our community by our own best ideas and efforts. And it is prayer that motivates us and empowers us to move beyond this corner to share the Gospel in our community and around the world. It is through the act of prayer that we open ourselves to the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit and claim our identity as children of God. I hope you are aware that we have a prayer ministry that meets every Tuesday evening in the chapel. They don’t meet to talk about prayer, but to pray, and you are welcome to join them.
With these four cornerstones firmly in place, teaching and preaching, fellowship and service, the breaking of bread and the practice of prayer, we read that the early church “had the good will of all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” The same can be true for the Church today. Friends, “extraordinary” things can happen still in these “ordinary” times. Such is life in the Spirit.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN