Celebrating the Holy Spirit & the Church

The Kingdom of God is a place where Jesus is closer to us than our own pain, our own hurt, our own fear. Would you like to live in this Kingdom?

Before we dive into that question, let me give a bit of backstory. This is our fourth and final service in Eastertide, where we’ve been writing a celebratory psalm as a way of entering into the Easter story. Each celebration psalm corresponds to a lament that we wrote and prayed together during Lent. You can see the pattern in this Big Idea graphic:

At the beginning of this journey, I assumed the lament psalms would be harder to write than the celebration psalms. Talking about our pain and our brokenness in a group would be vulnerable and scary. Praying together in our weakness would be challenging.

I thought we would have a difficult time opening up to Jesus and each other as we lamented together, but the process of celebrating what Jesus has done in our lives would be easier.

I was wrong.

For me, and for most everyone I’ve talked with (not everyone, mind you, but nearly), writing the celebration psalms was harder than the laments. It’s not harder because of the vulnerability required, but because of a reason that, at first, totally surprised me. One friend of Spring Church neatly summarized it like this: “It’s easier to lament my own pain, because it’s my pain, and I know it well. When we write celebrations, our attention sifts from ourselves and our own pain and onto Jesus, and I know my own pain much better than I know Jesus.”

I’ve certainly found that to be true for myself. I’m ready and able to lament death, racial brokenness, and this pandemic world because I can feel the sting of those terrible things in my life. But celebrating the life Jesus brings, racial healing, and the world as we find it requires me to take the attention off of myself and requires me to pay attention to Jesus. This process of writing laments and celebrations has revealed how I’m still sometimes more attached to my pain than I am to Jesus.

Throughout my life, at various points, I’ve come face to face with pain, hurt, and fear in my life, and the Spirit has invited me to trust Jesus with it. The Kingdom of God is a place where Jesus is closer to me than any pain I’m feeling. Do I want to live there?

Our Big Idea for the Easter Season is:

Jesus uses lament and celebration to reveal his Kingdom to us.

Do we want to live in this Kingdom?

The story of Palm Sunday shows what life is like when we know our own pain better than we know Jesus. If you’ve got time today, go back and read our blog post from Palm Sunday. Let’s focus specifically on the symbol of the palms themselves. In those days, when a victorious warrior was returning from battle after conquering the bad guys, the people would line the streets and wave palm branches in celebration. So when the crowd was waving palm branches as Jesus entered Jerusalem, they were celebrating Jesus coming to conquer the Romans and give them their land back.

The crowd knew the pain of Roman occupation. Sadly, they knew their pain much better than they knew Jesus.

The Story of Palm Sunday in Matthew 21:6-17

So the disciples went and did exactly what Jesus told them to do. So they brought out the donkey and the colt, and they laid their cloaks upon them, and Jesus hopped on. Nearly everyone who was there spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and threw them along his path. Crowds went ahead and crowds followed, chanting:

“Save us now, Son of David!
It’s our hero, the One who comes in God’s Name!
Save us now, bring us heaven!”

And he entered into Jerusalem, and all the whole city was stirred up, asking, “Who is this?” And the crowd was saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth of Galilee.”

And Jesus came into the temple and cast out all the vendors and the customers in the temple. And he kicked over the tables of the money changers and the stalls of the dove merchants. And he quoted, “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a hangout for insurrectionists.’”

Now there was room for the blind and the crippled in the temple, and they came to him and he healed them. When the Chief Priests and the Religious Leaders saw what wonders he did, and saw the children chanting in the temple “Save us now, Son of David,” they were furious, and took him to task, “Don’t you hear what these children are saying?!?!” “Of course. Haven’t you read that ‘From the mouths children and even babies I have prepared a place of praise.’”

So Jesus turned on his heel and left for Bethany, where he spent the night.

The crowd had the scriptures, they had their houses of worship, they had their community and their way of life, but in their hearts they knew their pain better than they knew Jesus. And this process of writing laments and celebrations has revealed a similar thing within my own heart. I have the scriptures, I’m a part of a house of worship, I have a community and a way of life, but in my heart I find it easer to talk about my pain than Jesus.

If you find it easier to talk about your pain than it is to talk about Jesus, this Pentecost service might be for you. If your pain and your fears feel closer to you than Jesus, this Pentecost service might be for you.

What is the fourth miracle at Pentecost?

There are four miracles in the story of Pentecost, and it’s the fourth miracle that helps us know Jesus more than our own pain. I love the first three miracles of Pentecost, and I look for and pray for those three miracles regularly. First, the miracle of this huge wind that’s full of possibility (think about the wind that brought Mary Poppins to the Banks family). Second, dancing fire jumps around and rests on each one of them. Third, people begin to speak in different languages. As a language nerd, I would LOVE to be able to do this someday, but the fourth miracle is the source of the help we need to know Jesus better than our own pain.

The fourth miracle is when God’s word lands deep inside each person’s heart, and they proclaim, “They’re speaking my language and praising God’s amazing works!” Only the Holy Spirit can take the story of who God is and what God is doing, and bring it deep into our hearts, and reveal to us that there’s a place for us in this story. We can have the scriptures, the house of worship, the community and the way of life, but only the Holy Spirit can bring the love of Jesus so deep in our hearts that we know Jesus more intimately than we know our own pain.

Do we want to live in this Kingdom?

Acts 2:1-11

And when the Fiftieth and final day marking the completion of Passover had arrived, everyone was together in the same place. And then, out of nowhere!, from the heavens a strong and heavy wind, full of possibility, filled the whole house and everyone who was sitting there. And the wind appeared to them like dancing tongues of fire, and it rested on each and every one of them. And all of them were filled by the Holy Spirit and they began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.

Now there was dwelling in Jerusalem some Jews, devout people from every nation everywhere. And at this sound a huge crowd assembled, because each and every one of them was hearing all the people of God speak in their own language. And this totally blew their minds, and they started saying, “Check this out! Aren’t all these people speaking Galileans? So how is it that we hear, each one of us, in our own native language?

Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and religious pilgrims from Rome (both Jews and non-Jews learning their new Jewish faith), even Cretans and Arabs!, “They’re speaking my language and praising God’s amazing works!” And all were confused and completely stumped, and were saying to one another, “What's the meaning of all this?"

And where will living in this Kingdom take us? If discipleship is walking in the direction Jesus is walking in, then where will this journey take us?

In this life, we can get angry or scared or forgetful, and hold onto our pain more tightly than we hold onto Jesus. We can, like the crowd in Palm Sunday, let our pain distract us into waving our palm branches in excitement for the things we WANT Jesus to do, rather than participate with Jesus in what Jesus is actually doing. But, eventually, we’ll wave our palm branches in perfect harmony with the Jesus who is closer to us than any fear we’ve ever felt, and our pain will be long gone. I just love how the palm branches make another appearance in this image of heaven:

Revelation 7:9-11

After that I looked, and check this out! A huge crowd, too big to even count em all, from every ethic group and tribe and people and language. There they were, standing before the Throne and the Lamb, all decked out in white, and palm branches were in their hand. And they were shouting at the top of their lungs:

Salvation!
Salvation to our God, who sits on the Throne,
And to the Lamb!

And all who were standing around the Throne - Angels, Elders, Animals - fell on their faces before the Throne and worshiped God, singing:

Amen!
The blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving,
The honor and power and strength,
To our God, forever and ever!
Amen!

The Kingdom of God is a place where Jesus is closer to us than our own pain, our own hurt, our own fear.

Would you like to live in this Kingdom?

May 23rd Worship Service