Category: Year C

Luke 1:26-38 – The Holy Spirit Will Come on You

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
Pentecost by Jen Norton

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her. (New International Version)

It is good that the Daily Lectionary has us considering these verses of Scripture outside of the Advent season. In this time of year, in which we focus on the Spirit, we need to remember that these stories, and our faith, are meant to be held throughout the entire year.

Most of life is lived in the mundane, even in times of uncertainty. For the most part, our everyday lives involve going about our business and dealing with the daily grind. That’s because we are common ordinary people. So, we can especially relate to Mary because she is rather plain. 

To put Mary’s life in our contemporary vernacular, at the time of this encounter with the angel, she is of junior high age but has never attended school. She wears mostly clothes from Goodwill, and occasionally can get some from Wal-Mart. She cannot read because girls of her day rarely did.

Her parents make all the decisions that affect her life, including the one that she should be married to an older man named Joseph. We don’t know if she even liked him. Mary lives in a small town that most people cannot even point to on a map. 

One night, into the bedroom of this young girl comes the brightly beaming divine messenger Gabriel whose name means, “God has shown himself mighty.” Mary stands there in her ratty old flannel nightgown, her life very quickly moving from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

The juxtaposition could not be more pronounced: a mighty angel and a plain teen-ager; a messenger of the Most High God and a girl barely past puberty; a holy angelic light which beams in a simple candlelit bedroom; an awesome power encountering complete vulnerability.

Mary, compared to Gabriel, is defenseless, fragile, and overwhelmed. She’s in way over her head. That’s why we can relate to her. We can get our human arms around Mary. She is like us. She has faced life with little power to make it turn out the way she planned. Forces beyond her have rearranged her life and altered it forever.

Descent of the Holy Spirit by John Lawson

Mary is the Matron Saint of the Ordinary. We can totally understand why Mary responds the way she does. Mary’s initial reaction to the angel Gabriel was to be greatly troubled. She was disturbed and shaking in her hand-me-down slippers.

The angel confidently told Mary that she had found favor with God. This scenario didn’t happen because Mary had some extreme spirituality. Instead, God simply chose her to be the mother of Jesus.

Mary needed to come to grips with what was happening to her. This was well beyond anything she could have expected.  Becoming pregnant with the Savior of the world was not even remotely on her radar. 

She immediately sensed the crazy disconnect between what was being told to her and who she was. After all, she was a plain ordinary girl from the hick town of Nazareth and was being told that she would raise a king.  Maybe somebody in heaven screwed up. Maybe Gabriel got the wrong girl. Maybe his Google map sent Gabriel on a wild goose chase.

Relating to Mary, we can totally understand that she would question how in the world all this was going to happen. Not only is Mary ordinary and far from royalty, but she is also very much a virgin. Nothing about any of this made any sense.

But, then again, this is the very sort of thing that the wild and seemingly reckless Holy Spirit would do.

The angel let Mary know that God specializes in the impossible. There is nothing outside of God’s power. There’s nowhere we can go, no place on earth, no situation whatsoever, that is beyond God’s ability and reach to affect divine power.

We very rarely get straightforward answers to our questions about God. Yet, Mary asked a question and got a straight answer: She really can be pregnant with Jesus because the Holy Spirit will come upon her, will overshadow her with power.

If the story were to end there it would be a great story. However, the Spirit’s work goes well beyond effecting the miraculous. The Spirit also brings about faith.

God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to us.

Romans 5:5, GNT

Mary believed the message and submitted herself completely to God’s will. We may completely understand if Mary simply said in her plain ordinary way that she was not prepared for this. We would totally “get it” if Mary pushed back on what the angel said to her. We could relate if Mary just dismissed the angel’s presence as a hallucination from using some bad chickpeas to make the hummus.

Yet, Mary not only believed; she also humbly submitted herself to what was happening. And this is what I believe we need to relate to most about Mary – not her being just a plain ordinary person in a non-descript village but stepping up to the calling she received.

We, too, have received a calling in our lives. We, too, have been given the power of the Holy Spirit. We, too, are ordinary people who have been given a very extraordinary task. 

Our response today can be the same as Mary all those centuries earlier: “I am the Lord’s servant; may it be to me as you have said.”

The Church is pregnant with possibilities because of the Holy Spirit.

We know the end of Mary’s story. She gave birth to Jesus and raised him in her plain ordinary way. She watched him grow up and embark on a ministry to proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. Mary didn’t always understand what Jesus said or what he was doing. And she experienced every mother’s nightmare in seeing her beloved son killed in a terribly gruesome manner right in front of her eyes. 

Yet, just as the Holy Spirit was with the birth of Jesus, so the Spirit was with Jesus at his resurrection from the dead. Jesus lived an ordinary life in a very extraordinary way. Furthermore, today Jesus invites us to do the same.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Jesus (Acts 1:8, CEB)

Because Christ accomplished his mission of saving people from their sins and establishing a kingdom that will never end, he has given us the same Holy Spirit to follow him forever and call other people to follow him, too. 

To trust and obey is God’s only way to live into the life of Jesus. The Christian life may often be difficult, but it isn’t complicated. It’s rather simple, just like Mary.

Mary responded to God’s revelation with faith, choosing to fully participate in what God was doing. “I am the Lord’s servant” is our confession, as well. Along with Mary we declare, “May it be to me as you have said.”

Good and gracious God, thank you for giving us your Son, the Lord Jesus. Draw us into the mystery of your love. Join our voices with the heavenly host, that we may sing your glory on high. Give us a place amongst all of your saints so that we may experience your Word made flesh, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in the splendor of eternal light, God forever and ever. Amen.

Psalm 48 – Our Place Matters

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
    in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation,
    is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
    the city of the great King.
Within its citadels God
    has shown himself a sure defense.

Then the kings assembled,
    they came on together.
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
    they were in panic, they took to flight;
trembling took hold of them there,
    pains as of a woman in labor,
as when an east wind shatters
    the ships of Tarshish.
As we have heard, so have we seen
    in the city of the Lord of hosts,
in the city of our God,
    which God establishes forever.

We ponder your steadfast love, O God,
    in the midst of your temple.
Your name, O God, like your praise,
    reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
    Let Mount Zion be glad,
let the towns of Judah rejoice
    because of your judgments.

Walk about Zion, go all around it,
    count its towers,
consider well its ramparts;
    go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
    that this is God,
our God forever and ever.
    He will be our guide forever. (New Revised Standard Version)

In college, I was a geography minor. One of the interesting things I discovered in looking at old maps from around the world, is that each country, nation, or people group tends to place themselves at the center of the world.

In the 1956 movie, The King and I, the King of Siam (played by Yul Brynner) displays a map with an oversized Siam (present day Thailand) smack in the middle, making sure to impress upon his children’s English schoolteacher, Anna (Deborah Kerr), that the British Empire is not the center of the world.

Our place matters. Being grounded and rooted to a geographical spot helps us establish long term relationships, consistent patterns of living, and attentive service to the community.

I happen to think there is something healthy about having pride of place. It enables us to take some ownership and responsibility of an area. Ideally, as we learn to care for our surrounds, we discover proper stewardship of all creation and the necessity of paying attention to the world that we all inhabit together.

Yet, we know that doesn’t always happen. The pride of place can give way to the wrongheaded belief that we are better than others, that our cultural norms and ethical mores are exactly the way everyone else ought to live. It manifests itself in overzealous patriotism and misplaced allegiances.

In The King and I, the Siamese King and British Anna must both grapple with and navigate the very different cultures of each. Eventually, they discover a deep appreciation of the other, even as they do not fully understand one another.

In their healthiest times, the ancient Israelites not only saw Jerusalem as the center of the world, but also discerned there is a big world with God as the center of it all. Everyplace has meaning. Each particular place has its own sacred quality to be appreciated.

Whenever we are able to be captivated by the beauty of the place we are in, this opens us to see the beauty in other places, as well.

I feel a special connection with Iowa farmland. After all, I grew up on an Iowa farm. Even though I left home for college, a life very different from working the soil, I still found myself becoming a Pastor – someone who tends to a parish and is attentive to the people in that place.

Everywhere I have lived, I established a kinship with the place. Each geographical locale had its own unique charm, as well as its challenges. And, having moved a great deal in my adult life, I discovered that everywhere I go, I’m reminded that this is not my home.

Yes, I long for another home, my true home. The deep connection I feel to the land, to the places I’ve lived, and in the current places I inhabit, help me to get in touch with what shall eventually be my permanent abode. I resonate with the Apostle Paul when he said:

If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. (Philippians 1:22-24, NIV)

And perhaps we have felt and share the Apostle’s longing, framed in this way:

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So, we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:1-8, NRSV)

In this life, God will guide us, by means of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit testifies and confirms within us, beyond what mere language can communicate, that we belong to God, and we will have a permanent place with the Lord forever.

Our place matters. The ways in which we inhabit where we live, matters.

Mighty God, I give you thanks for sending your Son, the Lord Jesus, to come and be with us. And in our longing to be with him, you have graciously given your Spirit to take up residence within us and assure us of our true home. May our longings in this life help us to be better people, attentive and mindful to those around us, to the glory of Christ, our Savior. Amen.

1 Corinthians 2:1-11 – Relying on Spiritual Power

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year C2 Comments

Brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I didn’t speak about God’s mystery  as if it were some kind of brilliant message or wisdom. While I was with you, I decided to deal with only one subject—Jesus Christ, who was crucified. When I came to you, I was weak. I was afraid and very nervous. I didn’t speak my message with persuasive intellectual arguments. I spoke my message with a show of spiritual power so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.

However, we do use wisdom to speak to those who are mature. It is a wisdom that doesn’t belong to this world or to the rulers of this world who are in power today and gone tomorrow. We speak about the mystery of God’s wisdom. It is a wisdom that has been hidden, which God had planned for our glory before the world began. Not one of the rulers of this world has known it. If they had, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. But as Scripture says:

“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
the things that God has prepared
for those who love him.”

God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, especially the deep things of God. After all, who knows everything about a person except that person’s own spirit? In the same way, no one has known everything about God except God’s Spirit. (God’s Word Translation)

We need the Holy Spirit of God.

Without the Spirit’s help, Jesus is just one guy out of thousands who were crucified in history – merely an example of someone martyred for his faith. Yet, Jesus was infinitely more. Christians discern Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world. 

Because of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension, people can be redeemed from empty lives, saved from destructive life-patterns, and given the kind of security and purpose which God intended from the beginning. The Spirit’s role is to take these redemptive events of Jesus and apply them to our lives. 

Christian Trinitarian theology understands we are unable to see the truth about the cross of Jesus Christ unless God the Holy Spirit, sent by God the Father and the Son, breaks into our lives and does an intervention, showing us our denial about how we are really doing – as well as our delusions about who we really are.

Admitting we need the Holy Spirit of God means the power of Christianity and the Christian life rests with Jesus Christ and him crucified, and not with us.

We are, in many ways, powerless. I realize this is not a popular message, especially in Western society. Tell the average American they are powerless, and they’ll think you’re off your rocker. It sounds ridiculous. Some would argue that we have done quite well, thank you very much, on our own. We have a couple of cars, a house, a job, and a family. After all, we worked hard, and we did it.

However, any worldly success we gain, and getting the things we want, may lead us to the delusion we have the power to do whatever we want.

Oh, sure, we might reason, we have problems just like everybody else. After all, we cannot control everything.  But we are not completely powerless. Just because we have difficult circumstances and a few problem people in our lives doesn’t mean I am weak, right? God will step in a take-over where I leave off, right?…

Wrong. Apart from the Holy Spirit of God, we are unable to become Christians and live the Christian life.

If we believe we manage our lives fine, with some help from God, then we might be in denial about how much we place ourselves at the center of the world. Whenever our consistent response to adversity, or the realization we are not handling something well, is to try and fix ourselves, we are living the delusion we have the power to independently change.

A reflexive response in asking Google to find answers to our problems; or dealing privately with our personal issues; or expecting our willpower to be enough; or passively resigning ourselves to mediocre lives because we have tried to change or be different; then we are feeding the delusion we don’t really need the Holy Spirit of God. I just need more effort or information to overcome my problems, right?

Wrong. More won’t solve our issues. And when it doesn’t, we easily become discouraged. We might even chide ourselves for our inability to deal with problems.

Our real need is for the true power source of the Christian life. We need the Holy Spirit applying the work of Jesus Christ to our lives so that we can live a victorious life.

Unfortunately, it typically takes a tragedy or crisis to break our delusion of power – a bad marriage, a family member’s addiction, a runaway child, a terminal illness, a bankruptcy, a death.

How bad do you and I need to hurt before we will admit we are not managing our lives well, at all, and that the real power to change resides with the Holy Spirit?

There is power in the cross of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul believed this with all his heart. Although Paul was an intelligent and learned person, he did not rely on his abilities but on proclaiming the power of Jesus and him crucified.

The crucifixion of Christ was a past action with continuing and forceful ripples into the present time.

The cross of Jesus is more than an historical event; it is an ongoing reality to experience for victory over all the brokenness of this world and all the mess we have made of things putting ourselves at the center of the universe.

The Reformer, John Calvin, repeatedly instructed and encouraged his Geneva congregation that the Spirit joins us to Christ, assures us of salvation, and grows us in confidence through the Scriptures. Calvin, although a genius, did not rely on his intellect or abilities but insisted we need the Spirit’s witness to mature as followers of Jesus.

There are tough situations and incredibly sad realities which are mysteries beyond our comprehension. They defy simplistic answers and are greater than our attempts to explain them. Hard problems stretch our faith. And they ought to cause us to cry out to God and Christ’s Church for help because we are powerless to manage our lives.

We absolutely and totally need the Holy Spirit of God. Without the Spirit, we are lost. But with the Spirit we experience the saving power of Christ’s cross to deal with everything in our lives.

The Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to his will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever in the next. Amen.

Acts 2:1-21 – The Day of Pentecost

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”

Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
    Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
    Your young will see visions.
    Your elders will dream dreams.
    Even upon my servants, men and women,
        I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
        and they will prophesy.
I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
        blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.
The sun will be changed into darkness,
    and the moon will be changed into blood,
        before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Common English Bible)

The Holy Spirit is the distinguishing mark of the believer in Jesus Christ.

Therefore, since the Spirit is given, the main responsibility of Christians is to receive. 

Christianity is distinctive in this sense – it is primarily a religion of receiving. The Christian life is lived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and not in our own strength. The function of faith is to receive what grace offers. 

We are saved and sanctified by grace alone through faith. God lives in and through us by means of the Spirit. The miraculous and the supernatural cannot, obviously, be done by any human person.  It can, however, be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit.

People tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to be a certain way and to do certain things. The result? Tiredness. Discouragement. Imbalance. Lots of giving. Little receiving.

Christianity is not chiefly about giving but receiving. The Christian life is about putting oneself in a position to receive through prayer and humility. In Christianity, the opposite of receiving is not giving – it’s pride. 

Maybe this kind of talk makes you uncomfortable. I’m not talking about being passive or lazy. I’m highlighting the need of receiving grace from God by means of the Holy Spirit. Then, the Spirit to work in and through us. 

Jesus said we would do greater works than even he himself with the advent of the Spirit! (John 14:12-14)

The question then becomes: Will we let God be God? Will we allow the Spirit to do work in us?

The Spirit is elsewhere described in Holy Scripture as a gentle presence, an encourager, counselor, and comforter. Yet, not here at Pentecost – the Spirit is portrayed like a violent wind and an unusual fire.

The Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was not some gentleman caller entering politely when invited. Instead, the Spirit appears more like a drunken sailor who bursts into the room and causes a big ruckus. There’s nothing subtle about the Spirit at Pentecost. The Spirit is electric, bombastic, and volcanic, causing a huge scene and upheaving the status quo.

Because of Pentecost, Christians are marked and defined by God’s Spirit living within them and being full of the Spirit. God wants to pour out the Spirit on all kinds of people to overflowing so that what comes out of them is “prophecy.” 

The prophet Joel and the Apostle Peter do not intend the word “prophecy” to mean predicting the future. Rather, they are referring to inspired speech coming from a heart overflowing with the Spirit. 

Just as an inebriated person says and does things they would not typically say or do because they are filled with alcohol, so the person filled with God’s Spirit says things and does things they would not typically say or do because their inspiration and courage come as a result of God within them.

Thus, we must cast off the unholy spirits of inebriation and receive the Holy Spirit of God.

Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost mosaic by Anna Wyner

God sobered-up the little band of Christ followers from learners to practitioners, sending them into the world with a mission.

Being on a mission from God is not really about ability; it’s about being filled and sent. 

First time parents may read and learn all they can about parenting before their child is born. Yet, when that little bundle comes into the world, and the hospital puts this kid in your arms and sends you out, you feel inadequate for the task. Parenting becomes a kind of supernatural affair where you pray and learn on the fly, finding out that you need something beyond yourself to get anywhere in raising this screaming, pooping, sleeping person who depends completely on you for everything. 

God sends us into the world to make disciples. And we may feel very inadequate for the task. However, this has more to do with receiving the Spirit. The Spirit comes looking to turn our lives upside-down with new life in Jesus Christ. 

Pentecost means that the Spirit came to shake things up and accomplish among God’s people what they could never do on their own.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 

The Church in the New Testament was not a country club for people to simply enjoy the perks of membership.  The community of the redeemed, the Church, is actually more like a place where the people seem drunk because they are all talking with inspired speech from the Holy Spirit. 

Maybe we don’t need to be saved in the sense that we have already called on the name of the Lord concerning forgiveness in Christ. Yet, maybe we need to call on the name of the Lord to be delivered from our misguided attempts to see the Christian life as a pleasant affair.

Perhaps we need deliverance from disordered priorities and misguided loves. We may need to be saved from ourselves so that we are open to the Holy Spirit with palms up receiving from God whatever it is the Spirit wants to do in and through us, rather than telling God how we think things ought to go. 

Prayer, then, is more about receiving the Spirit and God’s purposes for us rather than giving God an earful and expecting the Lord to bless our plans.

Pentecost is the launching pad of the church’s mission – it was explosive because the Spirit is a kind of wild man who fills people up to overflowing so that what comes out of them is inspired speech and missional actions.

If a language barrier cannot stop the Spirit from operating, then how much more can God transform us and use us in the lives of those around us?

Joel’s prophecy, quoted by Peter, is only partially fulfilled. Events have been set in motion by Pentecost for the complete fulfillment of God’s justice. So, there’s some urgency for people to fill their vacuous souls with the grace freely offered to them in Christ.

The outpouring of the Spirit is a sign: The end is near. And the generous giving of the Spirit is inclusive – there is room for all kinds of people. Through the Spirit, God saves all who call on the name of the Lord.

Today is not just another day on the calendar. It is the Day of Pentecost! 

Just as marriages occasionally need a spark and a fire and a fresh wind, so we need the Holy Spirit to breathe on us, comfort us, and inspire us.

May we be filled with the Spirit as we anticipate what our God will do now, and in the years to come.

Spirit of the living God, through the reading and proclamation of the Word, may you refresh our spirits, reshape our desires, recreate our hearts, and reform our ways so that we will shine with your enduring glory, through Jesus Christ, our risen and ascended Lord. Amen.