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Lord of Love Lutheran Church
(ELCA)
May 23, 1999 |
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Lord of Love Lutheran Church
(ELCA)
May 23, 1999 |
Readings: Acts 2.1-21, Psalm 104.25-35, 37, 1 Corinthians 12.3b-13, John 20.19-23
Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen
It was my first day of work at the law firm of Rifkind
and Sterling; one of Beverly Hills’ most prestigious corporate law firms.
The foyers were marble and the hallways were filled with 18th century English
furniture. I was a young man in a new corduroy suit sitting down
at a computer terminal trying to impress my new employer. I was given
the critical yet boring task of editing the billing book, which took me
more than three hours to complete. Having finished making the changes
it was time to copy my changes back onto the master disks. I put
the disks back in the drives and proceeded to copy the original material
over my changes thus undoing everything I had done that night. As
the realization of what I had done swept over me I could feel a wave like ice water
wash over me. It felt like the floor was spinning.
I felt nauseous. “What have I done?”
Practically speaking, I had done nothing at all
but waste my time and the firm’s time. Everything was still intact;
I was just no further along than when I had first shown up at work four
hours earlier. Still ... my first night on the job! I felt
like jumping out the window.
Despair behaves like a gas. It expands to
fill the available space, diffusing itself evenly into every nook and cranny
of your self-understanding. Despair rushes in to fill the vacuum
when you feel empty inside and it can’t be pushed out again except to be
replaced by something else.
Following Jesus’ death, the disciples were filled
with despair. Life itself had been sucked out of their lungs and
despair rushed in to fill the void. They were gathered all together
in one place behind locked doors, filled with that other gas: fear.
They felt like failures. They felt like all their plans and visions,
their hopes and dreams lay in a smoldering heap. The urgent moment
had arrived and passed and save for Peter’s flailing attempt with a sword,
Jesus was taken from them. Now the disciples cowered like whipped
dogs. They were empty vessels. And the only sound of wind was
that of desolation, fear and despair whistling through their empty hearts.
At that moment the disciples, too, were sharing in Jesus’ cry of dereliction
and descent into hell.
When it was evening on that day, the first day of
the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked
for fear, Jesus came and stood among his friends. “Peace be with
you.” Jesus enters into locked, empty spaces: empty rooms, empty
hearts. Recall that Jesus’ first miracle was changing water into
wine. Jesus changes fear into love. He changes despair into
hope. He transforms death into new life and faithlessness into powerful
witness. Having shared in his baptism into death, the disciples also
share Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
I can recall a conversation with a woman who had
once been a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. She explained
to me that now she was a member of a charismatic Pentecostal church.
She complained that the Lutherans – present company not excluded – had
always done a fine job of taking her from Christmas to Good Friday, sometimes
even as far as Easter. It just seemed to her that Lutherans never
seemed to get past the cross to arrive at the Day of Pentecost and the
coming of the Holy Spirit. “When do I get to know the power of the
Holy Spirit? When do I get to exercise some strength?” I could hear
this woman asking. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness,
so this woman just upped and joined a church where she could have power
and strength. Mistake?
I have never known a sweeter moment than the night
I lay down to sleep with the understanding that I was truly a sinner and
that I would never be anything more than a sinner, but also knowing that
I was loved by God and that the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ availed for
me. Jesus had worked his miracle for me and transformed me from the
kingdom of fear and despair over my sins to the kingdom of God’s grace
and I, a sinner of God’s own redeeming, will never go back.
And I feel I have company in that two-fold understanding.
I hear St. Paul reminding me what God reminded him, that: “My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul
goes on to say, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with
weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake
of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
The great and glorious day of Pentecost heralds
a new day for God’s creation when a wind from God again hovers over the
waters and stirs things up to new life. The Spirit blows into our
lives a freshening air that pushes out our fear and despair over our sins,
our inability to get things right, and replaces it with faith, hope and
love that what mortals are unable to accomplish, the God of heaven and
earth has already reconciled and redeemed. But such a faith and a
hope and a love is not based on human triumphs, but on Christ’s triumphs.
The fire that burned within the disciples that day
when the wind of the spirit picked up was a wind and a fire that burns
in people who know personal weakness, who know personal failure, who acknowledge
the impossibility of getting things right without God making things right.
The spirit that gave them utterance to be understood by all nations and
peoples did not appeal to human desires for strength and power and personal
glory, but to the human experience of brokenness and the desire for healing,
for the peace that displaces our fear and despair. That is the peace
that surpasses all human understanding. That is the peace we share
with one another. That is the peace that Jesus breathes on all that
call on his name. Amen
Copyright © 1999 Lord of Love Lutheran Church
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be copied without the
express written permission of Lord of Love Lutheran Church, 10405 Fort
Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68134.
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