"Testing the Spirits"

We were in Chattanooga this weekend, on our way to one of our favorite old haunts –a used bookstore – when we noticed something new in the landscape, a huge glaring white cross towering over that part of town.

When we got to our destination, we realized that the cross was at the top of the hill that rose above the bookstore. Then we saw a sign – new home of GraceWork Church -- and a new road or driveway leading up the hill.

And at the beginning of that driveway leading to the church is a gate with a keycard entry.

Gated residential communities are common these days, but this is the first time I have ever seen a gated church.

What kind of message is this congregation sending – with its cross towering over part of the city, beckoning people to Jesus. And when and if they come, they find that Jesus is locked behind a closed gate and without the proper identification card, one cannot enter.

It seemed especially ironic to come across this church on the eve of Pentecost because this church seems to me to represent the opposite of this great feast day.

On that first day of Pentecost, the disciples are gathered together in fear behind locked doors, praying and wondering what will happen to them. It has been 50 days since that glorious morning when Jesus rose from the dead.

But 10 days ago, just when the disciples had gotten used to the fact that Jesus was still with them in a new and strange way, he disappeared into the heavens – once again leaving them alone, afraid, and confused.

Before Jesus went, he made one last promise – that his friends would not be abandoned, that God’s Holy Spirit soon would be with them, empowering them to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Today, the day of Pentecost, that promise is fulfilled in a dramatic way. The disciples are together in a house in Jerusalem when suddenly the wind begins to blow. The doors burst open; the windows bang against the walls.

Flames dance over each person’s head. And everyone begins to speak at once in languages they did not know, but can suddenly understand.

And when it is over, the scriptures say that they look at each other in amazement and ask, “What can this mean?”

What it meant was that the power of God had filled that room and transformed the lives of the women and men there. And nothing would be the same for them again.

The wind that blew that day propelled those fearful men and women out of a closed up house in Jerusalem into the world, and the spirit that enabled them to speak and understand foreign tongues also empowered them to boldly proclaim the word of God wherever they went.

On that day alone, 3,000 people were baptized. Ultimately the Holy Spirit empowered these men and women to spread the gospel throughout the world.

On the day of Pentecost, the gospel of Jesus Christ went global. We learned that day that God’s Holy Spirit cannot be limited by barriers of language or geography, or by political or religious differences.

This same Holy Spirit that propelled the fearful disciples out of their locked rooms is still active in our world today, transforming people’s lives in both dramatic and subtle ways.

But on this day when we celebrate the continuing gift of God’s Holy Spirit, it is also important to remember that not all spirits that blow into our lives are of God.

Scripture itself cautions us to be wary of which spirits we follow.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit,” the First Letter of John warns. “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Theologian Christopher Morse calls this testing of the spirits a “call to faithful disbelief.”

“To believe in God is not to believe in everything,” he says. Faithful disbelief is a refusal to assent to that which is ungodly – even when what is ungodly is being proclaimed by the Church.

Perhaps the most infamous testing of the spirits in the last century was in Germany in the years following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. With the rise of the Nazi movement, a number of Christians believed a new manifestation of God’s Spirit was emerging in Germany, as evidenced by this sermon from that time:

“ Germany, after the Great War, was threatened with collapse. But then he came who, despite the great darkness in so many German hearts, spoke of light and showed them the way to the light,” this German Christian preacher said.

“His appeal found an echo in thousands and hundreds of thousands of German souls, who carried the appeal further. It swelled out like a sweeping cloud and then happened the greatest miracle – Germany awoke and followed the sign of light, the Swastika.”

To think that these words were proclaimed from the pulpit of a Christian church is chilling. But equally chilling proclamations have been made from pulpits of churches in this country in the years since.

In the 1960s, the Spirit of God propelled many men and women, both black and white, into the fight for equality for people of all races. But the Civil Rights movement was denounced as evil from many Southern church pulpits.

In our own day, we are called to say no to a spirit of meanness and narrow-mindedness that seems to have swept through much of Christianity in this country.

Recently I talked to a young Episcopalian who goes to a Christian school, where she was asked by a teacher about her relationship with Christ.

The teen-ager enthusiastically responded by telling about her involvement in her church, her work on mission trips and feeding the homeless, her regular attendance in Sunday School and worship – all motivated by what I know to be a deep faith and commitment.

Her enthusiasm was shot down by the adult, who looked at her and said, “You can do good deeds every day of your life until you die, but unless you accept Jesus Christ as your savior, you will go to hell.”

Who do you think was truer to the Spirit of God?

I believe this adult’s response is the kind of narrow spirit we are called as Christians to denounce, or to faithfully disbelieve.

A recently published book, entitled unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity, examines the attitudes and perceptions that young adults ages 16-29 have about Christianity.

Those in that age group were asked this question: Here are some words or phrases that could be used to describe a religious faith. Please indicate if you think each of these phrases describes Christianity.

Ninety-one percent of the young people responding to this survey described Christianity as “antihomosexual;” 87 percent described is as “judgmental,” and 85 percent as “hypocritical.”

Writer Patrick Henry notes that “once upon a time the term ‘Christian’ meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around.

“But these days ‘Christian’ sounds pinched, squeezed, narrow. When ‘Christian’ appears in a headline, the story will probably be about lines drawn, not about boundaries expanded.”

The true Spirit of God that swept through Jerusalem that first Pentecost was about expanding boundaries, not drawing lines, about bursting open locked doors, not retreating behind gates.

The Pentecost spirit set the disciples free from their pinched and narrow room and gave them power to move toward wider horizons.

Fortunately, scripture gives us guidance in how to test if a spirit is from God. We judge a spirit by its fruit.

“The fruit of the Spirit,” the apostle Paul says, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

The fruits of the Spirit are not characterized by narrowness, but expansiveness. Not by constrictedness, but by liberality. Not by exclusivity, but by inclusivity. Not by meanness, but by compassion. Not by retreat from the world, but by embracing and loving that which God has made.

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Readings

Numbers 11:24-30

Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the peo-ple, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those reg-istered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pam-phylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God de-clares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

John 7:37-39

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let any-one who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glo-rified.

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