“Troubled about the Future?”

(Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15) 

 When the day of Pentecost had come, they 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 people 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 Pamphylia, 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, “Fellow Jews 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 declares, 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.’” (Acts 2:1-21)

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.  You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning….

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.  But now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’  But because I have said these things to you sorrow has filled your hearts.  Nevertheless, I tell you the truth:  it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you.  And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement; about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine.  For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”   (John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)    

As I have lived my own life over the years and as I listen to you and to others, there is a common theme among us when we talk about things that really matter.  That theme is worry.

            First, a disclaimer, a recognition that the exception proves the rule: I know there is a small minority of you here who do not worry at all, so bear with me while I have this conversation with the others.  I know there are those of us who don’t worry much, but there are those situations about which we do worry mightily.  And I know that there are some among us who worry about everything, including worrying.

            People can tell worriers to “let go and let God” all the day long, and they will still worry.  When we’re worrying we can tell ourselves over and over that worry changes nothing, but we can’t seem to stop the fussing.

            We worry and we’re anxious about many things.  Will we have enough in our retirement to see us through our lives?  Will our children and grandchildren get jobs that will pay their bills and allow them to care for themselves?  Kids worry about their grades, about tests, about getting into college, about their families.  Young people worry about not finding the right mate or about how a relationship is going.  Many worry about something they said that may have hurt or bothered someone.  People worry about their own behavior or about the drinking, gambling, smoking or compulsive behaviors of their loved ones.  People worry about things they have done that were wrong.   

            I remember even as a small child worrying about my mother’s health and about chewing my fingernails (which, of course, made me chew my nails even more!).  I worried about what I didn’t know and about whether I would ever learn how to do whatever I did not know how to do.

            I remember when I moved to Wellington, I was more than a little anxious about whether I had the right skills and abilities for that church because I had left this warm, comfortable, long-time parish and wondered if I could handle what would happen next.

            So….  because you may have been able to relate to some of this, you can imagine how Jesus’ followers felt as they were listening to what he had to say about his leaving, in the Gospel of John reading.  Jack has just read it to us.  They were scared and worried and troubled about the future. 

This is why what you heard in the Gospel reading may have been so comforting to his followers.  Jesus told them about the Paraclete (the Greek word that he uses to talk about the Spirit, the coming Helper, the Advocate, the Counselor).  We’ll just call it the Spirit.  It was a way to talk about the continuing presence of Jesus in that post-resurrection community, and the Spirit will turn out to be a teacher and a witness.

            It’s true that people are always “troubled about the future,” to say the least.  In chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  It is clear in John that Jesus is the way that people know who God is.  Thinking about his leaving wasn’t just the fear of losing their teacher and friend.  They felt as though they would be losing touch with God.

            So, today’s Gospel reading gives us Jesus’ words of assurance for his followers, both then and now.  It is Jesus’ assurance that we have a connection between Jesus and his church, assurance that we, Jesus’ community, are guided and grounded in Jesus’ revelation of God, assurance that we needn’t worry about what is to come.  We don’t need to fuss about whether we’ll be able to survive into the future because we have this Advocate, this counselor, this Spirit who will guide us into the truth.

            So, I tell you, even now, this is good news for us as we become part of the change that is happening in Christ’s church.  And there is so much change—all the way from the disaffiliations that have happened in our denomination to the new decisions that were made at the recent General Conference.  Those decisions made in Charlotte last month are what I and many of you have been praying for, yet we know they will bring changes that may challenge churches. 

Yes, we can perform weddings for same gender people.  That could be a challenge for some of you but will be a wonderful opportunity for us to grow into this new world we live in.  There will be gay and Lesbian people being ordained now (there always have been, but they weren’t allowed to claim publicly who they were). 

These are good things but may challenge many of us in surprising ways.  Sometimes we can get all gloom and doom about it, afraid that what we have found so meaningful in church will go away and the church as-we-know-it will die.  Instead, the word from Jesus is that there is hope, that his presence will remain, the beauty of the Gospel will continue in the way that God wants.  Going into the future, the Spirit provides fresh encounters with Christ, the Logos, the Word (as Christ is known in the Gospel of John), and those fresh encounters will be given in the time of our need.  We will be shown how to be creative as we are open to our world as it is, the need as it presents itself and the way that the Spirit interacts with what’s going on.  Jesus gives us the guarantee that his presence will always be available for whatever the future holds.

            And so, we don’t need to be troubled about what’s to come, we don’t need to be worrying because Jesus has provided for us. 

Our job is to stay in the present moment, because, amazingly, this is the arena in which God’s future is already underway.  Just as we heard in the Acts reading which is the gold standard for what the day of Pentecost is all about, God is in charge of it all.  We needn’t be concerned.  Both the present and the future are where God’s promises will be enacted.  Our job is to pay attention in this and every moment, to trust God and to be faithful.

…Yes, I know that we do not know what that’s gonna look like.  So, we need to learn to be present right now, to experience and truly pay attention to this time.  And, yes, we need to learn Jesus’ ways, to take them in, to make them our own so that we, like him, can become the world’s way of knowing God.  Then we must trust the Spirit to do its work, to place opportunities in our way, opportunities for us to be faithful, for us to be the church of Jesus Christ.

So, on this day when we celebrate the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the church, remember, be present with God and each other in the moment, always be learning and integrating the ways and words of Jesus, trust God and be faithful.  Thanks be to God for Jesus’ powerful presence with us, even now.  Amen.