May 24 2020
Acts 19:1-10
It is hard for me to believe that this is Memorial Day weekend. Most of my memories about Memorial Day center on the observance on Memorial Day at the cemetery because of my kids being in the Dover band they performed as part of the service there. How strange that this year there will be none of that because of the corona virus. It was a real challenge for my kids when they were in band because they had to wear their uniforms of course, which were heavy and hot, and march in the humid weather of late May. Yet in spite of the challenges their performance of pieces like “The Battle Hymn of The Republic” added to a moving service punctuated by the reading of the Gettysburg Address and Flanders Field. As I recently heard it explained, Memorial Day is a day of remembrance not celebration, a day to ponder on the price paid so that we could be where we are at and live in the manner that we do. As Christians, we must remember the fallen but we have to be careful not to glorify war but rather to look forward to that day when nations will beat their swords into plough shares. For us, we live in these in between days, between the coming of Jesus and his coming once again, and the ushering in of that new day that when it dawns nations will no war no more.
Sometimes there is so much news of war, divisiveness and hostility that we as followers of Jesus can forget what Jesus taught us is our primary work. We hear Jesus speak to us once again from the fifth chapter of Matthew, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God. Now what Jesus teaches here is pretty straight forward yet the most difficult aspect of what he expects of us, this peacemaking may be a little hard for us to wrap our minds around. I mean, if I go a day without getting in a fight with any one I hardly think this is what Jesus meant by peacemaking. To understand peacemaking though I believe that we first have to know how Jesus understood peace. Peace in Hebrew thought was known as the word shalom. Shalom is a word loaded with meaning such as to be whole, sound, completeness, well-being, harmony; these hardly enter into what we normally think of when we think of peace. When you go deeper into what shalom means you find that it is the bringing together of opposites hence the reason that “shalom” is used by the Jews as their “Hello” and their “Goodbye”. It is only when seeming opposites are brought together that one can say that there is peace. So, knowing this then, peacemaking is the work of bringing opposites together, working at bringing a sense of wholeness back to a world that is broken and in pieces, when we do this we bring peace.
When we begin to see that peacemaking is about wholeness then when we step back and look at where this admonition by Jesus comes at in the flow of Jesus’ teaching we find that peacemaking comes after the beatitude that says the pure in heart will see God. To have a pure heart is to have a heart fully devoted unwavering in its love for God, a wholehearted faith in God as the one who can give life to the dead and who calls into existence the things that do not exist. So, it is only when we have an inner wholeness within our heart that we are then called by God to be a person who works at bringing wholeness into a broken world. Broken people are unable to heal a broken world. In order to be healed and be made whole requires an act of God in the form of the movement of his Holy Spirit hovering over our life recreating us into the image of Jesus.
This brings us to our scripture for today. In our story, Paul on his missionary journey has made his way to the city of Ephesus located in modern day Turkey. While at Ephesus, Paul encountered some disciples yet Paul in his brief encounter with them could figure out that something was missing in their witness. Paul did a little investigating asking them “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? The disciples must have had a puzzled look upon their face and they replied to Paul’s question “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!” Paul inquired further “Into what were you baptized? To which these disciples replied “Into John’s baptism” This is a reference to John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus who called his fellow Jews to come to the Jordan to be baptized. This was a call for them to repent, to turn from their sinful ways and to be washed clean in the living waters of the Jordan. John knew that the coming day of the Lord was approaching and John wondered, who would be able to stand when God would at last arrive. So, the baptism of John focused on repentance, the confession and subsequent turning away from the sin in ones life and the seeking of God’s forgiveness of the sin confessed. For these disciples of Paul, this was the only baptism that they knew of; this was the only baptism that the Jewish faith knew of. This once again is where the resurrection of Jesus has changed everything. This very important change is found in what these disciples had no clue of, the Holy Spirit.
The people who entered into the baptism of John found themselves in an endless cycle of sinning, repentance forgiveness then back to sinning again. They were never free of the enslavement of sin, its constant pull was always tugging at their heart. The truth is that the human will, the human spirit is weak being unable to make the flesh, our life conform to the good that it knows to do. This is what Paul found to be true and what he wrote about in the seventh chapter of Romans where we read “So I find it to be a law that when I do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being but I see in my members another law raging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” All the baptism of John did was to give those captive to this law of sin, as Paul puts it, a way to recognize this sin and fight against it. The war raging within them became visible as they washed in the water desiring to be cleansed, set free from the constant struggle to do the law that they delighted in.
This sin that dwells in our members, this is the sin Jesus condemned in the flesh upon the cross. Jesus through the Holy Spirit offered himself as a sacrifice without blemish. Jesus had faith in the will of his Heavenly Father trusting in his ways and his power even unto death. Three days later this faith of Jesus stepped out alive from the grave, vindicated by his Heavenly Father truly the Son of God. Jesus was glorified because he emptied himself and became a servant willing to serve through the offering of his life in order to bring life to the world. Jesus, in the seventh chapter of John, taught his disciples that when he was glorified out of his heart would flow streams of living water, his way of speaking about the Holy Spirit who brings life to the bodies of death held in slavery to sin. Those who believed in Jesus, those who had the same faith Jesus had in his Heavenly Father, that this God can give life to the dead, that this God can bring into existence that which does not exist, those who believe this these are the ones who receive the Holy Spirit.
The way that those who believe receive the Holy Spirit is revealed by none other than John the Baptist who tells us in the first chapter of John, that the Heavenly Father had told John as he had baptized Jesus that this Jesus was the one, the one who not only had been anointed with the Holy Spirit but he was the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. It is the risen and ascended Jesus who pours out the Holy Spirit, who comes to us like a stream of living water which we become immersed in. This living water flows over us, transforms us, empowers us and frees us from the slavery to sin.
This is what the disciples Paul had encountered were missing out on. It is no wonder that Paul urgently wanted them to experience this transforming power. Yet there is more that we must understand about this baptism of the Holy Spirit. The book of Hebrews is a beautiful message of how much better the new covenant is from the old. One of the ways that the new covenant is better than the old is that we now have a high priest named Jesus who stands before the throne of our Heavenly Father to intercede for us. Jesus offered up the once for all sacrifice of himself that has has perfected for all time those who are being made holy. Jesus our high priest has made it possible for us to enter into the most holy of places, the very presence of God. In the tenth chapter of Hebrews we read more of what the sacrifice of Jesus has done for us as we read “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” Now, when we hear this it is not hard to think of baptism when we hear of washing with pure water. But there is more going on here that can only be known if you have an understanding of the Old Testament especially the book of Leviticus. What the writer of Hebrews has written here is the way a priest would be consecrated and ordained for service in the Temple. They would be sprinkled with blood and washed by the High Priest. The saying “to draw near” is also a Temple term which means to come into the presence of God to serve him. To add to all of this, the only place where people were anointed with the exception of kings and prophets was the priests in the Temple. I say all this to help explain something that has been left to fall by the wayside and that is that when we are baptized we are in essence being ordained as part of the priesthood of all believers.
The Holy Spirit indeed does set us free from the slavery or service of sin but at the same time that same Holy Spirit is creating in us a servants heart, for a servants heart is the heart of Jesus. When we read in our scripture that Paul baptized the disciples he had met in the name of Jesus, this means that he was praying that the essence and characteristics of Jesus, his servants heart, his sacrificial love, his unity in faith with his Heavenly Father, Paul is asking for all of this and more be evident in the lives of these disciples. As Jesus is the High Priest those baptized in his name were to be priests just like him interceding on the behalf of others, to do as Jesus did to bring God to his people and to bring people to God. When we read that Paul laid hands on these disciples this is an act of commissioning, ordaining these disciples into the office of priest. When Paul commissioned them this is when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, witnessing to the work of heaven appearing in life on earth.This is exactly what Peter writes about in the second chapter of his first letter, where we read “As you come to him , a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”. And further in the letter we read “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim his glorious deeds.” Baptism is when we become a part of this priesthood, to serve our God in the Temple of his world.
This baptism of the Holy Spirit, this great river of living water flowing from the heart of our Savior, our High Priest who intercedes for us, this not only makes us whole but it makes us people who seek to bring wholeness back into our world, to be peacemakers. Only as we have this as our identity Jesus tells us can we then identify as a child of the most high God. The reason for this is understandable because our Heavenly Father is a God who is a peacemaker being willing to give his only Son that through the shedding of his blood those of us who were far off could be brought near, the holy bringing his opposite, the unholy people to his side in order to bring peace to our world. Such peace can never come through the efforts of our flesh because it is the war within our members as Paul taught us that is the reason for the war among us. Jesus teaches us that it is the flesh that wants to know, “What shall we wear?, What shall we eat?, or What shall we drink? And it is the striving after these desires that leaves us anxious and fearful and this fear leads us to anger and this anger leads to strife. Jesus goes on to teach us to seek first the kingdom of God, the kingdom that one can only enter by water and the Spirit, seek this life Jesus tells us. Seek the life of service and intercession and God promises us that we will have all we need. Only as we have the peace that God will supply what we need can we make peace by offering what we have, even ourselves in order to bring the world back together.
This is how the resurrection of Jesus has transformed our identity. Jesus commands that we do two things; baptize and observe the Eucharist, the last supper of Christ. It is in this baptism that Jesus calls us to observe that we repent of our sin, that we experience God’s mercy but there is more, so much more. From the risen, glorified Jesus flows the river of living water, the Holy Spirit which is poured over us at our baptism, creating in us a servants heart, ordaining us as priests. In the Old Testament, the high priest on his headpiece had a sign stating that he was a possession of God. On the breastplate he carried with him were the names of all the tribes of Israel, all the people he represented and served in the presence of God. This for us should be our example. In our minds we should never forget that we are God’s treasured possession. He loves us and cares for us; we are at peace with him. Then on our hearts let us carry the names of the people whose burdens God calls us to bear. This is what it means for us as priests to declare the glories of God for God’s glory is always found in serving others. Amen.
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