"Streams of Living Water"

Isaiah 11:1-3; John 7:37-39; 20:19-23

Today is the day we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The passage from Isaiah is one used by most ministers when someone is baptized. I have quoted that phrase in each of the 50 or so baptisms I have done throughout my ministry -"the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord." When I have the privilege of baptizing someone in ways I do not understand but fully believe, the Spirit becomes a more active part of that person's life. I like a quote I found by Pentecostal minister Rod Parsley, who wrote, "The baptism of the Spirit will do for you what a phone booth did for Clark Kent- it will change you into a different being." That Spirit has molded, shaped, and led my life in ways I do not fully understand nor comprehend- It has changed and will continue to change me if I pay attention to its prodding, which often feels like a tap on the shoulder.

These two passages about the Spirit from John have a different emphasis than the scripture typically read this Sunday from Acts chapter 2. That classic explanation of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon so many believers, which we sang about in the opening hymn - with tongues of fire upon their heads and speaking in different tongues yet understanding each other happens a while after these two passages in John. Today's New Testament passages are about Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. First, we have this saying from Jesus in chapter seven, a somewhat mysterious saying about "streams of living water," which John later explains in verse 39-"By this, he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified." (That is, he had not yet died, risen, and ascended to be with God.)

Then comes the scene in chapter 20, after Jesus has risen and appeared to Mary Magdalene. The disciples are locked in the upper room in the dark, huddled together, awaiting either the sound of Roman soldiers or angry Pharisees bursting through the door to drag them away. Jesus appears in the room, saying, "Peace be with you." Then Jesus shows the disciples the wounds in his hands and side. They are thrilled to see their Risen Rabbi standing there in front of them. He again offers his blessing of peace, then says, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." Jesus breathes upon them and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, which I will say more about in just a bit. I want to focus briefly on the saying which comes right after this. "If you forgive sins, they are forgiven. If you retain them, they are retained." Jesus, through his gift of the Holy Spirit, gives the disciples the power to forgive, which up until this time had only been something that God could do. And if the disciples did not forgive but instead retained someone's sins, those sins would be a burden to carry until they did forgive, thwarting God's purposes for creation in bringing about forgiveness and reconciliation. But our focus on this Pentecost Sunday is the gift of the Holy Spirit, given to the disciples by Jesus. We, too, have been given that gift bestowed upon believers during Pentecost and later believers through streams of living water in baptism. What does the gift of the Spirit mean for us modern-day disciples?

The word for Spirit in Greek is pneuma, which we still use in the Modern English language in the words pneumatic, meaning "filled with air," and "pneumonia," which we all know as "a chronic disease in the lungs." Both of these words have to do with air and breath in some way. The Hebrew word for God's Spirit is Ruach, the sound of which mimics the exhale of a breath.

God breathes Ruach into Adam through Adam's nostrils in the Old Testament. It is a warm, intimate scene of God breathing life into a human being.

Many years ago, when our son Sam was a wee toddler, I still remember one extraordinary night when he woke up from a nightmare and was pretty upset. So, I crawled into his little bed and stroked his back for a time while he calmed down. Eventually, he drifted off to sleep once again. As he slept, our faces were directly across from one another. And as he breathed out, I began breathing in. When he inhaled, I exhaled my breath. This wonderful, warm, intimate moment of being a dad and sharing our breath together was so memorable. It reminded me of that scene in Genesis 2:7 and this scene in John 20. I imagine that Jesus stood in front of each disciple and breathed his life, giving divine Ruach to them, until all had received the Spirit, this stream of living water.

What does the gift of the breath of God mean for us today? How can it affect us? For those of you who attended last Sunday's service of lament over gun violence in our nation, that is an example of what the Spirit can do. After that horrible shooting, I came into my office, and the Spirit said, "You cannot do the same service you were planning. You must tear it all down and build it back up into something new." The Spirit led me to preach about an alternate vision, speaking out, acting, and letting our people express their lament, anger, and confusion.

The Spirit also leads us personally to act in the world, in the lives of individuals, and in some particular circumstances. Many years ago, after conducting a memorial for a friend, I saw a stranded motorist as I was driving back home. He was holding a can of gas up standing next to his car but was partially blocked by another vehicle that was turning onto the highway, who ignored his plight. I saw him too late to stop in time and went across the bridge. It was then that the breath of God began to speak clearly to me and began to poke at my shoulder. "Go back. He is out of gas and needs your help." The Spirit repeated it to me, working once again on my soul. I wanted to get back home to be with my family and wondered if this somewhat inconvenient opportunity to help someone in need would cause me to get home much later. But God's breath was persistent, so, about a ½ mile down the road, I found a place to turn around and went back. The man was delighted to see that I had stopped for him. His name was Craig. He had been standing there for a while. He was from a nearby community and was coming into our town of Fort Bragg to get gas, which was much cheaper at the time than where he lived. He thought he could make the 15-20 mile drive with what was left in his tank. However, he miscalculated how much gas it would take to get to Fort Bragg, leaving him stranded. I took him to a gas station, where he filled up the gas can. On the trip back, I learned a bit about his life. After a bit more small talk, we arrived at his car. He shook my hand and said thank you very sincerely. I responded, "No problem and God bless you."

God's breath does within us is it prods us to do things for others and uses our hands, hearts, voices, and cars to be a blessing to others. As Jesus said in John 16:13, "The Spirit shows us what is true and will come and guide you into the full truth. The Spirit does not speak on its own. The Spirit  will tell you only what it has heard from me and  will declare to you the things that need to happen." Or, as theologian Tim Downs wrote, "Watches, cars, and Christians can all look chromed and shiny. But watches don't tick, cars don't go, and Christians don't make a difference without insides. For a Christian, that's the Holy Spirit." So that small inner voice from our insides, that feeling to do something for someone, is the prodding, the direction of God at work in us through the power of the Spirit, the divine Ruach of God. By paying attention to it and heeding its wishes, we become instruments of God's desires for the world. By ignoring it, we delay God's purposes for creation.

That delay is so apparent to me right now when it comes to the use of guns and the embracement of violence in American culture. According to the New York Times, since the horrific mass shooting of innocent children in Uvalde, Texas, there have been TWENTY mass shootings since that tragedy! Twenty! A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which at least four people are injured by gunfire, not including the shooter. So in the span of a mere thirteen days, we have had twenty more mass shootings. The most recent event on the mass shooting was last Wednesday's killing spree in a Tulsa, Okla., hospital when a gunman killed five people. Oklahoma, Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania have each recorded a pair of mass shootings since May 24. A May 30 gun violence event left ten people injured at a South Carolina house party. Special interest groups and money have delayed God's purposes for creation. We need to use the Spirit's gift - to speak up and speak out so that God's intent of a world at peace can be fully realized. We need to hold those politicians accountable who counter God's purposes for creation. So many of you signed that petition for gun purchase reform last Sunday, and I thank you. We will have it available for today to sign as well, should the Spirit lead you to do so. Many also signed that petition at our Tuesday morning Rotary group, and parents from the Montessori school are doing so as well. May the Spirit guide us with power and a voice, united against this violence. May God's Spirit mold, change and reshape our broken, violent gun-loving nation so that the purposes of God can be fully realized.

The Spirit is at work right now in the church - the big C church and the church here on the corner of Walker and Siskiyou, as we grapple with a post-Christendom world. God's purposes are being reworked and repurposed in new and sometimes unsettling ways. You may remember we had a couple of speakers join us from Church Renewal Northwest at a retreat about church change about four years ago. At that weekend, we were gifted with a blessing from the Spirit, which has been with us and continues to guide us as we seek to follow the Spirit's leadings.

These changes and upheavals are happening throughout our Presbytery of the Cascades. Our Executive Presbyter for vision and mission, Rev. Brian Heron, recently wrote the following in his Road to Emmaus column. "I just returned from a one-week training with approximately forty other presbytery executives from around the country. If one scripture could capture the message that repeatedly showed up in my heart and soul, it would be this: "So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away, new things have come into being!" (1 Corinthians 5: 17) Conversation after conversation confirmed that the deepest task of the Church in this time is to make room for the new thing that God is doing—a sort of cleaning out of the house so that God can redecorate, repaint, remodel and reform."

Rev. Heron's quote reminded me of a similar quote from theologian C.S. Lewis. In his book, Mere Christianity,  he wrote, "I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what God is doing- getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing, so you are not surprised. But presently, God starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is God up to? The explanation is that God is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but God is building a palace." Now, this quote and this particular book, in general, have much more to do with our own lives individually and how God rebuilds us in a holy way.

But as I read it again on my own, I heard it in another way and believe it applies to our c BIG C and little c church. I believe God is trying to do some reconstruction of the First Presbyterian Church of Ashland through the Spirit. Here at our local congregation, we may be in that phase where God is knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. I've been part of several reconstructions in disaster relief missions, tearing out walls, floors, and roofs. Initial deconstruction is unsettling, and it is hard to visualize how things will appear when all is put back together. I believe God is at hand deconstructing and reconstructing the Christian church in the world, and that includes our church on the corner of Walker and Siskiyou. In times such as these, we need to rely on the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide us, to help us as we try new things, and as we try not to impede upon God's reconstruction work. As our potential new members gather after today's service, we will gather in the Spirit of God's reconstruction.

In closing, give thanks for those times when the Spirit of God intervenes and prods you to action. May that same Spirit prod and renew this nation so that God's purposes for creation might be fully realized one day. May that same Spirit guide the big C and our own little C church here and now. God says in scripture, "Do not remember the former things or consider the old ways. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19) May the divine breath, the Ruach of God, stir us to new ways of being into streams of living water! We give thanks and praise to God for this amazing gift of the Holy Spirit. Alleluia! Amen.