Where Can I Go?

On the Christian calendar, it is Trinity Sunday. On the secular calendar, it is Memorial Day weekend, and for those in the racing business, it is the Indy 500. On the Educational calendar, it is graduation season, and I honor Holly Obermiller today on your graduation from Meredith College. You have done a terrific thing. God bless you. All of these things bring to mind the lyrics of a John Prine song, “It leaves me an ocean of mixed-up emotion; I’ll have to work it out in a song.” In my case, though, I have to edit that text to read, I’ll have to work it out in a sermon! So today, I turn to one of the most powerful and influential poems in the Bible, Psalm 139. In verse 7 are two of the 2,500 questions in the Bible: where can I go from your spirit? And where can I flee from your presence? I want to use them, plus the answer provided in the following verses, to work through all the emotion I feel today, and also to begin a four-sermon series on what we call the Holy Spirit of God. Two months ago, I preached a four-part series of Jesus: his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection. Now, I have a word about the Spirit, in four parts: Where is the Spirit? I ask at the beginning, that is, today; and then I want to apply the desire for spirit-filled living to the three persistent challenges of human life: money, sex, and power. I. Let’s begin with the Spirit at Pentecost. Last week, Marcy preached an excellent sermon on the famous Pentecostal experience of those first followers of Jesus. They were overwhelmed, the Acts of the Apostles, tells us, with a noisy and noticeable presence, a feeling, a power, a wind: something they felt and heard and sensed. The Spirit of the Living God, we call it, and it was there that day, in that upper room, loosening tongues and transforming people, striking deep to the soul of people. It was the coming of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit had been around for a long time. It may have been the birthday of the church, but it surely was not the birthday of the Spirit. The Spirit was present at creation and the Spirit filled the temple of the Hebrew people. Later, the Jewish rabbis termed it the Shekinah! Jesus said, quoting Isaiah, “The Spirit is upon me!” I will preach on that next Sunday, but today, I take this question as my text: Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? The double form of the one question helps us. The poet asks it once, then slightly changes the language and asks it again. “Your Spirit” is parallel to “your presence.” Meaning: the Spirit of God and the Presence of God. These are two ways of asking the same question: where is God and where can I go to get away from God and is there any place where I might be where God is not already present? This being Trinity Sunday and I being a trained theologian, I will clarify this. The Trinity is a complicated way of describing what we read in the Bible. We read of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Early on, Christian thinkers created this idea of the Trinity: three persons in one. But this formula raises all sorts of questions. Here is the way I think of it: there is one God, uncreated and everlasting, invisible and, in many ways, unknowable. God is present to us as Spirit. God is a Spirit, the gospel of John says. Where God is present, God is present as a spirit.  That spirit filled Jesus to the brim. Jesus was the original spirit-filled person. This is the way I understand and embrace God as Trinity: God, present as Spirit, especially in the life of Jesus. That is enough theology, but just enough for Trinity Sunday. II. Can I go anywhere and not be in the presence of God? That is the question before us today. Here is the answer: I can race up through the universe; God is already there. I can dig deep down into the lowest depths; God is already there. I can rise with the dawn and circumvent the globe, and everywhere I go, God is already there. Finally, I can descend into the darkness of my own self, my own spirit, my own soul, into my own darkness and depression, and God is also there. I was raised on the poetry of outer space. It begins, Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of – It ends with wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air…. Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace. Where never lark, or even eagle flew — And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, – Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.” Not just outer space, but also earthly space. On every sea and continent, among every culture and community, in every religion and sanctuary, God is present. Sometimes fully and gloriously, sometimes hidden and mysterious. Do we see signs of God in the world today? Where is God and what is God doing? Asking this question on Memorial Day weekend pushes us to a certain kind of answer. It makes us think of wars and rumors of wars, of peace and the blessing for peacemakers. It forces us to pray for those who serve in the cause of peace around the world: not just soldier and sailors, but diplomats and ambassadors, presidents and prime ministers, even medics and chaplains, journalists that tell the stories and aid workers wearing the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. My own father and mother are buried in the Camp Nelson Military Cemetery just south of Lexington KY. In a few weeks will host the Celebration of Life for one of our own, Larry Howe. On June 6, 1944, his unit went ashore on Utah Beach. Only four survived. He was one of them and came home to live a successful and generous life. First of all, God is present everywhere and anywhere. God is present as the force for justice and righteousness, for love and forgiveness, for truth and honesty. Every time, anybody tells the truth, they do so by the Spirit of God. Any time a person stands up for justice and fairness, she does so in the power of the Spirit. Whenever a person, any person, of any religion or no religion, feeds the hungry, tends to the wounded, or welcomes the stranger, he does so in the power and spirit of the one and only God of the universe. III. We don’t often think of the Spirit of God as everywhere, inspiring everybody. We like to restrict the Spirit to our religion, to our church, to us and our people. The coming of the Holy Spirit, we say, was on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. This is true, and the spirit of God fills this church, this congregation. The Spirit anoints the preacher and awakens the people; the spirit convicts the sinner and converts the lost. The Spirit distributes gifts, Paul the apostle wrote in several places. Each of us has a gift for the building up of the body of Christ. I have lived in Jerusalem and studied at Notre Dame. I have taught at two Catholic colleges in Pittsburgh and a Methodist college in Kentucky. In all of these places, God was at work among the followers of Jesus. During my days leading the Academy of Preachers, I became close friends with Orthodox, Catholic, Pentecostal, Protestant and Evangelical preachers. I saw the face of Christ in each one and felt the Spirit of Christ in their spirit. What God declares clean, I never once wanted to declare unclean. I am a better person and a better Christian because I have walked this path with these people. Last Sunday, we went to the Sedgefield United Methodist Church on the south side of Charlotte. What a spirit-filled day it was. A congregation of less than 100 people, I think. A winsome pastor, lively singing, and one baptism. Here is how that happened. Sam, my 15-year-old grandson, wandered past the church last fall while they were having an outdoor event, a picnic or something. He stopped, and stayed, and ate. He came back the next time they took their fellowship outdoors. One thing led to another and that lonely boy, looking for friends, found his way into the youth group. It was a very small group; but the Sedgefield church had partnered with four other congregations to hire one youth minister. And after a number of weeks of that, Sam signed up for confirmation class. Eight weeks of classes, and on Pentecost Sunday, everybody in class took vows to become members of that church; and Sam was baptized. Not all the way under and up dripping wet, but with enough of the water and the spirit to make it a powerful witness to the goodness of God and the glory of Christ. The Spirit of God is at work in the church, here and there and everywhere! IV We started wide, up in the stars; we narrowed it to the church of Jesus Christ, here and there. Now, one more move: God is present not just there, not just here among us; but here, in your soul, in your spirit, in your life, in your journey. Jesus began his mission on earth with these words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Those words are also for you and me. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Say those words with me: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Spirit is upon you to help you sing for joy and live in hope; to resist temptation and be strong in the Lord; to forgive those who do you wrong and to give generously to help others. Every time you feel the urge to pray, that is the Spirit. Every time you want to dance with gladness, that is the Spirit. Every time you want to push back against some addiction, some resentment, some habit that is pulling you down, that is the Spirit. Every time you call out, “Help me, Jesus.” –that is the Spirit. Every time you give of yourself to help somebody, guide somebody, encourage somebody, you are acting in the fullness of the Spirit. What is the Spirit pulling you to do today?