[The Easter Life is] A Life Empowered (Rock Springs UMC)

What does this mean? That's the question we're going

to be responding to here today. What does it mean?

That's the question that was asked there on Pentecost Now

today. Is it Pentecost Sunday, Next

Sunday's Pentecost Sunday. I'm going to be out of town next

Sunday. Rick's preaching next week.

And Rick, if I stole Pentecost from you, feel free to preach

another one on Pentecost. There's plenty to preach there,

So, but got something else. Awesome.

All right, All right, because I really, I really wanted to talk

about this passage. I'll be visiting our son James

next weekend. Looking forward to seeing him.

I haven't seen him since Christmas, so very eager to see

him again. And I'm very grateful for Rick

for filling in. But this question that they

asked, what does this mean that that these folks who are all

Judeans, not just Judeans, they're all Galileans and

they're talking and all of us folks who are from all over

different parts of the world are hearing everything they say,

each one of us in our own language.

How is that possible? And it's, it's the men, it's the

women, it's the old, it's the young, it's the educated, it's

the uneducated. And they're all doing this.

And we don't understand what this means.

Well, what this means is what we're talking about today.

And I'm going to kind of take a, a roundabout way to get there.

And I'm going to begin with a clip from one of my favorite

movies, a movie called Chariots of Fire.

It's an old movie. If you haven't seen it yet,

watch it. It's free on YouTube.

If you don't want to, you know, rent it on Amazon, you can get

it there. And it's true story of Eric

Little. And I'm going to show 2 races

that Eric Little ran. Eric Little was a missionary to

China and he was also a very accomplished athlete.

He played rugby and he ran. And at the point where we're

seeing him in the first clip, he's he's running a quarter mile

race. And and this again, this is a

true story. Both clips are of things that

actually happened, even though they're quite surprising.

And he's he's he's preparing for the Olympics, which will be

coming up in 1924. So this is way back in the in

the 20s. And Eric Little running a

quarter mile race, you'll know him.

He's the one that they get gets most of the camera time.

But let's watch this race together.

At this point, I showed a clip from the movie Chariots of Fire.

The scene is of 1/4 mile race in which Eric Little is not down

early in the race but comes back to win.

I didn't include the audio here because the clip is mostly

visual and the audio alone wouldn't have added anything.

Now back to the sermon. What does it mean?

You might be asking that? What does that have to do with

Pentecost? What does it have to do with the

Holy Spirit? Well, Eric Little talk

specifically about that. And we're going to get a little

bit more of that later, but I want us to have that in the back

of our minds this race run. There's not a track coach in the

world. And again, Eric Little

ultimately, spoiler alert, ultimately ends up winning a

gold medal at the Olympics. There's not a track coach in the

world that will tell one of their athletes to imitate Eric

Little's running style. When he really got going, he put

his head back, he closed his eyes and he flailed his arms.

You're track. You're in track, aren't you,

Paige? Try that next time.

See what your coach says. Maybe not, maybe not.

And yet what he did was extraordinary.

What does it mean? That's what we're talking about

because this our last Sunday on, on living the Easter life and,

and the Easter life, not only is it life in a world turned upside

down, a life of service, a life of faith, a life of love.

The Easter life is a life empowered and it's a life

empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to his disciples, for

you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

And we need to be careful that when we talk about the this

notion that we're going to receive power because we live in

a day in an 8. Well, and I hate to do this

again to you, but Star Wars, we live in a post Star Wars culture

and, and power means something very different in the minds, in

our cultural context that it meant when Jesus was talking

about it. Because our tendency, the modern

tendency is to think of power like the force in the Star Wars

universe. But the Holy Spirit is not the

force. Now I love, I love Star Wars

universe. Well, I like the first 6-7

movies. The last three not so much.

But the Holy Spirit is not the Force.

The Force in those movies, the Jedi's control the Force and

they use it to do what they want to do.

The Sith as well, the Force is this, this big thing, this Force

that, that exists out in the universe that some people have

the talent and the ability to learn to use.

And they take hold of the Force and they control the Force and

they use the Force to do things that they want to do.

And, and, and they can do extraordinary things with the

Force, and some of those things are good and some of those

things are bad. But the whole notion is that the

Jedi use the Force to do the things that they see need to be

done in the world around them. That is not the kind of power

Jesus was talking about. Jesus was talking about a very

different kind of power. The Holy Spirit empowers us to

do what God wants. The Force let's Jedi do what

they want to do. It gives them the power to

accomplish what they want to accomplish.

And the Sith as well, the power to accomplish what they want to

accomplish. But the power that Jesus

promised us, the power that Jesus promised the church, is

the power to do what God wants, not what we want.

The Holy Spirit was not given to us so we could live our best

lives now. The Holy Spirit was not given to

us so that we could walk out into the world with our sense of

justice and self righteousness and make people behave the way

they ought to behave and make the world into what we think it

ought to be. The Holy Spirit was given to us

to accomplish God's purposes and God's plan in the world.

And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit empowers us to do.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to do what God wants us to do as

individuals and as a church. Let's take a look at Jesus the

all the things leading up to all the things, a few of the things

leading up to Pentecost here and this business of the Holy Spirit

empowering us to do what God wants to do.

Jesus all the way back on the day of resurrection started

talking to his disciples. And this isn't just the 12.

By the time of Pentecost, there were 120, both men and women

followers of Jesus, disciples gathered.

And when the Holy Spirit descended upon them, and there

on the day of resurrection, Jesus had gone to Emmaus.

Then he went back to Jerusalem, met with again men and women in

the upper room, his followers, his disciples, and was telling

them what God was going to do through them.

And this is what Jesus said there on the day of

resurrection. Repentance for forgiveness of

sins, Jesus says, will be proclaimed in his name.

He's talking about himself to all the nations beginning in

Jerusalem. So there in Jerusalem, Jesus

said, here's what's going to happen now.

Repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in

the name of Jesus. And my name, Jesus says

beginning in Jerusalem, it's going to be proclaimed to all

the nations few weeks after that on the day that Jesus ascended

into the heavens, Jesus once again, he's not in the

Jerusalem. They're out of Jerusalem now out

in the countryside and and the disciples are gathered around

him. And Jesus before he ascends into

the heaven says this, you will receive power when the Holy

Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in

Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth.

Now he adds in this point to spot to two locations between

that Judea and Samaria, but now to the ends of the earth,

starting in Jerusalem, going to all the nations, going to the

ends of the earth. This is what Jesus is telling

his disciples is going to happen through them.

Now remember who his disciples were.

His disciples were not highly educated people.

His disciples that that had learned lots of languages.

His disciples were not wealthy people who could afford to

travel to the ends of the earth. His disciples were not

respected, powerful people who would be able to enter other

countries and just start doing things that they were going to

be doing. His disciples were just regular

folks. These were working class folks

that had a limited education. The women almost certainly had

even less education than the men because of the way their culture

was constructed then. But Jesus is saying to these

hundred 120 people, I mean, that's not bad for, you know,

for I love 120 people in here on Sunday.

I think, man, that's a lot of folks.

But you know, 8 billion people in the world now, 100 and 20s

tiny fraction to the ends of the earth.

Now we don't hear that the Bible does not report these

conversations happening. But I, I have to believe the

disciples from that day of resurrection up to this point of

ascension, we're going how, how is this going to be possible?

They were aware of how big the world was not, I mean not

completely, they didn't know about what we now call North and

South America or Australia, but they were aware that the world

was a lot bigger than Jerusalem and Israel.

They lived at the crossroads of great civilizations.

People travel. That's why that area of land

kept getting conquered by 1 empire after another, because

that area of land was strategically important.

It was accessed between Asia and and Africa and Europe and

Africa, and they would have encountered people from all of

those different areas. They would have encountered

people from India, maybe people from China.

They would have encountered people from the great

civilizations of Africa like Egypt and Ethiopia.

They would have encountered people from Europe and Rome and

the Roman Empire. All of these folks traveling

through that area, they would have known, have this tremendous

number of different languages, different cultures, all of this

diversity that was out there, all of these places that wealthy

people traveled to. And it took them weeks and

months to get there. And they would have said how,

how can this happen? And then Pentecost, then the

Holy Spirit descends upon them and they are empowered and God

through the Holy Spirit helps them see that God can and will

empower them to do whatever God calls them to do.

Because right there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost,

Pentecost was a Jewish celebration before it was a

Christian celebration. And, and on that day there were,

there were Jewish folks from all over, different parts of the

world, different ethnicities, different languages, different

cultures, different backgrounds. We're gathering there in

Jerusalem. Right there on that day was a

sampling, a small sampling of all the nations of the ends of

the earth. Earth.

And right there these regular, ordinary folks experienced this

extraordinary thing. All of them, men, the women, the

young, the old, the educated, the uneducated, all of them were

filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues

as the Spirit enabled them. Now they were staying in

Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under the under

heaven, when the when they heard this sound, a crowd came

together in bewilderment because each one heard their own

language being spoken. So we hear about them speaking

different languages and each people hearing in a different

language. And so, so, yeah, you got to

imagine this crowd of folks. There's 120 disciples plus all

of these other folks here. The disciples filled with the

Holy Spirit are telling the good news of Jesus Christ.

And everyone there was in all of this chaos, hearing the gospel

in their own language, in their own ears.

And the disciples can say, if God can do this, we've got

nothing to worry about. Ends of the earth, other

languages. We've got the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit didn't empower them to go out and force other

people to convert to Christianity except Jesus or

die. The Holy Spirit didn't empower

them to, to, to build up their lives and their personal net

worths and and the Holy Spirit didn't empower them to establish

their own personal empires in one form or another.

The Holy Spirit wasn't there to help them become great.

The Holy Spirit empowered them to do the work that Jesus had

given them to do to fulfill the prophecy that Jesus made about

them. That is the power of the Holy

Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers us to

do what God wants us to do, not whatever we want to do.

Now, in all of that, it's important to remember that the

Holy Spirit does not empower everyone to do the same thing.

We're part of a body, right? And the hand doesn't do what the

heart does, and the heart doesn't do what the lungs do,

And the lungs don't do what the feet do.

And the feet don't do what the kidneys do, and the kidneys

don't do what the knees do. Each of us gets empowered by the

Holy Spirit to do what God calls each of us as individuals to do.

And we're going to come down back to this ordinary,

extraordinary example of Eric Little because I, I, I believe

he's a, a, a wonderful illustration of this, partly

because what he does is extraordinary.

And he explicitly tributes what he does to the power of God,

working in his life through the Holy Spirit that way.

It's extraordinary what he does. It's ordinary in the sense that

this promises for all of us as individuals.

It's like, you know, you're, you're, you've heard that

before. You're a unique individual.

And the history of the world, there has never been anyone

exactly like you. You are absolutely unique, just

like everyone else in the world. It's both extraordinary and

ordinary, and Eric Little is extraordinary and ordinary.

We're going to watch his race in the Olympics.

He trained ultimately in Olympics and qualified for the

100 meters. Watch the movie, you'll find out

why he didn't run the 100 meters.

He ended up not running the 100 meters.

Instead, he's running the 400 meters, trained for 100 meters,

running the 400 meters and we're going to see his race in the

Olympics. The, the medal, this is the

medal round. He's run 2 heats in this day and

age. And it wasn't like we'll come

back day after they, they had already run 2 heats that day.

And now he's running the third heat competing for the medals.

It's the medal round and, and we're going to watch that race.

You're going to hear Eric Little's voice in the background

as he's running and and he's saying things that he had said

earlier in the movie, but we're only getting part of it at this

point. And I'm going to fill those

things out. But let's watch the race. 400

meters. Don't expect the seats after the

race to deal with this guy. Little coach, your problem.

No problem. He's a flier.

He's had two races today already.

He'll die. Just swing along, you guys, and

wait. After 300 meters, rigor mortis

sets in. You'll pull him in on a rope.

Good luck. Watch out for a little coach.

There's no problem. He's got something to prove,

something personal, something guys like Coach will never

understand in the meeting use. Says in the old book, He that

honours me, I will honour good luck, Jackson shows.

So where does the power come from to see the race to its end

from within? Jenny, I believe God made me for

a purpose, but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his

pleasure. As he's thinking there and he's

running, we hear his voice echoes from earlier in the movie

where he's he's teaching and talking about God and and

comparing as Paul did the Christian life to a race.

And where does the power come from?

Here we just hear him say it comes from within.

Earlier in the movie. He says it comes clearly.

He says it explicitly. It comes from God within us,

from the Holy Spirit within us is where the power comes.

And there's a place where he's saying there that that I know

God made me for a purpose. The full statement, he was

talking to his sister. His sister thought he was

wasting his time that this running stuff, this sports

stuff, the rugby, it was all silly.

It was all distracting him from the real important work that he

needed to do as a missionary, A missionary to China.

And he eventually went back to China where he had a very

effective ministry for many years.

But he said, I know God made me for a purpose, God made me for

China, but God also made me fast.

And when I run, I feel his pleasure.

So my question for you is, what do you do that lets you feel

God's pleasure? Because it's going to be

different things for different folks.

For some, it might be sports, some kind of academics, maybe

it's teaching, maybe it's building things, maybe it's

growing things, maybe it's making things.

Who paint? Who knows?

Working with children, healing all of these different things.

But what is it that you do in your life?

And when you do that, you can say in your heart and your soul

and your bones, When I do this, I feel God's pleasure.

Do that. Whatever that is, do that.

Whatever else anyone thinks about it, do that.

That thing where you feel God's pleasure in your life because

that's the Holy Spirit, that's the power that God is giving you

to do a thing. And God brings that power to

you. And it's not easy.

You see him, he was exhausted at after that first race where he

has to come from behind and win. It cost him everything he could

to win that race, to run and to do this thing that he feels

God's pleasure. It cost him, but He did it, and

there's joy in that. And it's not going to be the

same for everyone. God has different callings and

gives different gifts to each of us according to His purpose in

our lives. But whatever, whatever that

thing is that you can do that gives you a sense of God's

pleasure, keep doing that thing. Now, there is that

individuality, but there's also this ordinariness part of it.

And there are some things that the Holy Spirit empowers all of

God's followers to, something that the Holy Spirit does in

everyone who is a follower of Jesus.

God calls us different people to do different things, but the

Holy Spirit will empower you to do whatever God calls you to do.

But there are common things also that the Holy Spirit will

empower and in produce in all who receive him.

Let's look at what Paul said in Galatians.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives.

Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

There is no law against these things.

This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that is for everyone, for

everyone. I think you can make a real

strong argument that when you see this in the life of anyone,

that's evidence of the Holy Spirit in that person's life.

Whatever specific individual thing, again, whether it's

sports or arts or construction or building or farming or

teaching or doctoring or nursing or driving, whatever it is,

whatever it is the specific thing that gives you that joy of

God in your life. The Holy Spirit allows us to do

that and empowers us to do that with love, with that joy, with

peace, with patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness and self-control. Those are the marks that that's

God working in us. That's what Eric was able to see

and experience and feel in his own life.

That's what he was pointing to when he said when I run, I feel

God's pleasure. When he ran, he felt that joy of

God working in him. And this is not easy and it

requires letting go of a lot of things too.

Paul says right after this, let's not be.

Let us not be conceited or provoke one another or be

jealous of one another. Conceit, pride, jealousy,

obvious marks of not the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of this

world, the spirit of the devil in our lives and that provoking

one another. My goodness, you spend 5 minutes

on the Internet and you find people trolling and that's their

what they've devoted their life to is provoking other people,

click baiting and rage baiting and all of the things that

happened online and in real life.

And I confess this was one of the things I used to love.

One of my greatest sources of pleasure as a young man was to

say things that shocked and offended people.

I would get such a kick out of it.

I would say all sorts of things. Believe you said that.

And then I found out later, Well, realized later, yeah, that

was not a good way to do things, Blevins.

Not a good way to do things. I've grown a little bit.

Little bit we're not here to provoke each other.

And since we're living by the Spirit, let us follow the

spirits leading in every part of our lives everywhere.

We can live by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit with

Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness,

self-control, all of these things.

I want to give you a personal example here as we wrap up.

I'm running late again. We'll have to wait for me over

at New Beginnings because I I, you know what?

Yeah. I'm going to tell this.

I just have to abbreviate it. One of the things Amy and I have

done in our lives was in the hardest things, probably the

hardest thing each of us has ever done is, is Amy's mom lived

with us for three years while she had Alzheimer's.

And then then the final year of her life, it was beyond our

capacity to care for her. And, and she was in an, an

assisted living center. And I'm going to tell you a

little bit about Phyllis, and Phyllis won't mind.

Phyllis is Amy's mom. She won't mind that.

I've told this. Phyllis was a too much

information kind of person. After 15 minutes of knowing

Phyllis, you would know things about her that only your doctor

knows about you. That's just who Phyllis was.

She was happy to share everything.

So on Phyllis's behalf, I'm going to share more than you

know. She'll be all right with us.

Phyllis was not an easy person to get along with in in, in her

good years before Alzheimer's kicked in.

She was tough. She was tough.

And there reached a point we were living not too far from her

after her second husband had passed and our interactions with

her and her with us and with our kids.

And there was a point where Amy and I, after one particular

conversation with her, looked at each other and said she will

never live with us. Whatever happens to her,

wherever she ends up going, she will never live with us.

And we meant it. She was tough.

And then we both also, we were just talking about this

yesterday, had a very clear memory of when we were having

conversation with her and we saw clearly and unequivocally the

evidence of the Alzheimer's. And we looked at each other and

said she needs to move in with us.

And, and we meant it. And it was hard.

It was hard. It was particularly hard on Amy

and, and, and the cleaning and the serving and the caring and

the arguing and the, if you've had to care for someone with

Alzheimer's, you know, is hard. And she stayed with us for three

years. Amy and I both working full

time. COVID was a blessing for us

because Amy's job went remote and she was able to be at home

full time as well as working full time.

And that helped us care. And I was home a lot more than

two helped us care for Phyllis. And it was it was not only the

hardest four years of our life, but also, and Amy will tell you

the exact same thing. We had this sense all the way

through of this is what God wants us to be doing.

This is exactly what God has called us to do right now.

And we felt through the struggle, through the challenge,

through the tears, we felt God's pleasure and we felt that joy.

And we saw God doing things to make it possible for us to care

for her. That we don't have time to tell

them to you all. I got a lot of stories.

There's some amazing ones of things we could never have

worked out on our own that just worked out all by the power of

the Holy Spirit so that we could do this thing that God was

calling us to do. And I can guarantee that gum to

you that our capacity to care for Phyllis was not our

willpower and our determination. It was a gift of the Holy

Spirit. And we got to give him all that

credit and all that glory because he deserves it, because

he called us to do that, to care for her.

She was his daughter. He knew she was tough, right?

I went to a couple times to monastery in New York for some

spiritual retreats, talking to one of the monks there, and I

was belly aching about something.

I can't remember what it was about how hard it was and how

much it hurt and how challenging and difficult it was.

And he just looked at me and said, yeah, I said, I wonder,

you think it was hard for Jesus to be crucified?

Was that uncomfortable for him? I was like, shut up.

It's hard. What God calls us to do is hard.

It is uncomfortable. It is at times extraordinarily

painful. But the Holy Spirit will always

empower us to do whatever God calls us to do, whatever that

is, and to do it with love and joy and peace and patience and

kindness and goodness. And also a lot of tears.

A lot of tears too, but that's the Spirit empowered life.

That's the Easter life filled with, empowered by the Holy

Spirit to do whatever God is calling us to do in Jesus name,

Amen. Amen.