“Ministers – The Whole Congregation”

        This used to bother me, because it seemed that Paul was setting up a kind of elite group of Christians who all spoke in tongues and know something about the faith that the rest of us don’t. I wondered if I was missing something important because I didn’t seem to have received this gift Paul talks about. Maybe I was only baptized with the baptism of John. But from what I have read about this exchange between Paul and the people of Ephesus I decided that Paul was simply introducing them to a deeper level of faith –this lead them to the gift of tongues, but might just as well have led them to different gifts. What it really gave them was mature faith, and this meant they now recognized the power of God that was with them.

        This power is with us. It has been with creation since the beginning. In Genesis, the early Hebrew Priests conceived of the power of God’s Spirit moving across the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation. This wind, this Ruach, this Spirit, this power of God is still blowing. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells Nicodemus that “the wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes form or where it is going.”  In Psalm 29, from the lectionary for today, the Psalmist (maybe King David) tells of this power and spirit. “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; …the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness…the voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in God’s temple all say, ‘Glory!’”

        Power. I want to tap into that power. This is power that Isaiah says will “bring justice to the nations…open the eyes of the blind…to set free those who sit in dark prisons. Isaiah says the chosen people will have this power, this “Mispah”, which means justice and truth. This is the true way of life. Jesus claimed this power when he was baptized. He became the wind…or at least the wind blew through him. This wind he passed on to the disciples and all his followers. They in turn passed it on to the next generation as Paul did for the people of Ephesus, and the wind blew through the Roman Empire and transformed the world. And it is still blowing, pulling at our lapels and stirring our clothes, pushing us and leading us.

        So who gets this power? I believe it is available to each person, perhaps each creature of God’s creation. If it is blowing, and if we are children of this creation, then we can tap into it. It’s not just for me because I wear this stole and have sought to be an instrument of this wind. It is not just for those who are baptized and are actively trying to fly kites up and catch it. It is for everyone. Or perhaps I should say that it is already part of everyone and we are part of it. It is available to us. Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Reformation, when he felt weak and overwhelmed by the evil and suffering of the world would remind himself, “I am baptized!” I think it was his way of tapping back into that Spirit, putting up a sail to catch the wind. But we all need to do it. Wasn’t it Luther who taught “the Priesthood of all believers”? The early Protestants firmly believed that all Christians are Priests, all called to ministry, all equally called to serve God. Not just the clergy, monks and nuns, but all. I would expand that to all people, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Agnostic, you name it…the power of God is pulling on us all and leading us toward justice and love.

        Kahil Gibran says, “for in truth it is life that gives to life. While you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness”. Indeed, it is the wind that does the work and our job is to put up our sails. Doing this means giving up our sense of control over things. We humans like to be in control, to feel that we are doing things. But there is an element of surrender in tapping into the power of God. We have to get our selves out of the way, our desire to control and take credit. This is the symbolism of baptism, to surrender to the water and to death of our ego and come up out of the water to new life.

        Dr. Rachel Remen in My Grandfather’s Blessings, tells of a man who had cancer and struggled to keep control of his life. He saw taking his cancer medications as surrendering to the authority of the cancer. He saw cancer as a black hole trying to suck him down. It took all his strength to resist the pull. But when Dr. Remen convinced him to surrender and imagine himself letting go and being drawn into the hole, in it’s darkness he found profound healing. Another cancer survivor heard this story and was healed by it. She had survived cancer but found it left hole in her life. She was not healed spiritually. For years she had not bought a really good pair of shoes, the kind that if she died might not get worn out. She made vacation plans with her family, but did not buy clothes for the trip until right before they left to make sure she would actually get to wear them. She had this hole of grief and fear tugging at her. But when she heard the story of the man she let go, and let herself sink into that hole of fear and sadness and she too found healing in surrender. She wrote Dr. Remen months later, and she was wearing expensive shoes.

        Letting go is hard. Surrender is unnatural to the human ego. But there is tremendous power for healing, courage and peace are available to us if we can get ourselves out of the way and open ourselves to the power of God’s Spirit. There’s no telling what we are capable of with this power. I try to surrender my sermons to God, my fears, my worries about the future or my children, the seemingly sorry state of the world. Maybe this is the distinction between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus. When we are ready to submit to God’s control, to surrender, then we are putting up our sails and catching the wind.