Sermon: How the Spirit opens (and closes) way (May 26, 2019)

Easter 6C

May 26, 2019

Acts 16:9-15, John 14:23-29

INTRODUCTION

         We’re a couple weeks away yet from the Day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to form the Church. But today in our readings from Acts and John, we get a little sneak peek at the work of the Holy Spirit. In John, we are once again just before Jesus’ death, hearing a part of what’s called the priestly prayer, in which he promises that in his absence, he will send “the Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, a new way for God to be present among them. In Acts, we see that Spirit in action, see the ways it drives the formation of the early church.

I’ll be preaching mostly on Acts this morning, so let me give you a little set-up for this story. It can be a bit difficult to follow with all the unfamiliar names of cities, so hopefully this will help. Paul, Silas, and Timothy are going about the region planting churches, and, with God’s help, converting people. They are trying to decide where to go next, and the Spirit keeps giving them messages about where not to go. They are forbidden to go to Asia, and then also not allowed to go to Bithynia. So they hang out in Troas for a while, where Paul receives the vision we will hear about in our reading, which will then direct them through a number of locations, to exactly the right place to be.

There is a lot of uncertainty in these texts, about what God has in mind and where God is leading people. So as you listen, remember a time when you felt uncertain about where God was leading you, when you were listening for the Spirit to give you some clear instructions, and how you may have received that message. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         I am a planner. I’m that traveler who makes a list of everything we need to bring and in which bag it will be packed, the one who likes to be sure we have a hotel reservation well in advance, a rental car to suit our needs, and an itinerary for each day so that I can be sure I bring the right clothes. I am a planner.

         My husband… is not. He is a fly-by-the-seat of his pants type, who feels stressed and stifled by too many plans or lists. He simply trusts everything will work out. We love to travel together, but have had to meet in the middle on this: we set the bones of a trip in place, and schedule certain days to be “unscheduled,” so that I know when to mentally prepare myself to be flexible. It is not ideal for either of us, but we make it work.

         How many of you would identify as a planner, like me? … How many are more like my husband, preferring to wait and see what happens and not make too many plans up front? … So those of you who are planners can imagine, when I read this story from Acts, I feel a bit of stress. The few verses before our reading describe all the ways Paul and Silas’s plans, thoughtful and faithful as they may have been, have been blocked, and then even when Paul does get a great big vision that makes clear where they are to go next, it doesn’t even turn out like they expect. The vision was of a single man, begging them to come to Macedonia, but what they find there is instead a group of women, and in particular, Lydia, who would become the first European convert to Christianity, and helped to establish the first church in Europe. Pretty important!

It’s really a beautiful story about listening to the movement of the Spirit, of trusting the direction the wind is blowing, trusting enough to “go with the blow,” as it were. But I hear this story, and I think of all the times I have been pretty sure about where I should go next in life, about how my life plan would roll out, and the ways that plan got upset, “recalculated,” and redirected. I do not experience feelings of faith and gratitude when I hear this story, remembering all the ways God led me right where I needed to be. No, I hear this story, and I feel anxious.

I wish I didn’t. I wish that the possibility of trust-falling into the blowing wind of the Spirit gave me a thrill and filled me with hope and a sense of possibility. But the truth is, I would rather be the one making the plans, not letting the sometimes elusive, often frustrating, always surprising Holy Spirit call the shots! I do not like letting go of my sense of control. I would rather do what I think I should do. (Can anyone relate??)

Maybe it would be easier to trust if I just got a strong vision like Paul did. I don’t typically feel the Spirit tapping me on the shoulder saying, “No not that, Johanna. This instead” – at least, not in a way that I notice it! I remember when I was discerning whether to leave a call I loved and take this call to serve as your pastor, I talked to a trusted colleague about it. I asked her, “How do you know when it is time to leave one call and go to another?” She said, “Every time I’ve done that, it was made crystal clear to me, so that even if I didn’t really want to leave, I knew it was the right decision.” *sigh* I suppose it was helpful, but I found myself lamenting, “Ah! Why don’t I ever get clear messages like that??”

Parker Palmer is a Quaker and a spiritual writer. In his book, Let YourLife Speak, he reflects on a time in his mid-30s when he was searching to find his vocation, his particular calling and place in life. He was seeking to live by the Quaker teaching to, “Have faith, and way will open.” His response to that was, “I have faith. What I don’t have is time to wait for ‘way’ to open… The only way that has opened so far is the wrong way!” Oh boy, have I been there! Faithful discernment takes too long, I think. It’s too much work. I’ve tried before and it yielded nothing. All I’ve seen is a whole lot of the wrong direction.

Palmer sought help from a Quaker elder. He writes, “After a few months of deepening frustration, I took my troubles to an older Quaker woman well-known for her thoughtfulness and candor. ‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘people keep telling me that ‘way will open.’ Well, I sit in silence, I pray, I listen for my calling, but way is not opening. I’ve been trying to find my vocation for a long time, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m meant to do. Way may open for other people, but it’s sure not opening for me.’” Ruth thought a moment, then replied, “In 60+ years of living, way has never opened in front of me.” She paused, then spoke again, this time with a grin: “But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.” Palmer later reflected, “There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does—maybe more.”

Indeed, sometimes way needs to close to show us where the Spirit is truly leading us – just like it did for Paul and Silas, whose plans kept getting blocked by the Holy Spirit. But it can be so frustrating and discouraging, can’t it, to have hopeful way after carefully planned way closed in front of you, especially when the way you would have chosen seems like such a good and faithful one, like Paul’s. How easy it is, when confronted with a door in your face, to turn around, give up, and wallow in your lack of possibility and dashed hopes. Or perhaps we resort to pounding on those closed doors, throwing our troubled hearts into each frustrated swing, wishing we could have back a thing we have lost. Though we may be able to see in hindsight what the Spirit was doing by closing that way to us, in the moment, it is indeed troubling.

Jesus knows that. He, too, has felt troubled. Just a couple chapters before today’s Gospel reading, he says to the disciples, “Now my soul is deeply troubled.” That’s one of the cool things about our faith, that we trust that our God totally gets what it’s like to be human because God was a human himself. God knows our troubles. And so when Jesus offers his troubled disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” we know that this comes from a place of compassion and empathy. Even as he utters those reassuring words, he knows that the Spirit is leading him, imminently, to a place where he does not wish to go, but knows he must.

But when Jesus gets to that place, to the ultimate closed door – the door of the tomb, shutting him into death, he goes on to show us that a closed way is never the end of the story, no matter how much it may feel like it. No, when Jesus encountered that ultimate closed way, he showed us that with every ending is a beginning. With every “no” in your face comes a “yes” somewhere down the road. Every time something important feels like it has died – a hope, a dream, an expectation, a cherished perspective – we discover that this is only one guiding step along the way toward inevitable life.

Because that, ultimately is the promise of Easter, the promise we live into during this season and during every season of faith and life: that God understands our troubled hearts and cares deeply about them, so deeply that God would come to be one of us to understand our plight, and assure us of the peace, comfort, and guidance of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit; the promise that this same Spirit will “open way” to us by many and various ways, whether a series of “yeses” or a series of “nos,” and that this way that opens will be a way toward life, a life we may never have otherwise imagined. With trust in that promise, we can take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples on the night of his own betrayal: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Let us pray… Guiding Spirit, help us to trust that sometimes what feels like a closed door or an ending, is just a means to guide us down the path you intend for us, and for your will to come about. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.