Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In my E-Mail last week was the story of a group of students who were studying the Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World. The teacher asked them to write down what they thought the seven wonders of the modern world might be. There were a lot of suggestions. These got the most votes: the pyramids of Egypt (They were on the ancient list.), the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, the Panama Canal, St. Peter's Basilica and the Great Wall of China. One young girl in the class seemed to be struggling with the assignment, and didn't pass her paper in when the time came. "Having trouble with your list," the teacher asked? "Yes. I can't make up my mind. There are so many." "Well tell us what you have, and maybe we can help." The girl hesitated, then looked down and read, "I think the seven wonders of the world are: to touch, to taste, to see, to hear. She paused a second and then added to feel, the laugh and to love." I would have my own list of "wonders:" It would include Creation, God's love, Christ's death, the power of the Holy Spirit, baptism, Holy Communion. These things are full of wonder (wonder-full).

Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Booths, which commemorated the forty years of the Hebrew children's wandering in the wilderness -- forty years between slavery in Egypt and freedom (but also responsibility) in the Promised Land -- during which forty years, of course, God miraculously took care of his people. The Feast of Booths lasted seven days, and once each day, priests from the Temple would carry a golden bowl of water from the Pool of Siloam, in the fissure of a great rock, back to the Temple - to remind the Jews how, in the wilderness, God had provided water from a rock for them to drink. So here is Jesus, attending this traditional Feast, in which water is a major symbol, standing up and saying, "Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart (not out of a rock) shall flow rivers of living water.'" And John, the writer, clues us in: "Now Jesus said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive…."

Life is dangerously deceptive. Everything in us wants to fixate on life's material wonders (the pyramids, the Great Wall, a new house, the latest computer gadget.), and most of the time we neglect the more amazing but less spectacular wonders: the simple things (touching, seeing, loving), and we almost always ignore the great "mysterious" wonders: the things of God: his love, his forgiveness, his ability to make men and women new, and to do it over and over again, what Paul called "the immeasurable riches of Christ." Life is dangerously deceptive. We understand easily our need for physical water. (If we don't have it, our bodies get thirsty, even die.) But we think very little about the water of life, without which our souls thirst and just as surely die.

Another way of saying this is that we ignore the spiritual part of life and of us. That part, like the other, has needs. Our spirits get hungry and thirsty and need the bread of heaven and the water of life. Without this special nourishment, Jesus knew and the Bible says, men's spirits wither and die. Yet "the world is too much with us," as the poet said. "Getting and spending we lay waste our powers." Isaiah asked the haunting question centuries before Jesus: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" Jesus asked the same question another way, "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" There is more to this world than meets the eye - and the important things do not meet the eye. They are the things of the Spirit. And that's what Pentecost is all about.

Eleven ordinary men whose lives were wrenched out of their usual grooves by the power of God's Spirit, and who changed the world.

If John is right that when Jesus said, "Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water," he was speaking of the Holy Spirit, we can see that the Holy Spirit is a pass-through. We receive the Spirit from God, which is a great blessing and a comfort, but (if we have really received it) it then flows out of us like a river. Just as God's love comes to us and passes through us to others, so the Spirit flows into us and flows out again. We aren't just receptacles of the Holy Spirit, we are conveyors of it. One young man was carousing in a tavern with his buddies when they suggested a drinking contest, where the losers would pay for the drinks of those who drank the most. And, for some reason, at that strange moment, the young man suddenly realized how utterly meaningless and empty his life was. He refused to join their game, but went home instead and knelt in prayer. God told him that if his life was to have meaning, he could not be everyone's friend, nor would he have many friends. He accepted that honest sentence and began preaching and teaching a simple, unadorned gospel in the streets of London. He was George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, the Quakers. God's spirit flowed into George Fox and out again. And that's the way it always is.

		I'll shout it from the mountain top;
		I want the world to know;
		The Lord of love has come to me,
		I want to pass it on.
		

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the Church. When, two thousand years ago, the Holy Spirit alighted on those pitiful disciples, hiding in Jerusalem, the Church was born. (Even now, when the Spirit of God is in a church that church lives, and prospers, and serves God.) Today we receive confirmands into church membership. What shall we say to them? Seek and take hold of the Spirit of God, for the church is the Spirit and nothing more. Just as our physical journeys are sometimes difficult, our faith journeys are also full of unexpected bumps and detours. Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." It is the power of God's Spirit, all along the way, that enables us to make the journey and arrive safely at the gates of the city. You can't prepare yourselves for everything eventuality, but you can cling to the Spirit of God. You can do that through worship, and prayer, and Bible reading, and by seeking to serve him by serving others. Material things are fine, but they do not satisfy. The pyramids of Egypt are wonders, but they pale in comparison to the wonders of God. .