Now I want you to know that if you are led by God’s Spirit, you will say that Jesus is Lord. That is the good news I’ve been privileged to share with those who begin exploring the possibility of becoming Christians. In the Inquiry sessions of the Catechumenate, I tell the seekers that the very fact they have found the courage or the need to seek greater understanding of Christianity is a sign that the Holy Spirit is working in their lives. It is no accident, and certainly no power of their own, that brings them to this point of seeking. It is all the work of the Spirit. This is good news for seekers because it steers them away from thinking that becoming Christians is a matter of getting themselves saved by the effort to do the right thing. To speak of the Spirit working in them, drawing them to the Church, tells them that God is already seeking a relationship with them.
Now I want you to know that if you are led by God’s Spirit, you will say that Jesus is Lord. Seekers are not drawn to a private faith, but a public one. The you in Paul’s sentence is plural, speaking of many. The best proof of the resurrection of Christ and of God is the continuing existence of the Church on earth. Oh, I know, the church faces many internal squabbles and moral failures, and has faced such scandals over all of its life. Such things are hardly unique, say, to the Catholic Church, currently enduring the shame of failed priests. The Lutheran Church and other churches have deep problems, too. We all need to pray for the Church, daily. Yet no matter what shocking things happen, we may have complete confidence that the Church will continue on earth until the end of time. It’s like the headline in Bee a week go, referring to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in the aftermath of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation there: "Despite debris, church intact." This is the truth for all the Church, ours included, "Despite debris, church intact." This miracle of persistence is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now I want you to know that if you are led by God’s Spirit, you will say that Jesus is Lord. To say that Jesus is Lord is to say that first and foremost our allegiance is to him, and no other. No authority or power on earth shall ever have ultimate rule over us. Jesus is Lord, the nation is not. More personally, Jesus is Lord, and you and I are not! Whatever Jesus Christ wants of us, that is what we are here to do, be, and become. Jesus is Lord, but Jesus is a Lord who serves, and asks his people to follow him in service to others.
Thus St. Paul spoke about the fact that in the church, the body of Christ, there are many different spiritual gifts and many ways of serving. His point was that there is no one way that is the way. Just as in a body it takes all the parts working together to stay healthy and vital, so in the church. No one kind of service is better than all the others.
This is a powerful and liberating teaching! Yet, if our gifts are not the flashy, more public ones, we may begin to feel like second class citizens in the church. I’m sure you must have heard and perhaps even know for yourself that many people are more terrified of public speaking than they are dying! There may be many reasons for that, but in the church it is clear that God gives some the gift for public speaking. I happen to be one with that gift and the bigger the crowd, the more I feel energized publicly proclaiming the gospel. But the church is not all mouth! The more visible public gifts would be nothing without all the other parts. It takes all the parts of the body of Christ working together. And this, too, is the work of the Holy Spirit. To say that Jesus is Lord is to say that we are called to humbly serve, for no matter what our gifts, each is needed for the building up of the church on earth.
At the final Catechumenate retreat a couple of weeks ago, the participants completed a spiritual gifts inventory. The Holy Spirit made it a wonderful experience. One long time member of the church, on the retreat as a sponsor, discovered that what she’d been doing in the church for years and years and thought it was only just something she could do because she didn’t have talents for anything else, now saw with great delight that all along she’d been using the very gifts the Spirit had given her to do! New members’ faces lit up as they saw how their gifts and talents were in fact shaped in them by God and clearly needed in the church—in our congregation! The Holy Spirit gives us this joyous vision of our gifts for the church and our purpose in life.
To begin to see ourselves as God sees us makes all the difference in the world. A piece of crystal glass, for example, does not look like much until you hang it in a south facing window—and then, when the sun shines on it, the crystal comes alive with light, and refracts rainbow colors around the room. Long, long ago St. Basil saw in that effect of light on glass a sign of how it is with us and the Spirit. He suggested that we remain just ordinarily human until the Holy Spirit shines on us with the divine light, and then it is possible to catch something of the beauty of Christ in us. We are no longer just people muddling through life. Now we are God’s people, parts of the body of Christ. "The life of a saint," wrote Kate Tristram, "is not the life of a great man or woman, but God’s life in an ordinary man or woman." [page 92, Celtic Daily Prayer]
Now I want you to know that if you are led by God’s Spirit, you will say that Jesus is Lord. God’s life in us: this is the work of the Spirit given and expressed at Baptism: We have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. This is our Blessed Assurance: His life in our life, "despite debris, Church intact," as the Holy Spirit makes us able and happy to say, Jesus is Lord. Amen.