Filled with the Spirit

 I stayed up half of last night trying to find a good quote from Marcel Marceau, all I could find was...

(Miming being in a box, having a happy face and swipe my hand turning it into a sad face, struggling with the wind)

How much of communication is expressed nonverbally? We usually react to the body language about how a person is feeling more than their words, right? 

As we are starting school in a couple weeks, there is the story of a young girl starting 3rd grade and her teacher just wouldn't smile. She tried a lot of things to get her to smile week after week. Finally before Thanksgiving she left her teacher a note, "Dear Mrs. Smith, if you like your job and us, as your students, would you please tell your face?"

We have talked a little bit about the start of the church in the first century. How the early followers of Jesus still considered themselves Jewish and the communities didn't split up until 70 AD and for those early churches, especially outside of Jerusalem and Israel, they had people from many different backgrounds, cultures, and languages. The letter of Ephesians, whether written by Paul when he was in Rome or by one of his followers maybe 30 years later when the church was fully on its own, was beginning to form ways of being a community, worshipping, and living a Christ-lead life. Sometimes they got it right and sometimes they got it wrong, however they continued to be a church, learning and growing in the Spirit.

There is much that they don't have figured out in the early church, but they kept growing in spite of all the obstacles, inside and outside, the church. We mentioned the wide diversity of the early church, and very, very few were white European men among them to be very frank. It is part of the common lore of early Christianity that Paul was killed in Rome because he was seen as a threat to the established order, as were ten of the twelve disciples. I believe I have mentioned this before in other sermons, that Christians were the 'immigrants' of the first three centuries. It was common to persecute them and talk about them disparagingly. If anything went wrong, like a storm, an earthquake, an invasion, drought, or disease, Christians were routinely blamed because they weren't worshipping the right gods or lifting up Caesar as their 'god'. And yet, and yet, Christianity grew in numbers and influence so much so that Constantine saw, in the fourth century, Christianity as the only thing he believed that could save the Roman Empire. Because no matter they were, no matter where they were on life's journey, no matter Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, they were welcome. Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen!!

So here we had this rag-tag bunch of misfits who believed in a God of love. Who believed that Jesus came to give them liberation, liberation from the worldly and heavenly forces that would keep them chained up and oppressed. In these beginning decades of formation, they didn't have the creeds and the Bible, they had stories, they had hope, and they were often filled with the Spirit. Not always, sometimes they were filled with wine or ignorance. The Spirit flowed, not just in their thinking or their beliefs, not just in their hymns, psalms, and singing, but in their actions and in their bodies. We know that they didn't sit in pews when they worshipped, that is a fact. They met in homes, out in the wilderness, and even tunnels and catacombs, like the slaves in America, sneaking out to feel and embody the full Spirit of worship and God, not just the sterility of their masters churches. Always giving thanks. 

Again, I mention Brene Brown, researcher and author, who concludes we cannot build ourselves a wall that will keep us from being hurt emotionally and mentally, and I would also add spiritually and physically, but we can build up resilience. The best way to build up resilience to the crap that is thrown at us and the crap that happens, is to give thanks. 

There is much we don't have figured out today, the world and church that I grew up in the 70's and 80's is a different paradigm that the world we live in today, much less the 40's, 50's, and 60's. However, the Spirit is still with us, the same Spirit that guided and lead the early church. Jesus is still with us, with stories of standing up for the oppressed and healing communities and inviting all to create a better world. And God, God the Creator, the Lover, the Sustainer, the Eternal, the Still Small Voice, who knows and loves us all, is still with us. And if God is with us, and more importantly, if we are with God, then, then, then, if you're filled with the Spirit, shout "Amen!" If you're filled with the Spirit, shout "Amen!" If you're filled with the Spirit, then your neighbors better hear it! If you're filled with the Spirit, shout "Amen!"