Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted. Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Ephesians 4:30-5:2 Mssg
God’s Holy Spirit moving and breathing in me? How do I become aware of such a thing? How do I come to believe that the Holy Spirit is moving and breathing in me? Could the answer to those questions be in the paragraph about watching what God and then doing it – learning to imitate God as children learn proper behavior from their parents?
I would add to Paul’s analogy “and grandparents.” When our granddaughter Madison was with us week before last, she used some wrong grammar. She said something like, “Mommy and me went to the store.” Fleda said to her, “It would be Mommy and I.” I tried to explain that if you leave out the other person, you can get the correct pronoun. You would say, “I went to the store.” Not “Me went to the store.” So it is Mommy and I went to the store. Fleda who is Grammy to Madison encouraged her saying, “You will get it.” Last week Fleda talked to Madison on the phone and she said, “Mommy and I went swimming today. Did you hear that Grammy? I got it right.”
We are given an example of what it means to imitate God. “Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.” When you can forgive someone who has hurt you, you are imitating what God has done for us all.
I was talking with one of our members recently about our study of forgiveness on Wednesday nights. I had shown a brief report on the Amish story from Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. After a deranged man shot ten little girls in the head and killed five of them, the Amish community amazed the world by immediately going to his family to tell them that they did not hold a grudge against them and that they forgave the man who did the killing. As the church member and I talked, we agreed that forgiving someone whom you don’t know and don’t have to deal with anymore can be easier than forgiving someone in your family or in your church who hurts you.
When we think about how quick to forgive God has been, we stand amazed. His ability to forgive is downright startling. Last Wednesday night I asked the question, “When you think about Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who do you remember Jesus forgiving directly?” The first response was, “As he was being placed on the cross, he forgave those who were driving nails through his hands.”
Here is the amazing story. It gives us a clear image of forgiveness. We watch what God does in Jesus and then learn to do it ourselves. When the soldiers came to the place called "The Skull," they nailed Jesus to a cross. They also nailed the two criminals to crosses, one on each side of Jesus. Jesus said, "Father, forgive these people! They don't know what they're doing." While the crowd stood there watching Jesus, the soldiers gambled for his clothes. The leaders insulted him by saying, "He saved others. Now he should save himself, if he really is God's chosen Messiah!" The soldiers made fun of Jesus and brought him some wine. They said, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!" Above him was a sign that said, "This is the King of the Jews."
One of the criminals hanging there also insulted Jesus by saying, "Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and save us!" But the other criminal told the first one off, "Don't you fear God? Aren't you getting the same punishment as this man? We got what was coming to us, but he didn't do anything wrong." Then he said to Jesus, "Remember me when you come into power!"
Jesus replied, "I promise that today you will be with me in paradise."
Look what an awesome display of forgiveness Jesus makes. First the very people who nail him to the cross are the ones he forgives. They don’t appreciate what he has done. In fact, they throw dice to see who will get his clothes. They poke fun at him and respond to his forgiveness with nothing but contempt as they toast him with sour wine. One of the criminals joins in the mocking, but the other criminal shows openness to who Jesus really is and says to him, “Remember me when you come into power.” Jesus responds immediately to his openness and says, “Don’t worry. I will. Today you will join me in paradise.”
I think of the hymn we used to sing a lot in the church of my childhood: “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how he could love me, a sinner condemned unclean. How marvelous! How wonderful! And my song shall ever be, How marvelous! How wonderful is my savior’s love for me.”
How is it that God’s Holy Spirit can be breathing in you? It happens as you learn to be like God and forgive those who hurt you. Didn’t we pray it again this morning? “Forgive us for our sins, just as we have forgiven those who sinned against us.”
Who has sinned against you? Who do you need to forgive?
When you are dealing with somebody close to you, you have to let go of your desire to hit back,
to let go of thoughts of revenge
to release your anger.
It is like getting the poison out of your system instead of letting it continue to flow through your veins until, like snake venom, it kills you. Forgiveness is healing the hurt that you don’t deserve. You may have convinced yourself that you have some control over the one who has offended you if you don’t forgive and just keep on holding the grudge, keep on thinking about what a terrible thing she has done. You have to give up your desire to have control and give control over to God. It is not easy. That is why you need the Holy Spirit breathing in you, giving you the energy it takes to do what God does.
Here is one implication I see in this passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians: When you let the Holy Spirit move and breathe in you, God loves it. When you don’t, you grieve the Holy Spirit. Or to put it another way, God feels sad when you don’t let the Holy Spirit work through you as you imitate God, learn from God, and let God’s love flow through you.
So how do we make the Spirit happy? How do we not grieve the Holy Spirit? Look at the things we are called on to do in this part of the letter. We are to recognize that we are a community and celebrate our love for each other. There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. I don’t stand alone. You don’t’ stand alone. We need each other. Look at the things we are asked to do for each other.
· Tell your neighbor the truth. Why? Because “in Christ's body we're all connected to each other. . .. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.
· Don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don't stay angry. Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.
· Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work.
· Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth, but say what people need, words that will help others to become stronger.
· Never shout angrily or say things to hurt others. Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ.
Look at that list. What is it all about? What is the reason
for telling the truth,
for not staying angry,
for helping those who can’t work,
for watching the way you talk and saying only words that will build people up,
for being kind and loving to each other?
It is all for the sake of building up the church. It is all for the sake of staying connected to each other in Christ’s body.
What the church is about is learning to love the way God loves us. Here is the way Paul says it.
“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.”
That is why we are here in this church. That is why you and I are here in this world. We are learning to love like God loves: not cautious but extravagant, not in order to get something for himself from us. Christ loved us in order to give everything of himself to us. That is the way we are learning to love.
Greg Baer writes, “This era in which we live has been called the Information Age, and certainly we are swimming in knowledge. Surrounded by computers, books, telephones, satellites, faxes, and television, we can learn almost anything while sitting in the comfort of our homes. In an instant, we can see the latest transactions of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, learn how to cure a myriad of diseases, or track the current migration of humpback whales.
But with this ocean of knowledge, are we genuinely happier? Ten to twenty percent of us are addicted to alcohol or drugs. We greedily pursue the pleasures of money, power, and sex. More than half our marriages end in divorce. Staggering numbers of our children feel unloved and alone. Clearly, something is missing.
Greg Baer is a counselor who has talked to many people about their need for unconditional love. One of these people was Matt, sixteen years old. He was a bright child whose behavior was utterly baffling his parents and teachers. He was rebellious and angry. He acted out in many ways that were socially unacceptable. He was often withdrawn and moody.
He spoke with Matt and was impressed with his intellectual tools and skills. He’d read a great deal and surfed the Net to acquire a broad scope of knowledge about many things. After a short time together, Greg took his face in my hands and asked him a question: “Who loves you without any conditions? Who accepts you completely no matter what mistakes you make? Who cares that you’re happy?”
This child dissolved in tears. No one had ever shown him that kind of concern. Instead they expected things from him, pushed him, and were disappointed in him when he made mistakes. Despite his wealth of knowledge, he didn’t feel loved and certainly didn’t know how to love others. He was a frightened and lost little boy who was acting out only to gain some feeling of power and place in the world.
Children and adults sit in front of their computers and televisions for staggering numbers of hours in a day. Exposure to all that information and entertainment, however, is worthless if we’re not happy, which comes from feeling loved and from loving each other.
Information itself isn’t bad, but we get distracted by it. The more we know, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we’re accomplishing something when we’re not really going anywhere that matters. Without receiving and giving unconditional love like God, the world is a dark place, no matter how much information we have.
I’ve stood at the bedside of many people as they approached the end of their lives. I don’t recall a single one of them wishing they’d spent more time on the Internet, or made more money. The only thing that matters to them is the people who love them and the people they love.
Our children and grandchildren, more that anything else, need our love. The time and acceptance we give them are much more important than computers and job skills. No amount of knowledge and power will give us the joy and peace God wants for us if we’re not loved and don’t know how to love others.
God is offering us the opportunity right here at New Hope, right within your life and mine to begin the process of finding love and learning how to share it with others. Then we can know that Holy Spirit breathing in us.
