Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

June 15, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

First of all I want to thank you for inviting me to preach here this morning at my old home church, my parents’ church to this day. It is a real joy for me to be here. I bring you greetings from the Pacific Northwest Conference and from Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ, the wonderful little church that I have the great honor to serve as pastor. I bring you special greetings from Ms. Betty Stewart, who used to be a member here and is now a much loved member of our church in Monroe.

I think it is either a lucky coincidence or proof of Divine Providence that the lectionary readings for today include John 3:1-17 and specifically John 3:8, the lines about the moving of the Holy Spirit. You see, but for the moving of the Holy Spirit in my life, I wouldn’t be here. Listen to those lines again:

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. John 3:8

Now, John’s Jesus probably meant those lines to be as confusing as they are-at least they’ve always been confusing to me. It’s worse in Greek. The words given here as "wind" and as "the Spirit" are the same word in Greek-pneuma. Pity poor old Nicodemus.

And yet, I think I’ve figured out that these lines mean at least this much: When you are born of the Spirit, that is, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and lifts you up, it’s like a mighty wind. You know it’s hit you, but it hits you out of nowhere. You don't know where it came from and even more than that, you don’t know where it’s going, where it’s going to take you. I can tell you this: It’s going to take you someplace new, someplace unknown, someplace unexpected. Let me tell you a story:

There was a man who was considered a success in the eyes of the world, for he was a lawyer. He had many possessions. Some considered him wise, for he had many letters after his name. He was a leader in his church, and he tried as best he could to live a decent life according to the teachings of his faith. And yet as time went by he began to realize that his success was all dust and ashes.

For you see, one day the Spirit of the Lord began to blow on him. At first it was a gentle breeze, barely whispering to him: "You are not meant for all this. Give up the things of the law and come, follow me." But he held firm to his old ways resisting the wind; and he said to the Spirit: "I cannot leave all this and follow you, for I am advanced in years, and I have many responsibilities."

But the Spirit of the Lord kept blowing. It increased to gale force and yelled into his ear: "You are not meant for this life. Come, follow me." And the man held onto his old ways even tighter, and he said: "Where do you come from, and where are you trying to take me? I told you, I cannot leave all this and follow you."

And the Spirit of the Lord kept blowing. It increased to hurricane force. As the man kept trying to resist it, he found that resisting it took all of his energies, and he could not keep up with those precious responsibilities of his. He became exhausted and sorely depressed. He wanted to let go and follow the Spirit, but he did not have the courage.

And then the Spirit of the Lord blew on him so hard that he had to admit at last that he had no choice. He could not resist any longer. He had to let go or die trying to resist. And so he let go. He didn’t know where the Spirit would blow him, but he let go. And it blew him into seminary, and then it blew him into the pulpit of a small local church. And in the letting go, and in the going where the Spirit took him, he found newness of life. He found the strength to survive the death of his beloved wife from cancer. And despite his grief over her death, he found in his new life in ministry a peace and a joy he had never known before.

That, obviously I suppose, is my story. Most of you don’t know me, but I can assure you that the fact that I am standing up here as an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ is proof either that the Holy Spirit is real or that I’m nuts. Which it is I’ll leave for you to judge. Either way, the fact remains that for most of my 56 years on this planet anyone who knew me, including myself, would have told you that the odds of this happening were zero. Forty years ago, as I sat out there trying, in my adolescent ignorance of the things of the Spirit, to figure out what in heaven’s name Wesley Nicholson [the pastor of Eugene First Congregational for many, many years, including the years of my youth and adolescence] was talking about, it never once occurred to me that some day I might become a professional minister. And yet here I am, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, preaching to you just as though it made some kind of earthly sense for me to be doing so.

Trust me, it doesn’t. But that’s the way it is with matters of the Holy Spirit. Not everyone’s experience of the Holy Spirit is as tumultuous as mine. That’s because not everyone resists as hard as I did. Still, I think my story illustrates how it is when the Spirit of the Lord blows into our lives; and it’s just like Jesus told Nicodemus it is.

You don’t know where it’s coming from. You hear it. You know something’s happening. A voice starts telling you to change, to start over, or at least to start doing something you haven’t been doing before, something that, if you do it, will make you a truer disciple of Jesus Christ. It’s not the same for everyone. For me it was: Leave the law, go to seminary, and enter ordained ministry; but it doesn’t have to be anything that drastic. Each of us needs to listen for where the Spirit is calling us individually.

You don’t know where that voice is coming from, and you don’t know where it will take you. When I started seminary some six years ago, I wasn’t at all sure that my call was to parish ministry. I thought I wanted it to be in something much more scholarly, more academic, more concerned with the lofty affairs of the mind than with the mundane things of people’s everyday lives. The Spirit had other ideas. The Spirit knew me better than I knew myself.

No, you don’t know where the Spirit will lead you when you answer its call. And that not knowing is a key part of the experience. If you think the Spirit is blowing you somewhere where you’ve always wanted to go, think again. If you truly listen to the blowing of the Spirit, you’re going to wind up somewhere else.

And that is very good thing, because when you let yourself be blown where the Spirit wants you to be, what you find there is newness of life. Life in the Spirit is truly new life. That’s what Jesus meant when he told Nicodemus that he must be "born from above," the Greek original of which can also mean "born anew" and which traditional English translations render as "born again." Life in the Spirit is new life, it is a new birth. It is a chance to start over, a chance to be the person God intends you to be.

Life in the wind of the Spirit can be a bumpy ride. It can get pretty scary. It can disrupt a lot of things in your life. Still, I highly recommend it. If you open yourself to the blowing of the Spirit, it will blow you to newness of life. It’s blowing on us all. Quiet now. Listen. Can you hear it?