Time with the children
I have an origami paper sailboat with me today. I’ll put it here in the font. The font has water in it so the boat can float. The church is sometimes pictured as a boat—all of God’s people sailing together with Jesus, through life’s storms.
But let’s look at this sailboat in the font. Is it moving? No. What if I blow on it? Look what happens! What does a sail boat need? Wind. If a sailboat has no wind, it can’t go anywhere. But when the sail catches the wind, the wind pushes the boat forwards.
In today’s Gospel reading we hear that when Jesus was baptised, God the Father opened the heavens and sent the Holy Spirit down to Jesus: “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove” (Mark 1:10).
The Holy Spirit led Jesus and gave him strength to do what God wanted him to do—to overcome the devil and to preach salvation to the people. We could think of the Holy Spirit like the wind powering a sailboat. Jesus did what his Father wanted, powered by the Holy Spirit.
The bible says that by ourselves we can’t live the life that God has for us. By ourselves we are like this paper boat that hasn’t even got the power to cross from one side of the font to the other. Without the Holy Spirit giving us power, we cannot follow Jesus and do God’s will.
But just as the Holy Spirit came to Jesus at his baptism, we have received the Holy Spirit in the same way. The boat in the font can remind us of that. Through baptism God has given us his Holy Spirit and gathered us into his church—not just this church building here, but his church all over the world of all times and places. And you are a part of it.
You are not by yourself, left to your own strength. God has given you his Holy Spirit, who lives in you. That is how close God is to you. The Holy Spirit still gives us his gifts to strengthen us to serve God and his people. The Spirit is like the wind from God that powers us to follow Jesus in our daily lives. He gives us wisdom to follow Jesus. He helps us pray when we don’t know how or what to pray. We have received the same powerful Holy Spirit that Jesus has, who helps us to know Jesus, follow him, and do his will.
Growing in faith at home prayer – bulletin insert
SERMON—The Spirit of Lent—week 1: Power source
This image of the paper sailing boat needing breath to move prompted me to share a story with you from my time of Long Service Leave. As that time drew nearer I began compiling a mental list of all the things I looked forward to doing. On the first day, I had settled on working on some hobbies in the shed. First, I needed to tidy the shed to be able to set foot in there. So after spending the morning re-organising and de-cluttering, the view of a clear workbench stretched out enticingly before me—matching the smile that stretched across my face.
With anticipation I picked up the drill to get to work…but as I plugged the cord into the power point, the overhead fluro tubes made a blinking sound as they blinked off, and the radio emitted a long, distorted growl before radio silence. Thinking a fuse must have blown, I went round to the fuse box to investigate. On the way, I heard the unmistakable beeping sound of trucks reversing in the street, workmen calling to each other, and the whirring of hydraulic equipment. Then I remembered—that slip of paper in the letterbox from a few weeks prior. You know, the bright orange one, with the ‘SA Power Networks’ logo. The one that says: Interruption to power supply 11:30 am to 3:30pm.
“Not to worry, I’ll just do something else” I thought. I could watch a movie series we hadn’t finished watching…oh that’s right—no power! Ok, I could use the laptop to purchase some things online I was interested in—but the battery was flat. OK, maybe I could do some grocery shopping—but there wasn’t much point bringing chilled and frozen products home to a fridge and freezer that was off. So being lunchtime, force of habit made me fill up the kettle, rest it on its stand and flick the switch down. That’s right—no power.
Without power, I was powerless to do that which I wanted to do. The spiritual life is like that too.
In the texts from Matthew and Luke for the first Sunday of Lent, the emphasis is on Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness, and his overcoming the devil’s temptation of him there. But Mark omits the specific detail of this and seems to focus instead on Jesus’ Spirit-powered ministry. Just before today’s text, John the Baptist points to Jesus as the One who will baptise with the Holy Spirit. Then today’s text begins with Jesus’ own baptism. As Jesus saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove at his baptism (v10), Mark tells us that at once the Spirit sent Jesus out into the wilderness. There is an unmissable link between Jesus’ being anointed by the Spirit and his ministry of overcoming Satan and preaching the Good News. He has been sent—commissioned by the Spirit—for this task—and it is in the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus accomplishes it.
One of Satan’s greatest temptations to the church during the season of Lent is to tempt us to focus on ourselves even as we gather to focus on the Cross. For example, what began with good intentions—the practice of going without something to focus on our reliance on Jesus—has, in many instances, become twisted into a ‘40 day challenge’ to see how long we can go in giving up chocolate, alcohol or coffee, or eating fish instead of red meat. But that turns a spiritual discipline into a human tradition, because it makes us the setter and achiever of the challenge, rather than being led by the Spirit to grow in our lives unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). God doesn’t want our coffee and chocolate—or to put it in the words of the Prophet Joel on Ash Wednesday service—God calls us to rend our hearts, not our garments (Joel 2:13).
In this season of Lent, you can be sure of two things. The first one: you will be tempted. Just as the devil tempted Jesus, he also tempts those who pledge allegiance to Jesus. He seeks to destroy the relationship Christians have with our Father in Heaven. That’s why the closer one is to Jesus in their spiritual walk, the stronger the temptation is. The devil doesn’t need to worry about those who reject Jesus, or who say they are Christian, but don’t really follow Jesus because it’s inconvenient. The devil doesn’t want us to repent and believe the Gospel—to turn to Jesus for the grace, strength and blessing we need. Instead he will tempt us to look to ourselves—our strength, our abilities, our resources, our justification.
The devil will tempt you, you can be sure of that. He will tempt you with the same temptations he tempted Jesus with, in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel: to desire bread alone, and not every word that comes from the mouth of God, to try to manipulate God and put him to the test, and live as though it doesn’t matter what we do, even throwing ourselves off a temple, because God will rescue us. To live by the flesh, and seek out and prioritise the things of this world, which is really bowing down to Satan and worshipping him.
We get dangerously close to that when our focus in the Christian life is on how well we and others perform, rather than focusing on Christ. That’s the human way, the way of the flesh—to think it is by my morals, my performance, my piety, my power. But then Satan has us where he wants us because the power of the flesh is no power at all. Like a sailboat without wind, or a kettle without electricity, we are powerless to do the good we know we should.
Jesus’ call to repentance means not just turning to him with our sin when we know we have broken God’s commandments. It is not punishing ourselves when we have done wrong, like Luther who whipped himself. That’s useless anyway, even as Luther himself came to realise all the self-berating and punishment in the world wouldn’t achieve anything before God and counted for nothing to make one right with him.
Instead, to repent means to begin the day by turning to God as his forgiven children, who have been purchased by the precious blood of Christ, who are loved by our Heavenly Father. To repent means to turn to Jesus as the first thing we do, to perish the thought that the only reality to life is that is what we see, and somehow we have control over it as the day unfolds before us. It means getting out of bed and walking down a completely different driveway than that of our own design, logic, reasoning, and sight. It means to believe God’s word, and to strive to order all that we do in the day by it, leaving our fishing boats and nets behind, and following him. It means to echo the words of John who said: “Jesus must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30).
In his book The way of wisdom, Timothy Keller writes:
“There are then, only two ways of thinking about life. You can ‘let [the Lord] be your fear’ (Isaiah 8:13)—your life centre—or something else will be. Either God’s Word will be the unquestioned arbiter of truth or something else will serve that function (public opinion, your own feelings, or human scientific reasoning). Either God and your relationship with him will be the thing you esteem the most—and every single other thing will be evaluated in light of that—or your relationship to some other thing (such as money) will define reality. Do you follow the world’s wisdom, namely, that you can understand the world and yourself without reference to God or his Word? Or have you thoughtfully rejected it?”[1]
Thoughtfully rejecting the way of the world, as Keller puts it, is what is meant by true repentance. We are to repent from the thought that we are to order our lives by what is seen; the wisdom of the world—and to entrust our whole life to Christ. Now, that requires mighty strength that we humans are unable to produce, for in our natural state we are spiritually dead and spiritually bankrupt. The mighty strength needed can only come from God; from the Holy Spirit who strengthens us to walk by faith, and not sight.
In our series across the Sundays of Lent ‘The Spirit of Lent’, we will be hearing the Gospel texts and reflecting on how much we need the Spirit for the spiritual life; how much we need the Holy Spirit to focus on Jesus, not ourselves, how much we need to follow the Word, not the world.
What is the second thing you can be sure of? God’s proclamation to his Son in our text is his proclamation to you: “You are my son, my daughter, with whom I am well pleased.” Those words are very hard to hear for people with guilt and shame pressing hard. The devil will always tempt us to believe that couldn’t be true for us; that God’s love for the world excludes us because of how we have stuffed up. But then that’s to look to ourselves again, and not to Christ, and every word that comes from him.
God says to you today: “You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, with whom I am well pleased.” You are God’s and he is well pleased with you. God is not well-pleased with you because of your achievements, or sincerity in worship, or service to the community, or moral strivings, or the role you have in this congregation. He is well-pleased with you because of Christ and his work alone.
You are righteous because Christ’s righteousness is yours. You are holy, because you share in Christ’s holiness. You have gifts from the Spirit, because the Spirit has first of all come to you and gifted you according to God’s plan. We are all only in God’s church because the Holy Spirit has first called us, washed us and anointed us. It was not because we performed well that the Holy Spirit came to us. It was while we were enemies of God, spiritually dead, unable to do repent and believe the Gospel. But God has chosen you to be his own before the very foundation of the world, and after he tore the heavens open at Jesus’ baptism, he has sent the Holy Spirit down to you at yours, and he has worked in your hearts and called you to Jesus. We cannot fix our eyes on Jesus without the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We cannot reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice, and our need for it, and a Christian response to it, without the working of the Holy Spirit.
How do you continue to receive the Spirit for the spiritual journey, one for which ordinary, material food and drink will not sustain us? By staying in the boat, with Jesus, listening to him teach you and preach the good news to you. Your Father in heaven still sends the Holy Spirit to you, even now. As you come to listen to the Gospel, as you come to the banquet table, God’s sending of his Spirit continues—the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus. God sends him for you, to you, his beloved children, with whom he is well pleased.
God has not left you powerless. But he has flicked the power on, and he is here with mighty power for you, going to work in our heart. You are not in the realm of the flesh but the realm of the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you. And since you have the Spirit of Christ, you belong to Christ (Romans 8:9). You are under new management—the Holy Spirit’s—strengthened and empowered to follow Christ and grow more like him. Amen.
[1] Keller Timothy and Keller Kathy (2019), The way of wisdom, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 39
