Charged and Ready for Action - 2nd Timothy 1:3-14
We live in a technological age. There is no question about it. There is no denying it. If there is anyone here who can claim that
they are living technologically free, then you will have to help the rest of us
out—and the rest of us might point out how in some way, shape, or form, even
you are dependent on technology. I’ve
been accused of being a technology freak by one of my colleagues, who watches
me with at Annual Conference with my laptop, my smartphone, and my e-reader all
spread across the table or our hotel room bed while I work, while he pulls out
his pad and paper. He gives me grief and
tells me I couldn’t survive a day without my technology. Of course the tables quickly turn when his
granddaughter locks up her tablet, he needs help setting up an email account
(or accessing that email account on a new computer), or he needs some bit of
information in a hurry. Guess who he
calls!
However, there is one thing that those
of us who are “technology freaks” dread.
It is getting ready to use our camera, our phone, our laptop, or something
else and being confronted with the dreaded “low battery notification” or that
piece of equipment’s equivalent of it.
There’s nothing like the feeling of being at an important event, turning
on your camera, and seeing the low battery light flashing in your face, or
needing to make an important phone call when you are out of town, and seeing
the red battery light on your phone, or powering up the laptop and finding that
there is 10% battery remaining and nowhere to plug in. What causes these unnerving, frustrating
notifications to pop-up? It is a failure
to charge the device so it is ready to use.
Before any of y’all prepare to tell me
that’s why we need to learn to live without needing to have stuff that has to
be charged, I have a question. How many
of you have ever told me, or someone else, “I’m no good until I’ve had my first
cup of coffee?” There are plenty of
folks who feel they cannot function if they have not had a morning shot of
caffeine.
There is something about us all that
needs to be charged. Whether it is our technology or our bodies, it all needs
charging. According to God’s Word, the
same applies to the Church and our lives as followers of Christ.
In the Gospel of Luke, the resurrected
Christ tells the Disciples: “Thus it is
written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third
day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his
name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these
things. And see, I am sending upon you
what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed
with power from on high.”[i]
We pick up the story from Luke in the Acts of the Apostles where before His
Ascension Jesus says, “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for
John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not
many days from now…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth.”[ii]
Jesus makes it very clear that those
who sought to follow Him would need to be filled with power. Just shortly after His Ascension, as the
Disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem meeting together on Pentecost, a
powerful wind swept through the house they were gathered in, and flames
appeared over their heads as God fulfilled the promise of Christ and poured out
His Holy Spirit upon the Disciples, empowering them to boldly proclaim the
Gospel of Christ, and the Church was born.
Today the Church continues to celebrate that event, which many consider
the birth of the Church, the origin of our gathering today—as the festival
commemorating fifty days after Passover became the day in which we celebrate God’s
pouring out His promised Holy Spirit upon the followers of Christ. With the event of Pentecost, God supercharged
the followers of Jesus to do the ministry set before them.
So what does this mean for us?
In means for us to hear the words of
Paul as Timothy heard them. Paul told
Timothy, “rekindle the gift of God that is within you…”
Too many of us try to live off a
single charge—we may go to a worship service, a Christian concert, a spiritual
retreat, and think, “Hey, God’s really touched me, I’m good to go,” and then we
don’t worry about reconnecting to our source.
We jump headlong into a ministry, change aspects of our lives that are
out of sync with God, or confront every injustice we see in the world, without
any attempt to make sure we are being recharged on a regular basis. Then suddenly it happens. We find ourselves feeling burnt out in the
work of God we are doing…we encounter a temptation that we can’t find the
strength to resist…we find ourselves resenting those that God has called us to
serve. We are tired, we are worn out,
and our battery is flashing red…all because we have neglected to plug back in
to God. Like a battery in any of our
electronic devices that must be plugged back in and recharged, Paul understands
that we must be recharged. Our spirits,
first fueled by God’s Holy Spirit in the beginning, must regularly reconnect to
the power source, God’s Holy Spirit, in order live out the lives that God calls
us to live.
How do we recharge? Through daily devotional time, through Bible
Study, through regular worship, through the sacrament of Communion, through Christian
fellowship, and through Sabbath rest. It
is through regularly plugging into God that God recharges our spirit with His
Holy Spirit.
What does plugging into God’s Spirit
do for us? It empowers us to be ready
for action.
It gives us a sense of boldness…for,
as Paul says, it is not a spirit of cowardice.
It is when we have been recharged by God that we are able to do those
things that would otherwise have terrified us.
Remember for Peter and the other disciples, prior to Christ’s
resurrection, they denied Christ, they deserted Jesus, they cowered in an upper
room fearing they might be arrested and crucified. Yet, after being recharged with the Spirit of
Christ, they boldly proclaimed the good news of Jesus, despite threat of jail,
torture, stoning, or their own crucifixion.
It is through being recharged by the Holy Spirit that we can confront
the fear of speaking in public or in front of our peers, and find ourselves
teaching a Sunday School class, praying during Bible Study, or offering a
“Children’s Message.” It is through the
empowerment of a recharged spirit that we can share the Gospel through the
action of our lives, going into parts of town that would otherwise terrify us
to work in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.
It is through a spirit infused with the power of the Holy Spirit that we
are able to reach out and join hands with those not like us—with those who may
be covered in tattoos or those who only wear suits and ties, with those whose
skin color differs from our own, or those who struggle to speak the same
language we speak. With the Holy Spirit
charging up our spirits, we do not live in fear.
God’s Spirit rekindles our spirits we
are filled with love. Paul knew this
well. It was the presence of God’s
Spirit in their lives that allowed the followers of Christ to forgive him and
accept him, despite the fact that he had overseen and participated in the
stoning and killing of their brothers and sisters who proclaimed the
faith. It was Paul who, empowered by
God’s Holy Spirit himself, wrote that the greatest gift of the Spirit is love,
and that without it, nothing we do means anything. It is God’s Spirit of love that allows us to
forgive those who have wronged us. It is
God’s Spirit of love that empowers us to love those that the world, maybe even
those next to us, consider unlovable.
God’s Spirit is that which empowers us
to become self-disciplined, take control of our lives. Empowered by God, we are able to overcome
addictions, resist temptation, and live as God calls us to live. When we have been recharged by the Spirit of
God, we cannot use the excuse, “I’m only human” or “I couldn’t help it,” because
God’s Spirit re-creates in us the humanity that reflects the image of God, not
fallen creation…God’s Spirit empowers us to be able to “help it.”
It is the Holy Spirit empowering our
lives that allows us to “Guard the good treasure entrusted to us….” What is that treasure? It is none other than the Gospel of
Christ. It is the fact that we have been
saved and redeemed and promised eternal life through the birth, life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The treasure
is the good news that we have been freed from enslavement to sin and can live
for God. God has entrusted to us the
fact that nothing—“neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
My brothers and sisters, make sure you
are plugged in, charged and ready for action…
In the Name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment