5/11/08                                                                                   John 20:19-22

                                                                                              Galatians 5:19-26

“HOLY SPIRIT BREATHING”

Rev. James Singleton

As a preacher, I have a problem today. Today is Pentecost, the day in which the Church celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit. But it is also Mother’s Day! As a preacher I can justify not preaching about mothers on Mother’s Day because, after all, it’s not an official Church holiday. But I am not only a preacher but also a son and a husband whose mother and wife are sitting in the congregation this morning and whom I have to face after the service. I can hear the conversation now:  

“How did you like the sermon about Pentecost?” I ask.
 

“You didn’t say anything about mothers!” they reply.
 

“Yes, but it is Pentecost Sunday and so I thought I should preach about the Holy Spirit!” I respond defensively. 

 “It’s also Mother’s Day. Can’t you take one Sunday a year to acknowledge mothers? God doesn’t mind” they shoot back offensively.  

“So, what’s for lunch?” I ask desperately trying to change the subject.  

“We don’t know. Why don’t you ask the Holy Spirit? It’s Mother’s Day and we’re not cooking!” they respond definitively.

Do you see my problem? So what do mothers and the Holy Spirit have in common?  

I recently read a book in which those two themes were unintentionally combined. It is called Jesus Land by journalist Julia Scheeres. It is her memoir of growing up in a Christian home located in a Christian community and the cruelty that resulted.

Her memoir is a brutally frank and powerful portrait of growing up as a white girl with two adopted black brothers in the 1970s in rural Indiana. The book takes its title from a homemade sign that Julia and her brother David spot while out riding their bikes in the Hoosier countryside. The sign proclaimed, “This here is: Jesus Land.” But the experience the children in this racially mixed family have to endure from the people in Jesus Land was anything but Jesus like.

Even though religion was everywhere displayed, prejudice and hatred were more prominent than love and acceptance. At school the kids were subjected to name calling, exclusion, ridicule and physical threats. But that is not the worst of it.

Julia’s parents were extremely strong fundamentalist Christians who spent a lifetime supporting missionaries to Africa and adopted the two black boys because they believed that God called them to do so. Everyday Christian music was piped throughout the house and several times a week they went to church. The children were force fed bible verses daily and constantly told how God was disappointed in them.

But Christianity proved to be little more than a veneer. The Scheeres loved Africans from a distance, but the two African American boys in their own home were forced to live in the basement where they encountered threats and racism that went beyond what happened at school. They were beaten and whipped by the father with belts, two by fours, and other weapons when they misbehaved until welts tattooed their backs and bones were broken.

The mother is portrayed as an emotionally distant woman who resents it whenever her children ask her for something beyond food, water, and shelter. She supports her husband’s brutal treatment of the children because the Bible says that if you spare the rod you spoil the child and she resents how the children interfere with her work for the Lord as she focuses more upon her church activities than her family activities.  

This is only the beginning of what happens to these children, but it is enough to show how mothers and the Holy Spirit can and must combine. Mrs. Scheeres was a mother. She gave birth to Julia and three other children and adopted two boys. She provided for them physically and tried to instill within them a sense of religion and the fear of God. But there is one thing missing that keeps her from being a true mother. What is it?

She does not have the Spirit of motherhood because she does not give her children love. She gives them religion, but not affection. She bombards them with Christian music 24/7 but does not ever talk to them. 

She criticizes them, but never compliments them. And when they get in her way too much, she rids herself of them all together.  

A mother must be more than simply the person who gives birth to us. A surrogate can do the same thing and then give us away. A mother is more than someone who tells you what to do and punishes you when you do wrong. That is a master/slave relationship.  

A good mother is loving, kind, generous, patient, and faithful to her children. A good mother gives her children more than her physical self; she gives them her spiritual self. 

Similarly, a Christian must be more than someone who listens to Christian music or who fills up his/her week with church activities.  

If we have to put up a sign telling people they are in Jesus Land, but they can’t tell from our actions, then they are not in Jesus Land. Christianity is not about how we look to others but how we treat others.  

Whether it’s being a good mother or being a good Christian they both require one main ingredient—the Holy Spirit.  

In the Gospel of John we read where the resurrected Jesus came to his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” and then he breathed upon them. The first thing you need to know about Pentecost is that you have the Holy Spirit already within you!  

The Holy Spirit is breathed into all Christians by the Lord Jesus. It is His life breath. It is not something you need to wait for; it is not something that you need to pray to receive. You already have it.  

The Scheeres parents had it inside of them. The issue isn’t whether or not we have it. The issue is whether or not we allow it to come out of us.

When we turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, our other passage of Scripture for today, we are reminded that it is possible for Christians to stifle the Holy Spirit. Paul writes to the churches in Galatia and warns them about what he calls the “works of the flesh.” He warns them that if they do not get control over their destructive behavior, their deteriorating relationships, their loose morals, their selfish and petty ways, the Holy Spirit cannot come through their actions.  
    But if they gain control of their destructive, selfish, petty, impatient, relationship destroying actions—then the Holy Spirit can come forth and bear the fruit that is worthy the name Christian. In other words, a Christian is someone who not only has the Holy Spirit but who allows that Spirit to burst forth in actions of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

Paul calls these the “fruit of the spirit.” When a person encounters the fruit of the Spirit, that’s when they know they are in Jesus Land. 

I want to zero in particularly on “self-control” because it has been my experience that unless that comes first, none of the other ones stand a chance of coming out.  

• How can we love until we first get control of our temper, resentments and inconsiderateness?
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• How can we have joy and peace until we control our anger, fear and regrets?
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• How can we exhibit kindness and generosity until we get control over our pride, stinginess and self-absorption?
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• How can we be patient until we control our desire to have everything happen the way we want when we want as though the world revolves around us?

• How can we show goodness until we gain control of what is bad in us?

Mr and Mrs. Scheeres were parents who thought that what made them Christian were outward things like Christian music and pounding bible verses into their kids and attending church and supporting missionaries. But when it came to bearing the fruit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit could not get out of them because they would not control their violence, their anger, their prejudice, and their self-centeredness.

It is the Spirit that makes a mother a good mother because a good mother is:

• Patient with her wayward children
• Kind when she is tempted to be harsh
• Generous not only with her money but with her praise and time
• In control of her criticism
• Giving love and expressing the joy of being a mother 

Take away that Spirit or stifle it and you are left with a woman who gives birth but who feels put upon by her children, who yells and screams at them constantly, who is mean in her criticisms, cold and dispassionate, self-centered and temperamental. Some of you here today have undoubtedly experienced such a mother whose out of control behavior smothered the Holy Spirit. 

Here is a poem about what makes a good mother by an unknown author:

This is for young mothers stumbling
Through diaper changes and sleep deprivation.
And mature mothers who have learned,
And are still learning,
To let go.
For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.
Single mothers and married mothers.
Grandmothers whose wisdom and love remain a constant
For their grown children
And their children’s children. . . .
This is for mothers whose children have gone astray,
And who can’t find the words to reach them.
For all the mothers who bite their lips sometimes until they bleed
When their 14-year old dies [his] hair green. . . .

 This is for all mothers whose heads turn automatically
When a little voice calls “Mom?” in a crowd,
Even though they know their own offspring are at home
Or grown up. . . .

What makes a good mother anyway?
Is it the ability to nurse a baby,
Cook dinner,
And sew a button on a shirt,
All at the same time?
Or is it the heart?

You know the answer. What makes for a good mother is the heart or the Spirit that comes out of that heart that bears the fruit of Jesus.   

The same can be said about what makes for a good Christian. Until we control our bickering, our jealousy, our inflated egos, our desires to have everything our way, we will never be someone who exhibits the love and joy and peace of Jesus Christ within us.

Each morning I pray a prayer asking for God to give me the ability to control my actions and reactions so that I don’t hinder the Holy Spirit by being insufferable, negative, anxious, impatient, unkind, and self-centered.  

I pray that I have the strength and ability to get out of the way so that the Holy Spirit in me can bear forth its good fruit. And I come to church to take the fruit of the vine to be forgiven for all the times I lost control and the Holy Spirit was stifled in me. Thank God, perfection is not part of the fruit of the Spirit. But still, we must strive daily to gain control over what makes us so lacking and damaging when it comes to others. 

Salvation is at heart a form of breathing. The Holy Spirit has been breathed into our lives by the risen Lord Jesus. But Pentecost is not complete until we breathe the Holy Spirit back out of our lives in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

Whether we are talking about mothers in particular or Christians in general, the heart of both depends upon whether it is the Holy Spirit that we breathe out upon the people around us. And if it is the Holy Spirit we breathe out upon those around us, then they will know they are in Jesus Land.

AMEN.