When the Spirit Moves Faster than the Church

Year B: Sixth Sunday of Easter

When we let such things go, we are bound to feel loss and the corresponding emotion of sorrow. This sorrow is not the same as that which comes from the unwillingness to let go of what is being asked or taken from us and which may give rise to discouragement, depression and even despair. The willingness to let go and bear the loss of what we love gives rise to a new inner freedom that enables us to live without what we previously thought was so essential.¹ —Thomas Keating

Year B, Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5 2024

First Reading: Acts 10:44-48

Psalm: Psalm 98

Second Reading: 1 John 5:1-6

Gospel: John 15:9-17

Sermon - When the Spirit Moves Faster than the Church

In last week’s reading from John 15, we saw how Jesus said an uncomfortable truth: “Every branch that bears fruit [God] prunes” (John 15:2). Whenever we reach a place in our life when we feel that we have “arrived,” that is often the time when God urges us on towards the next phase of our life.

We become settled in a house or a job or a relationship or a hobby or something, and then we are told it is time to take it to the next level. Perhaps some occasion of loss, disappointment, or love shows us that we need to make a change.

As John said concerning Jesus, we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire (not “or”).

In fact, it is often within the cleansing fire or the time of pruning that the Spirit transforms us.

In Acts, Jesus told his disciples to be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The first two were easy. The disciples had been preaching and ministering throughout Jerusalem and Judea with relative ease over the last few years with Jesus.

But what would it take for the disciples to go into Samaria and the ends of the earth?

In Luke’s retelling of the history of the church, he shows that Stephen’s death at the hands of Saul directly led to the gospel making it into Samaria.

But it wouldn’t be until Acts 10 that Peter gave his sermon by which “the gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers” (Acts 15:7).

In Acts 10, Peter was instructed in a vision to move beyond the old categories of clean/ unclean with which he was familiar. “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean” (Acts 10:15). This vision was confusing to Peter, but soon he learned it had to do with that last group to whom he was to witness: “to the ends of the earth.”

The next day, he travelled with Cornelius’s messengers to Caesarea to preach the good news to Cornelius and his house. When Peter stepped inside, he was surprised to find that many had assembled, for Cornelius had called together his family and friends. In this new territory, Peter acknowledged the elephant in the room: “You yourselves know that it is improper (unlawful) for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

After a short exchange, Peter began his sermon.

Then Peter began to speak to them:

I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him….He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Acts 10:34–43

While Peter was still speaking, the people of Cornelius’s house began to put their faith in Christ. When God knew that they had faith in their heart, he cleansed their hearts by faith, gave them the Holy Spirit, and made no distinction between the Jewish and gentile believers (Acts 15:8-9).

Up to this point in the narrative, the reception of the Spirit hadn't explicitly preceded water baptism (of course, we have no account of any of the 120 in the upper room being baptized in water in the name of Jesus after the resurrection). But here, the Spirit moves faster than the church.

As Reginald Fuller wrote in his notes on this passage, “Luke’s point is that the Spirit here takes a fresh initiative where the church was too timid to follow… The Spirit has, in this unique instance, gone beyond the confines of the church and bestowed the Spirit’s blessing on outsiders (Preaching the Lectionary, p. 275).”

May we watch for signs that the Spirit is moving faster than ourselves in our own churches and lives. We may experience some kind of pruning or baptism of fire that just might be a way of God saying “go this way!” It’s not that God causes these unfortunate circumstances, but in God’s economy, nothing is wasted, so we shouldn’t be surprised when the Spirit takes advantage of those moments.

Psalm: Friends, Not Slaves

In Jesus’s farewell address in John, which is an expanded account of Jesus’s last night with his disciples before his death, Jesus admonishes his disciples to love one another with the greatest love of all: the kind that causes one to lay down their life for their friends. This kind of love was perfectly demonstrated by Jesus when he died on the cross, and, in doing so, called us his friends.

Jesus then said, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father…” (John 15:15).

A servant “does not know what the master is doing” because he is just to obey. This is a kind of “because I said so” relationship, but Jesus calls us to a different kind of relationship with the Father and himself. He calls us to be friends, to be in on the plan, and, in light of this friendship, to bear fruit for the kingdom.

Like Jesus, we should be friends towards each other, laying down our lives for each other metaphorically and, in some circumstances, even literally. Shepherds should “exercise the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly” (1 Peter 5:2). Every Christian should “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). And we should all “do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit…not looking at our own interests but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3).

We live this way, not out of blind obedience, but because we have been made the friends of God.

Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.

1. Keating, Thomas. The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience. New York: Continuum, 2008. Print.