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| Not slaves, rather adopted Acts 2:1-4 The sacrifices of war become honorable when they win, in Lincoln’s words, a new birth of freedom. The battle cry of freedom was sung on all sides in the American Civil War. But the cry for freedom from slavery became the glory of that war. Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms were to be won by the sacrifices in the Second World War and F.D.R. saw freedom from fear as one of the four. Now, freedom from slavery and freedom from fear are at the heart of our Bible reading from Saint Paul today. To the persecuted Christians in Rome Paul wrote a letter saying, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear” (Romans 8:15). A Christian is to be reborn in freedom from slavery, reborn in freedom from fear. These are Christian freedoms to St. Paul, and they were lifted up by Lincoln and Roosevelt. But in Paul’s mind freedom from slavery and fear is a half-won battle. To Paul the new birth of freedom needs to bring us to “The Spirit of Adoption,” to be like a new born, awaiting adoption. Something spiritual has to happen after we win the war for freedoms. Now we are always restless with the results of war. Our desire to be free is really for the liberation of our spirit. Freedom is a spiritual state and that spirit is not a spoil of war. One Sunday morning a few years ago, I received a vase of white carnations, mysteriously. When I read the unsigned card, I knew they from Carol. The card said only this: “It’s all about spirit.” It’s all about spirit. During a 20 year period Carol and I had been associates in different psychotherapy institutes. We loved and hated each other. Carol’s soul was so vast it only finally found a home when she visited Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo Indian Reservation. After that, she gave up her psychotherapy practice to become an authentic Shaman and spiritual healer. And as I gave up my psychotherapy work to become a Christian minister Carol and I found a new, spiritual, kinship. When she received a diagnosis of incurable brain cancer I became her fellow traveler as she walked her final path. And that’s why she had sent the white flowers with her life-won wisdom: “It’s all about spirit.” Her words were a stunning conclusion to her brilliant career. Like Paul, Carol was confident and clear that we did not receive a spirit of slavery in order to fall back into fear. But in our world, slavery and fear, neither are totally defeated. And in our time we are more enslaved by fear than frightened by slavery. In our “social location” fear is a part of our spiritual condition. Now, I have not watched television since April 13th, six weeks. So I have not engaged in that powerful secular spiritual practice of going before the sacred box, the holy screen to have my spirit changed by repeated images of war. And it makes a difference in my personal terror level. We all know about the numbers of hours per week we consume watching the burning bush of television, how the number of hours, minutes, left for relationships, parenting, rest, exercise, prayer, peace- giving art, wisdom giving words is little and getting less. Most of us struggle against the spirit of television, and the spirit of traffic, the spirit of e-mail, the spirit of money. I think we all know we are more enslaved to society than we ever planned to be, and more anxious and afraid than we ever wanted to be. One rare spiritual oasis is church choir practice. Those who do it say it is a joy, a peace, a source of energy. Choir practice is a spiritual practice, one of many that are open to us. But war, television, and society are still with us for the time being. So where is freedom, fearlessness, and spirit to be found? A spirit not won by war alone? The answer is Pentecost, that’s where. Pentecost is our Christian Holy Day celebrating the windy event when Jesus’ bereft followers received the promised advocate and comforter that would sustain them in their new life’s mission: The Holy Spirit! Some call Pentecost the birthday of the church. At least as a social movement, not a building program, this experience was formatting for the disciples. The rush of wind, the tongues of fire, belong to those non-rational religious experiences we call mystical, magical, miraculous, and meaningful. At Pentecost people from many cultures and countries began speaking in tongues like scat singing, and Peter explained in his sermon that all were hearing and receiving the one Holy Spirit in the language they could speak and understand, like our third hymn this morning in both Korean and English but everyone understanding, in one spirit. Do you remember the tower of Babel story? Early in the bible the people get so carried away by their building program, one great tower to the heavens, that they are deprived of their ability to speak the same language. Now Pentecost is the all-about-spirit answer to that all-about-building problem. At the tower of Babel building one over-reaching people could not communicate about their big building. At Pentecost many different peoples communicate in one spirit without any building. The Pentecostal answer is the spirit, the Holy Spirit. Now, there is a fight to be free of fear. There is a fight to be free from slavery. But war and society are still with us and war and society will still bring us fears and slaveries. Yet fearless freedom is always found in the spirit. That is not as abstract as it may sound. As long as we are fighting to survive as a church, and churches easily fall back into fear of survival, then we will be enslaved to programs and buildings. The disciples at Pentecost were afraid for their survival. They would have been happy for a building and program. But the answer at Pentecost was not, build a better tower! It was, be full of the Holy Spirit! This week at choir practice Jim said something particularly Pentecostal to the choir. He said, “you all are sounding depleted of air. Relax. Fill up. Inflate yourselves!” Now is our time to be inflated with Spirit! Our, job in church is not “build it and they will come.” Our job is to be in the Spirit, and then to go out to be with the peoples so that we and they are transformed. Building relationships that transform; not forming relationships for building purposes. We were not given the spirit to build a better church, we are given the spirit to use the church to build a better world and to become our better selves. We cannot make the spirit happen. And when we are enslaved, especially to fear, the spirit doesn’t have a chance. That is why there is honor in fighting for freedom from slavery, fighting for freedom from fear. But our restlessness with war continues because it alone cannot produce what we are fighting for. Something spiritual has to happen. Paul, who was at war, violently, with the early Christians, tells us in his letter to the vulnerable church in Rome what that spiritual something is: to cry out. We are back to that unexpected phrase “a spirit of adoption.” To cry out in a spirit of adoption the new birth of freedom brings us to the spirit of a newborn, children, but orphaned and up for adoption. Frankly, when it comes to adoption we like to do the adopting. We like to choose to help. We rightly applaud the young people whose “30 hour famine” money raised could lead to the adopting of a hungry child. But receiving a spirit of adoption is, Paul says, “when we cry, ‘ABBA! Father!’ That cry is the spirit, that cry speaks for our spirit and to the spirit. It says, “I cry out to God, because I am a child of God.” Spirit starts when we cry for spirit. When we cry to God we are rebelling against our slavery to this world. So I say, “Take your complaining to the max!” “Elevate your grousing to a lament!” Lamentations is a book in the bible. What we are crying out is: “there must be something better than this"? And there is, there is life in the spirit, free and fearless. Christopher Reeves after his spinal cord injury was often free and fearless. But I’ve read that he cried and screamed for twenty minutes to an hour every morning about just how terrible it was – what had happened to him. To cry out ABBA, Father God (“Daddy” is the real translation) doesn’t make you a cry-baby, it gets you through to spirit. Paul quickly says that this spirit brings us into relationship to God. We are adopted, and in the spirit of adoption we, as children of God, are heirs of God – in other words in line for God’s inheritance! In fact, joint heirs with Christ to be glorified, fortified as Christ was. That’s a lot of Glory! So this is the spiritual thing that needs to happen after we win our wars for freedoms – from slaveries and fears. We become not just winners Paul says, we become more than conquerors. Think of it! More than victorious, more than war-winners, more than freed slaves, more than fearless, but now also, full of spirit. My friend Carol’s rebirth in the spirit happened when she fell to her knees on the floor of Canyon De Chelly full of helpless rage at her tower of Babel, at the fortress she had made out of her life. Carol had won every battle she had taken on. She had the power to stand alone. No one would enslave her again as her father and her husband had. Fearlessly all her power was for her freedom. But her freedom served nothing but her power. And so she cried out to a God who has many names and whose spirit echoed through the canyon walls. She took on the spirit of canyon-emptiness, she took on the spirit of canyon-silence, she took on the spirits of nature. Her “Bear” was her best. Through two years of depression and tears she came to that place, ‘it’s all about spirit.” and she began to serve the great spirit. To serve the spirit is what adoption is. To be given the spirit of adoption is to be willing to be adopted. Carol was ordained in the Spirit to a freedom that neither death nor fear could take away. Of course she was angry that death took her away from her life and her work. But it never took away her life in the Spirit. We can win our civil war to be free from slavery. We can win a world war for freedom from fear and more. We can even win our culture wars with all its new freedoms. But without spirit we won’t be free, and spirit starts with crying out to God, from the Spirit of adoption in the spirit of adoption, for the spirit of adoption. Amen
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