Sermon Notes — January 12, 2025
January 12, 2025
Rev. Terry Carty
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The Gift of the Spirit
Last week, Pastor Craig (Dr. Goff) began a sermon series following on the familiar Gifts of the Three Wise Men: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. In our sermon series from now up until Ash Wednesday, we will follow a trail of God’s gifts. My mental image of this sermon series is a trail of gifts scattered from the Christmas tree all the way to the season of Lent. Today I will unwrap the Gift of the Spirit.
If you consult the Christian Calendar, you find that today is the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. No, this is not another Sunday of Christmas. Jesus was no longer a baby in a manger when he was baptized. Jesus was full grown, and he made a conscious decision to go to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist – John the Baptizer. John had been calling people to come into the wilderness to repent and become prepared for the coming of the Lord.
The scripture story we heard today from Luke tells us that Jesus received a gift – the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. Luke makes a big deal of Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit. He reports that while Jesus was praying, heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.
The dove is an image that the Church uses often to represent the Holy Spirit. I can close my eyes and imagine a white dove gently flying in and landing softly. I can imagine the quiet cooing sound a dove makes.
Since Methodists baptize our babies, it is easy to talk about the gentle image of a dove. And it is easy to imagine God’s spirit lightly entering a baby to begin the spiritual processes of maturing in faith.
I don’t know about any of you, but as I have reflected on my life to this point, I remember three experiences when I am convinced the Holy Spirit came to me like a dove. I do love to talk about them in detail, but for today I will be brief.
The first was at my baptism. I was 12 years old and had completed my Methodist membership training at a church near here. We now call this training Confirmation Classes and will offer these at Bethlehem soon. I was kneeling at the altar in our church and the preacher took a handful of water and baptized me. As the water ran through my hair and down over my face and ears, I had a peaceful, gentle feeling like the landing of a dove. It was unlike any feeling I had ever had and I remember it after all these years.
After some tumultuous years of high school, college, and hard living, I reengaged with the Church and became a volunteer in ministry to the youth. I went on my first-ever mission trip with them. At the closing night worship, during a candlelight communion service, I sat with tears running down my face as the Spirit again descended peacefully on my heart. That night I made a silent, heart-filled commitment to follow Jesus. I remember it after all these years.
The third experience was some years later when I had completed rigorous training, education, and testing and was ordained for ministry by the bishop. In that service, as the bishop and others laid their hands on my head and shoulders, that I felt the gentle spirit descending upon me and landing with an energizing current. Again, I remember it after all these years.
I hope that as you reflect on your life, you can identify at least one experience in which the Spirit has touched you in an extraordinary way. Perhaps you have felt the Spirit land like a dove.
As I have reflected on Luke’s account of the baptism of Jesus, I have become much more aware of some other times when the Lord came to me in Spirit, but in very different ways.
While we often focus this story on the gentleness of the dove, John the Baptist offers a very different image of what Jesus will do through the Spirit just a few verses earlier. He describes Jesus as sort of a “holy housecleaner” separating out the useful and burning away what is unneeded.
What do I mean by Jesus as a “holy housecleaner?” I mean John uses the image of winnowing: After harvest has been gathered in, it is threshed by driving livestock over it or beating it against the ground. Then it is then thrown into the air so the heavier grain will drop to the floor and the crushed straw and dry chaff will blow away. Luke references a winnowing fork which was used to toss the threshed materials into the air. So, John is telling the people that Jesus is coming to shake things up, throw stuff into the air, so the goodness of people can be exposed and the badness will blow away.
I am not going to even tell you how many times since I was 12 that my life has experienced the winnowing process. There have been so many times that I have settled in to accept the consequences of my own neglect or bad behavior. Inevitably my guilt led me to regret and resignation, sometimes depression.
Thanks to Luke’s Gospel, I now have a way to talk about how the Spirit met me in my dark times of chaos and resignation to winnow my life. After I had been trampled and beat enough, the “holy housecleaner” used that winnowing fork to toss me into the air and separate the good from the useless. So many times now, I have landed upright, on my feet, and with a new sense of purpose.
This process has happened for me in a few large experiences, but more often in small experiences that I have come to expect. For me, personal confession, repentance and recommitment to follow Christ has become a normal way that I experience the gift of the Holy Spirit in my everyday living. It puts me in touch with the winnowing process in my life.
The furious process of winnowing is quite different from the soft descent of a cooing dove. But the Spirit comes into our lives in both ways: as a gentle companion and as a fiery challenger. Learning to celebrate all that God’s Spirit does for us is part of maturing as a disciple.
My prayer for each of you is that you will identify some winnowing times in your life. And I pray that as you realize that God’s Spirit was working in you, you will seek Christ to sort out all the good from some of the uselessness.
PRAYER
Eternal God, at the baptism of Jesus you revealed him to be your Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit. Keep all who are born of water and the Spirit faithful to their calling as your people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
REMEMBRANCE, REAFFIRMATION, THANKSGIVING, BENEDICTION
Pour water into baptismal font and say:
Remember your baptism and be thankful. Amen.
Pause for congregation to reflect on their baptism.
The Holy Spirit work within you,
that having been born through water and the Spirit,
you may live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Let us rejoice in the faithfulness of our covenant God.
We give thanks for all that God has already given us. As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the Church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
Benediction
The God of all grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ, establish and strengthen you by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you may live in grace and peace.