Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Fountains: Life In The Holy Spirit- Ian Graham: Metaphor
Pastor Ian Graham looks at the pictures of the Holy Spirit used throughout the scriptures as we begin our series on the third person of the Trinity.
Good morning friends. It's really good to see you all, so many friends, so many visitors. It's really lovely to be together today. As Savannah mentioned, we are starting our year off by exploring the reality of the Holy Spirit, and at the end of each sermon teaching time, we pray Come Holy Spirit. And we pray that for several reasons, and we pray that for several reasons. We pray that because the God that is revealed in Jesus is revealed and illuminated to us by the Spirit of God. But we also pray that because I know, as a pastor, there are so many things in my own life that I want to see take place, and, beyond that, there are so many things in your lives that I would love to see God do, but I can't make those things happen. And so every week we come to the end of words, we come to the place where, if God has raised Jesus from the dead and he is dwelling here among us, then we have to put all of our faith on that fact that the story that we tell is not just about a God, a mythology, a story for another time and another place, but a story that meets us right here and right now. And so we pray come Holy Spirit, would you meet with dear daughters and sons? Would you convict them in the confines of their hearts? Would you bring them comfort in places that I don't know? You may not know, even your neighbor, what they're going through. And so, as we begin our teaching series, normally we pray in this kind of imperative sort of way, and that's fine with Jesus, you know. He tells us that we can ask for anything we want. It's kind of a crazy thing to say to a bunch of people who don't have the perspective of heaven Ask me for anything you want and I will give it to you, john 15. But today, as we pray, we're going to shift from this imperative to an invitation Welcome, holy Spirit. To acknowledge that God is here. And no matter what brought you in this room today, whether you were dragged here by a family member, whether you're just here because you're trying to avoid the snow and it's happening later, no matter what brought you here today, god is here and he's meeting with you. He has a word for you. So, just as we enter into the stillness which is really hard of a crowd this size we pray welcome, holy Spirit. Would you meet us here? Over the next few weeks we'll be focusing on the Holy Spirit, and our hope as a team is not so much an exposition, an exhaustive detailing of the Holy Spirit, but an invitation to encounter God.
Speaker 1:Our age is adept at talking about the spiritual. We kind of live this dual existence. In many ways we try to excise all that is mystical, all that is spiritual, from our conversation. We live in a very technological, scientific age and yet what we have found is that, for all of our efforts, that which we can't quite put into words, what philosophers and theologians have called the ineffable, the unutterable, keeps cropping up. And in all of our cultural genius we've come up with all kinds of great terms for that which we know is there but we can't quite explain. And so the young people will talk about the vibes, and that's just a deep philosophical and theological term for the mystical, the spiritual, the great unknown. The German word zeitgeist means the spirit of the age, and many philosophers have undertaken to describe what is the animating spirit of our age, and many of them agree that something has taken hold of our collective consciousness. And again, anytime we're talking about a collective spirit, we are overgeneralizing, and as we're going to talk in just a moment about the spirit that has captured a lot of our social interactions. We're not saying that every single person is like this. We're saying this is the general climate in which we interact with one another.
Speaker 1:Philosophers have talked about something taking hold of us, something collective in our consciousness. Call it anxiety, call it hopelessness or malaise, or even despair. The South Korean philosopher, byung-chul Han writes a specter is haunting us. It is fear. We're constantly confronted with apocalyptic scenarios pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world or of the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. In 2023, the so-called doomsday clock stood at 90 seconds to midnight, apparently the closest the dial has ever been to the end of the final hour. Now the doomsday clock is a metric that scientists and philosophers use to assess how close the technology that we have invented is to killing all of us. And so this is what he's referencing. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the conflicts that are going on in places like Israel and Gaza and Ukraine and Russia, how close are we to an extinction-level event?
Speaker 1:Hahn writes of the news that confronts us and the way that it shapes our collective consciousness. Now, it's nothing new that news tends towards the negative. That's not a new thing, right, but I do think what is new is the rate at which we encounter this news. I don't know about you, but for many of us I've tried at times to take fast, take steps away from encountering information. But in a world so saturated with technology as our own, it's not easy to do, and so even when you're consciously trying to avoid this constant deluge of information, it still finds you. But what about when you're just kind of going with the flow? How does that news, and the constant interaction with it, how does it shape the way that we see the world? Hahn goes on, he says.
Speaker 1:The German word angst originally meant narrowness. Angst suffocates any feeling of vastness of perspective by narrowing down and blocking our view. Someone who is fearful feels cornered. Fear is accompanied by a feeling of being caught and imprisoned. When we are fearful, the world seems to be a prison. All the doors that lead out into the open are locked. Fear blocks off the future by closing our access to what is possible and what is new. One of the ways that this fear takes hold is the shrinking of our imaginary horizon, the feeling that we are on this kind of forced march towards calamity.
Speaker 1:Again, this is not about whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. Of course there are individuals who embody all sorts of different postures towards life. This is about the collective story that we tell and that we inhabit, and so I invite you to pay attention. Is the political story that we are telling one of fear, scarcity, blaming other people? And what are the responses that are then dictated? Again, we're trying to see what is the plausibility structure, what is the story that the world is telling that we are living in? Because Jesus, throughout his life, will say you have heard it said. You have heard it said by the Roman culture that you inhabit, for the people that Jesus was talking to. You have heard it said by the Jewish culture that you inhabit, but I say unto you. And so, as Christians, we are people who pay attention to the wider story that the world is telling, because there are hints and glimmers of beauty and truth within that story, but there are also distortions and diversions. And, as the people who are invited to inhabit the truth, to have a life-giving relationship with the one who says I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, we don't have to shrink back in fear or shield ourselves off, but we have to pay attention. You have heard it said, but I say unto you Hahn writes to be free.
Speaker 1:I'm going to skip a couple slides there, alex, sorry. To be free means to be free of compulsion. These forms of compulsion are not external, they come from within. The compulsion to perform and the compulsion to optimize oneself are compulsions of freedom. Freedom and compulsion become one. We voluntarily submit ourselves to the compulsion to be creative, efficient, authentic. We live in the world not just of the entrepreneurial spirit. You know, when people tell the story of America, often they will tell the story of entrepreneurs who took great risks. We live in the world not just of the entrepreneurial spirit, but of the side hustle.
Speaker 1:Not only should you have a day job or not only should you be attending school during the day. You also got to be maximizing and optimizing every waking hour, and our technology just gives us an invitation to do that. Hey, if you just share every little thing that you're doing later I have dough that's been resting in the fridge for the last 48 hours and later I will heat up a pizza stone and make the best pizza in New Jersey, which is saying a lot and I will sit and huddle inside as it snows and I don't want to be anywhere outside and I will enjoy a little football and I will eat this pizza. And there are so many people on Instagram that have made a lot of money just filming that process. And I'm sitting there. I'm like what's wrong with me? I should turn my 300 followers into a movement here. I should turn my 300 followers into a movement here.
Speaker 1:The idea is that we have to constantly, and this puts a pressure on ourselves. We're told that we're creative, but actually it's just buying in to this system that is endlessly exhausting. If you could only be more efficient, more productive, then life would open up to you in freedom. But what Han is talking about, this illusion of freedom, is only compulsion, paul tells us. You've heard it said, but I say unto you where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and I pray as we start this series and as we'll talk throughout, it is that you see that there is a stark contrast between the spirit of our age and the spirit of the Lord the spirit of our age that brings enslavement, the spirit of our age that brings exhaustion, and the spirit of the Lord that brings freedom.
Speaker 1:Now if we all stopped for a moment where we are to think about thinking yes, the most hopelessly pedantic suggestion of the philosophers Think about the thoughts that you're thinking right now. We think without thinking most of the time, don't we? What we in the modern West have conceptualized as our mind is always operating. Some of you have been thinking about other things than what I'm talking about right now, and that's okay. I forgive you, but sometimes you can almost take a step back from the interior monologue, sometimes dialogue, if we're honest that's going on in our heads and observe the operation of thinking. You see me pointing out that you are thinking right now has caused you to almost observe. You're like I am thinking, something is happening here and you can almost you can look at your hands and see your body. You can't quite fully remove yourself from this experience, but you can almost become aware that I am something interior, something observing that which is going on. Descartes famously used this awareness as his starting point Cognita ergo sum. I think, therefore, I am.
Speaker 1:Scientists in our age have dubbed this phenomenon consciousness, and it remains one of the inexplicable mysteries of science, a science that doesn't account for faith. If the story of the world, that your faith in science tells does not have room for a creator. The question remains how did this consciousness, this complex operation of the brain that we know as our consciousness, our brain, our mind, emerge from the random morass of chemicals, enzymes, amino acids, to produce the infinitely complex operations of the brain? I mean, think about what a wonder you are For many of us. You drove here, which is an incredibly complex operation, and yet you did it flawlessly. You navigated the traffic circle with ease, all while thinking about other things. We can do complex tasks that should require the whole of our attention and probably require more attention than we give to it, and still be having this intense interior discussion about the other things that are going on in our lives we think about, we start to pay attention to something inside of us, an interior that isn't accounted for by science Robert Bereson, a medical doctor.
Speaker 1:I'm going to read a longer section of this quote. You'll have a little bit of it up here, but he's talking about how he, as a person who doesn't have faith in a creator, accounts for the emergence of this consciousness. He says I've traced the function of the limbic system, which has to do with our emotions, our behaviors, our motivations, our memory, which begins in utero. In Ray Kurzweil's presentation of hybrid thinking does not grasp the biological operations of the brain. He says consciousness coalesces at six weeks old which is interesting when the limbic cortex is sufficiently mapped to create a non-representational, formless feeling of ourself. This results from the history of limbic cortical mappings of the fetus and the infant of his self relating to its maternal environment. I call this the authentic being, the brain's creation of sentience, which is grounded in limbic feeling. Over the next three years, the child's extensive mapping of experience of self and other and their related matures to achieve a high enough state of order that creates symbolic form. At this point we have representational consciousness. Representational consciousness creates images and the imagination. The authentic being gets supplanted, but its mappings remain and is the source of authenticity, loving consciousness and creativity for the rest of our lives. Both the authentic being and our conventional sense of self are synthetic illusions created by the brain.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was pretty clear, right? Anybody who suggests to you that science is just describing the way things are is probably stretching the truth a little bit. But here's the summary of what he's saying Is that your brain sort of exists as an operating system and it's an operating system, much like a computer interface, that has emerged because evolution demanded it, and it's all an illusion. All the synthesis, all that we experience as interiority, is just this complex process of biology time. But all of it amounts to the chemicals, and the chemicals are firing in certain ways, so they will create certain functions. And again I ask you the question does that account for the complexity with which you experience your own life? Just an illusion, the interior monologue that's happening right now? Just an interface, something designed to help the rest of the operations of the body work, many of them we are unaware of at all times. Or is there something else going on here?
Speaker 1:As we talk about the Holy Spirit, we can't help but talk about our spirits, that which is interior to us, that which is unseen, and yet we all know that if we were to depart, it would mean the end of our lives. The broader structures of our age know that consciousness, something resembling a spirit, a soul, exists within us, and they have all sorts of different stories of accounting for that. Those of us who have sadly been in the room when a person has crossed the threshold from life to death know that, in the flicker of a moment, something that was present, something that was animating that person, isn't there anymore. Scientism, which is an overextension of faith in science, labels this with mechanical operations of the body, limbic system, brain, heart pumping blood, etc. But for Christians, the people of Jesus, that consciousness, that spirit, that part of us, which is really the whole of us, that is present, aware, thinking when it's deep, unreachable interiority, is a gift. It's a gift that we've received in the very breath of God. That is our spirit and, as Paul reminds, for those of us in Christ, the Holy Spirit, god's spirit, given to us, bears witness, with our spirit, that we are children of God. Romans 8, verse 16.
Speaker 1:Now, when it comes to theology, it's common for us and we often do this backwards for us to begin with math and method and description when the scriptures themselves start with metaphor. And today what I want to do is look at five of the dominant metaphors used for the Holy Spirit in the scriptures as a way of introduction and invitation, and encounter Each of these metaphors. And, as we'll see, it's really interesting in our own world when we talk about these metaphors, which are pictures. And why the Bible uses metaphor, if I could just for a moment is because if we could describe God, if we had a formula for God, if we can encapsulate him in a sentence or in a set of numbers, then he ceases to be God. It becomes something that we can control, but these pictures expand beyond our. It becomes something that we can control, but these pictures expand beyond our harnesses, our ability to contain them. And, as we'll see, these images that are applied to the Spirit of God still encounter us with their awesome and sometimes awful force here today. And it's so interesting as we'll talk about things like wind and fire and water that we found ways to apply these natural forces in many ways for energy, but we also see how these forces can be destructive. We think of our dear brothers and sisters in California right now who know the destructive combination of wind and fire, and how we will lament with them, and how all of us can almost put ourselves in that unimaginable place of feeling like our whole world has crumbled.
Speaker 1:And so what I want to do today is just invite us to see several of these metaphors. I'm going to put up a slide. Yes, this is the height of artistic design and graphic design in the Western world. Can you go to the next one, alex, I think I have one with scriptures on it. Thank you, I'm going to read a bunch of scriptures, and what I'm going to do, too, is just be mindful of the time, and so we may not get to every single metaphor, and I know you're like, oh man, I'll stay for the next service, but just be watching that, so if we don't get to all of them. But I'm also conscious that I'm going to be reading large swaths of scripture over you, and so I've been doing this for about 19 years now as a pastor. I know how human brains and consciousness and attention works, and so there'll be times where I'm reading a scripture and you may find yourself thinking about what you're gonna eat for brunch in the next hour. That's okay. So here's a lot of the scriptures that we're pulling from, and here are the places that we're starting.
Speaker 1:The first and perhaps most prominent picture used for the spirit of God in the scriptures is the wind From the very beginning, the Ruach Elohim. The spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the deep. Genesis 1, 1 and 2. When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete. Chaos and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the waters. A theologian's pondering this image of God hovering over the chaos, over the waters and bringing order, as we'll see in Genesis 1. But then, in Genesis 2, verse 7, it's not just that this force, this power that brings the world to life, stays distant. This force, this wind, this Ruach, elohim, is given as a gift to the man and the woman made in the image of God. Genesis 2, verse 7, says Then the Lord, god, formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Why are you here, with all of your complexity, with all the complex interiority that you represent, embodied where you sit? Because God wants you here, because you are a gift. God has breathed his life into your lungs. And Hebrews reminds us that Jesus upholds and sustains the entire universe by the breath of his mouth, by his word.
Speaker 1:There's a point in Ezekiel, chapter 37, where Ezekiel is brought to a vision of a valley of dry bones. And as it goes with the Hebrew prophets, often the images that they see are quite strange. The Hebrew prophets often the images that they see are quite strange. Ezekiel, prophet of the Lord, one who sees some of the mysteries of heaven, is overlooking this valley just stacked with bones. And as he's looking at this valley, surveying the valley of bones, bones, he asks himself the question how can these bones live again? And it's a question that so many of us can relate to. Right you perhaps don't find yourself on the precipice of a valley of dry bones? How many times in our lives have we stood among the ruins? How many times in our lives have we, because of the consequence of choices that we have made, perhaps, or the consequences of something that's been done to us, asked that aching and grievous question can these things live again? And God in that moment says to Ezekiel, and God in that moment says to Ezekiel prophesy Speak reality to the death and to the despair, the realities of heaven.
Speaker 1:And Ezekiel, in entering in by faith to these instructions from God, sees these bones put on flesh and sinew and blood, come to life again. That the word that brings life, the wind of God, is not just about creation, it is about restoration, recreation, and there's good news in there for all of us that, no matter where we find ourselves and Nicodemus finds himself in the same place he's talking to Jesus about what it means to be born again and he has that same kind of aching feeling of regret. He says how can I, when I am older, how can an old man, enter again into his mother's womb? And Jesus says to him the wind blows where it will. The wind of God's restoration, his recreation, blows, and it blows faithfully and truly. And God will not dispense with anything of our lives, because he is a God who brings life to dead things that when we stand and we find ourselves standing on the valley of dry bones, god is breathing his breath of life and grace and restoration and newness and bringing new life. The breath of God blows through the valley of dry bones. The wind blows and we see that this same act that was done in Genesis 2, as Jesus is risen from the dead in John chapter 21, he meets with his disciples and three times he says to them he says peace. And then it says he breathes on them, just as God breathed on those created in his image in the beginning. He says receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus gave us the breath of life in the beginning, he invites us to breathe in the breath of heaven as he's making a new creation, making all things new. We see in Acts, chapter 2, the wind, violent, rushing, moves to the place where the disciples are meeting, and then we see that there are tongues divided, as though of fire that plant themselves on each individual person. So as we move from wind to fire, aw Tozer linked the image of fire in the Bible with the presence of God From the burning bush in Exodus and the pillar of fire by night that accompanied the people out of Egypt, the fires on the altar at the center of the tabernacle.
Speaker 1:Most of us have had the experience and perhaps you'll have it today of coming in from the cold to a warm, roaring fire. It's pretty good, right, come inside, or maybe the fire's outside and you move in from the cold exterior, dark world to the warm gathering flame. And perhaps you've had the experience of almost wanting. You're like, can I just keep getting closer? But there's a point right where you get too close and it starts to hurt, it starts to burn. You have to draw back. But if you draw back too much, the cold returns and you're too far away.
Speaker 1:Fire, throughout the scriptures, is associated with this kind of warmth and comfort. First and foremost, the invitation of God. But beyond this sort of warmth that God invites us to, fire is also associated with the purging, purifying presence of God. As the desires of God, what we call holiness, confront our desires, what Paul will label things like our flesh desires, what Paul will label things like our flesh. John the Baptist foretells that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The fire of God is given as a furnace of holiness that purges out that which is not of God from our lives, so that we can be drawn deeper into God's passion.
Speaker 1:God doesn't scald us with his presence and love in order to harm us, in order to teach us a lesson God wants more of us and, as you may know, if you've been a part of any relationship that has depth, there's a purifying element to relationship has depth. There's a purifying element to relationship, because what we find in a whether it's a romantic relationship, a friendship, is that we are bringing all of these selfish desires into the context of that relationship. And if we refuse to face those selfish desires, then that person will either be consumed by our selfishness or will be repelled by it, because we can't get over ourselves. And this is much the same that's happening with God. We come to God who has no selfishness in him, he's completely self-giving love. We come to him with all of our selfishness and those two things begin to compound and God is saying hey, I've given you my spirit so that you can die to yourself and be drawn deeper into my life.
Speaker 1:John of the cross says the Holy Spirit is the flame that makes the soul alive in the living God. But he also says this that that flame can often be experienced not as gentle, not simply as the warm fire, the nice hearth, but as afflictive. For those of us who follow Jesus for a while, we know there have been seasons in our lives where it doesn't feel like things are getting better. It feels like they're getting much worse, that they're hurting far more. That is a new noise. We also talk commonly of people having an internal fire, a passion to achieve or keep going. The fire of God gives us energy for mission, a burning passion. That really is God's passion to see people find their home in Jesus and be invited to the fellowship of his new creation.
Speaker 1:At Pentecost, luke tells us this when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place and suddenly from heaven. There came like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Came like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested upon each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. This is where the day of Pentecost starts, in the beginning of Acts 2. And look at where it ends, at the end of Acts, chapter 2. Acts 2, scrolling ahead to Acts 2, 42.
Speaker 1:These people who had an encounter with the Spirit of God, it says, wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, all who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need, day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple. They broke bread at home, ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, having the goodwill of all. The fire of God draws us in and invites us, it purifies us and it fuels us to go and declare this good news to all the world and to live in light of its reality. The last one we'll look at for today, with our time, is water. The living water of the Spirit is associated with comfort and healing To those thirsting for restoration and hope. Jesus pours out rivers of living water I love the extravagance of that Like it's not a stream, it's not a trickle, it's not a creek. Jesus promises us that rivers of living water will be poured into and through our lives. Isaiah 55 tells us In John, chapter 4, now, I know we're in the dead of winter right now, I know it's a different season, but do you suppose it's odd in an ancient Near Eastern arid desert climate for a person to come draw water at noon, in the heat of the day?
Speaker 1:I remind those people that attend Ecclesia often that there are no unnecessary details in the scriptures. The narrators put little notes in there for us to pay attention, and John tells us very plainly that this woman has come at noon in order to draw water. To this day, people in many of these ancient Near Eastern climates take a nap or pause from working because of the heat of the day, and it's much for the same reason that you wouldn't go draw water in the middle of the day. Why is it? It's simple, it's human, it's hot. So, as we find this woman in John, chapter 4, we ask ourselves the first question why? Why is she drawing water in the middle of the day?
Speaker 1:Oh, it just so happens that drawing water was a collective, communal activity. It's not something that people undertook alone. Often the women in the community were charged with the task of drawing water and they would do it together. This is the invention of the water cooler for people to get around and gossip about one another. So first thing in the morning, the women in the community, in this case Samaria, would go and gather water.
Speaker 1:And yet we find this woman at noon drawing water. But she encounters Jesus and, as we find, jesus needs a drink of water too, because, again, fully God, fully men. And Jesus asks her needs a drink of water too because, again, fully God, fully man. And Jesus asks her for a drink of water. And then Jesus says to her if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? The woman said to him. But those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
Speaker 1:Jesus meets this woman who, for reasons that we see elsewhere in John 4, you can read that on your own time have been ostracized from life in the community. This woman looking for something. And he says yes, there's water here, but there's something far greater. I offer it to you freely, abundantly, without cost. I'm going to invite the worship team forward as we move to the table. Ecclesia, if you are thirsty, you're longing for hope, you're longing for a different spirit that is on offer in our world. Our response can't help but be like this woman in encountering Jesus. With all of her limited knowledge, she says sir, give me this water so I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
Speaker 1:Jesus is inviting us to pay attention to our parched souls, to see the poverty, often, of the stories that we so easily inhabit and to hear the good news that Jesus says you have heard it said, but I say unto you you have heard it said that this world is a product of what you can make it, that your life will only be sustainable to the point that you can sustain yourself. But I say unto you anybody who comes and follows after me, I will give water in abundance in rivers of never-ending life. And Jesus embodies this by his very life, given for us On the cross. In John's gospel, jesus is pierced and from his side flows both blood and water. It's his death that pours out the fountainhead of the rivers of life that Revelation 21 and 22 describe will flow for the healing of the nations. It's his death that is the center point of all of human history, the center point of the salvation offered to us by God. It's his death that sends forth, as Jesus says, father, into your hands I commit my spirit, begins an exposition and a proliferation of God's spirit to all people. It is God who establishes us in Christ and has anointed us. He's put his seal upon us.
Speaker 1:Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, giving us his spirit in our hearts as a down payment as we move to the table. As I said each week, we pray Come Holy Spirit. And I want to shift that slightly still and pray Welcome Holy Spirit. And I want to invite you all to the table to receive, and I also want to invite you to consider is God asking you, like this woman, just simply to make the request sir, give me this living water. Luke tells us that Jesus said that when anybody asks God for the Holy Spirit, he will give it without measure. Luke 11.
Speaker 1:And for us today, maybe, as we encounter this third person of the Trinity, god is saying ask me for more of my spirit, for more of the wind, the fire, the water of God, and encounter Jesus afresh and anew. And so, as we come and we make our way to the table, I'm going to be over here and if you'd like just a brief word of prayer, it won't be complex. I won't be speaking all kinds of words over you, I'm just simply going to pray. Come Holy Spirit. And if you'd like to be anointed with oil, we have some oil here just as a mark, as a tangible mark of God's presence. We live a sacramental faith, the mysteries of heaven brought about in embodied and real senses by bread and wine and oil, because God transfigures the stuff of our created world, the stuff that he called good in the beginning and calls good ever still, because of Jesus of Nazareth, and he makes it a signifier and a mark of his presence. There's nothing magic about any of this that will happen next but we serve a sacramental God who makes that which is spiritual and unseen able to be tasted upon our lips and touched in our hands. The Spirit of God points us to Christ unfailingly and invites us to take part in the life of the triune God. I'm going to pray and then we'll approach the table together. We pray welcome, holy Spirit God.
Speaker 1:Now is the time that we fully acknowledge, lord, that all of our best words spoken about you fully acknowledge, lord, that all of our best words spoken about you, god, all of our best arguments, our best stories, lord, are nothing without your presence, god. And so we turn our collective attention to you and we say welcome, holy Spirit God. To those heavy laden here among us. Lord, would you show them the well that will never run dry, the river of living water that flows from your side? God poured out evermore, god, for those who are feeling downcast, defeated.
Speaker 1:God, aimless, without purpose. Lord, would your wind blow, as Paul reminds Timothy, to rekindle the gift of God that is within us? God, blow on the embers, god, your wind your fire, jesus. God, would we encounter you here this morning because you have poured out your spirit on all flesh. Jesus, would we welcome it here today? God, bring comfort to those who need comfort. Bring conviction to those who need conviction. God, help us to see ourselves in light of your story. We ask and we pray all these things in your name. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray Amen.