February 20, 2008 – Midweek Lenten Worship
Rom 12:11
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
These midweek meditations in the season of Lent have focused on the theme for the week, and this week’s theme is The Active Heart. We’ve taken as our text Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 12. Part of that chapter sounds almost like a checklist, and, in fact, Paul is laying out for us in these verses the unique qualities and characteristics of a committed Christian.
I’d like to concentrate especially on one phrase in verse 11, since I believe that it is the engine that drives all the rest. In that verse, Paul encourages us to “be ardent in spirit.”
The word Paul uses for “ardent” translates into English as “to boil with intensity.” And the word he uses for spirit is pneuma, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit. So Paul says that we are to boil with intensity with the Holy Spirit!
Hmmm, I don’t see much boiling going on out there tonight! Ah, St. Paul would have been a lousy Lutheran. We don’t do “boiling.” When it comes to intensity, we’re much more like the image in Proverbs, chapter 20, where it says that “the human spirit is the candle of the Lord.” Ah, that’s more like it. A candle. Steady, even. While a candle can flicker from time to time, for the most part its flame is stable, consistent.
Nicodemus, the figure in our Gospel lesson this past Sunday, might have felt that even this little, flickering flame had been blown out of his spirit during his late-night conversation with Jesus. Nicodemus, the educated religious leader, had been bewildered and lost when Jesus had told him that the Holy Spirit was completely unpredictable, uncontrollable. It blows if and when and where it alone chooses, Jesus had told him. You can’t comprehend it. You can’t figure it out; in fact, it figures you out, and then it uses you, Jesus had said.
Good Lord, Nicodemus must have thought; this means that God is capable of anything! A God like that could rearrange your priorities, realign your relationships, redefine who’s an insider and who’s an outsider! Nothing’s safe from a God like this, a God who is unpredictable! “How can these things be?” Nicodemus had asked as he sat, literally and spiritually, in the dark.
But the flame of God’s Spirit continued to burn in Nicodemus, even though he didn’t realize it. With his questions unanswered, his doubts remaining, his uncertainty unresolved, he allowed himself to be used by the Spirit of God, coming to tend lovingly to the body of Jesus following the crucifixion.
Nicodemus exemplifies the active heart because his is a willing heart: he’s willing to serve when his own life is less than predictable and stable.
What might that look like for us? I’d like to share with you something that one of our members recently shared with me. It’s poem – a prayer, really – that is titled “The Ultimate Mission Statement.”
“Lord, when I am famished, give me someone who needs food;
when I am thirsty, send me someone who needs water;
when I am hurting, send me someone to console;
when my cross becomes heavy, give me another’s cross to share;
when I have no time, give me someone to help for a moment;
when I am humiliated, give me someone to praise;
when I am discouraged, send me someone to encourage;
when I need another’s understanding, give me someone who needs mine;
when I need somebody to take care of me, send me someone to care for;
when I think of myself, turn my thoughts toward another.”
May God make your heart active – to his glory!
Amen.
