What is the boldest thing you have ever
done?
Boldness is a quality of the spirit, a
sign that the Holy Spirit is resident in you.
When you decide to step out, to share
your faith, to call for repentance, to help another in a situation that has
some cost, you are following the spirit!
It may be scary. But to not follow where
the spirit leads would be nothing short of stifling the spirit, and none of us
want to so that.
If you are old like me you remember TV
shows that came over the air (not on cables) and rabbit ear antennae on the back of the TV.
Some of you may also remember black and white TV sets in big wood boxes!
I remember watching President Kennedy’s
funeral procession on a big black and white TV in the living room on Sunday,
September 24, 1963. It was amazing and awful. It changed the way people got their
news and how many of us perceived the world.
Later we watched Disney’s Wonderful World
of Color and Marlin Perkin’s Wild Kingdom, and my mom and dad sometimes watched the
Honeymooners, with Ralph yelling “to the moon Alice” and then even later on as the world changed
“All in the Family” with Archie Bunker and his famous line, “stifle Edith”.
He, Archie, wanted her to not get excited, not
say stuff, not listen to her brain and her big heart in the same way we
sometimes tell people to not listen to the spirit, even tell ourselves not to
listen to the spirit.
But 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says in some translations “do not stifle the spirit”, that is don’t pour water on a roaring
fire, or snuff out a smoking reed, or not speak when God has given you the
words, the opportunity and the fullness of his grace and mercy to do so!
Do not hide your light under a bushel,
but rather put in on a lampstand so the whole house is lit, so the whole world
can see! Don’t be afraid. Be bold. Speak what your heart is feeling and the
spirit is leading you to say!
And they spoke boldly, Peter and John.
They could have stifled.
They could have decided that healing the
lame man and then explaining it to the gathered crowd was enough, and gone home!
They could have disappeared back into
the crowd with the 5000 men who were now part of the followers of
Jesus in Jerusalem and had a nice little safe worship service inside the wall
of an upper room.
They might still have been arrested at some point, but
they could have stifled when asked for an explanation of their actions and
words by the religious leaders.
They could have wimped out, begged off, told a warm and
fuzzy healing story and not confronted the authorities, but instead they went
with the spirit’s invitation.
Like other believers after them, they
spoke of God’s work through Jesus of Nazareth with boldness, and in doing so
they confronted other people of faith who had stifled, quenched, ignored, and failed
to listen to and then do the spirit’s work.
Not that listening to the spirit is for
the faint hearted!
Not everyone is willing to confront
those who say change is unacceptable or impossible or that we have always done it this way,
even though “this way” is no longer the way the spirit is going or what the
spirit is doing.
It is amazing how comfortable the people
of God can be inside the church walls even when the world and it’s need for
Jesus continues to move farther and father away from the church.
And still church after church senses no
urgency to reach the next generation for Christ!
How is that possible? We have (unknowingly
perhaps) quenched the spirit.
It has not always been that way.
In generations past, the spirit
spoke, and the followers of Jesus, as well as others, confronted the slave
trade, with Great Britain leading the way, and soon ships no longer sailed from
African with our brothers and sisters of color on board.
In another generation and a world away,
the followers of Jesus confronted widow burning, and brought it to an end. No
woman dies, because the husband who owned her has died.
Children no longer work in factories,
people with leprosy have medical solutions to their once dread disease, and folks
with cancer, or mental illness, or who lose a child in childbirth, are no
longer considered unclean.
Today, in communities not too far away,
people of faith are confronting human trafficking and trying to bring it to it
end.
And some have recognized the spirit’s work
in the “Me too” and “Time’s up” campaigns, seeing in them the call for
believers to recognize what we have always affirmed, that in Christ, there is
no Greek or Jew, slave or free, male or female.
That in fact, we are all one family in
Christ, and therefore need to be bold in sharing with and caring for each
other, even when it appears on the surface that we are very different.
Peter and John were not shy, even though
they were not considered well-spoken or well-educated men. They were just
speaking what the spirit gave them to speak.
And in doing so, they became
models of what bold believers in Jesus can do: bring healing to the sick,
boldness to the public area, and let the whole world know that Jesus is alive
and well in the hearts and minds and lives of his people.
So, what is the boldest thing you have
ever done…
…and what is the bold thing you need to
do right now, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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