The Sprit Poured Out on All Flesh
Pentecost -- May 11, 2008
Robert Montgomery
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound 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 on 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.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
"In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' --Acts 2:1-21
I knew the wind was up last night, even before I heard it. I heard the low moan turning into a howl from our dog Cindy, who becomes unhinged and distraught at the very whisper of a storm. I began to worry that I might have to call Paul Wilburn and tell him that Cindy had clawed her way through one of the new windows in the manse. Let the wind get up, and Cindy is nervous about what may happen next. Let lightning strike—fire from heaven in her mind—and she just might leap onto the roof and try to come down the chimney.
When the wind gets up, Cindy knows that something is about to happen.
We’re all that way, I think. We all get a little unsettled when the wind gets up. You don’t have to listen long to news of cyclones in Myanmar or tornadoes not far from here, to start to feel that Cindy-like uneasiness about what wind can do.
But as scary as wind and the change it can bring may be, think for just minute if there were no wind.
The smoke that filled my house when we started a fire in the fireplace without opening the flue a few years back just might still be in there. The smell of that tuna fish you opened in your house a few days back would certainly still be there. All the onions that you have ever peeled and chopped would still be running down your throat and into your eyes. Every smell that has ever come into your house would still be there, in your closets and your clothes, just hanging around heavier and heavier and making everything more and more stagnant.
If there were no wind, there would be no birds soaring and riding the currents. Instead, it would be hard flapping everywhere, with only an occasional coasting in from up higher. But it would be all work for the birds, nothing to ever carry them along. Just a lot of hard flapping to make anything happen.
There would be no kites and no hot air balloon races. And there would be sailboats. No Christopher Columbus.
There would be no rain—except in places where it rained all the time. Every leaf that ever fell would be piling up right there under every tree. Every seed would fall right around the base of its parent plant, just piling up higher and higher, either rotting or drying out, but finally choking out the original plant.
Imagine if there were no wind. But now, think with me on this one. Imagine that there were no Holy Spirit.
The smells and smoke of our sins would be forever hanging on us. There would be no fresh air of new people, new hopes, new possibilities, new realizations and new relationships. There would be no mission and no direction, nothing to carry us along. Just a lot of heavy flapping to make anything happen. There would only be a stale, heavy, stagnant existence, like a suffocating, hot, humid Middle Tennessee day when there is not a breath of wind in the air.
If there were no Holy Spirit, there would be no baptism, no Lord’s Supper, no preaching, because there would be no power to make them anything but our own lifeless efforts to make a kite fly when there is no wind. Just a lot of running for no reason.
If there were no Holy Spirit, all there would be is us taking to ourselves, in a dull recital of our own lifeless goodness or our smothering evil. Everything would be piled up around our feet and within our churches, slowly choking the life out of everything and every one.
But the Good News is what we hear and see in Acts 2: the Holy Spirit has come.
The wind is up—the wind from heaven.
Of course, that Cindy part of us is nervous about that very thought. We have all heard stories of how people have been turned upside down by the Spirit and the stories that some people tell about the Spirit are just plain scary. They disturb us, for good reason.
But this is not just the wind of terrifying change, much less a tornado or cyclone of chaos. This wind and this fire from heaven come from God, and so they come to serve God’s purposes, and the Good News is that the purpose of God are mercy and grace for the whole world,
This is the wind that Jesus told Nicodemus blows where it wills. The coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 parallels the coming of the Spirit onto Jesus at the beginning of our Gospels.
The coming of the Spirit is Jesus’ baptizing his disciples into the very mission and life that Jesus has lived out in front of the whole world in his incarnation. This is the Spirit of Jesus arriving.
So, this is not a terrifying wind of disaster, but Acts does call it a rushing, violent wind. We have reason to feel unsettled, because something is going to pass among us that will bring change, change no one can exactly determine in advance. It’s also unsettling to think about seeing fire dance right before your eyes and resting on people, for fire leaves nothing unchanged.
Yes, the wind of God is up, change is in the air, but the One who brings this is the very One we can trust the most.
There are three small phrases in this passage that I want us to think about for just a moment. The first is this: “the entire house.” The Spirit filled “the entire house where they were sitting.”
The coming of Spirit comes and fills a place where the disciples have been sitting—the entire house and carries these sitting disciples out the door into the entire world. From the entire house to the entire world. The Spirit puts the disciples on their feet, standing and walking in the streets of the world where they meet the world that has been around them all along: Parthians, Medes, Elamites…people from all over the world.
Parthians are about the last people you would expect to see head the list of anything religious. But the Spirit blows everywhere toward the entire world.
The natural human tendency, of course, is toward exclusion, segregation and apartheid. Separation. The symbol of human society is the fence, the wall, the fortress, a barrier so thick and so high that no one can cross it, so that not even the wind could cross it if it were possible to hold it back.
It is that human tendency to divide into hostile, warring camps keeping everything and everyone separated, no human dandelions blown from one yard to another, no seed scattering out to transplant life and spread it beyond very clear bounds.
But Acts 2 makes it clear that no one will own the Spirit. It can’t be held inside anyone’s house. It fills up the house and then blows through the doors and windows and carries people right along with it. The Spirit blows—and blows us—across the whole, entire world, from upper rooms of prayer and worship into the streets of the world, where people are.
And what is clear is that the Spirit also does what it is possible to sow the seed of the Word of God around the world, by giving the power to both speak and to hear the Word of God.
That gift of communication is a sign of the Spirit, for sure, since language may be the biggest barrier of all. If you have ever tried to communicate with a person who speaks a different language, it often feels like trying to cross an ocean in one of those paddle boats built for two you see on ponds, only in this case you’re in one by yourself. It feels like it might be easier to cross the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat than to cross the language divide. But the Spirit who fills the entire house carries us into the entire world—and makes it possible for the whole world to speak and hear the Word of God.
The second thing that I would like for us to hear this morning are two little words: each and all. Maybe you heard them as I read this passage to you. They are scattered throughout these verses. “Tongues of fire rested on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” “How is that we each hear them speaking in the native language of each?” “God declares I will pour out my spirit on all flesh…” Each and all, over and over, back and forth between the two.
Now the natural human tendency, of course, is toward a few, toward some, toward perhaps only one or two. Surely the Spirit only works in the best of the best, or only in the best Christians we know, or maybe just in the people wearing those odd robes up front at church.
Not with the wind of the Spirit. From the entire house into the entire world, to each and all.
Peter recites the passage from Joel to make it clear that the Spirit is at work in both parents and children, male and female, young and old, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, as Paul will stress in all his writings. The Spirit is at work everywhere—and also in everyone.
Notice this little amazing fact: each person hears the disciples in their own native language. That’s how deep the work of the Spirit goes, no matter how wide it goes. Each hears in their own native culture and identity.
That’s why it’s impossible for you to compare yourself to anyone else as a Christian, because no one but you has the life story you have. We are not some undifferentiated mass of uniformity in the Spirit, but we are all starkly individual and unique. You don’t have to speak some holy language or come from a culture that seems befitting to God somehow. You don’t have to have grown up religious. As much as it hurts me to say it, you don’t even have to have ever owned sheep. The Spirit does not need for people to come “pre-packaged” from a culture that is somehow favorable to Christianity already.
No, the Spirit is at work everywhere and in everyone, no matter where and no matter who. All barriers are transcended between God and each person, no matter what barrier we think is too much. The wind of God is blowing, and change for all of us and for each of us is coming—and it’s a very, very good thing because God is entering each one of our lives in a way that makes it possible for all of us to feel new life picking us up and carrying us along within it.
The third thing that I want us to hear is this little phrase: “we hear them speaking about God’s mighty deeds of power.”
The natural human tendency is to talk about ourselves and especially about “me.” We humans tend to pile up everything around us and around our feet. It can be disorienting and disturbing when the Spirit comes through and blows us and our lives in new directions, but it is how life takes on new meaning.
In the life of the Spirit, we are finally light enough to be able to quit obsessing over ourselves. In the life of the Spirit, we hear even ourselves talking about God and God’s mighty deeds.
And what are these mighty deeds? Peter’s sermon goes on to tell us. God’s mighty deeds are the story of Jesus of Nazareth, a man from God who went about doing good—a man who, in fact, was God’s Messiah in the flesh but one crucified by the natural human tendencies to divide the world into warring camps and put up walls of hostility to keep God out by keeping each other out at the same time. Jesus is crucified by the envy that some had in hopes of remaining one of the few, keeping religion narrow to keep power piled up around a few feet.
But this Jesus God raised up and shown him to be the Messiah and Lord of all, the One who is sending the power of the Spirit into the world, to each and to all.
This Spirit takes the clueless disciples from hidden upper rooms and out to the outer reaches of the entire world and human experience. The Spirit takes the divided, fearful, hostile, stagnant world and blows right past the dividing walls of hostility and brings each and all together in the hope, love and future being created by Jesus Christ.
This Spirit takes people obsessed with themselves and turns them toward trust in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, so that we no longer obsess over ourselves or live for ourselves, but we live, act, speak and breathe in the tenacious hope that flows straight from God.
Today is Pentecost. Here we sit in a house all together, and the Spirit has come. May the Spirit blow on us and carry us out into the streets of our world, released like balloons with a message inside on a windy day, a message that says the kingdom of God has come and there is new life for each and for all. Take heart, and be glad the wind of God is up and blowing.
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Witnesses of the Ascended Lord
Seventh Sunday of Easter-First Sunday after the Ascension
May 4, 2008
Robert Montgomery
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. –John 17:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,’ he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” –Acts 1:1-11
I don’t have much use for reality shows, at least the ones I have seen advertised on television. They seem to grate on my nerves. I think it is not just my own taste in TV shows. I think reality shows grate on my Christian sensibilities—they seem designed to bring out the worst in people for everyone else’s entertainment.
But there is one element about those kinds of shows that fits the situation of Jesus’ disciples in our readings from Acts today—and the situation of disciples in every day. There comes a time when we are no longer just sitting back watching the story unfold in front of us as spectators and an audience. There comes a time when the camera pulls back and we too become part of the events.
That is what happens to Jesus’ disciples as he tells them he is leaving them to ascend to the Father. His prayer for them in John 17 is really an ordination and installation prayer, putting God’s blessing on them as he calls them to take up the mission that he has in mind for them.
And like most newly ordained and installed ministers and disciples, they seem utterly, utterly clueless about what it is that they are supposed to do.
Here in Acts, right up until the moment of Jesus’ ascension, the disciples are wondering if now is the time that Jesus is going to hand power over to the nation of Israel and give the rest of the world a long-overdue what for. It’s about time to put God’s people back on top, don’t you think?
Jesus responds patiently—yet again. Little do these disciples sense what Jesus has come to do and why he is ascending to the Father. He does what he does to engage the world and to bring it into right relationship with God and with each other. Far from pushing the world away or down under the boot of heaven, Jesus has arrived in the flesh, taught and acted in God’s name, been “crucified, dead and buried,” and resurrected the third day—precisely so that the world might be brought back to life from the hell of death and sin into which it has plunged itself.
In short, Jesus is ascending—and now sending his disciples—so that the world might be brought up from its prison-house by the coming of the Spirit of Jesus.
So, just as the disciples ask if they are about to see Israel seize power over the world, Jesus tells them that they have some of the words right but not in the right order.
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
I want us to spend a little time thinking about this one verse.
First of all, it’s not, “you will seize power” or “you will love to wield power,” but you will receive power. It does not come from the disciples, and it does not come from us as disciples.
It’s an election year—a nationwide debate about who will control enormous power, and those conversations are rightly sobering and even unsettling. To hand power over to people, regardless of who they are, is a scary and serious thing. We all know what can be done by power in the wrong hands or in hands that are controlled by the wrong hearts and heads.
So, it’s interesting at the very least that Jesus is about to send power on these clueless disciples who have really been only marginally successful as spectators for his ministry and who are now about to be entrusted with a world-wide mission, the world-wide mission, in fact. The ultimate world-wide work of God being placed within the reach of eleven muddled and unlikely disciples.
Now if I were to ask you what you as a disciple have to offer God or the Spirit or Jesus in the mission of redeeming the world, my guess is that most of you would shift uneasily in your seat and find a way to say, “Not much.” I suspect most of you would say, “I’m no one of consequence. I barely know how to do the small things I try to do now, much less take on a mission with consequences for the whole world.” I suspect most of us think that we would be no good at the big picture stuff of building a PR campaign and figuring out how to run with the big dogs and do all the things it takes to be a leader on the world stage.
But if we let those thoughts shape us, we misunderstand the whole point of Jesus’ words. It is not—decidedly not—about us. Instead, rather than trying to figure out how to hurry ourselves up with grand schemes and plans, it is as it was for the disciples listening to Jesus that day. “Wait for the promise of the Father. You will receive power—when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” It is the Spirit, not our own savvy, smarts, personal attractiveness that make us into what Jesus calls us to be. The power for life and for witness as Christians flows not from ourselves or our own sense of power, but from the leadings and promptings and faithfulness of the Spirit.
It’s the same word for any of us who might just think that we are all primed and ready to take on the world—to seize power based on our personal abilities which we have just been aching to use.
That word is, “Wait!” Before we go trekking home thinking we are nobodies or before we go racing off thinking we are big-time somebodies, Jesus has a simple word: “Wait.”
It is what Jesus will do in sending the Spirit from God that will make the difference. And a key statement follows next: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, to the farthest ends of the earth.”
We are used to witnesses in a court of law. That may be partly in mind here. But even more is the idea that witnesses tell what they know, what they have seen and heard. They tell the truth.
You will be my witnesses. Not kings or queens, princes or princesses. Not lords or domineering. Witnesses. Witnesses talk about someone else by definition. It is not a story about ourselves or our wonderful accomplishments. It is a message about someone else.
And it is important to remember that very small word, “my witnesses.”
We Christians are not here to witness to ourselves or even our churches. We are not here to promote ourselves or convince everyone that our church is better than every other church. We are not here to pretend that we know everything and to demand that everyone genuflect to us.
We are not witnesses with an independent contract, as if we are to go out and do what it takes to get noticed no matter what.
No, we are witnesses of the crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord. We are witnesses to Jesus. We are witnesses of Jesus, which means we are here to live and to act and to talk the way Jesus lived and acted and talked. We are here to remind ourselves and everyone else that it is the Spirit of Jesus at work in people that makes the difference not anything about us.
And not only do we talk about Jesus and act in his name, but we are called to be witnesses by doing and speaking the way Jesus did those things and now does them by his Spirit.
This is the Jesus who was and is a friend of sinners and Savior of the world. This is the Jesus who told John’s messengers, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
This is the Jesus who said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
We are witnesses of Jesus, about whom God has said,
“Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
He will not wrangle or cry aloud nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory.
And in his name will Gentiles take hope.”
We are witnesses of the Jesus who said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
And
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
So, Jesus calls his followers to be confident in their role and in the power to be witnesses of the very Jesus they have watched and heard all this time, not create a new organization that can push the world around their own agenda.
Which brings us to the last part of Jesus’ words, “You will be.” “You will be my witnesses.” Did these disciples really become witnesses, just as Jesus promised.
Did they become witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea, where Jesus had been killed and the disciples worried the same could happen to them? In Samaria, that land no one could imagine could ever be anything but a human landfill for the religiously hopeless? Even in the farthest reaches of the earth, to places like Athens and Rome, the seemingly anti-God capital cities?
It has. You can travel the world and virtually every place you go, there you can see and hear signs of Christian witness through the years since Jesus’ words. It’s amazing that with 11 eleven clueless disciples and a few other followers and the power of the Holy Spirit, there really has been a witness across the whole world. Our biggest challenge now is not nearly so much geography as it is chronology. New generations are always rising up, so that the Spirit must teach us how to speak the same witness in yet more languages to new generations.
But talk about world-wide witness raises some honesty questions for us, at the same time.
Have Christians often failed in our witness? Yes.
Have we often betrayed our commission, thinking we could substitute ourselves for Jesus and try to take power in our hands for our own purposes, all while claiming to be Jesus’ witnesses? Absolutely.
If we take an honest look at the history of Christian witness, we should willingly admit, willingly “witness” to the truth that Christians have often failed in our witness by remaining silent at the wrong times…in times like the Holocaust, which is being remembered this week in the commemoration of Yom HaShoah.
Ordinary people like you and me, witnesses of Jesus, in places like Germany did not say enough when Hitler was claiming and seizing power.
Ordinary people, people just like you and me, did not say enough, closed our mouths to Christian witness when it came to slavery, segregation, the treatment of Native Americans. It’s true for us in questions of social justice, peace-making, care for the poor and the weak, in the care for the Creation and in the use of social, economic and political power.
And, yes, Christians have also failed as witnesses of Jesus by speaking at the wrong times…by launching Crusades in 1086 in the name of Jesus and by excusing and even sanctioning injustices against people and the Creation, all while claiming to speak for Jesus. We Christians have too often lapsed into self-promotion, demanding chief seats and claiming to be Judge in Jesus’ place. We have also defied Jesus’ own prayer for unity by using our words and actions to pull away from each other and drive people away by claiming that if you do not see things my way, then you have no relationship with Jesus. That’s not what witnesses do.
BUT…despite our failings as Christian witnesses, Jesus’ words have still proven true. “You will be my witnesses,” and now we can say, “you have been and you are” since the Spirit has come. Christians have been witnesses in this world. We have succeeded most when we have witnessed TO Jesus by witnessing LIKE Jesus. Christians have spoken out in this world. Christians have given amazing speeches, honest and bold ones that have turned people’s hearts to God and to one another. Christians have spoken powerful sermons and written crucial books and writings.
Just as importantly, Christians have also been Jesus’ witnesses by treating people the way Jesus did, the way his Spirit always leads us to do. Christians are those who have hope and mercy for those that we recognize so very well in ourselves: Sinners, tax-collectors, the blind, the deaf, lepers, harlots, Samaritans, Greeks, Gentiles, sojourners, aliens and outcasts. Christians have also built hospitals for the poor and for lepers; Christians have made and built peace, Christians have forgiven sinners and great sins; Christians have opened doors to schools, nursing homes and our own homes.
All because of the Spirit of Jesus, not because we Christians are somehow wise and great people. Oh no. But it has happened. You WILL BE my witnesses.
So, today, as I look out at this group of Christians, I can echo Jesus’ words to you: “You will be witnesses of Jesus.” And because the Spirit has now come, I can say this: “And you are.”
How else can we explain the fact that many of you have the ability to say just the right thing at just the right time? And many of you have the power to do the right thing at just the right time? Some of you have one set of gifts, some the other, some both. It is true in one way or another of ALL of you, each of you.
The odds are that if I were to point to you and start describing the ways I and others see the Spirit of Jesus at work in you as a witness of Jesus, you would start to shift even more uncomfortably in your seat than when I asked you what you have to offer as a disciples of Jesus. But the odds are even greater that what you least respect about your own witness is precisely the SPIRIT AT WORK IN YOU, whether in speaking or in acts of compassion inspired by the Compassionate and Ascended Lord.
Are we Christians still witnesses today? As surely as the Spirit came and still comes, the answer is yes. In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. You can see and hear the witness to Jesus, sometimes garbled and lost, but still present by God’s faithfulness. Some might even ask us if Pulaski is the uttermost part of the earth? With our reputation in the history of the Klan, some may question if God can really be at work here?
But every community is part Jerusalem, part Samaria, part Nazareth, part Bethlehem, part Rome, part Athens. Did the witness of ordinary people, witnesses like you and me, help bring hope and light there? It did.
So is there hope in places like Chicago? LA? Washington? Baghdad? Tehran? Pulaski? Will there be witnesses there?
Where we would naturally go and where we would NOT naturally go…
Where we go with no agenda for ourselves…
Where we go to treat others as Jesus did and to speak to others the way Jesus did…
And to bring hope in Jesus’ name…THERE we are called to be witnesses. And we will be.
We will be witnesses, for the power of the Spirit makes us so.
Witnesses. Ordinary people, like you and me. We are witnesses, for the Spirit has come.