"Unfurl the Sails"
...and catch the wind of the Holy Spirit.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Text: Acts 2:1-12
A day never goes by when I walk into this magnificent sanctuary to begin a day's work that I'm not overwhelmed by the grandeur, the splendour and the majesty of this place of worship. As I look at the magnificent stained-glass windows, high ceilings and beautiful pulpit, I'm always in awe, and doubly so when I think that this was built as a place to worship a babe who was born in a stable in Palestine, 2,000 years ago.
I often wonder what Mrs. Timothy Eaton must have thought would happen here when she was handed a silver trowel by her son, John Craig Eaton to lay the cornerstone on August 28, 1913. I wonder if she had any idea what the impact of the ministry of this congregation would be, or whether she could have foreseen that years later camels would come down the aisle, Reverend Harries would ride a bicycle, Reverend Tamas would bring an Eaton's bag from the now-defunct store and that the senior minister would play Herod, singing with a rock'n'roll guitar. I doubt very much that she would have foreseen such things - and they've only occurred in the last four years or so. I wonder what she would think.
I wonder what the artifacts in the cornerstone of this building - the Bibles, the hymnbooks, the records of congregational meetings, the newspapers and stamps of the day - would tell us? This church was erected in 1914 and this sanctuary was built, and I wonder if the walls could speak and tell us what they have heard and seen since, through two world wars, through Vietnam and Korea and the Persian Gulf. They've seen the landing on the moon and they have seen us take pictures from Mars. I wonder what they would say.
I wonder what they thought of the great sermons that have been preached here over the last 90 years. I'm always cognizant of the fact, as I come into this pulpit, that I stand behind those who have been my predecessors: Joseph Odery, James Henderson, C.A. Williams, Stanley Osborne, Trevor Davies, David MacLennan, Andrew Lawson, George Morrison, Stanford Lucyk, Douglas Lobb and the many others who had been invited as guests to come and preach the Word here. I wonder what the things that are in the cornerstone would say that they have heard and seen. I'm sure it's been wonderful.
As we gather now to celebrate 90 years, it behooves us to ask the question, not what has gone before and how grand it might have been, but what is yet to come and what will the next 90 years bring? We have no idea. We step out in faith. The future is unknown and yet we gather here today in faith, asking and praying that this place of worship may once again be consecrated as a holy place where God's word may be heard and celebrated. I wonder where the church is going and what it will look like in the years to come.
In an article that I read recently from the New York Times magazine, about the emerging desire on the part, particularly of American Christians, to share their faith in the workplace, there was a troubling paragraph:
The idea is that Christians have for too long practised their faith on Sundays and left it behind during the work week. That there is a moral vacuum in the modern workplace which leads to backstabbing careerism, empty routines for employees and CEOs who push for profits at the expense of society, the environment and their fellow human beings. No less a figure than The Reverend Billy Graham has predicted that, ”˜One of the next great moves of God is going to be through believers in the workplace.' To listen to marketplace pastors you would think churches were almost passé. For them work is the place and Jesus is the antidote to both cubile boredom and Enron-style malfeasance.
In other words, there is the belief, and it is rightly held, that our faith should go beyond just Sunday, but this sense of the church being passé is troublesome. This was in fact borne out in an article that I read just this week in Harvard magazine that says that there is a growing desire for corporate profits and that faith can have a lot to do with corporate profits. In fact, the writer of the article suggests that having faith matters more than practising one's religion. If people have belief, they can cause their business to grow and their profits to increase, as long as they don't trouble themselves by spending too much time on worship and religious practices: “These do not help in terms of economic growth.”
I'm troubled by this, my friends, because it seems to suggest that the church of the future is a church that has belief without worship, that has good ideas and has the practice of faith without the corporate coming-together. But what kind of faith is that and what kind of beliefs do we have, if they are taken away from the Body of Christ? For who and where are the believer going to find nourishment and guidance for their own life? Where are they going to find the power for their daily living? Where the instruction? Where the service? Where the passion?
Oh, no, my friends, I believe the church is essential. Worship is necessary for belief. And by all means share it, wherever you are. And by all means practise it in your own lives. Be good, moral, upstanding citizens, but remember the source. The desire of God is that he be worshipped and this is when the Spirit comes. You cannot have faith and belief if you are not on your knees. You cannot have ideas about God if you do not have a community in which they are centred.
From the very beginning of the temple of Solomon right through the New Testament to this very day, this has been our conviction, this has been our belief: If we as Christians take our faith into the workplace without having it renewed, we are just like ships bobbing on the water. We are going nowhere, we are actually standing still.
I thought about that a little while ago when I recalled sailing with some friends in the harbour at St. George's, Bermuda. We were bobbing up and down in the harbour in a sailboat with a very small motor when all of a sudden we turned around and saw a Dutch cruise liner entering the harbour. We were in the middle of the harbour and this little motor was getting us nowhere. My friend from London decided to take charge. He looked at me with agony on his face as the cruise liner got nearer and nearer and nearer, and cried out, “For Gawd's sake, Stirling, unfurl the sails!”
I did as I was charged and with a little help put the right sails up, and off we went away from danger. I've thought about that many times because the Church of Jesus Christ needs to unfurl the sails of faith in worship, so the wind and the power of the Spirit might blow us in the direction we're intended to go.
As you may know, one of my favourite places in this building is the East Chapel. A few days ago, I went in there to pray and my mind returned to other places where I have spent moments of devotion and waited on the Spirit. One such place was the Anglican church in Burnhamthorpe where Nelson's father had been the minister. I've been to that church twice in my life. The second time was on a very sunny May afternoon. I went in and prayed on my own in a chapel no bigger, really, than our East Chapel.
Then the choir came in - it was their practice time - not even realizing I was there. I sat entranced, and listened to them begin to sing. They sang that famous Latin piece, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” “Come, Creator Spirit.” This piece, written in the 9th century by a Frankish writer, has been sung for 1,100 years. It has been sung at the ordination of priests, the installation of bishops and in the consecration of churches. Why? Because every church and every ministry and every bishop needs the creative power of the Spirit. Without the creative power of the Spirit there is paralysis, but with the coming together of the people seeking the guidance and the power of the Holy Spirit, great and wonderful and tremendous things can be done by God.
That is why in today's passage from the Book of Acts, the disciples were gathered together in one place, and the wind, the roar, the power of the Spirit came and blew through them as if their sails had been unfurled. A wind came and took them out of that place into the world and gave them the power to proclaim the Gospel and to live the Christian life. And that has spread to every corner of the world. And, so, my friends, on this 90th anniversary of this sanctuary, we need to unfurl our sails in order that we might be animated, in order that we might be moved.
It is no coincidence that every time God does something great or new in the Bible, we are told that the Spirit is present. Whether it is in creation when the Spirit moves on the water. When Mary conceives Jesus in Luke 1:35, it is by the Holy Spirit. When the church is born in Acts 2, it is the power of the Spirit that moves like a wind amongst God's people. Every time God does something powerful, it is by means of the Holy Spirit. And the Church of Jesus Christ has no other source, no other guidance, no other power on which it can rely but that which is manifested when the gathered community opens their hearts, unfurling their sails to the wind of the Spirit.
I read something in an agricultural magazine from Iowa that said that for every 1,000 bushels of corn produced on a one-acre plot of land, it takes four million pounds of water. It takes 6,800 pounds of oxygen, 5,200 pounds of carbon, 160 pounds of nitrogen and 124 pounds of potassium. And they require sunshine. But then it concluded that only five per cent of that which is needed to create this crop is provided by the hands of human beings. A full 95 per cent of the growth comes naturally - by the hand of God.
My friends, the same is true with the church. The growth of the church is not something that happens just with the work of our hands, it is something that happens when our hands and our lives are open to the power of God's Spirit. We wonder at times when the church seems lacking in its effective witness and its power and its ministry. It is not God who is lacking, it is us in terms of our openness to the power of God's Holy Spirit. We need to unfurl our sails of faith.
But we also need to unfurl the sails that we may be consecrated. One of the things I love about this church is that we have long-range plans and we desire to move forward. Our lay leadership looks to the future and not just to the past. This is a good thing, an important and necessary thing. If we are going to minister in the next 90 years, then a long-range vision is necessary. But a long-range plan in and of itself cannot bear anything. It is only five per cent of what we need if it is not, and we are not, in our devotion, open to the power of the Holy Spirit.
On the first Sunday that I was privileged to preach from this pulpit, I gave an illustration of this and I think now, after six-and-a-half years, it's worth repeating. It's a story of a minister who moves to his new congregation and realizes that he really isn't up to the task. When he listens to the sermons of former preachers he realizes that he”˜s not in their league, so he knows that he has to do something spectacular to grab the attention of the congregation so they might appreciate him. He goes up to a boy in the congregation and says, “Next Sunday I want you to do something for me. I'm going to give you this dove and I want you to go up in the balcony and when I say, ”˜Come, Holy Spirit,' I want you to release the dove and it will alight onto my shoulder. It will blow their minds.”
And so Sunday arrives, the dove is in its cage and the little boy goes to get a glass of water and comes back. When the minister cries out, “Come, Holy Spirit,” nothing happens. He looks to the balcony and again cries, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Again, nothing happens. Finally, exasperated, he cries out, “All right, come Holy Spirit!”
Silence. And then a little voice comes from the balcony: “Reverend, Reverend, an orange cat has eaten the Holy Spirit!”
There are many orange cats prowling around churches these days. Part of the problem is that we think outstanding technique or brilliant ideas are enough. They're not. The only thing that genuinely, powerfully allows the church to be prophetic and pastoral, to speak to the needs of a broken world, to address the concerns of society is the Spirit.
Tennyson put it this way:
Speak to him for though he hears
and spirit with spirit can meet.
Closer is he than breathing
Nearer than hands and feet.
The Spirit is always here. For the last 90 years the Spirit has been here. It is not the absence of the Spirit that holds us back, it is rather, sometimes, our unwillingness to unfurl our sails and let him blow through.
But some of you might be saying, “But who am I and do I matter? Does my presence here really make a difference? Who am I? I'm not a leader in the church.” Maybe you're not someone who is the chair of a committee or part of our magnificent choir and you're saying, “But who am I? Am I important?”
Remember the young boy who signed up for a part in the school play. On his way to school he said to his mother, “Mom, I want to be in this play more than anything in the whole world!” The mother dropped him off knowing that he wasn't very good, that his singing and dancing skills were pretty poor and that he was going to be disappointed. At the end of the day his mother was waiting for him and he came towards her with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face. His mother was incredulous. She said to him, “Well, dear, what happened with the play?”
He said, “They picked me to clap and cheer! That's what I'm doing!”
He knew in his heart that his role, even if it was just clapping and cheering, is a role that needed to be played. There is not one of us who is not missed when he or she is absent from this place. There is not one of us who, when we feel we do not have the power and the gifts of God to do things, cannot be touched by the Spirit and sent in some direction for God. There is not one member of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church who is not a valuable, contributing, and necessary part of this congregation. And I believe that with the power of the Spirit, all of us together can sing as Christians have done for 1,100 years, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” “Come, Creator Spirit,” for therein lies our future. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.