Month: June 2022

Dear Church,

I really like the lectures of a Bible professor named N.T. Wright.  He ends many of them with the same challenge to his students: inhabit what you’ve heard.  In other words, don’t just think about this, don’t just know it or agree with it–live it.  Ultimately, what we believe only matters if it leads us into a relationship with Jesus that leads us to a life shaped by the cross.

Inhabit what you’ve heard.  But what does that mean when we gather around a passage like the one we’re looking at this Sunday?  We are filled with the same Holy Spirit that filled John and Peter; but (and forgive me for assuming here) we’ve never reached out our hands and instantly supernaturally healed a random stranger.  So, how do we inhabit that?

I think Professor Wright’s invitation is a good one–especially on a Sunday like this one.  We can’t be tricked into thinking these are pretty stories or ‘only’ metaphors.  We need to seek God in this, we need to spend time wondering where the kind of healing power the Holy Spirit manifested in Acts is in our own lives.  One thing I know for sure.  The Spirit’s power in our lives may not look the same as it did in the lives of Jesus’ first disciples, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t available to us.  And we aren’t absolved of our responsibility to wonder in every encounter, as Peter surely did, how can I share what I have in Christ here and now?

We’re in Spirit School this summer because we want to grow in our understanding of a Spirit filled life.  We don’t just want to believe in the Holy Spirit.  We want to inhabit that belief–we want to live it out.  We were made to do this together–with God and one another.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Nicole’s sermon last week on the Holy Spirit, Justice and Juneteenth, we really should.  It was a powerful gift to us all.  You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9vPvO_b4yY

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here: https://www.thegrovecharlotte.org/connect-with-us

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Scripture: Romans 16:17-20

Dear Church,

This Sunday I am so excited to welcome Elder Nicole Thompson to the pulpit to preach the next lesson in our Spirit School worship series: The Holy Spirit and Justice.  It also happens to be Juneteenth, a holiday many Black Americans have been celebrating for generations. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865–the  day that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned from the officials in the Union Army that the nation had abolished slavery.

Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation almost two and a half years earlier on January 1, 1963.

This isn’t a story of news traveling slowly.  It is a Pharaoh 10th plague kind of story.  It is the story of enslavers holding on to institutional evil for as long as humanly possible.  Humans do hold on to evil–but, by the power of God, the hold can only last so long.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is the culmination of salvation history.  In that moment–along with reconciling love, grace, wisdom and power–God unleashes God’s restorative justice.  The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of justice.  The work of justice is not optional or supplemental for Spirit filled people.  It is essential.  As the song goes–where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.  Our God of peace is a God of justice–because without justice there is no peace, only control and oppression.  

On Sunday, we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises, we celebrate liberation, we celebrate receiving the Holy Spirit–which not only calls but equips us to follow the Lord Jesus.  Jesus tears down every system that divides, denies and destroys life.  Jesus is the way that restores all people created in God’s image to the mutually flourishing shalom life we were made for.  We can not do the work on our own, but we dare not try to delay or deny it.  I hope to worship with you Sunday at 10am on livestream or in the sanctuary!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:

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Scripture: Psalm 1

Dear Church,

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked 
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord 
and who mediates on his law day and night

These are the very first words of the Book of Psalms–the prayer book you’ll find in the very center of scripture.  For generations, these prayers–spoken and sung–have been a sort of holy umbilical cord growing God-life in God’s people.  We’re using these words as our jumping off point for our second session of Spirit School ‘How to Cultivate Intimacy with the Holy Spirit’.  Many of us met the Lord in the context of a religion mostly concerned with protecting us from bad things.  But God’s gift of the Spirit is an invitation to so much more–a life centered on and overflowing with the goodness of God.  When we learn to delight in God’s ways we become, in the next words of the psalm– like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.   We were made for so much more than not doing wrong.  Life with God, filled with the Holy Spirit, is the relationship that leads into that more that Jesus called abundant life.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:
https://www.thegrovecharlotte.org/connect-with-us

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Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Dear Church–

At the last meal he shared with his disciples before his death, Jesus told them, ‘it is good that I am leaving you.’  Even though no one was brave or foolish enough to say it, I’m sure they were all thinking that was crazy.  How could it be good that Jesus was leaving?  The disciples had incredible intimacy with the Lord, how could it be good for them to lose that?  What could be better than walking around,  sharing meals, talking one-on-one with Jesus?  

Jesus tells them it’s good that he’s leaving them because when he returns to the Father, he will send them the Holy Spirit.  He leaves them physically, so that he can be even more intimate with them spiritually.  And that gift is not just with the people who were in the room that night, but for all who call upon the name of the Lord.  Even us.

So often, we long to have a deeper connection with Jesus–we pray for a word, for a sign, for a feeling.  Friends, we can have all that and more: we can have continual access to the Spirit of God through Christ.  This Sunday, we’ll share the story of the day Jesus kept his promise and poured out his Spirit upon his people.  It’s the day of Pentecost, it’s the birthday of the church, and it’s wildly wonderful good news for all of us.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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