[learn_press_profile]
I remember watching Daniel and Henrik Sedin on the ice back when you could count on the Canucks to be a competitive hockey team. Actually, based on how they are doing today, that was when you could count on them to be healthy enough to field a team. With the COVID virus on the rampage right now, it has become impossible to put a team on the ice let alone be competitive. Soon though, they will be back on the ice and competitive! Right? Please?
But, back to Henrik and Daniel. It was fun to watch them play together because they seemed to know each other so well. They knew what the other was going to do and knew where they were going to be. They could make their own moves and passes based on what they knew the other was going to do. At times it seemed as though they could read each other’s mind. But the truth is that they had spent so much time together, played so many games together that they truly knew each other. It is much easier to play with people that you know than people who are unfamiliar with your way of being.
That is true not only for the hockey rink, but for most things in life. When you are developing a team, you want to help people get to know each other and how they like to work. You like your co-workers to know what you are good at and what they are good at, so that together you can perform at your best. In the church, we want to know people’s gifting so we know how they can contribute to the team. If you know and trust that someone is going to cover a certain part of the work, it frees you up to go where you need to go. It is helpful for the work of any organization to know your team and to be known by them!
The same is true if we are going to stay in step with the Spirit. It is helpful to know what the Spirit wants to do and to know that the Spirit knows what you can and can’t do. That is what we are going to be talking about in our Eastertide sermon series. The call will be to know God and to be comfortable with the fact that God knows you! One challenge with this is that we too often think that we must be something we are not in order to get or deserve God’s attention. But that is not the case. Because of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we know God’s love and power is available to us even as sinners. We know that God’s presence is with us because Jesus promised to send his Spirit to live among us. We need to recognize and know God’s Spirit and leading and we have to recognize that God is with us.
In order to continue the focus on Keeping in Step with the Spirit, we are going to turn toward how we learn to appreciate the presence of God with us at all times. During the season of Easter, we will be looking at the promise of resurrection power/life, with a deep understanding of God’s presence with us. Our task is to know and be known. To know that God is with us and to be known by allowing God to work in our hearts and minds the way that God wired us to be. Keeping in Step with the Spirit means opening ourselves up to the movement and leading of God around us, but that won’t happen if we refuse to live the life of God knowing who God is and being who God knows that we are. We will use the lectionary gospel lessons for the season and Psalm 139.
The more we know God’s presence with us, the more we are sensitive to the movements of the Spirit in our lives. We need to seek out God’s presence, God’s spirit and learn/discover what God is calling us to do and be.
Listen to these beautiful words and let them call you into knowing God and being known by God:
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it….
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
