Jesus Christ, Hope of the World: Do Not Quench the Spirit
Sermon preached by Rev. Patricia Farris
December 11, 2005

At the time Paul wrote his letter to the young church, Thessalonica must have been an incredibly spirited place! It was a vibrant port city on the north shore of the Aegean Sea. It was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and it was on the great Roman road, the Via Egnatia, which ran from Byzantium to the Adriatic Sea. It was prosperous, vital and diverse.

My first real experience of a port city like Thessalonica came during the year I was an exchange student living in the south of France in the great port city, Marseille. Much like Thessalonica, it had been important to the Romans whose great system of roads and ports extended throughout the Mediterranean world. Ports are lively and bustling, hubs of commerce and community, crossroads of all the earth’s great cultures and peoples. And there is always an energy in the air, an aliveness that can be intoxicating in its allure.

For a girl who had grown up smack dab in the middle of a desert in a fairly homogenous community, a walk through the Old Port in Marseille was a wonder, indeed. At that Mediterranean crossroads, I saw for the first time very exotic people from all parts of the globe—French, Arabs, Orthodox Jews, Armenians, Moroccans, Turks, Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Ethiopians, gypsies. Hearing languages I could not begin to identify. Seeing gorgeous, colorful native dress and headdresses from all parts of Africa and Asia and people of every shade and hue. Smelling spices and cooking from the tables of many peoples. Feeling the energy, the vibrancy, the whiff of danger and the compelling promise of adventure inherent in every port city.

And just last month, Marseille escaped the urban violence that erupted in several French cities because its diverse people have lived together in this rich multicultural mix for millennia.

It was to just such a people as this that Paul wrote, people like us, living in a place much like ours, Los Angeles, a great port city and hub of commerce and cultures . Paul’s letter is thought by scholars to be the oldest of all the New Testament writings, written just 20 years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus. To these early Christians in Thessalonica-- Greek, Roman, and lots of (continued...)

"Do Not Quench the Spirit" by Rev. Patricia Farris, December 11, 2005

"Do Not Quench the Spirit" by Rev. Patricia Farris, December 11, 2005

Paul is, of course, pointing to something much deeper, something we need to dig down and claim in our hearts. Those people he wrote to in Thessalonica long ago were people facing real problems, real challenges, real dilemmas, just as we, yet were people filled with hope, flowing from their young and joyful faith. This was the power of their witness to the world. The scholar and United Methodist pastor, Huston Smith, reminds us that the early Christians were not numerous, prosperous or powerful. He writes: “If anything, they faced more adversity than the average man or woman. Yet, in the midst of their trials, they had laid hold of an inner peace that found expression in a joy that seemed exuberant. Perhaps radiant would be a better word…Life for them was no longer a matter of coping. It was glory discerned.”

The Christian lifestyle. Glory discerned. Rejoice, pray, give thanks in all circumstances.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put it this way: “In the early Church, people were attracted to it not so much by the preaching, but by the fact that they saw Christians as a community, living a new life as if what God had done was important, and had made a difference. They saw a community of those who, whether poor or rich, male or female, free or slave, young or old—all quite unbelievably loved and cared for each other. It was the lifestyle of the Christians that was witnessing.”

Nothing makes this more clear to us than by seeing the opposite and thanks to Charles Dickens, we see that opposite at Christmastime each year in crabby old Ebenezer Scrooge, a man whose very name has come to mean a miserly and mean-spirited person. Scrooge, a man so hurt by the loss of love in his life that all he could say of Christmas, indeed of life itself, was “Bah, humbug!”

Do you remember the scene in which his nephew is pleading with him to open his heart?

Scrooge: “What else can I be, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon Merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer…If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart! He should! . . . Keep Christmas in your way and I’ll keep it in mine?”

”Keep it”, repeated Scrooge’s nephew, “but you don’t keep it!”

“Let it leave me alone then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good has it ever done you!”

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around…as
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a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable time, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Of course, in the end, old Mr. Scrooge comes to his senses and finds his heart! He repents—wouldn’t it have made John the Baptist proud?! But we love him still for reminding us each year to root out any scroogyness that may have crept back into our hearts this year since last Christmas.

Don’t quench the Spirit, dear brothers and sisters. Don’t quench it in yourself or in others. Don’t quench it by being down in the mouth, rather than rejoicing or by complaining instead of giving thanks. Don’t quench it by not taking time to breathe or to pray. Don’t quench it by always focusing on what is wrong or what you don’t like or can’t do.

Don’t quench the Spirit by turning away from another’s pain or ignoring someone’s need. Don’t quench it with gossip and pettiness. Don’t quench the Spirit by missing the stars in the night sky or tuning out the angels’ song. Don’t quench it by being afraid, but remember always that the one who has called you is faithful.

Live by the light of the candle of joy and let our Christian lifestyle witness now to this wonderful, crazy, dynamic, hurting world. Rejoice, people of God, rejoice, pray and in all things, give thanks.

This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ!

Amen.

 

Notes:

Huston Smith quoted by Jan Love: “An Attitude of Gratitude” in Response magazine, November 2005.
Bishop Tutu quote from Resources for Preaching and Worship Year B. Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild, editors.
Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol.

©Patricia Farris, 2005. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.