The Bathwater

Text: John 20:19-29

Focus: Power of God

Function: To help people embrace their relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Form:

Intro: I want to be a little tongue in cheek this morning and give you the Phil Reynolds Abridged version of Church history since Constantine.

Constantine was the Roman Emperor who claimed to be converted to Christ.

Rumor has it that Constantine, when he was baptized, held his right arm out of the water because he did not want to surrender his sword hand to Jesus.

And in one sense, at least to me, that was the fall of the Church.

Up until that time the Church experienced phenomenal growth in spite of the fact that Christians were persecuted to death.

Many would wander why, when death was a very real option if one surrendered one's life to Christ.

Well, I suppose some sort of psychological study could be made about the same kind of death wish, or adventure, however one may describe it, related to teenagers joining ISIS.

Or. And this is much more relevant to me. Or, the Holy Spirit called people to Christ.

The early Church was amazing!

At first, they were so dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, to Jesus' generous grace and mercy, that they lived in Community, sharing everything, so that they could be more effective.

And although those first 300 years were filled with persecution, they were also filled with tremendous power: Power from God.

They took the teachings of Jesus serious enough to be the main welfare system for wherever they went in the Roman Empire.

The Holy Spirit was at work in them. And the Holy Spirit was working to call them to live sacrificial lives. Or at least, to love everyone else as much as they loved themselves.

The sincerity of their commitment, powered by the Holy Spirit, drew others to Christ.

The faith was real to outsiders because Christians lived it, even though sometimes it cost them everything.

There was no disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the way the early Christians lived their lives.

And then, when Constantine was converted, the Church became the State Religion. Apparently, politicians and other power hungry people, joined the Church for political, or convenience reasons and the faith was sort of diluted.

Ironically, what the Church was praying for: official recognition, sort of became the worse thing that could happen.

Believers then were the same as believers now. They were people who lived, loved, cared and suffered just like people do now. Suffering is never easy. When Christianity was the official religion and persecution stopped, Christianity became easier.

I wonder if it was too easy. They got a break, but they lost the edge they had.

Maybe a little bit of comfort goes a long way.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with being comfortable. Not at all. Comfort is a blessing from God.

But what happened is that people lost the “living for the good of others” mentality and started living more for themselves.

Again, it may just be a blessing.

But maybe the worst thing that happened was that social welfare, which was being done primarily by the church stopped being funded by the sacrificial living of Christians. Welfare had been done by the Church, and the church did it well. But All of a sudden, social welfare became the ministry of the Government instead of the Church.

I am not going to get into the current politics of that except to say that it has proven difficult to bring it back exclusively to the Church. We have tried for 1700 years.

In my abridged history of the Church, that was the first big event in Church history.

The second was the Reformation.

Throughout the history of the Church, there has always been a faithful remnant.

The Holy Spirit has always been active in the Church.

And in spite of the Church's downfall when what appears to be an insincere Emperor was “converted,” throughout history, men, women, children and the aged have found comfort and peace in the Church, the body of Christ.

But, at the same time, there appeared to be official corruption in the institution.

And the Reformation was started by sincere Catholics who never intended to cause a split. They were merely asking questions.

But because people are hot-headed and defensive, it became a split instead of a reconciliation.

We had already split around the 3^rd Century into the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church.

But now, the Roman Catholic Church split into the Roman Catholics and the Protestants.

I regret the name: “Protestant.”

It means, those who protest.

And it is sad that where the body of Christ was promised a reputation for its love, over half of it is now known as the group that protests.

I think of that name for us: Protesters. Wow. Protest has been good, but it should be reserved for evil.

Now we name a branch of Christianity for the opposite of acts of love. And we often wonder why the world outside quite listening.

But, that just helps us remember that we still need an healing, a reconciliation. That is why I believe in Ecumenicism.

And at the Reformation, one big huge thing changed.

The Protestants, in order to throw off the burden of Roman Catholicism started changing everything.

And one of the things that we went to far with was the confessional.

And that brings us back to today's scripture.

“Receive the Holy Spirit, those whose sins forgive will be forgiven, those whose sins you retain will be retained.”

Think about it. That is a huge responsibility.

And, it could be used in the wrong way.

It could be used to control people by fear. It could be used to justify a system that strayed from Jesus' teaching.

Or, it could, and should be used, to impart grace to everyone.

“ I Forgive you.” Say it with me: “I forgive you.”

Those might be the most powerful words heard in Christianity.

We need 60,000 cookies for the Kairos weekend. During the Kairos weekend, Saturday evening, each of the Residents are given 2 extra dozen cookies to give to a resident of the prison that they need to forgive.

A true story is told of one such prisoner, a little guy what was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in a prison.

He was picked on. So he joined this Neo-Nazi group in order to have someone to watch his back.

One night, he got a prison tat (tattoo) from a man who disagreed with his decision to become Aryan.

He was supposed to put some sort of Aryan symbol on the back of his neck. Instead, he inked the symbol of one of the black gangs on his neck, It was a sad joke.

The man wanted revenge. He and the tattoo artist were both on a Kairos weekend together. The little man, bravely brought a shiv, the prison term for makeshift knife in order to murder the man who played the joke on him.

He was going to use shiv to murder the other. But instead of offering him cold steel to his neck, he handed the cookies to him and threw away the shiv.

Another inmate, who was sitting at my son's table two years ago had written his mother's name on a piece of paper.

It was a list of the people who harmed us. It was a list of those we choose to forgive.

He had not seen or heard from his mother in 16 years. On Saturday night, he forgave his mother.

On Sunday morning, out of the blue, his mother came to the prison to visit him.

This is a miracle of timing.

She planned the trip a week before. He would not have received her.

But he forgave and God knew he would. And so, to prove the power of forgiveness, God started working the miracle of his mother's visit a week before.

This passage is speaking of real spiritual power.

If we forgive on earth, it will happen in heaven.

This is real. I have seen it time and time again. To many times has reconciliation happened after I have unconditionally offered forgiveness for it to be a coincidence.

God will indeed work.

God proved it to me, my son, this man, his mother and everyone else in that room.

This is real power.

So the title of the Sermon: “The Bathwater.”

It comes from the idiom: “Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.” In other words, don't go to far in our cleaning house.

We Protestants, while rejecting what might have been abuse by a religious system, while rejecting the power of an institutional Church, while rejecting the authority of the Pope, threw out the idea of confession because it might seem to “Roman Catholic.”

But look at the passage.

It is commanded here.

And I understand the idea of a confessing to a Priest.

Last week I mentioned how nothing that is not general among all of Christianity can happen on the Kairos weekend. In other words, no baptizing, no communion, no laying on of hands, no speaking in tongues, no praying to saints or Mary. Except for the fact that the team washes each other's feet during our team meeting, there is only one other thing that happens that is not denominationally specific.

We do confession. We constantly identify the ordained clergy to the men so that if they have sins they need to get off their chest, they can.

And since we are ordained, we cannot be compelled to testify against the men in the future.

I have heard a lot of stuff. Heavy stuff.

But I thank God that we embrace the Roman Catholic concept of confession. It is indeed biblical.

And, I understand the use of by Priests. They are trained to keep quiet. They are trained to respond with grace that benefits the sinner. And, they aren't gossips.

So, I submit that the baby might have been thrown out with the bathwater.

But in our text, there is more.

We have two stories in today's text about belief.

The second one is about Thomas and his doubt unless he sees physical evidence.

I suppose Thomas' faith is a great story for the modern man who needs objective proof to believe in the Divine. I rejoice that God was more interested in Thomas' salvation that chiding him for unbelief and the God who wants everyone to be saved went the extra mile and gave him the proof.

I rejoice in that.

But the lesson is “blessed are those who believe and have not seen.”

This again is a tie back to the Holy Spirit.

I want to replace those words with “blessed are those who listen to the Holy Spirit and let the Holy Spirit create faith in Jesus.

And that ties into the bath water theme.

The theme of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater does not only apply to confession, but to the work and power of the Holy Spirit.

At my conservative Bible College, while studying the book of Acts, the first verse we memorized was Acts 1:8. (Quote it)

It came up in my devotions this week.

Power. Real power. Real spiritual power.

Not for the sake of validating me, my faith, my choices, my life, especially over others, but so that Jesus might be shown to an hurting and dying world.

We are witnesses. Just like the first Church. And the Power of the Holy Spirit will always continue to strengthen our message and create faith in Christ.