Elanora Uniting Church – The Church in the Pines

This Week’s Minister’s Message:

NEW LIFE IN CHRIST (Romans 6)

            His world had just been turned upside down.  He had just had all his doors blown off their hinges and when the Israelites asked him “What should we do?” I do not believe he gave them a three-step prescription to fill.  I believe he told them how to prepare for a holy hurricane.

            “Reorient your lives”. That is the truth of what he told them, knowing full well that was what would happen the moment Jesus came to live in them.  Forget everything you ever thought you knew about who is in charge in this world. Get ready to revise all your notions about what makes someone great, or right, or worthy of your attention. If you think you know which way is up, think again. If you think you know how things should turn out in the end, get ready to be wrong.  This Jesus I have been telling you about is one surprise after another.  You cannot second guess him.  All you can do is love him and let him love you back, any way he sees fit.  Sometimes it is so strong it can scare you to death.  You want to know what you should do?   Repent, return, revise, re-invent yourself.

            Then go get born again, by water and the Spirit.  Walk into the river of death with him, and while you are down there, let the current carry away everything that stands between you and him.  Then, when all your breath is gone, let him give you some of his. Take his breath inside of you. Let it save your life, and when he rises, rise with him, understanding that your life is no longer your own.  You died down there.  You are borrowing his life now.  Let someone make the sign of the cross on your forehead to remind you of that, and join the community of those who call themselves his body, because they believe his heart beats in every one of them.  

            There is no limit to what the Holy Spirit can do.  You just cannot hold your breath, that’s all.  You have to keep breathing, keep paying attention, keep responding.  Some people call it intuition.  Forever and ever, the church has called it Holy Spirit.     

-       Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, p72-73