In the last few weeks there have been two big lottery winners covered in the national press. I keep praying that someday a member of this congregation will win one of those huge lotteries, and I keep praying that the member who does win is a tither! Well, I don’t actually pray that because I don’t think that lotteries or gambling in any form is a particularly healthy or spiritually mature way to spend money, but it is nice to fantasize every once in a while about how life might be different with a sudden infusion of huge amounts of cash! I suppose even the wealthiest among us, and the most powerful among us, and the most intelligent among us, dreams every once in a while about what it would be like to have even more money or power or brainpower, don’t we? What strikes me about the huge lottery winners is this: that from the moment you win your life takes a radical turn. And I suppose that is true about any momentous kind of event. When you find a mate or lose a mate, find a job or lose a job, find a fortune or lose a fortune, life changes, perhaps quite radically. Big events have big implications.

In a sense, our national holiday of Thanksgiving is recognition of this fact. When a starving band of Pilgrims made it through their first winter in the new world and then enjoyed an adequate harvest after their first summer, that was a big event, a life-or-death event, literally speaking. And so they decided to mark this momentous fact with a feast. Heaven had blessed them with adequate food, and being people of faith, they recognized that heaven needed to be thanked.

Winning a lottery or making it through a tough first year in a new land are very small bits of a much larger picture of the human story. It is that larger picture of which Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus around the middle of the first century after the birth of Christ. In fact, Paul was speaking of the entire picture of existence, including not just human history but the history of all time and space, the history of what God was doing in the world and doing with his creation. We’ve spent the entire fall walking carefully through the story, learning how God has blessed all creation by sending his Son as the complete and total revelation of his plan and his character, a plan to redeem the entire creation that is born out of a character of infinite love. We’ve learned how God has taken the initiative to provide for us a way out of our predicament of sin and death, how God is building us into a spiritual family and kingdom, how God is blessing us with everything we truly need and desire. And we’ve learned that God is using his power in each of us to make us into that perfect image of humanity that he has already expressed in Christ. What God has done and is doing is far beyond winning a big lottery and even far beyond surviving in a new world, in fact, it is far beyond what we can even ask or imagine.

If winning a lottery changes your life, or if surviving a tough year changes your life, then how much more is your life changed when you realize the amazing things that God has done for you and is doing in you now? This is the dynamic to which Paul turns his attention in the second half of his letter to the brothers and sisters in Ephesus. “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” God has adopted us as his children. God has let us in on his plans for the universe. God has assured us of his love for us and his intention to have us live forever with him in glory. God has removed any fear we might have of death. God welcomes all of us, not just some of us, to this amazing life. If all of this good news doesn’t change you, then nothing ever will. But Paul himself had been changed by God’s intervention in his life, and he had seen it happen in countless others’ lives. And so he reminded us all that we now have a new opportunity to live in a new way because of what God has done for us.

Jesus invited his first disciples to enter into a whole new way of understanding reality and subsequently, a whole new way of living. Jesus called them to experience life in the Kingdom of God, life in its highest and best form. To follow Jesus into this new life involves a person’s entire life, not just part of it. And to follow Jesus involves life on this side of death, as well as on the other. To follow Jesus is to learn to live a God life, a life infused thoroughly with the Holy Spirit, which is God in his present form and reality with us, the continuing life of Jesus Christ. That is the nature of our calling, our vocation. Throughout the rest of his letter Paul will explain the practical implications of the spiritual blessings God gives us. In effect, Paul describes for us what happens in people’s minds and hearts and wills and everyday lives when they begin to live in Christ through the power of the Spirit. Here is where we see how the God life actually takes root and changes the whole shape and character and thrust of people’s lives.

We often think of the Spirit of God as wind or breath. You cannot see the Spirit and you cannot capture the Spirit, but you know it is there. Wind and breath are another way of talking about air, which is matter in gaseous form. One of the things you and I learned about gasses in our junior high physics class is that a gas takes the shape or form of that which contains it. Gas has no form of its own, but it expands to fill the container it is in and in a sense, conforms itself to the shape of the container. Liquids do the same thing, of course, but they cannot expand beyond their particular amount of mass. Here’s how to think of a gas. If you put helium into a balloon shaped like a ball, you get a ball. If you put helium into a balloon shaped like Mickey Mouse, you get Mickey Mouse. That is the way all gasses behave. But the Spirit of God is not just any “wind” or “breath.” When the Spirit of God comes into a person, it does not take the shape of that person. Instead, it begins to change the shape of that person into the shape of God. When the Spirit of Christ enters your heart and soul, Christ begins a life-long process of making you into a version of himself, a perfect blend of the unique person God made you to be, but perfected and refined and completed by the presence of Christ in you.

Paul begins here in this passage to speak of the very real ways in which the Holy Spirit changes the shape of a person’s life. He speaks of the kinds of qualities in a person’s life that are worthy of the Spirit, qualities that truly do spring from God’s renewing and remolding work. The list he gives is brief and by no means are we to take it as a complete list. But it is an important beginning. Paul says that the effect of the Holy Spirit in us produces humility, gentleness, patience, love and peace. I don’t know if Paul specifically chose these qualities or if for him they were a random list, but to me they together produce a picture of a person who has the beginnings of true spiritual maturity. Instead of being arrogant and proud of the special place that we hold in God’s heart, we are to be humbled by the fact that God would even choose us in the first place. Instead of being pushy and domineering because of the status we know we have with God and trying to force the truth that we understand down everyone else’s throats, we are to be gentle and considerate and kind. Instead of rushing forward with our own timetable for bringing everyone into the Kingdom of God, we are to be patient in our work of sharing the good news. Instead of trumpeting our superior spiritual knowledge, we are instead to love others. Instead of forcing the rule of God’s Kingdom on everyone, we are instead to pursue peace.

Now that is just one way of looking at Paul’s list of virtues and there are certainly others. No matter how we understand the list, we cannot fail to realize that these fruits of the presence of the Spirit are identical with the virtues of Jesus himself. That should come as no surprise. If Jesus is God-With-Us, and the Spirit is the Spirit of the Risen Christ, then the shape the Spirit takes in us will be identical to the shape of God that we have known in Jesus.

Paul makes special note of one of the manifestations of the Spirit and that is the presence of unity. He notes that there is only one Holy Spirit and only one body of Christ. He says that we have only one source of hope and that there is only one Lord. He says there is only one true faith, one baptism into that faith, and above all there is only one God who is the Father of all. Why this special emphasis on oneness and unity?

In other letters of Paul’s we learn that one of the biggest challenges in the early church was the fact that it was very easy for different factions and different theologies to develop. Especially among the Gentile Christians who were used to worshiping many gods in many ways, it was easy for their Christianity to devolve into multiple forms and expressions. One problem with this was that this also tended to divide even local churches into warring factions and cliques. Paul himself had suffered through something like this when he and Peter went head-to-head over the idea of whether or not Jesus came for the sake of just the Jews or also came to welcome the Gentiles. They each had agreed to go their separate ways, but they also agreed that they both were serving the one God.

Paul insisted that all people who believed in God through Christ were one people, one church. Because of this fact, individual Christians and groups of Christians must work to maintain as much visible and practical unity as they possibly can. But the unity does not result from our effort to be unified. We only can confess and proclaim the unity we experience in our common faith in Christ. This is a unity that crosses all denominational lines, all creedal expressions, all differences around minor points of theology or practice. All who confess Christ as Lord and Savior are one in him. That reality trumps the lesser realities of our local congregations or our denominational loyalties. In other words, the shape of God’s Spirit in a person leads that person to recognize and affirm the true Christian faith that exists in others, regardless of what differences may exist alongside their common Christianity. But I am preaching to the choir here, or else none of you would attend the Village Community Presbyterian Church!

The upshot of all of what Paul says in these few lines is this, that those who have understood and received the spiritual blessings of God life will necessarily become different. There are practical implications of eternal realities.

One day a police officer was following a car down the road when suddenly another vehicle swerved in front of them both and cut them off. The officer could see that the driver of the car directly in front of him began to yell and swear and gesture at the offending driver in front of them both. After a couple of minutes of watching the driver ventilate his feelings, the officer switched on his siren and lights and pulled the car over. The driver started yelling at the officer, “Why didn’t you stop that fool in front of us? Didn’t you see what he did to us?” The police officer calmly stated, “Well, I was going to do that, but then I noticed how you began to yell and swear and gesture, and I saw that on the back of your car was a little fish with a cross in it and a bumper sticker that said ‘I Love Jesus,’ I decided that surely a Christian wouldn’t do what you were doing, so obviously you have stolen this car! May I see your license and registration please?”

If you were ever accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? If you have received the blessings of God in your life, and if you have welcomed Jesus into your life, and if you have the Spirit living in your life, are you leading a life worthy of them? Are you a person of humility, gentleness, patience, peace, unity, and love? Is God taking shape in your life?

Amen.

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