Let's Go Sailing

Introduction

In a 2023 article in Golf Digest titled: “Throwing grass to check the wind is dumb. Here's why.” ...Matt Rudy quotes Nick von der Wense...15-time national sailing champion...to debunk what we’ve seen professional golfers do before they hit a shot.

Like any professional...a golfer is trying to understand all conditions that could affect where he or she is trying to put the ball. One of those variables...is wind speed.

But the sailing champion Von Der Wense declares: “Making your strategic decisions based on what you feel on the side of your face is a recipe for losing...because what you feel down by you... can be, and usually is, very different than what’s happening 20 feet or 100 feet above the ground.”

“Your best bet is to look at the flag on the clubhouse; think of that as the prevailing wind and make your big-picture strategic decisions accordingly.”

It’s always fascinating to me how those in the top of their professional field...go to the nth degree to get an edge.

Whether in a race as a sailor or hitting a golf ball...strategizing with the wind is essential.

Sufi mystic...and poet...Rumi...once said “On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.”

Let’s go Sailing

I’ve titled today’s message...Let’s go sailing. Like Rumi said...we as Christians...as the church...need to just “open the sail” and harness the movement of the Holy Spirit...and see a world full of beauty. What do I mean by that?

Presbyterian Pastor Rev. Joan Gray wrote a book titled “Sailboat Church”. In it she compares churches to “row boats” (where the congregation thinks making a difference for God is all up to them...so they row and row and eventually become exhausted). And she compares that to sailboart churches tend to be intentional about discerning God’s unfolding will. She writes “They engage in intimate partnership with God...trusting God to provide and do what only God can do.” (5)

She adds “Sailboat congregations know that they cannot make the wind blow...but they do realize that they can tap into spiritual resources beyond themselves by reorienting their efforts and catching the wind of the Spirit.”

For Rev. Gray...to be a sailboat church...we need to be like golfers and sailors...and discern and take clues from the wind. Only the wind the church is looking to harness is the Holy Spirit...the breath of God.

How was the Spirit described at Pentecost? As the sound of a mighty rushing wind. Indicating the animating power of the Holy Spirit.

The early church...which we’ve been studying this summer...was very much attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit...and they followed wherever it went.

Last week and Today

Last week I talked about how Peter’s dream of animals that the law of Moses considered unclean...God was calling clean. Indicating that no animal or no person God made was to be considered unclean by His children. Although confused...Peter understood God’s message and obeyed.

Today in Acts 11 we find a crucial turning point in the early church’s understanding of how the Holy Spirit was working to bring the church to the Gentiles. We are introduced to the church at Antioch...the gentile epicenter for the gospel in Acts. Antioch was the 3rd largest Roman city and was ethnically diverse... bringing together in trade people from India and the Orient. This was also a morally lax society with many pagan gods worshiped. We are told right off the bat in our reading this morning that Christians...who were scattered out of Jerusalem after Stephen’s martyrdom...may have fled to the gentile church in Antioch.

Acts 11:19–20 NLT

Meanwhile, the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews. However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene began preaching to the Gentiles about the Lord Jesus.

Luke...the author of Acts is pointing us to the movement of the Holy Spirit...beyond Jerusalem and into the heart of gentile Rome. But look at the next v. Acts 11:21

Acts 11:21 LEB

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord.

The hand of the Lord was with them...that expression is most often used in the Hebrew Bible / OT to indicate God’s strenght and God’s cointinuing presence with God’s pople.

Noticing the movement of the spirit...means we need to observe the hand of God.

What ministries, outreaches, prayer service or worship services is God’s hand blessing?

Where can we join God in this? That’s our question. Where can we join and how can we join when the hand of God is blessing a movement.

Rest of the story

Church in Jerusalem sends Barnabas (frmo antioch (6:5)

Barnabas praises God … knows they will need discipled

Goes gets Paul

They spend a year there

Agabus is attuned to the spirit and predicts a famine; to which the Anitoch church sends food to the church in Jerusalem

Its a beautiful story of mutual caring and love for the Lord and one another.

We are not in competition with anyone in serving God...we are partners. IN Christ our calling is the same.

We need to be a sail boat church like the early church...looking for the true wind...the Holy Spirit. Jesu ssaid the spirit is like the wind...you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going...but you see its effects. Let’s not toss grass in the air...close to ground...where we can be decieved....Let us keep our eyes and hearts open to God the Holy Spirit...and which direction he is calling us.

Thanks be to God...AMEN.