One of the things that has been on my heart lately is how disconnected we all seem to be in this modern world.  I touched on that point a few weeks ago.  I said that technology, jobs, transportation and a whole host of other things have had the dual affect of bringing us closer together and driving us further apart.  And it is still troubling me.  There was a time when a man and women in America would get married settle down in a town, get a nice career, and have few kids.  They would work, live, go to school and church in that town until they died.  There children would stay there in that town too.  They would grow up and marry and have kids.  The children would all visit the parents and grandparents on Saturday or Sunday for dinner. Then they too would live there lives in that town and grow old until they died.  And generation after generation would do that.

          I grew up in one of those small towns.  Four generations of Blodgett’s living there in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.  It was a community where everybody knew everybody.  Where I wasn’t just family with my family, I was family with my friends and neighbors.  That kind of community or family is getting harder and harder to find.  My parents still live in Sapulpa with one of my brothers.  My other brother lives in Seminole.  I live here.  My grandparents, aunts, and uncles are either dead or living all over the place. My friends and neighbors from growing up are scattered across this great country.  And I know from talking to many of you out there that a lot of your children or parents or grandparents are living all over the country too in Louisiana, California, Texas and beyond.  We have moved from a close knit family and community structure to an increasingly scattered and dispersed structure.

          This is something the biblical authors and characters knew well and about which they were quite concerned.  They were constantly striving to live and maintain community with one another at the same time they were being scattered.  Family and community first exist on earth as Adam and Eve are brought into existence.  Those two were the first family and community with God. As the human population multiples genealogies appear as a effort to maintain the family and community structure.  The tribal system of Genesis and Exodus helped to organize and preserve one family from another.  Later on, the great kings of Israel were meant to unite the Israelites together into one country, one community, under one God.  Even later on, Jesus gathers and creates another community, the early church, as he breaks bread with his followers, teaches, and leads them.  This issue of community is also tackled in another way by the bible.  Protection for those on the edge of community. The alien in our midst, the widow without family to take care of her, the orphan with out anything, provisions are made again and again in the bible to take care of the these people.  Grain is to be left for them.  Justice is to be done for them.  Mercy is to be given to them.  They are to be treated as a part of the community even if the natural bonds of family or community ties have been severed.  Such great concern is given to them so that they do not lose their lives.  They must be fed, protected, and watched after just like everybody else.  And if nobody else is there to guarantee these things, God will do it by God’s self. 

          Jesus echoes this concern in the passage for today. As he is leaving this earthly realm he is worried about maintaining community and fellowship and relationship after he is gone.  He wants to insure that you and I will not be orphaned, particularly by God.  That we will not be disconnected from our community, this community that Christ has created and died for and was resurrected for.  He wants us to live and to protect that life.  And that concerns flows down to our modern times, where we are so seemingly disconnected from one another.  He wants to pave a path where we will not be disconnected from each other now either.  And to do, our passage says, that Jesus Christ will ask the Father and the Father will send the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit will unite us with one another and unite us with God. 

          The Holy Spirit is not something you hear very much in Presbyterian Churches.  It is not that we do not believe in the Holy Spirit.  It is that we do not know what to do with it.  We are a pretty passive crowd overall.  God is out there.  Jesus is there in the Bible.  That Holy Spirit is troubling because you cannot place it somewhere.  You cannot put it in a box and be disconnected from it.  And I think that is the point.  The Holy Spirit fights against all our natural or more likely sinful inclinations to be disconnected from one another.  The Holy Spirit is that fire of faith that burns in our heart and makes us move.  The Holy Spirit is the wind that encircles us and  unites us in common purposes as we follow Christ together.  The Holy Spirit is the lightening crash that wakes us from our spiritual slumber and drives us out of the church to engage the world.  The Holy Spirit is God’s active agent in the world even now.  Active. Active agent. 

          The changes and growth that you see around you in this church and in this community is happening not primarily because of us, but because of the activity of the Holy Spirit working in and through us.  I am bit of an oddity in the Presbyterian Church, because as you may have noticed, I include the Holy Spirit an awful lot in my prayers.  I am not afraid it.  I know and I have seen the power and energy that the Holy Spirit can bring to us.  The life that the Holy Spirit can guide us into.  That is part of my call story that brought me into the church and guided me to this pulpit.  That life and vitality and connection is exactly what Jesus was trying to protect and continue by asking the Father to send another helper or advocate, the Holy Spirit.  The apostles, the early church were not going to be left like a helpless orphan to die, but God was going to protect and nurture them as God’s own. 

          God is not going to leave us alone either.  We are not orphans.  We are not even really scattered to the four winds.  We are still united in Christ by the Holy Spirit.  I love that line of Paul’s from the Letter to the Romans.  “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  What Paul is saying there, is that we are not just suffering and overcoming the world out here by ourselves.  God is with us.  Christ is with us.  And they are with us and active in our lives because of the Holy Spirit.

          If God is active and we are not orphans, then the way that we live our lives and the way we do church must change.  We do a pretty fair job around here of being a family.  We, for the most part, like one another and get along with one another.  We have fellowship events and live in community with one another.   But outside the walls of this church is a community that is also our family and we do not call and visit them enough.  They are diverse.  Rich and poor.  Black and white.  Male and female. American and not.  And they too are our family.  They are not orphaned by God either.  There is that old saying, “You can’t choose your family.” Talk about a true saying.  You cannot choose your family of faith either because we are all united by this Holy Spirit.  We are united and called to one another.  We should act like.  So that we truly can be as Christ said, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  That goes for all of us.  That is a vision of the church.  A vision where we are all connected and united with one another and with an active God working in our lives.  So I challenge you today to fulfill that vision of community and family that I began this sermon with today.  To visit and reach out to all of your family, all of Christ’s family.  To follow where the Holy Spirit leads us.  And as we are gathered together to be set on fire for God and to reach out even more to those with whom we are connected by the Holy Spirit.