Reflection - August 2, 2026

Reflection - August 2, 2026

Sermon: We Cannot Script the Spirit                             Traci Hubbard

August 2, 2026

My doctor said I needed to make some serious lifestyle changes. So, I changed my doctor. Think about this…

How many United Church’s of Canada does it take to change a light bulb? "Change it? My grandfather donated that light bulb!

"We do not think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking."

Have you ever noticed how much we love a script?

We want to know what's happening next. We like recipes, GPS directions, five-year plans, and church PPTs with every hymn in the right place. Some of us get nervous if someone sits in our chair. We don't own the chair—but somehow our mind has put a mortgage on it. Then the Cosmos says, "I'm doing a new thing. Infinite LOVE doesn’t say, "I'm polishing the old thing, or I'm updating the old version.” Holy Vibration is always doing a new thing. The Spirit has never been interested in simply preserving our comfort. The Spirit is always creating. The trouble is that we often want the Infinite to bless our script instead of inviting us into Her story.

Isaiah isn't speaking to people living their best lives. Israel is in exile. They want to go back. Back to certainty, familiarity, you know, to the way things used to be. Infinite Mystery doesn't even begin with the destination, the Holy begins with perception. "Do you not perceive it?" Sometimes the greatest miracle isn't that the Sacred changes circumstances. It's that the Spirit changes our eyes. Richard Rohr reminds us, "We do not think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking." That's deeply transformational and life giving. The disciples didn't fully understand Jesus before following him. They understood because they followed. Faith has always been less like solving an equation and more like learning to dance in the rain. Nobody learns the tango by reading about it. Eventually we have to step onto the floor and risk looking slightly ridiculous. Following the risky and radical ways of Christ is the same way.

The early church discovered this firsthand. Peter is a wonderful example. In Acts chapter ten, Peter is praying on a rooftop when he receives a bewildering vision. A sheet filled with animals descends from heaven, and a voice says, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." Peter immediately protests, "Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything unclean." Peter is trying to remain faithful, but his understanding of faithfulness has become tied to old categories. Then comes the startling response: "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." Before Peter has time to figure it all out, the Spirit sends him to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. Everything Peter has learned tells him not to cross that threshold. Yet he goes anyway. While Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit falls upon the Gentiles just as it had upon the Jewish believers. Peter doesn't reason himself into this new way of thinking and loving. He walks into it. He lives into it. Only after witnessing what Holy Mystery is doing he declares, “I truly understand that Infinite LOVE shows no partiality." Peter's mindset changed because his experience of LOVE's grace expanded. His mind followed where the Spirit had already led his feet. Isn't that how the Spirit often works? She doesn't hand us a complete blueprint. Wisdom – Sophia – the Spirit invites us to take the next faithful step, trusting that understanding will grow along the journey. The greatest obstacle to the Spirit’s new thing is often not what we consider evil. It's our ego. The ego says, "I already know."

"I've always done it this way."

"If it isn't familiar, it can't be what we need to imagine, be, and do."

The ego mistakes comfort for truth. The Spirit keeps interrupting that illusion. Jesus constantly surprised people. Not because God (whatever name you know and understand God to be) had changed. We become surprised because our expectations and our ways of thinking and doing things become too small. We often ask, "Spirit, please bless what I'm doing." History proves and I believe that the Spirit has always said and is saying to us, "Would you rather join what I'm doing?" These are very different prayers.

Humor has a way of exposing the ego. Without fail, every church that has called a minister to help them become a relevant choice and grow has been told, “'We've never done it that way before." If we're honest, sometimes our greatest act of faith is surviving a new song the minister has written or placed in the service. Or surviving moving the coffee station to the foyer so folks can bring their coffee mugs and fill them. Or surviving children and youth practicing the presence of the Spirit differently and making more noise than the adults. If the flame of Eat, Play, Love had been fanned instead of blown out by what a few folks expected and wanted it to be and do, things may have surprised everyone in a life-giving way.

Infinite LOVE says, "I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." Notice where the miracle happens. Not in the temple – the church. In the wilderness. The desert represents uncertainty. No maps, guarantees, in our scripts for the Spirit to hit her mark – the mark we have made for her to deliver the lines we have written and want to hear. Folks, when we look at our lives, we will clearly see that our spiritual growth happens in the heart wrenching, uncertain, desert moments. No one asks for the desert. But many discover Infinite LOVE there. The Israelites found manna there. Elijah heard the still small voice there. Jesus was tested for ministry qualifications there. The desert strips away the illusion that we're in control. Only then do we discover that Infinite LOVE has a better plan, another way, a new and always evolving way that results in growth. The wilderness isn't punishment. It's preparation for us to eat, play, and love together so we can become more than who we are. When we stop trying to control every outcome, we become available for expanding grace.

Many people think legacy means preserving the past. Spiritually, legacy means passing on living faith, not fossilized faith. Living faith. Living Legacy. A river, Lake Okanagan, remains alive because it moves and we know, no man ever steps in the same river or lake twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. The Dead Sea receives water but lets none out. Lake Okanagan gives life. The Dead Sea simply preserves. Churches, families, and individuals face the same choice. Friends, most of us have more photo albums and family movies that we can count, but do we live our lives only to preserve memories?

Or do we really desire to participate in the Spirit’s ongoing creation? Past spiritual leaders and followers of the Cosmos didn't honor tradition by freezing it. They honored tradition by faithfully responding to Infinite LOVE’'s call in the current culture, not in their generation. Our children, our adult children, our grandchildren, and our neighbours do not need us to recreate yesterday. They need us to trust and follow Infinite LOVE today.

Legacy is not leaving people exactly where we were. It's helping them follow wherever and however the Spirit is leading them to go and be.

When I was a senior in high school, my best friend and her family invited me to go to Puerto Villarta with them. One day, we learned about a virgin beach – a beach no one inhabited, and a native guide in the area promised he could get us there. So, we climbed into two jeeps while four men walked in front of us with machetes cutting a way through the jungle. Our eyes were bigger than a full moon. We were out in a jungle with men we did not know but trusted to get us through all the wild natural entanglement to a clear, beautiful, and safe place to land and spend our day. It was bumpy and exhilarating. Iguanas were hanging from branches and flying through the air. Species of colored birds sang and flew around us. I concentrated really hard not to think about the spiders and snakes that I knew were crawling around. It took longer than the guides expected to arrive at the beach. The blades on the machetes became dulled by thicker entanglements they had not expected. But, when the last twenty yards had been cleared, the jeeps drove onto untouched sand that seemed like it had been waiting for us.

When we jumped out of the jeeps and gathered our stuff, I asked the head guide how he knew about this hidden treasure. He said, “I could see it from my boat when I was passing by. I circled around and went about 500 yards further out to take a wider look. I could see the village was about two miles away from the beach and I knew we could cut a path for a jeep to drive through. I know Puerto Villarta like I know myself. And I promised myself that someday, I would lead people who trusted me to a place no one had ever stepped on before. Watching all of you as we cut and moved, feeling your trust and excitement, made the journey an experience that will stay with me the rest of my life.”

Peter’s experience and Isaiah tell us the Spirit is already doing something new. This morning, our question isn't whether Infinite LOVE is moving. Our question is are we're paying attention? We cannot script the Spirit. Holy LOVE refuses to fit neatly inside our plans.

Instead, the Spirit invites us to live ourselves into change. Release the grip of our ego. Trust the Spirit in the wilderness. And leave behind a legacy that is alive, growing, and courageous. Because the One who made a way through the sea...is now making rivers in the desert.

And perhaps the greatest miracle is this, the Spirit is not asking us to relive yesterday's faith. The Spirit is inviting us to become today and tomorrow's participants and witnesses. May we eat, play, and love in new ways like there’s nothing but today to engage in new ways of being a living legacy…to become ways that make those who are not here yet, curious. It’s time to be a new way. It’s time to be curious and courageous enough to tear up our script and follow the Spirit.

May it be so, amen.