And one more promise - that we would receive the Holy Spirit. This is the one I want you to think about today - that we would have sightings, that we would have sightings of the presence of God right near and around us. This is my prayer, that when the Holy Spirit makes the presence of God known unto you, that you will allow God to control that experience because insofar as you try to control the experience, you may not see the Lord nearby. You may not, if you allow your sadness to overwhelm it, see the sweetness of the Lord or your despair. You may not see the hope of the Lord who is in the people around you or if you allow your fears or your sin, then you may remain blind to this most blessed of promises.

This is what happened to the apostles and to the friends of Jesus when He first began to appear to them. You will remember that Mary Magdalene saw Him when she was so sad that the tears clouded her eyes, and she thought He was the gardener until the Lord took control and called her by name and then she knew.

You will remember that two disciples walking to Emmaus were so filled with their own despair that they didn't know who Jesus was walking beside them, until Jesus took over, and then they knew, and the disciples locked themselves away in an upper room for fear of what might happen to them and did not know it was the Lord until He took control.

One more. St. Paul, who was Saul, so filled with his own righteousness was unaware of the Lord until that Lord took over. This is my prayer, that when that promise is being kept for you, that you will not allow any of these things of your own life to control the experience because then the dear Lord appearing will not be seen by you.

Or let me say all this another way. Let me tell you a story.

About a year ago, my wife and I returned to the church where we had been pastoring for years and years and years. It was an inner-city congregation. It was the congregation that we had been with for fifteen years. One that we had come to love, small congregation, black to our whiteness, one so wise that I began to understand these sightings, or these appearances of the Lord in that congregation.

I remember the Sunday and I remember how the Lord became apparent in exactly the most curious and unexpected place. It was last spring, Good Shepherd Sunday, and already there was some sense in me that things were going to be a little bit different in this tiny congregation, not that the children were going to sing, that was usual. The children often would get up in front and sing, and they rose always casually in this congregation, and it was always a jubilation for the adults to smile upon these children. They would gather in the chancel area without any sense of decorum or formality, and they would smile at their parents and scratch the air and wave.

Only this time when they got up to sing, there was one child - the most wild of all the children - who stood in a way I had never seen him stand before. James. James stood up in front of the congregation, military and straight. That child at the age of six had his chest stuck out, his skinny chest stuck out like something terribly important was going to happen. His chin was up and the hair fell down his back. Something, something in his manner, said this would not be the same sort of Sunday that it had been before.

Well, James was the most unrestrained child in church. James was the kind of boy who, if he loved you, would literally race across the fellowship hall and bomb you with his head, knock the wind out of you and squeeze you. He was the kind of child whose toy in church was G.I. Joe, so that while I was preaching he would have G.I. Joe shooting Christians down while I'm trying to save their lives. He would shout in church. He would get up and walk to me even when I was preaching. "Pastor," he said once after I had finished a sermon and sat down in the chancel, "Pastor," he said, "When you die, I'm going to be a pastor." The boy had killed me off in order to keep his dreams.

And last year matters were worse with James. His parents had begun to get a divorce, and the more that family pulled apart, the wilder James himself was. It was shocking to me that he would, with all the children, be the only one who stood up formal and straight.

And the children sang their first song, and all the congregation smiled upon them with the beamings of God, and when they were done, the congregation did what it always did. They applauded the children and the children smiled and they waved back and applauded themselves, and then they all tottered off to the front pews and sat down, except for James.

James was the only one who had not sat down. Still with his chest out, Brenda went to the piano and began to play, and I realized what was happening. James, at six years old, was going to sing his first solo in his entire life and he was taking it very seriously. I should have known.

Sitting in front of me where I was sitting, just one pew ahead, was his father who was there with his girl friend. His father, a short man and a genial one, with glasses. To the right, across the aisle behind me, was his mother who was flanked on that particular Sunday by her parents, one on one side and one on the other, and they all sat with their arms folded as if this were some kind of an invasion into enemy territory. I should have seen that and I should have known. James was about to sing his first hymn. And he did.

Brenda began to play the piano and James started to sing in an astonishingly pure voice right on the notes, he sang:

I had never heard James's voice before, and this wild child with his fall of hair, with his G.I. Joe attacks, with his vigorous love was singing as sweetly as the angels. And then he came to the second verse. The whole congregation was quiet.

You know how sometimes when somebody has memorized a song, you can watch by their eyes and see that the end of the memorization is coming but the song won't be over?

Poor James began to feel that the end of the song was going to catch him before the music was done. The whole congregation watched his face. They saw that tape coming to the very moment that it was going to strike his head and then James the Wild found it!

Oh, the congregation was with him. He had survived and he went on to sing three, four verses of this beautiful song, only the more that he sang the quieter became the congregation. By the time he got to the fifth verse, I heard a sound in the pew in front of me and I looked. His father's head was down. His father had covered his eyes, taken his glasses off, and was sobbing.

And behind me to the right-hand side, there was his mother still with her chin up and her arms folded, in enemy territory, but the tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Something was happening, something altogether different was happening in this church. Members of the congregation also had their heads down, peering so closely at James whose voice was brighter than he knew, clearer than he knew, more holy than he ever realized.

"Shall follow me," he sang, "and in God's house forever more, my dwelling place shall be," he sang. "My dwelling place shall be."

And when he was done, no one moved. His father's head was down, his mother's head was up, and the tears were coming from them. No one applauded. James waited for his applause and no one was applauding. They were looking down; they were looking up; they were looking away and poor James was lost. So he put closure to the song that the congregation would not applaud. James bowed, bowed vigorously until the congregation began to laugh, broke open with a dear and blessed laughter, that James had been more beautiful, that James had preached more loudly than the wild child had known.

That, people, was a sighting. That was the Holy Spirit and the presence of the resurrected Lord among us for all kinds of people, for me, for his mother and his father. No, they will not get back together again, but there was an extraordinary opportunity there at that point, if they would not allow sadness to blind them to the presence of God in their child, if they would not allow despair to blind them, if they would not allow fear or more than anything else that sin that makes people think that sinfulness is righteousness. And they could see in the hottest place, in the most extraordinary place, the presence of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of the Risen Lord in James.

Now you have choices. The promise is sure. It is absolutely sure tomorrow or the next day or the next week, the Holy Spirit will become apparent exactly where you don't expect it and when you allow the Lord to be the one in control of the association, when you will yourself lay down your arms, then you will see this glory and blessing, these things, people, this peace and this joy and that forgiveness and the ability to forgive arising from the angels of God.

In a minute, listen and you will hear the choir sing loudly, "Hallelujah," and when you hear that "Hallelujah," you will be assured, yes. Sometimes the glory of God breaks open in anticipated ways, but after that song is done, when you turn back to your most common and ordinary life, then listen and wait to hear the love of God in the grasses springing green and the children and the people around you. Listen and watch for the Lord is calling.

Lydia Talbot:  Walter, the sharp, shooting of a flaming metaphor you say you got from your mother, is your special genius, I think, for revealing your personal faith through your award-winning story-telling. In the compelling children's book, Potter, you capture the resurrection message through the metaphor of a bird. How did that evolve?

Walter Wangerin:  I'll give you two triggers for the evolution of that story and the resurrection in it. One was that I needed to find a way, especially to speak to children, about a resurrection that would not seem to them false or cheap. I went to a very old Christian tale which is the Phoenix. From the early Christian church on, they used the story of that bird which died in flames every five hundred years and then was born out of its own ashes, as the best story they had for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Well, I wanted to use that in my story as the climax for a child watching that take place to begin to realize that there can be a resurrection.

My own personal experience is that when I was that child and when I was suffering the death of a friend, I happened to catch a Baltimore Oriole in my hands in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and I was astonished at how tender the bird was and how small its little neck was on the inside of all those feathers. When I sat down to write this story, I knew I would use my experience and I wanted somehow to make a link between a child who reads the book and my child in the book and, finally, that beautiful Phoenix and injury that would come. So I used the birds. The experience of all the birds.

Talbot:  Walter Wangerin, you are authentic and inspirational. We thank you so much for that message.