Scripture: Hebrews 4:12-13; John 3:1-7 Series: 2022
Part of the ‘How to Build a Car’ series, this Mother’s Day sermon uses Formula 1 aerodynamics (drag vs. downforce, from Adrian Newey’s book) as an extended metaphor for how the church meets the world. The Holy Spirit pushes the church to move and change; our assumptions and disordered attachments create drag, while surrender creates downforce. Drawing on Hebrews 4:12-13, Pruitt frames God’s word as a two-edged sword that cuts through self-deception, and on C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce (the possessive ghost mother Pam) to define sin as a good gift—like a mother’s love—distorted into possession and control. He closes with Nicodemus and new birth, calling the church to be a people of the book who let go of everything but love.
Illustrations: aerodynamics-drag-and-downforce, adrian-newey-how-to-build-a-car, f1-regulated-parts-pirelli-tires, methodist-laywoman-founded-mothers-day, apostles-laying-down-nets-and-past, great-divorce-pam-possessive-mother, nicodemus-born-again-question, house-on-sand-versus-rock, ut-f1-pickleball-not-the-bond
May 8
Aerodynamics
Mother’s Day
“because God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions. No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.” Hebrews 4:12-13 CEB
Aerodynamics are complex. Some of you are engineers and worked on aeronautical or aerospace projects, and in your time, you have dealt with some of the complexities of aerodynamics. Aerodynamics in a car is different from aerodynamics in a plane, but the same basic concepts still apply. Same with aerodynamics in a bird, even aerodynamics in a person. All of our interactions with reality have an aerodynamic component. We hit air: we change the air and the air changes us. Our speed and mass can make these changes more or less dynamic.
Today is Mother’s Day. A dynamic day. A day started by a methodist lay woman over a hundred years ago to honor her mother. Mother’s day is not about yourself. Sorry mom’s, you’re great, but you can’t say to yourself, “It’s all about me!” It is always about reaching out to another. Not every woman has a child but every person has a mother. Mother’s handle everything for foetus’s as they develop. They, as well, handle the aerodynamics. Our mother’s pushed back the wind for us and took care of us and taught us to navigate the world. In the church, every woman is a mother to our community. Every mother helps us navigate the aerodynamic pressures of the world. How should the church navigate the world? How should the church respond to the wind and downward forces pressing upon it?
We’re continuing our series on How to Build a Car, how to build the church as an active presence in the world at its best. Last week, we talked about the chassis, the foundation of the car. Our foundation is not just to be in Christ, but our foundation is in doing the things of God; that is when we are at our best. This week, we’re looking at aerodynamics. Adrian Newey, who wrote the book, How to Build a Car, is the chief designer for red bull racing in Formula 1. He Talks in his book about the importance of aerodynamics again and again. He writes in his book,
“I’m known chiefly as an aerodynamicist, but that’s a product of the fact that aerodynamics is the biggest single performance differentiator. Therefore, I tend to spend most of my time looking at aerodynamics, with the mechanical layout a close second, in order to make sure the two complement one another in a package. In fact, my sole interest lies in improving the ability of the car to score points, and what helps me do that is my experience across the disciplines.”
When there’s 10 racing teams and drivers, the biggest differentiator is the aerodynamics of the car. The power unit is under a ton of regulation. All the tires are made by the fancy Italian brand, Pirelli. They are nice, but they are not manufactured by the teams themselves.
How do you maximize the aerodynamics of the car for a season? The two big ways that aerodynamics effects the car is through drag and down force. You want to avoid drag and increase downforce, which is the pressure pushing the car down. Downforce helps on turns at these high speeds and helps the drivers handle the car. Here is a brief video on downforce. play video The church always interacts with the world. The church cannot avoid the world. So the question is how to maximize beneficial downforce and minimize harmful drag, or conflict with the air.
Conflict itself is not a negative. Conflict happens with every true encounter when we encounter the world.
This is where the aerodynamics of the church comes in. The Holy Spirit is going to push us as a church to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. When Christ ascended and sent the Holy Spirit to the disciples at Pentecost, the people got the spirit but not everyone moved with the spirit. Movement means change. For Peter And James, to lead the church meant laying down their nets and letting go of their old life. For Paul to lead the church, it meant letting go of his past life as a persecutor and accept his future as a church planter. So really the question is: are we going to cause drag on the Holy Spirit or are we going to let it enable downforce so we can move better in the world? Are we getting in the way of the Holy Spirit’s actions because of our assumptions about what the church is and what the church should do, or are we creating downforce so that God can transform more lives into Christ’s image? The image of God and Jesus can heal broken people. CS Lewis, in his great book, The great divorce, gives us a set of examples of how people respond to God after death. It is a brief book that I highly recommend, but one section is especially challenging to mothers. The narrator is on this journey towards the presence of God and he overhears various interactions with those who are either turning more towards God or more away from God.
“Oh … Reginald! It’s you, is it?”
“Yes, dear,” said the Spirit. “I know you expected someone else. Can you … I hope you can be a little glad to see even me; for the present.” “I did think Michael would have come,” said the Ghost; and then, almost fiercely, “He is here, of course?” “He’s there-far up in the mountains.” “Why hasn’t he come to meet me? Didn’t he know?” “My dear (don’t worry, it will all come right presently) it wouldn’t have done. Not yet. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear you as you are at present. You’d be totally invisible to Michael. But we’ll soon build you up.” “I should have thought if you can see me, my own son could!” “It doesn’t always happen like that. You see, I have specialised in this sort of work.” “Oh, it’s work, is it?” snapped the Ghost. Then, after a pause, “Well. When am I going to be allowed to see him?” “There’s no question of being allowed, Pam. As soon as it’s possible for him to see you, of course he will. You need to be thickened up a bit.” “How?” “I’m afraid the first step is a hard one,""But after that you’ll go on like a house on fire. You will become solid enough for Michael to perceive you when you learn to want someone else besides Michael. I don’t say ‘more than Michael,’ not as a beginning. That will come later. It’s only the little germ of a desire for God that we need to start the process.” “Oh, you mean religion and all that sort of thing? This is hardly the moment… and from you, of all people. Well, never mind. I’ll do whatever’s necessary. What do you want me to do? Come on. The sooner I begin it, the sooner they’ll let me see my boy. I’m quite ready.” “But, Pam, do think! Don’t you see you are not beginning at all as long as you are in that state of mind? You’re treating God only as a means to Michael. But the whole thickening treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake.” “You wouldn’t talk like that if you were a Mother.” “You mean, if I were only a mother. But there is no such thing as being only a mother. You exist as Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature. That relation is older and closer. No, listen, Pam! He also loves. He also has suffered. He also has waited a long time.”
The conversation goes on and the narrator and his guide leave before they are finished.
”It might take a long while, that conversation,” said my Teacher. “And ye have heard enough to see what the choice is.” “Is there any hope for her, Sir?” “Aye, there’s some. What she calls her love for her son has turned into a poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing. But there’s still a wee spark of something that’s not just her self in it. That might be blown into a flame.” And then later, the Teacher goes on when asked about it again and whether the mother had too much love,
”Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But it may well be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it.”
She can’t let go of her son and enter into the arms of Jesus. She has distorted that which is good and beautiful, her relationship with her son, and twisted it into only something about possession and control. She didn’t love her son for his own sake but for hers. And in that, her affection is like a house on sand or mulch. When we define ourselves, when we build ourselves on the sand of our relationships, the sand of our hobbies, we are going to give the Holy Spirit some major drag. We are going to avoid the rock that is hearing the word of God and putting it into practice.
The reason why the story is so tragic is because she takes something that is good and beautiful the love of a mother for a child, and distorts it. And that’s really what sin is from top to bottom. Sin is taking something that is good, it’s taking a gift of God and distorting it, changing it. Sin is not about good people, and bad people, that is not how God sees the world. Sin is a gift that has been turned into a chain, a weight, something that causes drag. But the word of God cuts right through that. As it says in Hebrews, the word of God is active and living and two edged. The word of God is not a sword to cut other people down. It is a sword that cuts right through the lies we each tell ourselves. It cuts through the ways we neglect our neighbors. It cuts through the ways we cause drag to the Spirit. And so my brothers and sisters, in this day, may we honor mother’s as an active practice. We each have a mom, whether they are with us or not. They are our gateway into this world, where we encounter love, joy, peace, comfort, but where we also encounter hurt, pain, sorrow, tragedy. A mother’s love does not keep those things from us but to offer us the world at its best. In John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night to ask him the question You say, I must be born again. Does that mean I need to go into my mother’s belly?” It is a good question. If you hear the words, born again, and have not been a part of a church, it is a funny question. It is also serious question. Birth comes from a mother into the world. New birth is through the Holy Spirit so that we can be a part of the world made new now. So we need not be dragged down by sin or guilt. You don’t cease to be a child. You are free and called to be a part of a larger family where people live freely together, the family we call the church. A family drawn together not because we all like UT or Formula 1 or boats or knitting or work outs or pickle ball. The word of God cuts through the drag of the world. If we read it and study it together. If we are a people of the book together, who continuelly return to scripture, not with assumptions or expectations but faith in what God is doing, we will be stable and strong, moving aerodynamically through the sin of the world. Let us do that together. Let us take the time to read scripture together. Let us take the time to commit to new life together. Let us not be afraid of God’s word. Let’s not abuse it. Let us receive the truth of our need for God and the power God gives us to interact with the world through the Holy Spirit, with enough downforce to move mountains.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Spirit and your Word. May we be open to the movement of the Spirit as a church and as individuals, and when we cause drag to your Spirit, may we be ready to be cut by the Word of God like a sword so that we can let go of everything in our life but love. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.