May 8, 2008

            Easter comes to completion at Pentecost.  Nearly fifty days ago we celebrated Christ’s triumph over death; that magnificent, mysterious moment when the ultimate enemy was destroyed.  Sunday we come to celebrate the fullness of Easter’s implications.  We gather to be reminded of the gift that binds us together as Easter people; namely, Jesus’ promised gift of the Holy Spirit.

            Precisely how the Spirit would come was something that was left to the first followers’ imaginations, just as it is in our lives, too.  How do we define that which we cannot capture or lay hold of or harness?  As a general rule, we church types tend to prefer patterned predictability.  We like logical, rational religion that we can wrap our minds around.  But as soon as the Spirit enters into the conversation any hope for such conventional wisdom goes out the window.  Trying to lay hold of the Holy Spirit is like trying to rope the wind.

            Luke’s telling of the Spirit’s arrival (Acts 2) describes it as being like the rush of a mighty wind.  John’s account (John 20:19-23; an often overlooked Pentecost text set on Easter Sunday evening) says that the Spirit comes when Jesus breathes on his disciples.  Both have echoes of the earliest days of all being, when God was creating the world.  In Genesis the story begins with the ruah (the Hebrew word that means spirit, breath or wind) brooding over the deep.  God’s spoken word sweeps across the universe and calls all things into being.  God breathes life into it all and sets into motion a love affair with this world that continues even today.

            It is that love affair that ultimately led God to enter into the world in such an unconventional way as the incarnation.  And it is a deep-seated desire to see that kind of tangible, living love carried on that prompted the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost.  It is through human beings – through us – that God’s loving, forgiving, merciful, gracious Spirit is at work.  We the people, we the Church, are among the conduits through which the holy wind of heaven blows.

            This is a gift, pure and simple.  No one at any point in time could ever even pretend to have earned such a thing.  God’s choosing ordinary folks to be empowered to carry on what was begun in the beginning and most fully revealed in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ is a gift; a rather daunting one to be given, quite frankly.  It is the sort of thing to be handled with great care; the sort of thing that we do together, as a community that gathers in order to be scattered.

            Diana Eck summarizes it well when she says: “It is clear in the New Testament that the Spirit is a gift, not a reward…the empowerment of the Spirit is not earned, it is freely given.  And so with the early church at Pentecost.  It was not their courage or clarity that evoked the blessing of the Spirit, for they were vulnerable and confused.  The Spirit is a gift, not a possession.  The Spirit inspires and gives the breath of life to the church, but the church does not encompass, contain, or own the Holy Spirit.”

            Lacking in courage, confused, vulnerable…those terms certainly describe well the way that we live a lot of our lives as individuals and even as church.  Sure, we might put our best foot forward to make it seem as though we have a good grasp on what it means to be good, upstanding people of faith.  But be honest: do we ever really get it all in order?

            Most times it seems like when we think we have our houses of faith in order, our plans in place, and life put together in a neat little package, a rushing wind sweeps in and blows our little house of cards down.  Pentecost happens.  And that is when, by the grace of God, we find ourselves set free to be caught up in the adventure of a lifetime, really learning what it means to be swept off our feet by the Spirit.

Peace to you,
Stephen