Come Holy Spirit

Did you listen carefully to the words of the anthem the choir sang a few moments ago?  If not – or even if you did – they are in the bulletin, so you can refresh your memory.  The images used to reflect the nature of the Holy Spirit are:  wind, fire, rain, and a dove.  The first two, wind and fire, are powerful forces of nature.  All you have to do is recall pictures you may have seen on TV of a tornado or hurricane – or maybe you’ve actually experienced one of these powerful phenomenons of nature yourself – and you have a pretty good idea of the power of wind.  We all also know how powerful fire is.  And when you put the two of them together…phew!  We’ve had some recent experience of that with the fires that have been stoked by the winds near Santa Barbara, and some of you, I know, have friends or family near that area, so it was especially disquieting.  Oh, yes, wind and fire together are dangerous and we all know it.  Want to play with the Holy Spirit as symbolized by wind and fire?  Dangerous!

Rain is perhaps a softer image, although anyone who has been pelted by it in a downpour and become completely soaked might not appreciate that softer sensibility.  Surely, the dove is a peace-invoking and gentle image…..unless it’s flying directly above you and what it’s doing comes down right on top of you….. but let’s not go there.

You see, inviting the Holy Spirit to come into our lives, particularly in terms of the images that are used to evoke that coming, can be dangerous.  If we mean it, and the Spirit responds, we might get really shaken up.  Sometimes in our communion liturgy we use the line, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!”  When we do that, we’re asking for more than we might imagine.  The Holy Spirit is a disturber.  It shakes up all of our preconceptions.  It calls upon us to set aside our fears and opens us up to the new things that God is doing with us.

You’re kind of getting a “two-for-one” this week and next.  Because we are celebrating Church School Sunday next week on the actual day of Pentecost, and the Church School – kids and adults – are going to be putting together a drama about Pentecost – the choir and I thought that we would get a jump start on this holiday by singing and talking about it today.  (By the way, if you are feeling deprived because you will not be getting a Pentecost sermon on Pentecost, you can come at 9:00 next week when I’m going to be giving the sermon for the Northwest service.)  Now, in my view, this is wholly appropriate – celebrating Pentecost on two successive Sundays.  After Christmas and Easter Pentecost is the third most significant holy day for Christians.  And it enjoys the privilege of being the one Christian celebration that hasn’t been co-opted by our society.  No big rabbit or jolly man in a red suit is associated with it.  There is no Pentecost tree or even colored eggs that magically appear on Pentecost morning.  Pentecost is a religious holiday unspoiled by popular notions.  It remains Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian church.

You almost wonder why the idea of having a big birthday party hasn’t been used to give Pentecost those similar kinds of secular trappings that get in our way of celebrating the holiness of Christmas and Easter.  Perhaps it is because of the dangerousness of those images associated with the Holy Spirit.  A birthday party is usually a happy occasion (although those of you who have suffered through the excesses that can sometimes be part of a one-or-a-two-or-a-three year old’s party might have a different take on that).  And for those babbling away in strange tongues on that first Pentecost it was a happy time indeed – so much so that those who saw them thought it was a drunken revel.  For those of us who have reached a level of maturity, though, a birthday is also a reminder of our mortality and a realization that we have one less year to do ministry and mission for our Lord.  Wind and fire and rain are awesome birthday presents to receive when we know that they are to be used to shake us out of our apathy and provide us with the courage to overcome our fears and anxieties about being Christ’s people doing His work.

There is a familiar hymn that we often sing on Pentecost and at other times as well:

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me;
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Consider the words of the third line carefully.  Is this what we really want?  “Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.”  That’s risky business. It moves us away from the pleasure and comfortableness of a birthday party and into the time that is the rest of our lives.

The story of the first Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit is told in the second chapter of Acts, which we will read next week.  But leading up to that event is the disciples’ awe-inspiring experience of the ascension of Jesus (which we recognized last Thursday, May 21 – traditionally, it occurs 40 days after Easter), and then they have to get down to the mundane task of choosing a successor for Judas, which is the scripture from Acts 1 that we read today.  In between the splendor of the ascension and the majesty of the first Pentecost is this ordinary, almost humdrum task.  Yet, it was necessary.  In order for the disciples to be perceived as the legitimate heirs of Israel their numbers needed to parallel the twelve tribes of Israel.  And so they went about their task matter-of-factly, holding an election between two presumably worthy followers of Jesus (I assume there were no hanging chads in this election).  We know that Matthias was one of the seventy disciples of Jesus who had been with him since his baptism by John.  However, a “biographical sketch of memorable Christians of the past” on the Internet says this about Matthias:  “Apart from the information given in the first chapter of Acts, nothing is known of him.  It would be a mistake to conclude from this that he was a failure and a bad choice as an apostle.  We know as much as we do about Peter and Paul because Luke (a traveling companion of Paul) wrote extensively about them. About most of the other apostles (those belonging to the original twelve and later ones like Matthias) we know little after Pentecost on an individual basis.”

In other words, Matthias, like most Christians down through the centuries, like most of us, labored faithfully in the service of his Savior but did so mostly in obscurity.  He accepted the dangerous wind and fire and rain and let the Spirit melt him, mold him, fill him, use him – without worrying about whether he was going to get the glory.  From the day of Pentecost on, most of the other disciples lived and worked with this same Spirit directing their lives.

The experience of Matthias and what he did with that understanding is an important model for the ways in which we experience the Spirit and what we do with that.  I would venture to guess that none of us ever experienced Jesus as “[being] lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9)  Or of two men in white robes standing by us and exclaiming that Jesus has been taken up into heaven.  Or hearing people babble in an incomprehensible language that nevertheless has something of the holy about it (although modern-day Pentecostalists do claim to have this experience).  These are discomfiting incidents that take us out of our comfort zone – much like the mighty wind and rain and fire.  We would prefer the Spirit to be a gentle breeze.

But as we said last week about God’s comfort (the pastoral) and God’s afflicting (the prophetic) the Spirit is both of these.  A wonderful contemporary hymn that we will sing next week gets at this dual nature:

Spirit, Spirit of gentleness, blow through the wilderness,
calling and free.
Spirit, Spirit of restlessness,
stir me from placidness,
Wind, Wind on the sea.

That stirring from placidness is what I am focusing on today.  We are birthing a new thing here in our corner of the Las Vegas valley – an exciting congregation that offers God’s extravagant welcome to everyone who comes in those doors and to many others outside through the food pantry and bread run and Thrift Shop who will not come here to worship but who nevertheless experience our extravagant welcome.  We are birthing a new thing here by being Open and Affirming, so that along with our sisters and brothers at Northwest we witness to how those who have felt unwelcome in other places are now more than welcome in this place.  We are birthing a new thing here, and it is stirring us from our placidness.

Paul says that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves…..”  Do you feel the excitement of new birth?  As my wife would be quick to tell you, for someone who is practicing prepared childbirth “labor pains” is almost an oxymoron – what starts out feeling painful becomes purposeful and powerful and pulsing with the pleasure of bringing new life into the world.  That’s what the Spirit – that Spirit of wind and flame and rain – does for us:  it blows us through our own wildernesses and calls us to be free and at the same time it stirs us from the placidness that makes us just want to exist in the same old life without rebirth.

Paul goes on to say that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.”  Like the creation we, too, groan from time to time, wondering whether God has left us.  What Paul is telling us here is that our groans are not only being heard they are being understood.  The babble that is in our minds and that sometimes comes out of our mouths is taken by the Spirit and turned into a meaning that is deeper than words – in fact the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, in that delicious phrase, “with sighs too deep for words”.  Be encouraged, therefore, that God’s concern for you is not limited by what you can understand or express with words.  The Spirit itself intercedes for us.  Us.  Even us.  You and me.  (The NRSV translation, by the way, doesn’t include those two words, but it does offer a footnote saying “Other ancient authorities add for us”.  And I want to go with those “other ancient authorities”, because the whole point of the Spirit’s interceding is that it is done for the least of us, for all of us.)

We’ve been talking about the danger of accepting the Holy Spirit into our lives through those turbulent images of wind and flame and rain.  But we haven’t yet talked about the Spirit as a dove.  That image comes from the story of the baptism of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit came upon him then as a descending dove.  As a result, the dove has also come to mean peace.  Jesus welcomed the Holy Spirit into himself.  It gave him power to cast out demons, make the lame walk, raise people from the dead, and face danger bravely.  He could do all of this because of the inner peace given him through the Holy Spirit.  Peace allows us to withstand the forces of wind and rain and fire and mold them into tools we can use in our striving to further the mission and ministry of the Christ.

The choir sang toward the end of the anthem, “Soar, Holy Spirit, on the wings of love and peace,” and then concluded with the bidding prayer:  “Come, Holy Spirit, Come, Holy Spirit, Come, Holy Spirit, like a dove.”  Despite all the turbulence that comes with it, we do want to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, for then, indeed, will our spirits soar.  Last week we had some balloons floating around at the top of our sanctuary, acting for all the world like they were bursting to get out.  Some churches that I know of use kites to symbolize the Spirit, and after the service fly them outside, noting that the wind blows them where it will.  When the Spirit comes into our lives it moves us into peculiar places.  But the other thing about the image of kites is how they can send our spirits soaring (remember the end of the movie “Mary Poppins” with that cheery song, “Let’s go fly a kite, up to the highest height, Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring…”).  The Holy Spirit, as symbolized by a dove or a kite, is one of God’s greatest gifts to us.

As we said, Pentecost is the birthday of the church.  And on this day God has given us such a wonderful gift.  What can we do in return?  We can offer back to God the fruit of the gift that God gave the church when it was born.  We celebrate what God has given us and offer to God what God has put inside us. The Holy Spirit has given us gifts, abilities, talents, things that we can do to help us do what God wants us to do.  It is God who gives us faith; it is God who gives us strength; it is God who makes it possible for us to do what we should be doing.  These are the gifts of God offered to us on the birthday of the church.

Come, Holy Spirit.  Your people are ready to receive you and to follow through with all that you have given us to do.

Amen.

Come Holy Spirit (Romans 8:22-27, Acts 1:15-17, Acts 1:21-26)

Romans 8:22-27

22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (ESV)

Acts 1:15-17

15 In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. 17 For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” (ESV)

Acts 1:21-26

21 So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” 23 And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. 24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen 25 to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” 26 And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. (ESV)

Powered by Sermon Browser