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The Feast of Pentecost He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Today we celebrate the Feast of the Pentecost, one of the great festival days in the church year. Our celebration is reflected in our red vestments and altar hangings, in the red balloons, [in the rousing Alleluia we sang before the reading of the Gospel, in the cake we’ll share at coffee hour.] It’s a time of great celebration because the Feast of the Pentecost marks the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ followers, and by extension, to us. It marks what we think of as the birthday of the church, because it was the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that empowered Jesus’ followers to go out and spread the Good News, to go out and become what we think of as “church”, Christ’s Body in the world. Pentecost is a day of power and we celebrate it with great joy, but I wonder if we really appreciate the power of the day, the power of the Holy Spirit. Contemporary theologian and author Frederick Buechner writes that in today’s world “the word spirit has come to means something pale and shapeless, like an unmade bed. School spirit, the American spirit, the Christmas spirit, the spirit of ’76 the Holy Spirit—each of these points to something you know is supposed to get you to your feet cheering but which you somehow can’t rise to.” 1 For many of us, especially those of us who are not Charismatic or Pentecostal Christians, spirit has become an anemic word, a word lacking power, lacking oomph. But it hasn’t always been that way. The word spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus, and like the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma used in scripture, it connotes wind or breath as well as spirit—something of strength, of might. In both the OT and the NT, the Spirit was understood as a life-giving force, and in fact, in the OT the Holy Spirit is implicated as an agent of creation—in Genesis we hear that a wind from God or the Spirit of God moved over the waters when the earth was still formless—the wind a metaphor or icon for the awesome presence of God. The Holy Spirit is seen as a source of inspiration and power in the OT as well. Time and again Israel’s leaders—Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon—and the prophets—Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, Isaiah—are empowered to speak and act by the Holy Spirit with a wisdom and authority greater than their own. In today’s reading from Acts we heard how the Holy Spirit came over the disciples like a roaring wind and with tongues of fire, images that evoke again power and might—these are not pale and anemic images. And in the gospel we heard how the Holy Spirit came as Jesus breathed on his disciples—again not an anemic image. In every case, the Spirit was not something pale and shapeless—this was something potent, something life-changing. The followers of Jesus certainly experienced the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This coming of the Holy Spirit not only signified the continued support and comfort Jesus had promised for his followers in his physical absence, but also the sending out of the disciples into the world to continue Jesus’ ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing, and to proclaim the good news of Christ crucified and risen. With the coming of the Holy Spirit the lives of Jesus’ followers, already indelibly marked by their experiences with Jesus, were further altered. Things could never be the same. For just as the Holy Spirit empowered and emboldened the prophets and leaders of old, so too did it empower and embolden the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. With the gift of the Holy Spirit came a mission, a responsibility to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, to take the message out into the world so that others might hear it. The Acts version of the story explicitly highlights this need to communicate the gospel. Just as we heard the gospel proclaimed in a variety of languages here today, so did those gathered together hear the word proclaimed in languages that were native to many of them. What better way to emphasize that the gospel was for EVERYONE and should be shared with EVERYONE than to speak it to everyone, to empower those who had already heard the message with the ability to pass it on? The coming of the Holy Spirit not only compelled the apostles to spread the gospel, it also brought with it the gift of authority. In John’s gospel the disciples are specifically given the authority to forgive sins. In Acts the implicit message is that the followers have the authority to share the good news with others, with those outside their group, the authority to preach and teach as Jesus had done. The gift of the Holy Spirit was not something anemic and shapeless for Jesus’ followers—it was something powerful and life-altering. We experience glimpses of that power at our baptisms when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit as we are baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and as we are marked by the Holy Spirit as Christ’s own for ever (always a goose bump moment for me). We experience glimpses of that power when we are confirmed, as the bishop lays hands on our heads and asks the Holy Spirit to be with us, to strengthen and sustain us in our lives in Christ as we renew our baptismal promises and work to live them out in our lives. A year ago today I experienced a glimpse of that power when my bishop laid hands upon my head and ordained me as a deacon. All of these are special moments and they do much to sustain us on our journeys, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could capture that power, if we let it fuel our daily lives in Christ? All too often, however, I think, we dismiss the power of the Holy Spirit as something removed from our daily lives; the notion of “spirit” becomes for us, as Buechner says, something pale and shapeless. Perhaps it is a lack of faith on our parts that leads to this, but more often, I think, there is an underlying fear involved—fear of what we might be asked to do, fear of being found wanting, fear of having our lives really altered, really changed. And that fear causes us to hold back, keeps us from being open to, from perhaps even expecting to experience the Holy Spirit in our daily lives as something powerful. Nonetheless, like the disciples and followers of Jesus who received the gift of the Holy Spirit in those early days, we too are given a mission. We take on the responsibility of living as Christ’s own, of living in a way that is consonant with the gospel Jesus preached and of sharing the good news of Christ Jesus, risen for us. And the power of the Holy Spirit is available to us just as it was available to the apostles to sustain us as we take on that mission, the mission to be “church”, to be Christ’s Body in the world. In just a moment we will stand and renew our baptismal covenant not only as a reminder of the promises we made at our baptism, but also as a reminder that we too have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we do so I hold out for us a challenge as well as a prayer. I challenge us to consider how much more we might do as Christ’s Body in the world if we could let go of whatever fear that holds us back, that keeps us from embracing the full power of the Holy Spirit. How might we be empowered and emboldened? What ministries might we undertake when so emboldened? How might we more fully be Christ’s Body in the world? And my prayer for us today is that we might open ourselves more fully to the power of the Holy Spirit, that we might live into that power so that we experience the Holy Spirit not as something shapeless and anemic but rather as something powerful and life-giving not just occasionally, but rather daily as we go about this business of being church, of being Christ’s Body in the world. AMEN.
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