Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday A; 05.24.26; G. Miles Smith+
Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23
The Day of Pentecost A; 05.22.26; G. Miles Smith+
Today is the Day of Pentecost…a day when most churches commemorate and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this may be my last chance to really speak to you about the Holy Spirit…definitely my last Day of Pentecost with you. So here we go. I have a lot to say.
And I want to begin by acknowledging…just how very difficult it is…to even speak of the Holy Spirit. There are so many obstacles in the way of our understanding…even though we speak of the Holy Spirit every Sunday.
If you grew up with the 1928 prayer book…or even older versions such as the 1662…which is still the official prayer book of the Church of England…then your first acquaintance with the Holy Spirit was with the old English language of the “Holy Ghost”. The use of the word “ghost” was intended to be the best translation at the time of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words which we now translate into English as the word “spirit”. However, by 1662, the word “ghost” was already acquiring a strong association with the experience of supernatural apparitions…which we commonly now think of as “ghosts”. But that is not what the Holy Spirit is—the Holy Spirit is not a remnant…of the deceased life of Jesus…floating about…and sometimes appearing.
But you don’t even have to associate the Holy Ghost with ghosts these days to end up in misunderstanding…because there is now a new use of the word “ghost”. So, I have heard that… people who are dating these days…and who experience a person of potential romantic interest suddenly becoming completely unresponsive to their texts or social media posts…that that person is said to be “ghosting” you…in other words…without a word of explanation they have painfully disappeared. But that is definitely not what the language of the Holy Spirit is…it is not a way of referring to the disappearance of God…from our human experience. In fact, the Holy Spirit is the very opposite. The language of the Holy Spirit exists to describe the experience…of being drawn into contact with God…and when that happens to us…we know something is happening…even if we may not realize…that it is the Holy Spirit.
I’ll name just one more potential obstacle out there. It can be difficult to understand what we mean by the Holy Spirit, if we only associate the Holy Spirit with extraordinary charismatic spiritual gifts such as “speaking in tongues” (glossolalia)…or even “praise music”. In other words, we cannot simply equate the Holy Spirit with any kind of visibly emotional worship. The Holy Spirit may very well be inspiring any such fervor in worship. But none of these kinds of expression…are essential to who the Holy Spirit is.
It is important that we are able to “check at the door” whatever misunderstandings we may have inherited about the Holy Spirit from our common culture. I hope my words here may help avoid that. But once we may have managed to clear a path through any such obstacles of false and distracting associations…then just who is…the Holy Spirit?!
So I want to try to say three true things about the Holy Spirit which the Bible…and human experience…both give witness to. The first two are experiences of the Holy Spirit which are potentially accessible to every human being…right this very moment. And the other is an experience of the Holy Spirit which is specifically related to Jesus.
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First…this very moment. The idea of the Holy Spirit did not just suddenly appear in the New Testament...the language of such a reality had already existed in Hebrew (ruach), Greek (pneuma), and Latin (spiritus)...and in other languages in India (prana, shakti) and the Far East (chi). I will speak specifically about the Hebrew idea of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. It appears in the Psalm today…where it associates the Spirit with the breath of all living creatures…with the energizing and sustaining life of all living creatures. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God giving life…right now…as close to us as our breath…as close to us as the life in the green woods…and the wind through the trees…as close to us as the breath and stirring of all living creatures…this unrelenting creativity…which raises up flowers between the cracks of concrete…which renews the face of the earth over and over again despite our despoiling of it…this immediate and ever present life that is the nearness of God right now (if we be not distracted by our projects and labors…if we be not too heavily burdened by our sorrows). This is the Holy Spirit which the Old Testament rightly knows…and whom we can know.
Second, there is another experience which is potentially accessible to every human being right this very moment. The Holy Spirit which the Old Testament especially knows…as well as Jesus himself who knew the Old Testament…is the reality of God who called the biblical prophets to raise the clarion call to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). It is the Holy Spirit who calls human beings to discover and seek the beloved community of God in our world by treating one another right. This prophetic voice of the Holy Spirit should be echoed by any faithful person who holds the Old Testament and the New Testament to have divine authority. But because the Holy Spirit “blows where it will” (John 3:8)…any human being can potentially be roused to a desire for justice…kindness…and humility in their own moment...even when they have no idea it in fact comes from the Holy Spirit.
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Third. There is an experience of the Holy Spirit which is specifically related to Jesus. This is witnessed to throughout the New Testament…such as in the Gospel of John where Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to his disciples…and in 1st Corinthians where Paul says that it is the Holy Spirit which makes it possible to recognize that “Jesus is Lord”.
There is all kinds of theologizing that goes on the New Testament trying to describe this…and yet the experience of it is as palpable as…saying the Lord’s Prayer…where Jesus has invited us into the same intimate relationship with God…which Jesus himself has with God…where Jesus’ Father…is now also… “Our Father.”
The experience of the Holy Spirit through Jesus can also be as palpable as witnessing a Holy Baptism… in which a child is blessed by a priest who says: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” We are given an everlasting home by the Holy Spirit…within the love of the Father for Jesus…and the love of Jesus for the Father.
And the experience of the Holy Spirit through Jesus can be as palpable as gathering for Holy Communion…where we are all equal in our communion with God…all broken…all in need of forgiveness…all called to live in God’s beloved community…going in peace…to love and serve the Lord.
So, the Holy Spirit…is very much a matter of an experience…of belonging to God the Father by way of Jesus…belonging deeply…truthfully…kindly…humbly…dependably…inviting us to reorient ourselves over and over again…toward a new way of being in the world.
This is a truly extraordinary…and deeply mysterious...awareness of life…that the Holy Spirit uniquely invites us into with Jesus.
We will easily want to talk ourselves out of it…by all kinds of false paths or distractions in understanding the Holy Spirit.
We will also look at our own selves and say to ourselves that we do not deserve to be able to speak to God as “Our Father” like Jesus does…and that we do not belong in the beloved life of God’s own life.
We will look at the wreckage of the sin in the world and be tempted to say to ourselves…that there is no beloved life for us within God’s own life…that is real.
And yet this is the shocking truth of the gospel. Every person is invited by the Holy Spirit…into an intimate “family” relationship with God…that exceeds every natural family and every nation…an intimate relationship with God that we did not know was even possible. And it is this invitation…and experience…which is Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit…to you.
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I want to close with the words of a Church of England priest whom I just heard this past week. His name is Malcolm Guite. For me…hearing him…in his deep raspy voice…was an experience in itself…of the Holy Spirit.
And whether it is in Fr. Guite’s words…or in other such true words spoken by the breath of life…the breath of prophetic speech…or the breath of Jesus…then I do hope you can hear the Holy Spirit calling.
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I cannot think, unless I have been thought,
Nor can I speak, unless I have been spoken.
I cannot teach, except as I am taught,
Or break the bread, except as I am broken.
A mind behind the mind through which I seek,
A light within the light with which I see,
A word beneath the words with which I speak.
Oh, founding, unfounded Wisdom, finding me.
