What about the Holy Spirit?

Today is Pentecost. It is arguably the third most important feast day of the Liturgical year (Easter and Christmas being the other two). It is popularly called the birthday of the church. It is the primary feast of the Holy Spirit. It is the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to His disciples and also God's promise to Israel. It is foundational for our understanding Who God is and how we are to be in the world. It is a very big, buig day for our church. But....In all honesty, probably because of a mixture of the anti-liturgical bent of most Protestant Christians coupled with the secular value system of our people, this feast day is not a well attended event. If Easter and Christmas mean doubling normal attendance, today is probably 1/3rd less than normal (especially as it is Memorial Day). Sad...

Perhaps it is not as important to people because it focuses on the Holy Spirit. Most of us get God, we understand, even if we do not believe, the idea that there is a Creator. An all powerful God is not a huge stretch for most people. Belief in God is actually the norm in most places and times.

The incarnation of God, the Word made flesh, is probably more of a stretch. What could it mean that God became a man, that the divine is human flesh and blood? It is a mystery, but even so, there is a sense in which "gods walking among us" is part of many culture's tales and religious ideas. A God stripping Himself and enterring the human realm has a certain dignity to it. In the end, ANY communication we have with God demands that this be so. God must always condescend in order to be with us. The incarnation of Jesus is merely a special (and most wonderful) example of what is going on everywhere and any time God is among us. And the best part about Jesus is we can (theoretically) see Him, touch Him, hear Him. Stories about Him are there for us. We can measure His words and ponder them. We can reflect on His acts and come to know Him. His life, while different from us, is still a human life. We get that. We know about heroes and holy men, about teachers and preachers. We have a mental model to understand Jesus and His life.

The Holy Spirit, however, is another thing. The Spirit is formless. The Spirit is invisible. Talking about the Spirit seems too open to each one's whims. We enter the world of endless metaphors, a realm of analogy and simile. The Spirit is like breath, or wind, or shared feeling. The Spirit is the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit of Jesus. It is the life of God poured into us. The Spirit is the Instructor, the Paraclete, the One moving in our souls and hearts to make God accesible. The Spirit gets credit for many of our ideas. [In the Epsicopal church "the Spirit" is the code word employed for any new innovation.] As such, the Spirit is confusing. There is nothing to grasp beyond what others tell us that the Spirit has told them. The Spirit is claimed by all, orthodox and heretic; and most enthusiastically by the latter!

The Bible gives mixed messages about the Spirit. In places, like Luke, The Holy Spirit is active with the characters. In his birth narrative the Spirit is involved in the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus. It is there to inspire the great canticles of Zechariah, Mary and Simeon. The Spirit fills Jesus and led Him into the desert. Yet in the Gospel today Jesus says that unless He goes the Spirit will not come. Hmmm.

Now obviously there are many Christians, apologetically prepared and arguments honed, who will provide a version of how these are both true. I do not want to go there. I prefer to be open to the text and humble before it. Perhaps God does not need me constantly running to defend Him (and His word). Perhaps it is enough to admit to mystery larger and deeper than I normally do. In John's writings there is much tension about the newness of Christian faith. In one of my favorite quotes he says, "I give you a new commandment" then later "it is not new at all." In Jesus, while everything is the same, it is all different. That is, to some degree, what the Holy Spirit talk is about. The Spirit, Who is always at work and alwasy has been since creation, is coming now. We do well to remember that talking about God always borrows language from our world and applies it to the One who transcends all thought and reason and feeling. Pure mystery, not ever grasped, but pointed at from afar. Theology requires we say something about God. Good theology reminds us that what we say must include the reminder that it is not 'fully' true in the sense that it cannot 'fully capture' the Truth. Real orthodoxy is humble.

The Spirit is the Person of God Who is not the Father and not the Son, yet Who is, and Who conveys the life of the Father and the Son to us. He comes among us, like fire, wind and power. He is like God's life breath and His entrance (again and again in myriad ways) in our lives is our source of power and life. He is at work, most commonly imperceptably. He is among us as something like the continued and abiding presence of Jesus (Who is long absent). He is imaged a gift of the Father to bring us new life, to make us reborn, from above--still the same yet totally different.

My deepest desire would be that today 500 souls would batter down our church doors to sing and pray and hear the story. My deepest desire is the we would be overflowing with Christians enthused and excited about God among us in and through the Spirit and celebrating this great event of salvation history; a huge throng hungry to make our parish the kind of church God wants us to be. I long to see people on fire and full of a mighty wind, ready to go forth an preach Jesus' Kingdom and provide God's healing, exorcism, teaching and forgiveness. It will not be like that, today, at least here. But for those who do gather, it will still be a time to hear, to ponder, to pray and praise. It will be a time for the Spirit to do a new work (yet the same old work); God's work of making a holy people and redeeming the world. And God can do His wonders even if we are not always faithful or wonderful! Come Holy Spirit, renew your church, renew your people, bring the world the salvation in Christ, amen!