Predictably Unpredictable

Author and Pastor Jan Richardson tells the story of how, in her junior year of high school, she landed in the hospital several times because one of her lungs kept collapsing. It wasn’t due to an injury… each collapse was spontaneous.  She was, somehow, genetically predisposed to this happening.  During three separate trips to the hospital, she became intimately acquainted with chest tubes… tetracycline… and morphine.  Looking back on the experience, she said, “Painkillers and local anesthesia only do so much to dull the sensation of acid flowing over your innards. Mostly, I remember unbelievable pressure on my chest, the sensation that I could not breathe, would never do it again, that my body would not remember how. But in the wake of the fire came breath: breath that came without assistance, breath that sustained itself and did not seep out. In time I came to understand the experience as a gift, one marked by the presence of God, who…used it as an occasion of transformation, an experience of initiation.  With the fire and the breath came knowledge: I would never be in my body in the same way. It altered how I experienced my own body, and it changed how I would engage people whose bodies are vulnerable.”  For Jan Richardson, you see, Pentecost was something very real.

A defining day in the life of the early church, Pentecost actually finds its roots in the Jewish tradition, where it is called the Festival of Weeks.  Falling fifty days after Passover, Pentecost is a harvest festival that also commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It is the time during the calendar year, when Jews present to God the “first fruits” of their harvest, as they were first commanded to do in Exodus… bringing to God an offering in proportion to how God has blessed them.  Our text tells us that, on this festival day, when the followers of Jesus were “all together in one place,” the Spirit appeared. It arrived as a rushing wind, filling them… in-spiring them… causing them to draw breath and speak. The scene at Pentecost offers a brilliant display of how in Greek, as in Hebrew, the word for Spirit … wind… and breath is the same word: pneuma (in Greek) and ruach (in Hebrew).  Who is this Holy Spirit… this third person of the Trinity?  Why do we, as Presbyterians, often avoid speaking of the reality and work of the Holy Spirit?  What do we find in the story of Pentecost that offers hope to us today?

            The appearance of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was not the first appearance of the Holy Spirit.  As our Older Youth learned last Wednesday evening, the first time the Spirit is mentioned in the Bible is in the first chapter of Genesis, the second verse, which tells us that the Spirit of God moved across the waters of creation.  The first “Pentecost” experience is the story that we read from Numbers, where the Spirit of God was given to seventy elders who then prophesied.   And I will echo what Moses said then, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!"

The Holy Spirit appears in many ways and does many things in the Bible.  The Spirit is known to give life, as Job claimed in his discourse with his friends and as Ezekiel tells us in his vision in the Valley of Dry Bones.  The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God’s presence, for it was the Spirit who was with the children of Israel in the wilderness and it was the Spirit who came upon Saul and David when they were anointed kings of Israel.  It is the Spirit who empowers individuals to do the work that God has given them to do, as is told in countless stories in the Old Testament… stories of Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samson, Isaiah, and Daniel… to mention just a few. It is the Spirit of God who gives the gift of prophecy… to Isaiah, to Ezekiel, to Jeremiah, to Zechariah, to the seventy elders in our Old Testament reading today and to the disciples in the story from Acts.

            In fact, throughout the Bible, the Holy Spirit is the agency through which the word of God is given… the power of the Divine is revealed… and the work of the Lord is done.  So, given all the testimony to the Holy Spirit in the Bible, shouldn’t we be praying for the Holy Spirit to come to us today… that we might hear the word of God to us… see the power of the Divine revealed to us and to all peoples… and that we might be empowered to do the work of the Lord in this place? 

Mark Harris, an Episcopal priest and author, urges caution.  “Pentecost,” he says, “is not an event to be wished for lightly. The Spirit is somewhat cranky and given to its own thing.”  As the gospel of John tells us: "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  If we pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, we should not expect this person of the Trinity to be amenable to our direction and command.  As Jan Richardson shares:  “Along with the wind [of Pentecost] comes fire, a symbol that stirs our collective memory of the God whose transforming presence has so often been marked by flames. Think of Moses and the burning bush… the column of fire that led the people of Israel through the wilderness… the temple fire that consumed the sacrificial offerings… [and I would remind our Older Youth of the ball of fire from heaven that consumed the sacrifice that Elijah gave before the 450 prophets of Baal]. “For the Lord your God is a devouring fire,” Deuteronomy 4:24 tells us. In contemporary culture, we most often experience fire as a contained… controlled… gentle force. Yet the fires of Pentecost are not the tame flames of birthday candles or a cozy winter’s hearth… the fires of Pentecost are a sign of the God who resists our every attempt to domesticate the divine and to control how the holy will work.”  If there is one thing that is predictable about the Holy Spirit, it is that the Holy Spirit is unpredictable.

Yet, the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us… it is the “first fruit” of the kingdom of God on earth… the first gift of God to the early church.  And the gift is not just for us, but for all of humankind.  The Prophet Joel said it best when he declared: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other… I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke… Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  It is not just to a select few that this gift is given, but to everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord. It often came to new believers through baptism or the laying on of hands.

But what do we do with this gift that is wind and fire and predictably unpredictable?   The gift of the Holy Spirit would seem to be a “white elephant” gift that many Presbyterians would like to stuff in the back of their closets, waiting for the day when they can safely give it to someone else so that they won’t have to deal with it.  After all, we do things “decently and in good order” and the Holy Spirit does not seem to fit that criteria.  Even Jesus, who told his disciples to wait for this gift from God, did not tell the disciples what the gift was or what the gift would do.

The answer is simple… and scary.   We do not know when the power of God will be unleashed in our midst.  In history, the Spirit’s coming upon individuals was the sovereign choice of God… rather than God’s response to the initiative of those individuals. Generally speaking, those who received the Holy Spirit did not expect the Spirit of God to come upon them… nor did they do anything to prompt it. It just happened.   And it did not always happen to those who “deserved it”… to those who were spiritually pure.  Samson is a prime example of a man who was not “godly” who received the power of the Spirit.  In every case, God took the initiative and those who received the gift responded accordingly. There is clearly no “pattern” for those who would wish to find some method or formula for obtaining the Spirit’s power.  God is clearly in charge.

But that is exactly what should give us comfort.  The God who is in charge is the same God who created us… who loves us… and who has called us to be his children.   Are we ready for God to be totally in charge?   Are we ready to surrender ourselves to whatever the wind and fire of the Spirit might do in this church?  Or do we, like so many before us, want to keep God on a leash… ordering and directing what the Spirit should do… as if we were in charge?   Do we truly believe in the power that is ours in this gift that God gives?   Will we surrender ourselves to its leading?   As we come to the Table today to remember all that our Lord Jesus did for us in his life… death… and resurrection, may we offer to God all that we are… to do with as God alone chooses… regardless of where that might lead… for it is God who calls… the Spirit who empowers… and the Son who shows us the way.  May we have the courage to pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, with all thy quickening power.  Kindle a flame of sacred love in these cold hearts of ours.”  Amen.

Acts 2:1-21

.