Loading...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.
— Daniel Iverson
If you like order and control, Pentecost may not be your favorite day of the church year. Today, the church calendar celebrates how the Holy Spirit interrupts orderly and controlling helps like calendars and language barriers — and even sneering — and shows God’s power to people who didn’t even know they were looking for God’s power in the first place.
In the first reading from Genesis we remember how much humans desire to be close to God. Can we build a tower to try and get closer to God? That’s not the way God wants to feel close. The way God wants to feel close to people is through people: first God’s son Jesus, then those who profess faith in Jesus, and then those in need.
Regardless of your native tongue, all who speak “Jesus” are invited to live as close to God as a person can without even being in heaven — rather, on earth as it is in heaven. No tower necessary.
In the second lesson of Acts, we read about the day of Pentecost, originally designed to celebrate the spring harvest festival which occurs 50 (Pente) Days after Passover.
Pentecost was on the calendar for everyone sitting in the house but NOT for those outside innocently going about their own schedules outside the house. Their schedules are interrupted by the sound of a violent wind and the suspicion that a room of drunks is getting rowdy already at 9am. What’s unexplainable is that they can understand the explanation of God’s power from these strangers who clearly didn’t go to school to learn languages.
Everyone in the Holy-Spirit-splashzone gets their schedule interrupted more because in a minute Peter splashes what got splashed on him onto them and starts a sermon that will eventually convert three thousand of these Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians, Pontians and Asias, Phrygians and Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyians, Cyrenians, Romans, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. Can you imagine being sent to the market for a gallon of milk and coming home with the Holy Spirit all over you?
Getting the Holy Spirit all over you is the prayer Jesus prays in the gospel reading from John. “...the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
What I take away from the conversation Jesus has with Phillip is that God knows I need things the world gives, like a gallon of milk or a spring harvest. In addition to those things God gives what the world cannot give by virtue of the Holy Spirit which is sent forth from Jesus who knows precisely what it feels like to need a gallon of milk or celebrate a spring harvest. I need salvation from sin and the promise of eternal life and I’m not gonna get that unless I’m in the splashzone. Once I am in that zone I become that zone for others. It would be easy to cling to Jesus the way Mary Magdalene does when she first sees him at the tomb on Easter morning. But Jesus is not to be clung to. He’s meant to ascend into heaven in body so that he can work in Spirit anywhere in the whole wide, wild, world, including my very scared heart or all the other places he brings peace. God might even use me or you as the person who spreads that peace.
If you find yourself sneering at the Holy Spirit like the doubters outside the Pentecost festivity and joy, well, you’ve come to the right place. Just when it seems like God is out of order and not abiding by the schedule or hopes or dreams you’ve made for your world, you’ve come to the best place you can be for God to come close to you in God’s world.
Just remember, when God is close, it may not be English you hear as if you could diagram the sentence of salvation. The language of the kingdom probably sounds more like a combination of wind rushing, wings beating and hearts humming with a power far beyond anything anyone can conjugate. Isn’t it easier to sing than conjugate anyway?
