If someone didn’t know anything about the Holy Trinity, could they gain some insight into God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by our speech? Would they get some picture of God as Trinity, or would they think we worshipped only God the Father, or—in the case of many Christians—only Jesus? I suspect that in our speech, and perhaps even in our theological ruminations, we don’t quite know what to do with the Holy Spirit.
When is the last time you spoke openly about the Holy Spirit’s presence in your life? Do you have any sense of how the Spirit might be active in your daily existence or in the lives of those dear to you? Are you scared to speak about the Holy Spirit for fear of being labeled as a fanatic or charismatic? Or does the Holy Spirit frighten you because the Spirit blows where the Spirit will and has a tendency to disrupt our complacency?
I have written before of how palpably I’ve felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in my time at Good Shepherd. Maybe it’s because, as I get older, I’m more attuned to the need to let go of control, and letting go of control, from a Christian perspective, is partly about submitting to the Spirit’s ability and proclivity to blow unpredictably throughout my life. But it could also be that Good Shepherd has felt like such an open place for the past several years. I mean “open” in the sense of being a tabula rasa, a blank slate. When a place is not crowded by old ways of doing things and lots of parishioners being set in their rigid ways, the Holy Spirit’s invigorating and refreshing power has a way of coming to light.
It was by the Holy Spirit’s power that I was nudged, through the urging of a former staff member, to consider coming to Good Shepherd. It was by the Holy Spirit’s power that some of us began to recognize the potential latent in physical space on this campus, as well as the unique gifts of some parishioners, all of which led us to start our retreat house ministry. It was by the Holy Spirit’s power that many of you found yourselves on our doorstep, and we, in turn, discovered—rather surprisingly—that you had exactly the right gifts we needed to sustain the ministry to which we felt called. These are only some examples of the Holy Spirit’s work among us.
But the Holy Spirit, of course, can’t be controlled by the Church. In the Church, we learn how the Holy Spirit is shaping our lives and pushing us outside our comfort zones. But in the world (the kosmos as St. John puts it in his Gospel), we are called to witness to the Spirit’s power. We observe the Spirit moving and breathing among our friends and loved ones. We detect, through the Spirit’s provocations, that our voice is needed to speak to justice in the face of injustice. We discern that we’re called to a particular workplace, or school, or geographical region in order to live as fully as God desires for us to live. By the Spirit’s power, our hard-hearted ways are judged, and we are cut to the heart, and we seek repentance. By the Spirit’s power, we follow not a whim but a distinct feeling that moves us to be in the right place at the right time.
And above all, the Spirit is there to comfort us (for the Spirit is the Comforter, Advocate, Paraclete—one who “comes alongside us”) when we are in the valley of the shadow of death, enabling us to pray “with sighs too deep for words” as St. Paul tells us. The Holy Spirit gives voice to our prayer. The Holy Spirit reassures us that in our loneliest moments, we are not alone. It’s because of the Holy Spirit’s living, breathing presence in our lives that we are able even to pray at all. And it’s because God has given us the Holy Spirit that the Church is able to do “to do even greater things than these [works of Jesus in his earthly life]” (John 14:12).
This Sunday is the Day of Pentecost, the day when the Church marks the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the earliest disciples as they were gathered together, fifty days after the celebration Passover. The disciples would, of course, never be the same after this palpable manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and they would be propelled to the very ends of the earth, telling the story of God’s good news as known in Christ and engaging in God’s work of mission.
Does our current malaise within the Church mean that we’re ripe for another Pentecostal moment? Or rather, is it that every minute of our Christian existence is a moment for Pentecostal dynamism? I’ve often wondered why the fervor and spiritual fire of the Church’s earliest days (as particularly conveyed in the Acts of the Apostles) seems so far removed from sleep-in Sundays, “dying” churches, and financially anxious parish meetings, where budgets are slashed to “keep order” and ministry is whittled away. I’m thankful that this isn’t the case at Good Shepherd, where I see ambitious reaching for new ministry and an overwhelming sense of God’s abundance. And thank goodness for that. The Holy Spirit is no less alive now than two thousand years ago. Perhaps it’s that we have tuned our antennae to other frequencies: busyness, consumerism, fear, predictability, and normalcy.
The question when speaking about the Holy Spirit is how we know whether we’re following the Spirit’s voice or not? That’s not an easy question to answer. But we have some guideposts to help us along the way. If the nudges we’re following restrict our capacity for abundant living, they’re probably not of the Spirit. If something actively creates divisions and has no impulse to restore people to one another and God, then it’s probably not of the Spirit. If an urging provokes fear and shame, it’s likely not of the Spirit. But if we’re faithful in our prayers—that is, making prayer a regular part of our lives—then I’m convinced that we can trust the nudges we feel because they probably stem from the openness that God creates within us when we’re actively at prayer. Heeding those nudges, the voices of others in our lives, and the circumstances in which we find ourselves are all part of tuning our own antenna to the frequency of the Holy Spirit.
On Day of Pentecost, a principal feast of the Church, we will welcome a child, Douglas Joseph Backman, III, into the Body of Christ through the sacrament of Baptism. He will rise to new life in Christ through the water of Baptism and be sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. Every Baptism is a reminder that each moment of our lives is an opportunity for Pentecostal living. Let us take that Pentecostal fire into a world that needs its cleansing power and its refreshing potential for newness. I’ll look forward to seeing you in church on Sunday.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle