Texts: Psalm 104; Acts 2: 1-21
Back in the dark ages – that's when I was a young girl – my mother used to send me to my Aunt Ruby's house in Alabama for what she told me was a “vacation.” The real vacation, of course, was for my parents. Be that as it may. Even though worship in my aunt's old Southern Baptist church was lively, to say the least, it was no near as lively as worship in the African-American churches whose shouting and singing we could hear down the back road all Sunday afternoon.
Curious, while everyone else was taking a nap, I snuck out of the house and went down the dirt road to the small church and peeked in a window to watch the tenant farmers and their families shout and sing and move in their fervent worship. They were dripping with perspiration in the hot Alabama summers – and if you think it gets hot here in New Jersey, you should try Alabama in the summertime.
One of the girls, who was just a few years older than I, told me that they were moved by the power of the Spirit. She told me that her grandmother had the gift of speaking in tongues when seized by the Spirit. It was really overwhelming to me.
What is the origin of our ideas of the Spirit of God? The earliest reference to the Apirit of God is in the first creation story. God’s breath, God’s spirit – ruach in Hebrew – moves over the face of the waters, the formless void out of which God creates the heavens and the earth. And it is ruach, the breath of God, that breathes life into the first human created in God’s image. God’s spirit has also been breathed into all of us. Sometimes called Holy Wisdom, that spirit is at the very center of what God is.
Writing around 55 CE, Paul is the earliest witness we have to a theology that includes the Spirit of God as central to Christianity. However, it is not until close to the end of the first century when Luke-Acts was put into its current form that the story of what we call Pentecost appears. The earliest Christians didn’t much consider what we have come to call the Holy Spirit because they were busy preaching about Jesus.
The threefold phrase “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” first appears in the early second century by writers of the early church, such as Polycarp, Clement, or Ignatius. By the middle of the second century, Theophilus of Antioch, a pagan who became a Christian, took notice of the Holy Spirit and defined it as God’s wisdom, being present since the creation of all things. His contemporary Athenagoras also spoke of “one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” By the end of the century, the early church was embroiled in a full scale debate on the nature of the Holy Spirit and its role in the church.
Tertullian, the third century lawyer-theologian, was the first to develop the theology we call Trinitarianism, by naming the Holy Spirit as the third manifestation of the divine, fully equal to the Father and the Son. Debate regarding the nature of the Holy Spirit raged for another century until the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. stated point blank in its creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
The Holy Spirit, however, once institutionalized, was largely ignored because its wondrous workings were considered a threat to order and stability. Reformers in the Middle Ages and even the Reformation did not call on the Holy Spirit as their inspiration. Indeed, it was not until the emergence of Pentecostalism that the Spirit took a pre-eminent position in Christian theology.
Although the Pentecostal movement had its beginnings in the United States, it owes much of its theology to earlier British perfectionist and charismatic movements. At least three of these, the Methodist/Holiness movement, the Catholic Apostolic movement of Edward Irving, and the British Keswick "Higher Life" movement prepared the way for what appeared to be a spontaneous outpouring of the Holy Spirit in America.
Beginning in 1901 with a handful of students in a Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, the number of Pentecostals increased steadily throughout the world during the until by the turn of this century they have become the largest family of Protestants in the world. With over 200,000,000 members designated as denominational Pentecostals, this group surpassed the Orthodox churches as the second largest denominational family of Christians, surpassed only by Roman Catholicism. There are also another 200 million "Charismatics" in mainline denominations and independent charismatic churches, both Catholic and Protestant. Pentecostalism embraces the Assemblies of God and many independent churches throughout the United States and the world.
What is it that characterizes them and creates such appeal? Drawing its name from the first Pentecost, which we celebrate today, Pentecostalism stresses experiencing God in worship – exhibited through fervor and power in worship services – and through fervor in living the word of God every day of the week. Just as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the early church changed the lives of new Christians then, so are lives changed through the outpouring of God’s Spirit today. That is true of not just Pentecostals, but of many other Christian communities seeking the experience of God in worship and in living.
Not all religious communities that seek the experience of God in worship fit within the Pentecostal tradition. Quakers, who have a totally different style of worship through quiet meeting, also seek God’s presence to empower them to witness to God’s radical justice in the world. There’s an old Quaker story of the two members who sat through meeting silently until one rose to speak, which he did eloquently. Following meeting, the other told the first how he was appreciative of what the first had said. To which the first replied: Friend, next time, say it yourself. In other words, respond when the Spirit calls you. Respond. But first, we need to get ready.
So, how is it that we get ready for the Spirit? What is it that we need to do? First, we need to be open to the many ways that God’s Spirit works in people. Living the Spirit involves a process of spiritual transformation, which brings us closer to God. These are more than just words.
If we slow down and take stock of our goals and of what we are really working for in life, then we will learn what the real treasures of life are. Yes, we know that in our heads, but do we live it in our hearts – and our lives? Life would be such a waste if all we do is rush towards death without really living at all. We need to search out the other, greater part of life, that of the spirit. We must reach inside ourselves to find ultimate peace and the grand purpose of our lives.
The Spirit will speak to each of us in different ways. For some, it is through living a life of service; for others, through prayer; for others still, through special gifts that we have been given. And the Spirit does not just speak once, but often, and even constantly.
God’s spirit reaches out to us in ways we often cannot even fathom. It encounters us in our daily lives, enabling us to find the sacred in the many ordinary things of life. The Spirit must be nurtured, like coals in a fire. The Irish have a word for it – grieshog. It is the fire in the ashes, pushed together so that the fire within never goes out. Nurturing the spirit, so that we are ready for the spirit in our lives, takes tender loving care.
It means paying attention to the small things in life that speak to us, whether they are words or experiences. We need to be ready – to listen not just with our ears but with our hearts, our souls. Only then can we experience the ruach, the breath, the spirit of God in our lives.
Let us pray: Spirit of God, enter our hearts – seize our souls so we are able to reflect the spirit you infused into Jesus of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord. Amen.