Blown by the Spirit

Why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? [Query a few people.] Is it because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Is it because coming is what God expects of me, and I want to please and serve God? Do you seek weekly nourishment in the Eucharist? Do you hope thereby to become more like Jesus? Do you seek strength for the journey, the sustenance you need to keep going in life? Or are you perhaps looking to satisfy some deeply-felt need for authentic community? What brought you here?

My friends, none of these reasons is why you are here. You are here because the Holy Spirit brought you here. You may even be here against your will. Certainly you have every good reason not to be here, and no longer any social approbation for rousing yourselves and actually getting here. You are here, because the Holy Spirit blew you in through the red doors – for a reason.

Jesus’ disappearance is behind us, we’ve crossed over the threshold, and the Holy Spirit is rampant in the world. But the Holy is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of making herself known. Some of us can really resonate with the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. We know that in Scripture a powerful wind is often a signal for God’s presence. Remember how Jesus tried to describe the Spirit to Nicodemus? “The wind blows where it chooses,” he said, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” For some of us, the Holy Spirit does feel like a great rushing wind, coming into our lives, carrying us along, even pushing us in unexpected directions. We know too that in Scripture fire is also a signal of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites in their journey through the Sinai? When Jeremiah felt so compelled to speak God’s word that he could no longer keep silent, he said that God’s urging felt “like fire in the bones.” And when John Wesley felt himself come alive again spiritually at the Aldersgate meeting, he said his heart “felt strangely warmed.”

To others of us, the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and enlivening. Although Elijah had expected God to come in thunder and fire, God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples in John’s Gospel felt Jesus breathe the Holy Spirit into them. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” says one of our hymns. Gentle, easy, yet life-giving and utterly life-changing. For yet others, the Holy Spirit comes in extraordinary, inexplicable experiences. The fractious members of the Christian community at Corinth suddenly had the ability to speak ecstatically in another language. St. Francis of Assisi heard the crucifix in a country church calling to him. A woman knelt at the altar of a strange church and suddenly knew she was home. A student sang in a church choir, and all his resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit melted away.

However the Spirit brought you here, as a strong but invisible force, as a gentle tug on the sleeve, or through a moment in your life you still can’t explain, you are here because the Spirit has brought you here. We are all here because the Spirit has brought us here. As Paul told the Corinthians who thought their ability to speak in tongues made them special, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” Paul went on to remind the Corinthian Christians that collectively their community possessed many different kinds of gifts, not just that of speaking in tongues, and that all their gifts had come from the same Spirit. Whatever the gifts were, whether they were teaching, administration, preaching, devotion, healing, or working miracles, all these gifts had been given to the community by the Spirit, distributed by the Spirit as the Spirit saw fit. Most important, the Spirit had given these gifts to the Corinthian Christians for a reason: “for the common good,” i.e. to build up the church in that place.

As with the Christian community at Corinth, the Spirit has given the church of our day diverse gifts and talents, all of which the Spirit needs the church to exercise. From a lofty perspective, you might even say that the Spirit has given diverse gifts to the churches. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has diverse God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or community has all the gifts needed to bring God’s reign nearer. Much as we love the Episcopal Church, perhaps we can learn from Lutherans, or Roman Catholics, or even Baptists and Pentecostals. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of our parishes have God-given gifts, but perhaps none of them has all the gifts needed to build the kingdom of God. We have a lot to learn from each other. And the Spirit has certainly scattered her gifts here at St. Peter’s. All of us have different God-given gifts that this parish needs, and none of us, whatever our age, station, or life situation, is without gifts. The Spirit has distributed gifts and talents among us all, and the Spirit calls on us to use our gifts.

My friends, there’s kind of a paradox here. The Spirit has not given us these gifts for our own spiritual self-aggrandizement, nor solely to enable us to feel at peace with ourselves, valuable as that may be, or at ease with the world. Strength for the journey, maybe. But, as one writer observed, the real truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us, that, in fact, may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After they stepped over that threshold, there was no going back to the old life for the disciples. In the very last chapter of John’s Gospel, Peter, James, and John tried to return to fishing. Jesus caught up with them, and told Peter to “Feed my sheep.” Celtic Christians still use the image of the wild goose as a symbol for the unfettered Spirit. They know that the Spirit, like a noisy and bothersome wild goose, often shakes us out of our complacency and leads us in unexpected directions.

And so too for us. Having stepped over that same threshold, we know there is no going back to what this parish once was. There is no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. In a recent speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks challenged his listeners to give up our American pre-occupation with self-fulfillment and instead make a “sacred commitment” to service to others. “Most successful young people,” he wrote, “don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem which summons their life…. They are called by a problem which then helps them create self-identity.” Isn’t that true for us as well? The Spirit calls each of to use our gifts to reach out to people of every language, ethnicity, and social station. The Spirit calls all of us, young or old, women or men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to bring the reign of God nearer, to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we can discern it. The Spirit calls us to ask, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”

Most of you know that I like icons. I especially like this one of the descent of the Holy Spirit from the Cathedral of St. Sophia. You remember that icons are not realistic pictures but rather attempts to capture spiritual realities visually. This icon is different from what we might expect such an icon to be, in that it shows the apostles at rest, perhaps being gently bathed by the light touch of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen has written movingly of the way in which this icon reflects the Spirit’s role in creating Christian community, by drawing us into the community of love created by the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But two other things strike me about this icon. The first is how different all the apostles are. At first glance, they may look alike. However, if you look closely, you can see that the icon tradition has visibly represented the diversity among them. They are different ages, they are dressed differently, some are bearded and some are not, and their postures differ. In effect, the icon gives us a visual representation of the diversity of gifts among that first apostolic community. Second, and perhaps more important, each figure has in his lap a book or other object. Tranquil as this scene may be, we have the sure sense that the apostles will shortly rise from their chairs to go out to serve the church in the various paths on which they will be led.

We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. The Spirit has given us all gifts. The Spirit has given us the responsibility to rebuild and revitalize this parish. And so therefore we pray most earnestly, that the Spirit will continue to shower her gifts on us, so that we may continue to bring God’s reign nearer. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and light us with celestial fire. Thou the anointing Spirit art, who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.”