Why am I here? More important, why are you here? What blew you in through the red doors? Are you here because coming to church is what one does on Sunday? Are you here because you think that God expects you to come, and you want to please God? Do you want to be fed in the Eucharist? Do you hope that, if you take in Christ’s Body and Blood, you will become more like him? Do you seek strength for the journey, something to help you keep going in life? Or are you looking for a real community?
My friends, we are not here for any of these reasons. We are here because the Holy Spirit blew us here. Perhaps you didn’t even want to come. Certainly you have every good reason not to come. No one will look down on you for sleeping in, and no one will pat you on the back for waking up and actually getting here. We are here, because the Holy Spirit blew us in through the red doors – and for a reason.
Jesus is gone. We listened to Jesus. We prayed together, and we waited for him to make good on his promises. And then it happened! We crossed over the threshold, and discovered that God has let God’s Spirit loose in the world. But God’s Spirit is wily and changeable, and she has many ways of showing herself.
Some of us are inspired by the violent, life-changing experiences of the disciples in the Book of Acts. In Scripture a powerful wind is a sign of God’s presence. Remember the beginning of Genesis? “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” 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.
Perhaps you are inspired by the disciples’ experience of being on fire. Fire in Scripture is also a sign of God’s presence. Remember the Pillar of Fire that followed the Israelites as they travelled through the Sinai? When the prophet Jeremiah could no longer keep from speaking God’s word, 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.”
Or perhaps the Holy Spirit comes as a gentle breath, a quickening and an enlivening, a sense of being invisibly, yet inexorably, transformed. 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.
Still others of us feel the Spirit’s presence in a rush of deep emotion. Ricardo Avila lay prostrate on the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, waiting to be ordained a priest. As the congregation began to chant the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, “Come, Holy Spirit,” the traditional invocation of the Holy Spirit at ordinations, he felt tears gush from his eyes, and then he began to sob. Others of us experience that emotion as deep joy, joy that makes us so giddy that those around us may be sure that we are drunk – and we are, drunk with the “new wine” that old wineskins cannot contain.
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 other languages. 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. Back in his pew after taking Christ into his body, a man knew that God’s Spirit was lodged deep in his own heart. 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.” We are all here, because the Spirit needs us to be here. Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that the Spirit had brought them together, because the community needed the abilities, talents, and gifts of many different people. All their various gifts had come from the same Spirit, and all were needed and important. 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.
The Christian community at Corinth was just the beginning. The Spirit has given today’s church tons of gifts and talents, and the Spirit needs the church to use them all. In one sense, you could even say that the Spirit has given the churches different gifts. Perhaps the Spirit has intentionally scattered her gifts around. Perhaps every denomination, maybe even every faith community, has different God-given gifts and talents, and no denomination or faith has all the gifts necessary to bring God’s reign nearer. I love the Episcopal Church. I have been drinking from its deep well almost all my adult life. However, I know that we can learn from Lutherans and Roman Catholics, even Baptists and Pentecostals, even Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. In the same way, I believe that the Spirit has scattered her gifts around the various parishes in our diocese. All of us have God-given gifts, but none of us has all the gifts we need to bring the reign of God nearer. 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 blew us here, the Spirit gave us all gifts and talents, and the Spirit empowers us to use our gifts.
My friends, there is both a mystery and a paradox here. The mystery is this: we don’t know how the Holy Spirit works. We say that the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, with God the Creator and God the Redeemer. We reaffirm our faith in the Spirit every time we say the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ….” But we don’t know how the Spirit helps us to let go of old, destructive ways of life, helps us to forgive and be forgiven, and helps us to live more compassionately. We don’t know how the Spirit transforms our lives and helps us to do more and more of what Jesus did. We don’t know how the Spirit grabs our hand and takes us down a path of ministry we had never before contemplated. We only know that something has changed, that we have experienced transforming grace, and that we have discovered gifts within ourselves that we never knew we possessed.
And here is the paradox. The Spirit doesn’t give these gifts so that we can feel proud of ourselves spiritually, nor so that we may feel peaceful, nor even so that we may be strengthened for the journey. As one writer has observed, the truth is that the Spirit has given us gifts and talents that create problems for us and that may make us profoundly uncomfortable. After the disciples were blown over by the Spirit, they could not go back to their old lives. 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 new directions.
We too are living in this paradox. Having been blown here by the Spirit, perhaps having been blown over by the Spirit, we know there is no going back to what our lives were before, no going back to a life focused solely on ourselves and our own narrow needs. 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 and old, women and men, to prophesy. The Spirit calls all of us to use our gifts to care for this planet, to bring the reign of God nearer, and to partner with God in God’s work, wherever we discern it. The Spirit calls all of us to ask, “Who needs us?” As you begin a new chapter in the life of this parish, I invite you ask, “How can this parish use its diverse gifts and talents to share God’s love in this community?”
We are here, because the Spirit has brought us here. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove: descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through us that sacred story. Take our lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame, then send us forth to spread your name. May it be so.
