PENTECOST (C) Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:14-17 John 14: 8-17, 25-27
Just before Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he told his disciples, ‘it will be better for you when I go away, because my Father will send the Holy Spirit to live within you and guide you.’ Since Jesus said that the coming of the Holy Spirit would be better for us than having Jesus here on earth with us physically…let me ask you: This past week, how important has the Holy Spirit in your life? On this Pentecost weekend…is there a deep longing in your heart to know more and experience more of God’s Holy Spirit guiding you every day?
Imagine a person with a fast, high power computer, with the most up to date software…but the person does not plug in or turn on the computer. The person never experiences all the resources available.
That is what many Christians are like in their relationship with the Holy Spirit. In Baptism, God gave each of us the Holy Spirit. The potential is there to experience God’s Spirit guiding us every day, moment by moment. But many of us have not plugged in and turned on the connection with the Holy Spirit. We have not discovered how to access the moment-by-moment gift of Holy Spirit who wants to flow into our minds, hearts and bodies giving us God’s wisdom, guidance, healing, energy, joy, hope and peace.
Who is the Holy Spirit? In God the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the go-between-God, the loving energy of communion who links Jesus with his Heavenly Father…and links us with Jesus and the Father and one another.
In the beginning of time, the Holy Spirit helped create the universe, brooding over the dark waters. Down though history, the Holy Spirit came upon kings and prophets, artists and poets, major leaders and ordinary people through whom God spoke and worked to guide the human race.
An angel told a teenager named Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would conceive and bear Jesus, God’s Son. The Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in his Baptism and guided his teaching, empowered Jesus to heal people who were sick. The power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.
It was the Holy Spirit who guided and transformed the first fearful disciples into a community of Spirit-alive Jesus followers who turned the world upside down with the healing, reconciling love of God.
In our generation, God is looking for people who will live their daily lives with the same kind of openness and responsiveness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit…so God can continue to make a new creation out of the brokenness of human beings and societies on this planet.
As we look at the life of Jesus, we see him making choices every day to stay in open communication with the Holy Spirit. We see Jesus going off alone to pray and praying in the middle whatever happened in his daily life. We see Jesus asking others to pray for him so that he could hear and have the courage to follow the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.
If you and I want the Holy Spirit to guide our lives, as the Spirit guided the life of Jesus, then we will need to make daily choices to open ourselves to the presence and guidance of God’s Spirit.
This week, might God be inviting you to explore the habit of more frequent daily prayer, inviting the Holy Spirit to help and guide you…when your day begins, during the challenges of the day, and at the end of each day?
esus read and studied the Bible regularly. The Holy Spirit helped Jesus hear God guide him through the words and stories and images of the Bible.
When Jesus talked with his disciples and tried to help them understand the life-giving wisdom of the Bible, the disciples talked about their hearts burning within them. It was the Holy Spirit who helped the disciples to recognize God speaking to them in fresh and powerful ways through the Bible and through talking with Jesus.
Does the Bible seem dead and dry to you sometimes? When it feels dead and dry, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help the words of the Bible come alive for us, like words spoken from the loving heart of God to our hearts. Is it time for you to begin the habit of reading a short portion of the Bible every day so that you give God a chance to guide you…connect the story of your life with the stories of Christians in previous generations?
God is as eager to guide all the details of our lives, as he was to guide the life of Jesus. But listening for the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit is not easy. There are many voices that speak inside all of us. We hear the voices of our parents and teachers, the voices of our fears and prejudices. We hear the voices of our society and our selfish desires. The voices of greed, impatience, evil and violence speak and tempt each of us.
Spiritual maturity involves learning how to interpret the many voices that speak in our minds and hearts…so we can discern what God’s Holy Spirit is saying and how God’s voice is different from all the other voices. We need to test our sense of God’s guidance by asking if it is consistent with the teaching of Scripture…and if it is consistent with the wisdom of Christians down through history and in our contemporary Christian community.
Many Christians think that all they need is Sunday worship to keep their connection with the Holy Spirit alive and healthy. Certainly worship and the sacraments are essential life-giving ways of connecting our lives with the Holy Spirit…but they are not enough to sustain a growing connection with the Holy Spirit. We all face problems, struggles, decisions. There are so many questions about how God wants us to live and act and speak in our chaotic and demanding times.
The Holy Spirit often guides us best when we spend regular time in a small group, talking and learning with other Christians about the specific realities of our lives. We need other people to model for us what it means to stay in touch with the Holy Spirit. We need others to encourage us and hold us accountable for seeking to follow the Word and Spirit of Jesus. We need Christian community, just as Jesus needed the community of his disciples.
must warn you that following the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit will be demanding. God will continually lead us out of our comfort zones…so that we have to depend on God, and not just our own skills and resources. I find this true almost every day of my life. God will lead us all to the edge of our knowledge and control…where we will have to step out in faith, depending on God alone. This will test all of us. Are we following the Holy Spirit for our own comfort?…or are we willing to make sacrifices so that God can lead us and work through us for good…beyond what we could conceive as humanly possible?
The Holy Spirit works in us much like a pendulum works in a grandfather clock, swinging back and forth to move the hands of the clock. First the pendulum swings to one side…the Holy Spirit gathers us in Christian community to nourish, form and heal us through worship, learning and conversation. Then the Holy Spirit swings the pendulum to the others side…scattering us out into our daily lives, into the stresses and challenges of society, so that Christ can work though us to bring healing, justice and peace to the people we meet everyday in schools, businesses, homes, stores and sports fields. The Spirit gathers us for renewal…and scatters us to serve and heal the world.
Yet, we can’t live this life style of gathering and scattering as followers of Jesus by our own energy and strength alone. Christianity is not a “do it yourself” religion. It is not just a matter of believing right doctrine and being good and nice and moral. The heart of the Christian faith is…allowing the Holy Spirit of God to guide us, to speak and act through us to make a positive difference in your school, your work place, your family, in the community, in the places of violence and poverty and need in our society and world.
Perhaps you are thinking that your life is already too busy…you have no time for the Holy Spirit to use your God given gifts to help others. If this is your concern, be still for a moment and listen to God.
The Holy Spirit will not burn anyone out. What burns us out is when we try to do MORE things, or Different Things than the Holy Spirit calls us to do. The Holy Spirit calls us to take time for rest and renewal, like Jesus did. The Holy Spirit calls us to wholeness and balance through gathering and scattering. The Holy Spirit guides us to say NO to things that are of secondary importance… and to say YES to things that are truly life-giving.
What burns us out is the voice of our society saying, you have to do more and have more, you have to keep up with your peers. The voice of greed can destroy us. n contrast, the Spirit of Jesus says, simplify your life and live within your limits. Come to me and I will show you how to live life at its fullest, by loving God and your neighbor. I will give you my Holy Spirit who will produce in you the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.
Today we will ask God to renew the gift and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who will be Confirmed...not only during this service, but every day, for the rest of their lives.
All of us will recommit ourselves to being followers of Jesus who seek every day, to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
Can you imagine the transformation that could happen…if each of us…if each Christian around the world truly allowed the Holy Spirit to guide us every day… to bring healing, reconciliation and hope to the people and places of need in our communities and around the world?
Let’s close our eyes for a moment…and be aware that the Holy Spirit is right here, surrounding us with love…eager to help and guide us.
How is God inviting you and me…to change our lives…so we can be more open and responsive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance every day?
Come Holy Spirit, today and every day…rekindle in us the fire of your love…and scatter us into the world of our daily lives so that you can flow through us to bring healing and hope to the people and situations we encounter…so come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit. Amen.