Forever More, The Spirit Comes

Let us pray…Gracious and loving God, on this the birthday of the church, we come to you open for the movement of the Spirit in our lives. Grant that we might open our hearts, minds, and our own spirits to the tongues of flames and the wind that announced your Spirit’s coming to the world, Amen.

Occasionally, in what time I have for down time, I seek out the words and wisdom of other preachers on TV. While the ones I find are not typically of the same mind as I, I do find one or two who on occasion speak to me and what I need to hear that day. The majority of the time, however, I find those that speak on the opposite end of the spectrum from what I believe is the true depth of our faith, that God created us to be in unity with all who believe. Oftentimes, I hear the divisiveness of how, we as humans, create labels and separate ourselves from other Christians. I guess I need to make a caveat here…I am not saying that those who think vastly different from I are “bad” or not preaching the right way, I am just saying that my understanding of the movement of the Spirit amongst believers is there to unite us and bring us together rather than separate us from one another. With that side note, maybe I am just a bit naive, because I do pause fro, time-to-time to listen for a few minutes to what is being said, hoping to find some additional insights which could help me understand better the elusive presence of God's Spirit among us. Unfortunately, I get more frustrated than actually hearing what I had hoped to hear. It is in this strain of thought that I want us to consider the meaning of the Spirit coming into the world that very first Pentecost and the Spirit’s movement amongst us still today because the Spirit does still move amongst us today.

So, what are the signs of God's spirit in the church today, the spirit which God promised to pour out "on all flesh"? Considering this question today reminds me of two pastors I have had in my life. The first was a scholar. He spent hours carefully preparing for every sermon. He came to the pulpit with more notes than he could possibly use in the time allotted for his sermon, much like me. This pastor spent a considerable amount of time considering what he would say and how he would deliver it so that his message was heard clearly. He was a quiet, gentle, and loving man. He was my role model and the model I use in my own ministry.

Another pastor I had was a very different person. He had the Spirit, it was clear by how he acted, spoke, and the decisions he made. I knew he had the Spirit because he himself told us he did, and quite often for that matter. He preached fiery, extemporaneous sermons, without a single note. I once asked him how he did this and he told me that he preached what the Spirit wanted him to say. I remember him as a very angry man. He was competitive, bitter, and driven. I also use him as a model for some of my ministry but not for the whole of my ministry.

These two men represent, to me, the two ends of the spectrum of Christianity as well. There are some who believe that if you are Christian, you need to be like the first pastor I described, always loving and always happy and never like the second pastor I described. Others believe that we should be combination of the two. While still others believe that we need to be like the second pastor and only a little like the first. The paradigm can be very confusing for anyone who has never known Jesus as our sibling. I have to also admit that as a Pastor today, the opposing ends of the spectrum make it very difficult to speak to others because as someone who believes we should love all in order to exhibit the Spirit moving in our lives without needing to go around announcing that the Spirit is in me, we need to be cautious about being too boastful but this also holds us back. Unfortunately, every time I hear someone say you have to get the Spirit (like you get a new car or get a new suit), I remember those two men: the angry one who told us he had the Spirit, and the gentle one who never claimed it in so many words, but seemed more filled with the Spirit of God than anyone I have ever met.

I suppose that is part of the reason why I continue to have trouble with a great deal of the traditional religious language which is being thrown around more and more these days. It has always seemed to me that our deepest beliefs are to be lived, more than they are to be talked about. And so today, I am more concerned that we remember that there is a great diversity in the vastness of God, and not become so wary when someone tries to convince us that the Holy Spirit is the property of any one group of Christians. I pray you are all still with me here because this is really important to our future as the body of Christ, the church, not the building but the people who carry the Spirit within our hearts.

One last example…and this is a big one that I often get questions about...I once had an encounter with someone who claimed to have gone through what is called a charismatic experience (usually referred to as being reborn or finding Jesus moment). This woman told me about how she had "found Jesus," and been "reborn in the Spirit." My first thought was, “Great, I am glad that God spoke to you and that you felt the Spirit come to your heart.” Initially, I was overjoyed because this person had been struggling with her faith for quite some time and had come to me on several occasions to talk about what she believed. However, the very next breath, she asked me when I was saved and went on to try to convince me that I needed to have the same experience in exactly the same way that she had. As I have reflected on this conversation, after the fact, I often wish I had had the clarity of mind to say something like, “I am so glad that you have felt the Spirit stirring in your heart, but why is it that my experience of God needs to be exactly the same as yours when we were created very differently?” I did not think that quickly in the moment but in conversations like this, this is what it comes down to, is it not? We are confronted with an exclusivism which says, "My way is not a way of understanding God, but the one and only way and for that matter it is the true way of understanding God!"

Which leads me to another question...does the Holy Spirit come to the church in only one way? Only one way, really? I don't think so because I believe in the wonder of the diversity of God's presence and expression of that presence with us always. When we believe that there is only one way to experience God and the Spirit in this world, we are really limiting ourselves and our understanding of God amongst us. We miss the possibility that God may have an entirely different experience in mind for you than God has in mind for me. It is not so much a matter of wondering why God's Spirit hasn't spoken to you in the same way it has to someone else, as it is a matter of listening for the particular way God is speaking to you right now.

That is what is really important, and that is what we seldom bother to do, for we are great readers, listeners and collectors of the experiences of others. Yet the Spirit does not want to touch us through their experiences, but through our own: through the empty or needful spaces in our own lives which are the locations of our greatest anxiety and our greatest potential. Somewhere within each of us is a great hunger, a great empty space which will never be filled until we identify it correctly for what it is - a hunger for God. Nothing else can fill the emptiness which that hunger creates. Yet most of us, most of the time, will try to fill ourselves with just about anything else we can think of, rather than seek to hear God's Spirit calling to those places of need in us. Perhaps one reason our resistance is so powerful is that we have often been pressured to hear God calling in someone else's way, rather than in our own.

The Spirit of God is vast and diverse, and God probably chuckles at the way we compete for the possession of, the exclusive rights to, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost with wind and fire and speaking in tongues to claim the faithful, all of whom are diverse in backgrounds and experiences. The fact that we still study this passage nearly 2,000 year later says that the Spirit did - and still does come amongst us today!

Our challenge in today’s world is to listen for the Holy Spirit who is calling to the empty places, to the need within us, no matter who we are or where we are on our life’s journey. If we are diligent in our seeking, God's Spirit will come. It will come in the least expected ways and come to each of us in different ways. My experience of the Spirit moving in me in is going to be very different from your experience. It has to be…we are all created differently and have different life journeys. I cannot predict how it will happen for you, but it will happen: Jesus promised that we would receive it when he said, "... for I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." Remember too that the Spirit lit upon each person individually. There is no other way to interpret this in my mind than to understand that we will each receive the Spirit in our own ways…there is no right or wrong way to experience the Spirit in our lives and there is no single way that we need to understand how the Spirit moves amongst us, just that it does and always will! AMEN.

Adapted from: The Way Of The King by Charles Curley. https://sermons.com/sermon/the-presence-of-the-spirit/1334619. Accessed 28 May, 2020.