What Good is the Holy Spirit?

Does God Control us with a Remote Control?
October 13, 2013
Coming Home
October 27, 2013

I have been fighting a battle against getting our daughters’ colds this weekend.  As you can tell from my voice, I have lost that battle badly.  But in hearing our children’s choir sing and the chancel players and the music and the scriptures read – in experiencing all the different gifts represented in this worship service, I realize that worshiping God well doesn’t depend on any one person.  It depends on the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray.

Come Holy Spirit come, help us to recognize our commonality as people gifted and called by the Spirit of the Living God.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

It’s good to see the government reopened.  This week one of you shared with me a mock press release which declared that the Washington Redskins had finally decided to change their team name and drop the word “Washington” because it had become too embarrassing.

Has the greater good been lost to a narrow focus and selfish actions?   That was one message in Jim Wallis’ book last spring, On God’s Side, which suggests that Washington and our culture is being hampered and our broader society torn apart by an inability to deal with our differences.  It’s something the Protestant church knows a lot about it, having split several times.  For Christians dealing with differences in policy, at work or even in relationships at home or at school, how we view those differences may depend upon our view of the Holy Spirit. 

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth that everyone in the church has been given gifts.  Furthermore, he makes the point that the Holy Spirit is the source of all of them.  Paul wrote this because the Corinthian church had become a place of disagreement.  Members seemed unable to deal with differences.  Factions developed as people looked to their own interests.  In spiritual terms, Paul wanted the Corinthians to realize that whatever gifts they had were not theirs to boast about, for they came from outside – from the same Holy Spirit.

Recall how the Bible begins, Genesis starts, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  The word for the “wind of God” means “spirit” or “ghost” – it’s the Hebrew word “ruach.”  As the wind swept, the spirit moved, life was created.  Ruach is a feminine word in the Hebrew meaning “life.”  This, friends, was the beginning of the involvement of the Holy Spirit.  The same spirit parted the Red Sea and descended on Jesus like a dove.  This same spirit came to the disciples as Jesus declared he was returning to heaven.  It was the same spirit that would blow through the room where the disciples were hiding at Pentecost.

In Acts 1, the great ruach came into the lives of Jesus’ followers, transforming them from disciples to apostles, empowering them to go forth as Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Apostles are by definition, people who go out into the world.  This is what the Holy Spirit does, takes us out of our narrow interests and sends us forth into the world as people who would seek to be like Jesus.

In his bestselling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan reinterprets the history of Jesus’ life as being that of a revolutionary leader focused on throwing off the yoke of Roman oppression from the Promised Land.  Recall we talked about Zealots last Sunday and how one of Jesus’ disciples, Simon the Cananean, was one.   There are some helpful parts of Aslan’s book and some parts that have been justly criticized, but what I find most interesting about it is the personal story of the author.  I sat next to Aslan at a dinner at a religion conference in New York two summers ago and he told me of how he grew up as a Muslim who then became inspired by Jesus and was converted as an evangelical Christian in high school.  But then, as an adult, he returned to the Islamic faith of his childhood, only this time as a highly spiritual Sufi Muslim.  Now Aslan writes about Jesus, whom he used to worship, from the vantage point of a spiritual Muslim who reveres Christ as a prophet.  Thus his writing reflects Aslan’s personal journey.  And in talking with Aslan, one constant I heard from him which he has seen in Jesus that attracted him as both a Christian and a Muslim is how Jesus was led by the Spirit in the world.

We don’t often think about how much Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit.  Jesus received the Holy Spirit at baptism and bore the spirit in his miracles of healing and bringing good news to the poor.  That same Spirit that led him to oppose oppression.  In Acts, Peter proclaims that Jesus “anointed with power and the Holy Spirit.”  Everything Jesus did was empowered by the spirit.  So, in John 14, Jesus prepares to depart and promises the Holy Spirit will come after him as a gift to all the people.  In doing so, he promises that his work will continue, being done by those who would seek to become like him.  The continuing work of Jesus is possible because the Holy Spirit remains after Jesus to lead his people away from individual, narrow, selfish interests, into a world which needed people who cared about the greater good.  And to become more like their savior on the way.

It can be tempting for us today to take credit for our gifts as the Corinthians did.  Or to think that the Holy Spirit inside us comes from our unique, well-developed spirituality.  If that is the case, we might well look down on the differences of others.  Or believe that we can be spiritual apart from the greater world by withdrawing into our own inner self.  But the spirit within us didn’t originate within us.  The book of Exodus, Job and Daniel all speak of the ruach of God as the source of all human gifts, wisdom and strength.  The same spirit that brought life to the world and that Jesus shared with his disciples is the source of and holds together all our gifts.  That is why Paul sought to inspire the Corinthians to see beyond their own interests to the common Spirit which was the source of all good.

When we recognize that the Holy Spirit comes from outside ourselves and is the source of our gifts, we want to return thanks to God.  We start to think about how we show gratitude to God for the gifts of time, talent and treasure which don’t originate with us.  It’s why Paul concludes that the many gifts form the one body of the church.  And why we are all apostles who receive a special calling to go out into the world to continue Christ’s work.

The role of apostles is to go forth into the world to reveal Jesus to the ends of the earth.  If our gifts come from Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, which blew over creation, parted the seas, and led disciples to become apostles who went out into the world, is with us, then we too can be led out into the world. 

Like the disciples at Pentecost, the doors of this body of Christ, our church, were pushed open this week as our worship ministries began adding new opportunities for the outside community to hear music, as our mission leaders began planning this year’s Angel Gift Tree Advent tradition of sharing gifts with those in need, our session voted to support proposed changes  in the rules about who our denomination lets marry in this room and as on Tuesday I sat bare foot in our Memorial Hall and worshiped with 150 Muslims celebrating a holy day of prayer. 

The Holy Spirit does not come into our lives to keep us the way we were.  That has never been the spirit’s way.  The spirit comes to push us to be more than we can be, to go out and make a difference for the common good. 

Francis Chan writes in his book Forgotten God that the early church knew less about the Holy Spirit intellectually than we do today:  they didn’t have the scholarship and analysis or pneumatology that we do; but that they experienced the spirit more.    

We know from scripture that the great ruach which brings forth life, parts seas, repairs dry bones, celebrates sacraments, blew open comfortable lives and led anxious people to use their gifts to further Christ’s mission in the world is still at work in the world.

Yet it can be tempting to read Paul’s letter and worry that all the exciting stuff happened thousands of years ago and so nothing fun happens in faith anymore, that back then the Holy Spirit allowed people to prophecy and speak in tongues.  Why can’t we do that cool stuff?

But that is to misinterpret the purpose of the Holy Spirit.  The presence of the Holy Spirit is unique for each one of us but it is not about celebrating one individual’s gifts.  The purpose of the Spirit is for us to become more holy, more like Jesus, and to continue his work. 

So the Apostles were empowered to go out into the world and be Jesus’ witnesses, the spirit in John 14 would take Jesus’ place once he returned to heaven, and Paul told the Corinthians that the same Spirit makes them parts of the body of Christ.  The gifts God gives are not ends in themselves, but starting points for us to see what we can do in the world to become more like our savior. 

Apostles are people gifted to reveal Christ to the world.  By virtue of your individual gifts, you have been called to reveal Christ to the world, called to continue his work and called to become more and more like Jesus each day.

If you long to make a contribution the greater good, if we long for the presence of the living God, if we long for the sweet redeeming passionate fire of life, think about how we can use our gifts in the greater world, and in that way become more like Jesus.

Around this time of year many of us naturally think about spirits and ghosts.  And the Halloween hope has been that the ghosts stay away.   Halloween, all Hallow’s eve, All Saint’s eve, started with the Celtic festival Samhain that marked the end of summer.   Building on the Greek idea that a person’s spirit was separate from their body and that the spirits of the dead often returned to roam the earth, the Celts lit bonfires, wore masks and disguises and offered sacrifices to ward off ghosts.  Interestingly, perhaps the first ghost story as we have come to know them was written in the generation after Jesus.  A Roman magistrate known as Pliny the Younger wrote many letters, including about his persecutions of many Christians in the early church.  In one letter he told about a ghost who visited a house in Athens and beckoned its master to come outside where the ghost showed him a spot in the ground.  The Athenians reputedly dug a hole, found the ghosts’ bones, gave them a proper burial and the house was haunted no more.  

We should be glad that the Holy Spirit is still alive today.  It is what makes it possible for us to feel the continued presence of God.  It saves us from narrow interests and selfish actions by connecting us to all creation and by reminding us that our gifts come from God.  It inspires us to follow the spirit out to do greater good in the world.

Despite the issues in Washington, I did see the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of several people this week.   Sometimes the world is hard and seemingly unfair and even cruel.  And when you have every reason to be angry, it takes a lot of courageous grace to focus on life’s big picture and the greater good.  Demonstrating uncommon forgiveness and grace is not something we naturally do on our own.  It takes the Holy Spirit to help us do it.  And it’s not something we have seen a lot of in Washington this week, where differences should be celebrated rather than frightened away.  But when we see uncommon grace demonstrated in the face of real pain, it is evidence that the spirit, which led Jesus to grace in the face of his pain, is still alive in our time.  And whatever your gift is, if it helps you become more like the savior that you worship and love, honor and follow it; let it remind you of the spirit’s goodness.   And give thanks.

Amen.