LIKE THE WIND OR TONGUES AS OF FIRE

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1 Acts 2:1-21--May 19, 2013 LIKE THE WIND OR TONGUES AS OF FIRE How do you possibly describe the indescribable, or explain the unexplainable? When we talk about the Holy Spirit, that s exactly what we're trying to do we re trying to grasp or comprehend something that defies both description and explanation. And yet, in order to fully allow the power of the Holy Spirit to flow, we need to know more about this third person of the Trinity. We need to know what the Spirit is and what the Spirit does. The classic definition of the Holy Spirit, according to our Christian faith, is simply the presence and activity of God in the world. By in the world, I mean three things: the Holy Spirit in us, in you and me as God s people; in the church, the Body of Christ; and in the whole of creation as the handiwork of God. Maybe that definition of the Holy Spirit too general and vague, and you want to more fully and clearly understand. If so, it would be helpful to look at the two images Luke used to describe the Spirit in this morning s reading from the Book of Acts. The first image Luke used was the wind. The passage in Acts says, Suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were staying. To understand what that statement reveals to us about the Holy Spirit, we need to think about the wind. What are the traits of wind? Well, first of all, the wind is everywhere in the world. You can t escape it. Go where you will, and the wind will be there. The same thing is true of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the presence and activity of God, is everywhere. Pablo Casals, the greatest cellist of our time, once described his experience of God s presence this way: When I wake up in the morning I go immediately to the sea, and everywhere I find God in the smallest and in the largest things. I see God in colors and designs and forms. I constantly have the idea of God when I am at the sea. What is God but this world in which we live alive with His life! What is music but God! Every human being is a miracle. The world is a miracle that only God could make. Think of how no two grains of sand are alike; how there is not one nose, one voice like another; how among billions of living and non-

2 2 living things in the universe, no two are exactly alike. Who but God could do that? God must be present all the time! Nothing can take that from us! That divine presence which Pablo Casals sensed everywhere is the Holy Spirit of God, blowing through the whole of God s creation like a mighty wind, permeating and empowering God s handiwork. There s a second trait of wind that can help us more fully understand the Holy Spirit. And that second trait is power. The wind can power everything from kites to windmills to great sailing ships. The energy of the wind can be awesome and terrifying. In the form of a hurricane or a tornado it can overturn automobiles and even blow houses off of their foundations. The power of the Holy Spirit can ALSO be awesome and frightening. But mostly the power of the Spirit is energizing and liberating. The Holy Spirit is the wind of God s presence in God s creation, giving power for life. The Spirit is the very breath of God, giving God s people and Christ s church the force and energy they need to accomplish God s work in the world. Of course, the wind wasn t the only image Luke used to describe the Holy Spirit. He used another image that of fire. In the Book of Acts we read, And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit... One of fire s traits that I think perfectly fits an attribute of the Holy Spirit is that, once it s ignited, fire grows and spreads, and whatever is near to it also catches on fire. That s how it is with God s Spirit. The power and influence of the Spirit is catching. The Spirit s flame alights on all who desire to have their lives set ablaze by God. And we can help spread the Spirit s fire through our witnessing and our deeds of Christian love and compassion. One Pentecost Sunday, the kindergarten children of a Sunday School made bright paper flames as big as their bodies, which they were to carry around the sanctuary during the offering. When the moment finally came, one little boy discovered that he d forgotten his flame. So he raced up and down the aisle, flapping his arms and shouting, I lost my flame! It would have been quite cute and funny and except for the fact that the youngster was genuinely upset. A little girl close by him saw his distress. She hurried over to him and said, It s all right. Take this. And she tore off a piece of her own flame

3 3 and gave it to him. The boy took her gift, laughed happily, and waved the flame above his head. For a few moments the girl watched him. She pursed her lips and, acting on some Inner inspiration, moved slowly along the aisle of the church sanctuary, tearing off bits of her flame and sharing them with as many people as she could. What a great illustration that is of how you and I can share the fire of the Holy Spirit with others and help the Spirit spread throughout the Body of Christ and beyond. We can rejoice that God s energizing fire is available to all who wish to be enriched and empowered by the Spirit on their life s spiritual journey. I ve tried to help enlighten you a little about that mysterious and hard to describe Third person of the Trinity. But a true and full understanding of the Holy Spirit is something that s actually more to be EXPERIENCED than learned. We don t so much come to know and understand the Holy Spirit in our heads as we come to feel and be a witness to, or an instrument of, the Spirit s presence firsthand in our hearts and in our lives. I wonder, can any of YOU identify or recognize a personal, firsthand experience with the Holy Spirit? Have you felt the Spirit s presence and witnessed the Spirit s power for yourself? Maybe you're wondering, How can you even identify the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit at all? It s such a mysterious thing. What would such an encounter with the very presence of God even look like? In an attempt to answer that question, I'd like to share this story with you. I was leading an adult Bible Study discussion some years ago, and I asked the participants to name places where they had experienced the activity of the Holy Spirit in their lives. There was an awkward silence, so I let the matter rest for the time being. The next week I handed each student a sheet of paper and asked them to jot down on one side of it any times in their lives when they had felt God s presence and guidance. That guidance may have come through a friend, I said, or maybe it was a sudden twinge of conscience. It may have come when you remembered a teaching of Jesus and it helped you tremendously at a certain moment in your life, or when something totally new opened up before you and you felt God calling you to do something, to

4 4 take some action. I asked everyone in the class to write down as many of those kinds of moments as they could remember, and not worry about sharing them with the group unless they wanted to. I told them, They re yours and God s. And then I told the class, When you finish that, turn your paper over. On the other side, write where you were when you felt a special closeness with God. Perhaps that closeness came when you were alone in your bedroom praying. Maybe you sensed it at a church camp, or in a sanctuary during worship, or when you were in the backyard at a barbeque with family or friends. Just write on your paper the sacred places, the holy ground you remember standing on when you felt God s presence in an unmistakable way. At first there was a silence in the room so thick you could cut it with a knife; then everyone started writing, and, after about fifteen or twenty minutes things got quiet once again. When they were finished I told the class, Those moments and places you wrote down are when and where you experienced the presence and activity of God s Holy Spirit. That s when the Spirit was blowing through your lives; that s when the Spirit was aflame. And the Spirit is STILL blowing. It s still burning. The thing I found interesting was that, for those who shared their encounter with the Holy Spirit with the class, they happened in ordinary, everyday ways, in ordinary, everyday places. They weren t high on a mountaintop or in some grand and glorious temple; it didn t happen after a near-death experience or after twenty straight hours praying to the Lord. No, these encounters with the Holy Spirit happened in their backyard garden, or while they were changing their baby s diapers, or driving their elderly mother home from an appointment at the doctor s office, or at work holding a cup of coffee and talking with a co-worker. After listening to those stories, I encouraged the sharers to continue to be aware of such sacred moments; to keep their eyes open to see the Spirit s flame still burning, and their ears tuned in to hear the wind of the Spirit still blowing. And I would encourage all of you to do the same. The Good News of Pentecost is that the Spirit of God is everywhere, blowing powerfully like the wind, burning radiantly like a fiery flame.

5 5 People who are spiritual have learned to sensitize themselves to the Spirit s presence and movement. They see God where others can t or won t, in their own lives, in the life of the church, and throughout God s creation; and they become empowered and strengthened for service to God and the church because of their encounters with the Holy Spirit. On this Pentecost Sunday, as we celebrate the coming of God s Holy Spirit and the birth of the Christian church, it s appropriate to ask ourselves, are we spiritually aware people of God.. Are we people who feel God s presence in our midst? For example, have we sensed the Holy Spirit HERE this morning in the choir anthem or the Scripture reading, during the Children s Message, the sermon or in the time of silent prayer? If not, why not? Are our hearts not open and receptive enough? Are we too easily distracted? Does the rush of a mighty wind have to blow us totally away, or do tongues of fire have to scorch us, before we finally experience God s Holy Spirit among us? Maybe, just maybe, what need to do is simply pray and ask God, with sincerity, humility, receptiveness and anticipation, to make God s self known, and God will respond. If that s the case, let THIS be our prayer. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.