Maybe not Parthians, Medes and Elamites but we are Koreans, Chinese, Colombians, French, Germans, Indians and Haitians. We are from Benin, Cameroon, El Salvador, Malaysia, Nigeria, Rwanda and the Philippines. We are natives of Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Poland, Kenya and Viet Nam. We have traveled from Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Ghana and Canada – Spaniards and Arabs too. Maybe not Jew and Greek, slaves and free but we are married and single, widowed and divorced, men and women, old and young, rich and poor, straight and gay, Democrats and Republicans, old timers and noobies, cradle Catholics and converts. We are from Bronzeville and Bridgeport, Canaryville and Douglas, Kenwood and Hyde Park, South Loop and Indiana, Flossmoor and LaGrange, Oak Forest and South Holland, Rogers Park and Berwyn, Skokie and Cicero, China Town and Hodgkins and, surprisingly, many more besides, especially when you count in those participating on zoom. All of which is to say we are community much like the one that encountered the presence and action of the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost Sunday. The story from the Book of Acts suggests that the Holy Spirit is present in diversity. It was the richness of the various languages and cultures that made the Pentecost experience so memorable. The first Pentecost was inclusive. No one was checking the crowd for their political opinions, voting record or social media posts before inviting them to hear of the mighty acts of God. The first Pentecost was inviting. People from “every nation under heaven” gathered together to find that they belonged, that they were heard, that they mattered enough for the Spirit of God to address them in ways they could understand.
The first Pentecost provides the model or template for what it means to be a spirit-filled Church. When we hear about a Holy Ghost church we think of having happy feet or “halleluia” shouts or making lots of joyful noise. The story from Acts of the Apostles suggests something different as characteristic of a Church with the Spirit: diversity, inclusion, hospitality. The Holy Spirit is about making disciples. When the remnant of the Jesus movement gathered after the Resurrection and Ascension the Spirit descended upon them. While this, no doubt created in them a heady sense of joy, they were not content to hold onto that warm, fuzzy feeling for themselves. Instead they immediately wanted to share it. You know you have the Spirit when you want to pass it on. The second thing you notice in the account from Acts is that the Holy Spirit is all about building up community, creating a sense of belonging. St. Luke goes out of his way to name sixteen different nations and peoples present to show that everyone had a place at the table. You know you have the Spirit when you understand that faith is not meant for our own private salvation, a kind of “me and Jesus” spirituality, but, instead, connects us automatically with others since we all together are children of God, with Jesus as our elder brother.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts requires that we bring the light and hope of Christ to a world in need by reaching out to those who are hurting. To understand one particular aspect of how that might look like we turn to the Gospel of St. John. He has a different take on the coming of the Holy Spirit. Not the dramatic event of a strong driving wind shaking the entire house, no tongues as of fire coming to rest on each one. No, in St. John’s account the gift of the Spirit comes in the most basic of human activities – breathing. From that first smack on the bottom at the moment of birth to the last gasp of our existence on earth we breathe. So when Jesus breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit” he was staking the claim that the Spirit is what makes human existence possible. The Spirit dwells inside of us with every breath we take, every move we make. It is the Spirit of God that makes us alive. The very first task that Jesus proposes to the disciples, and to us as spirit filled people, as those who bear witness to what Christ does for us, is forgiveness. “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” We know that forgiveness is important to Jesus. He wove it right into the Lord’s Prayer. But forgiveness is hard. All too often you’re never quite sure where forgiveness belongs. Take the recent shooting of the children in Texas. As Spirit-filled people are we supposed to forgive the gun man, law enforcement whose actions caused more death, legislators who don’t make laws to prevent such slaughter, sellers who market weapons of war to teen-age boys, manufacturers who produce guns whose only purpose is to kill human beings? And how does forgiveness even work on such a broad scale? Think of all the ills out there: war, racism, injustice, global warming, you name it. What does it mean to forgive – how does the Spirit make it possible?
Maybe another image will help us understand the Spirit at work – not tongues of fire, not even breath, certainly not the dove, but water. The second Eucharistic prayer begins: “Send down your spirit like the dewfall.” The dewfall comes almost unnoticed but refreshes and renews all that it touches each in its own way. The dewfall nourishes the rose to be beautiful, the lettuce to be flavorful, the thorn bush to be painful. Everything the dewfall touches is impacted differently. Maybe that’s the way we have to think about bearing witness. We each let the Spirit soak into us as individuals. We will know we have the Spirit when we do what we can, with whom we can, when we can. That’s how we’ll be a Holy Ghost church.
