Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and lighten us with thy celestial fire. Amen.
Instead
of talking about who the Holy Spirit is, let’s focus today on what the Holy
Spirit does. In the reading from Acts, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples
in the form of fire – and so by thinking about fire, we can better understand
what Holy Spirit does in our world and in our lives. So throughout the sermon, whenever
I say “Everything is different,” you’ll respond by saying “because of the Holy
Spirit.” So – the Holy Spirit came down as fire and now everything is
different, because of the Holy Spirit.
Thinking
about fire, the first thing that the Holy Spirit does is that she enables us to
praise God. And, yes, I said, “she.” Calling the Holy Spirit “it,” really isn’t
helpful, because the Holy Spirit isn’t an “it,” rather the Holy Spirit is a person
of the Holy Trinity. “She” is just as correct as “he,” and the word for Spirit
in Hebrew is feminine and from the earliest days of the Church, theologians
have referred to the Spirit grammatically as feminine. Plus, if it shakes us up
a little bit, well, that’s exactly the sort of thing that the Holy Spirit does.
But
fire is what we use to light our candles when we begin worship, and this is
what the Holy Spirit helps us to do. As we heard in the Psalm, “I will sing to
the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being.” It is
the Spirit who helps us to pray, even when we don’t have the words. This is
what St. Paul wrote in Romans, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do
not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs
too deep for words.” The Holy Spirit is like the flame of a candle that helps
us to praise God even when we don’t have the words and aren’t sure what we’re
supposed to say. Everything is different, because of the Holy Spirit.
And
like a campfire, the Holy Spirit draws us to gather near in beloved community.
We heard in Acts that people from all sorts of places came together. And two of
them are really interesting – Medes and Elamites. On the day of Pentecost,
those cultures had been extinct for hundreds of years. It would be like me
telling you that I saw a Viking walking a pet wooly mammoth down the street. Well,
the Holy Spirit can make things happen that we thought were impossible, things
like the beloved community, thus everything is different, because of the
Holy Spirit.
We heard that the
Spirit fell on young and old, slave and free, male and female. And we see this
most wondrously in the youth of St. Luke’s who are full of this Spirit, and in particular,
in the words offered by our graduating high school seniors. We are witnesses of
how the Spirit is moving in their lives. The Holy Spirit is for all people.
Now,
if I’m honest, I find this to be incredibly frustrating. I was talking to
someone the other day, complaining about how Christians misuse and
misunderstand their faith to push political agendas. And I lamented that these
people often have no theological training, no formal academic degree, no
qualifications whatsoever. I, on the other hand, have Bachelor’s, Master’s, and
doctoral degrees in religious studies – a dozen years of academic training and a
dozen years of experience as ordained clergy. But then I confessed, rather begrudgingly,
that everything is different, because of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, some
uneducated know-nothing might actually be given more truth about God than I
have by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not discriminate and she doesn’t
review résumés, rather, she falls on all people and draws us together around
her fire of beloved community. As frustrating as it might be to those of us who
think we’ve earned certain things, everything is different, because of the Holy
Spirit.
Like
the fire of a forge that is used to make new things, the Holy Spirit creates
new things in our lives. As the Psalm says, “You send forth your Spirit, and
they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.” When you think you
are stuck, when there are no options left, when you don’t know what you can do
next, there is always another move for God and everything is different, because
of the Holy Spirit.
Now,
this both gives us hope in knowing that our limits are not God’s limits. But this
is also scary because we don’t always like change and new things. Sometimes we’re
rather comfortable in our old patterns and old ways. Yes, everything is
different, because of the Holy Spirit. But we don’t always like different,
do we? Sometimes you’ll hear the Holy Spirit referred to as the “Holy
Comforter,” and that’s true. But sometimes she is also the “Holy Disrupter.” The
Holy Spirit is a transforming fire and so everything is different, because
of the Holy Spirit.
Another
thing that fire does is that it guides us when we cannot see; think about
having a lantern. The Holy Spirit, like that sort of guiding light, leads us
into the truths of God, as Jesus puts it. We hear in John, “I still have many
things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth
comes, she will guide you into all the truth.” In other words, God isn’t done
with us. We might be old dogs, but God intends to teach us some new tricks. And
so that phrase that we hear in the Church and society “But we’ve never done it
that way,” can be met with the response that “everything is different, because
of the Holy Spirit.” We don’t know it all, but through the gift of the Holy
Spirit, we will be given what we need to know when we need to know it. The
Spirit gives us her daily bread of wisdom.
Fire
also warms us up when we are cold, and so it is meet and right to see the Holy
Spirit as the Holy Comforter. She is always with us, so we are never alone,
never without an advocate. When Jesus promised “Remember, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the age,” the Holy Spirit is how Jesus makes good on that
promise. God’s presence is always with us, and so everything is different, because
of the Holy Spirit.
We
also know that fire is powerful – think about an engine or rocket. The Holy
Spirit is incredibly powerful and sets us ablaze with the power of God. This
power of God is no longer contained to burning bushes or mighty acts like the parting
of the Red Sea, but now resides in you and in me. We have been gifted the power
of God, and so everything is different, because of the Holy Spirit. As
Jesus says, don’t put this light under a bushel, but let it shine.
The
last thing that I’ll point out about fire is that, as we’ve seen in the tragic
wildfires that seem to sweep across the West Coast each summer, fire is
uncontrollable and untamable. Fire will do what fire does: burn. And nothing
can stop it until it’s done doing its burning. The Holy Spirit reminds us that
God is always a mystery to us, something that we cannot predict or control. And
so, as recipients of this Holy Spirit, we have to be humble and confess that control
is merely an idolatrous illusion. Though we like to delude ourselves into
thinking that we are in charge, we are not and everything is different, because
of the Holy Spirit.
The
Holy Spirit is like the candles of worship, like a campfire that gathers us in
beloved community, like the creative fire of a forge, like the guiding light of
a lantern, like a fire that comforts us, like the power of an engine, and like an
untamable blaze. Pentecost though is not about the beginning or the coming of
the Holy Spirit, as she is a part of the Holy Trinity, as eternal and
everlasting as God the Father and Jesus Christ. Rather, Pentecost is about the
gifting of this fire of God’s power and God’s love within us all. And so it
really is true that everything is different, because of the Holy Spirit.
