Holy Spirit, the Life that gives life: You are the cause of all movement. You are the breath of all creatures. You are the salve that purifies our souls. You are the ointment that heals our wounds. You are the fire that warms our hearts. You are the light that guides our feet. Be with us now, and evermore. Amen.
Last July, Tyler and I came to Colorado Springs to meet with the Vestry for a final interview and one of the first things we were told was, “You need to start drinking water. Lots of it.” It’s good advice, and we share it with all friends and family who visit. We’ve learned that along with Chapstick, you always need a water bottle.
Though we often think about the Holy Spirit in terms of breath, wind, and fire, I’m imaging the Holy Spirit as water on this Feast of Pentecost. For one, we have the joy of baptizing four children this morning. And we also heard Jesus say, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink, [for] out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” John then clarifies for us that Jesus was speaking about the Spirit.
There is something mysterious and ineffable about the Holy Spirit – it’s why we use images like wind, fire, and water to describe her. I use that pronoun because, in Hebrew, “Spirit” is a feminine word. Of course, the Divine transcends human language and gender, but using language that stretches us reminds us that that God is beyond all that we can imagine. Describing God with human language is a bit like trying to capture the wind in a glass jar – it just doesn’t work. So, try as we might to talk about the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, we do so always with a sense of awe, humility, and holding these things loosely.
The Holy Spirit as water though does put us on a helpful path. Just as water is essential for life, so is the Holy Spirit. And just as water flows to us from a source beyond us – runoff from snowpack, a river, or a faucet – the Holy Spirit comes as a gift and a surprise. The disciples, along with Jews from around Israel, came to Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot, which is celebrated fifty days after Passover. It is a festival about both celebrating the first harvest of the agricultural season, and a commemoration God giving the Torah to Moses.
They were gathered there not because they were expecting something special to happen; they had not asked for the Spirit of God to fall upon them. No, just like the grace of flowing water that sustains life, the Spirit comes as a gracious gift from our loving God, not as a reward for our good behavior or persistent prayers. Just as she continues to do today, the Spirit came as a surprise.
In Israel, there is a geography lesson about how water, and therefore the Holy Spirit, is meant to flow. Up north, there is the Sea of Galilee. Many fishing villages are setup on its shores, and it became a source of life and business in that region. It is fed by the melting snow of Mount Hermon and then flows into the Jordan River which supports life throughout Israel. Towards the south, there is another body of water – the Dead Sea, so named because of its very high mineral and salt content. Not much lives in and around that salty lake because though the Dead Sea receives water from the Jordan, nothing flows out of it, which is why the salt builds up. The lesson is clear – when the Spirit flows through us, we flourish. When we try to hoard onto it, we wither.
We heard in the first reading from Numbers that Moses, as a good and faithful leader, took some of the Spirit that had been given to him and shared it with seventy elders. He was allowing the Spirit to flow through him instead of keeping it as something that would give him special status, power, and privilege. Then two others, Eldad and Medad, received that gracious and surprising gift of the Spirit.
But some people are worried about this – “Moses, Moses, Eldad and Medad have the Spirit and are doing your job. They’re speaking for God. You better put a stop to this.” But Moses knows the wisdom of water – if you don’t let it flow, it will overwhelm you. Moses says, “I wish that the Spirit of the LORD would be upon all people” – a wish that is fulfilled at Pentecost.
Beloved, it’s tempting to hang onto gifts and blessings when we receive them. When we have information that others don’t, we use it to our advantage. When we can do something that others can’t, arrogance builds. When we receive praise, we can be reluctant to share it. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, to the gifts of God, the only proper response is to, quoting the rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “give it away, give it away, give it away now.”
One of the great preachers of the 20th-century said, “Our business in life is less to make something of ourselves than to find something worth losing ourselves in.” In other words, it’s not about what we build, but rather what we become a part of it. Jesus teaches us, “Those who seek to preserve their life will lose it, but those who lose it for the sake of the Gospel will find it.” The Gospel always works in surprising and counter-intuitive ways: the more we give, the more we receive.
The Church, sadly, easily forgets this lesson. We sometimes think that peace, salvation, and blessings belong to us and that it is our responsibility to vet people before loving them, that it is our task to pronounced God’s judgments on one another, that it is our duty to protect God, who needs no protecting at all. I read a memoir this past week about both the brokenness and beauty of life. The author writes, “I was taught as a kid to not take God’s name in vain, but the real vanity is claiming to be a follower of Jesus while opposing those he loved – the poor, the sick, the outcast, the immigrants. God-talk becomes empty when it is used to gain and hold power rather than to give it away.” Give it away now.
As we heard in Acts, the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost was disruptive. Suddenly, tongues of fire descended and people are amazed and perplexed. They asked, “What does this mean?” Some had no frame of reference for what was happening, so they assumed this was all a drunken spectacle. Pentecost was an animating and unifying holy disruption into their lives and what they thought their lives were going to be about. The disciples never imagined that after this day, they would go to places like Rome, Spain, India, Ethiopia, and Armenia. They would not have chosen the martyrs’ death that awaited them. They could not have imagined that 2,000 years later and 7,000 miles away that we would remember them, that we would be animated by that same Spirit that sent them out on mission.
The Holy Spirit disrupts our division with unity and our cowardice with courage. Lord, we need the Spirit to come mightily and give us some more of that unity and courage. We are thirsty for the peace that only Jesus can give. We are parched for unity instead of discord. We are in a drought of compassion, wisdom, and courage. We need this water to flow to us and through us.
The great gift of Pentecost, and of Baptism, is that the Holy Spirit is given to us and we are temples of the Holy Spirit. This means that everywhere we go, every conversation we have, in whatever work we do, the Spirit is present. The difference that Jesus is making is this world is being made through you.
Speaking of hoarding power and status, we clergy are some of the absolute worst at this. For too long, the Church has understood vocation, call, and ministry as something that requires a collar. We’ve made it seem like serving God requires either working for a church or a charity. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Because the Holy Spirit is with each of us, it means that all our work is holy. Pentecost makes Monday just as holy as Sunday.
Your jobs, your homes, your interactions are all made holy by the Spirit who lives within us. The institution of the church is not the faucet that controls access to the blessings of God, rather, it is the Body of the Christ, it is us all together, through which God is blessing the world. Everything you do is ministry because the Holy Spirit is with you. A teacher never teaches alone. A nurse never cares alone. A parent never parents alone. A financial planner never plans alone. A salesperson never helps a customer alone. A waiter never serves alone. An engineer never develops alone. A janitor never cleans alone. A student never studies alone. A friend never supports alone. Your life, your work – it’s all ministry. Your workplace, whatever it looks like, is holy ground; it is a place where the holy disruption of Pentecost reverberates.
What our society is thirsty for has been graciously given to us in the Holy Spirit – we know the peace that passes all understanding, the mercy that frees us, the love that makes all things well. Drink deeply from this well of grace. Remember that the Spirit is always with you, that your life is ministry, that as the Prayer of St. Francis teaches us, “it is in giving that we receive.” And most importantly, we rejoice that for us and for our salvation, Jesus gave it all away. Amen.
