“I will pour out my Spirit
upon all flesh.” Acts 2:17
The story is told of a travelling
evangelist who made the circuit of little Southern towns a few generations
ago. A dramatic preacher, he knew just
how to bring the crowd to their knees.
His great method was to call out, at the height of his sermon, “Holy
Ghost, come down.” He had conveniently
stationed a little boy up in the rafters with a dove in a cage, and at that
signal, the boy would open the cage, and the dove would flutter down upon the
assembled congregation.
Well, the preacher had made the customary
arrangements one sweltering Sunday evening in June, and when he had his crowd
just where he wanted them, he shouted out, “Holy Ghost, come down.” There was silence. Again, “Holy Ghost, come down.” The preacher cleared his throat and glanced
nervously toward the ceiling, and—“Holy Ghost, come down.” Finally, a little voice chimed from the
balcony, “The yaller cat done ‘et the Holy Ghost. Shall I throw the yaller cat down?”
Well, showmanship aside, the preacher
wasn’t wrong to associate the coming of the Holy Ghost with a dramatic
spectacle. I expect he had this day, the
Day of Pentecost, in mind, when he was engineering his stagecraft, and if he’d
been able to manage a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire on his limited
budget, he probably would have used them as well. Pentecost is the day when the Holy Spirit
came down upon the Church to announce the truth of the Gospel in mighty signs
and wonders. Peter announces to the
crowd gathered from all lands that the Day of the Lord has come. The risen Christ has defeated all the power
of death and sin, and now salvation is offered freely to the whole world.
The Spirit does not come quietly. There are messages in a dozen languages, a
frenzied joy and dramatic response of faith.
Three thousand people, we learn later in Acts 2, were cut to the heart,
repented of their sin, and were baptized.[1]
There was, of course, no stagecraft at
the first Pentecost. The apostles had
been told by Christ before his Ascension to wait in Jerusalem and to remain in
prayer until He sent the Spirit, but He didn’t say precisely when or how the
Spirit would come. This was all a great miracle, entirely in God’s
control. But in another sense, it wasn’t
entirely unexpected. At various times in
Israel’s history, God had sent His Spirit on to individuals, and it was always
a dramatic event. The Spirit descended on the seventy elders that Moses
gathered and they began to prophesy, to speak a wild and unpredictable word
from God.[2] When the Spirit descended on Saul, he went
into a kind of trance, changed into a different person.[3] The Spirit came on Samson to give him
superhuman strength, so that he could kill a thousand Philistines with the
jawbone of a donkey.[4]
And in our own time, our brothers and
sisters who call themselves the Pentecostals are known for their dramatic, supernatural
forms of worship and spiritual activity.
The Spirit comes and they speak in unintelligible tongues, they see
visions and utter miraculous words. Some
of you have had these kinds of powerful experiences as well, and they have
helped you to understand God’s love and strength. They have given you a new kind of evidence, a
deep personal experience to assure you that the message is true. I’ve been asked before if Christ Church is a
Spirit-filled church, and the questioner means this kind of drama and
power. If I show up at Christ Church at
8:00 Sunday morning, will it look like the first Pentecost: frenzied words,
rushing winds, and three thousand cut to the heart?
Well, not most of the time, I have to
tell them. But the Holy Spirit is still
present at Christ Church, even when the way we worship is rather more reserved
and the gifts we receive generally reveal themselves a bit more quietly.
It’s important to remember, I think, that the
Spirit was poured out in a new and different way at Pentecost than ever
before. God had sent the Spirit on
individuals in the Old Testament, to empower them for a particular task. That dramatic display showed that something
unique, but temporary, was happening.
But Jesus was the One on whom, as Saint John the Baptist recognized, the
Spirit descended and remained.[5] He was filled with the Spirit from the moment
of His conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And when He sent His Spirit at Pentecost, it
may have arrived in signs and wonders, but it remained forever on His people,
the members of His Body. The Spirit was
there in the dramatic moments, to be sure, but in the ordinary ones as
well.
Our Epistle lesson from Romans describes
how the Spirit is at work in us even “in our weakness,” when we feel very far
from God, and don’t know how to pray. In
our darkest times, when any kind of belief seems difficult, we can trust that
the Spirit within us is interceding for us, calling out for God’s help and
renewing us from within. These moments
are Pentecost’s opposite—the night of weeping instead of the morning of joy,
simple grace instead of blazing glory, simply holding on instead of reaching
out in signs and wonders. But the same
Spirit is present in both times, and God sustains us through both kinds of
experiences so that we may continue to grow in our love for Him and develop His
fruit in our lives.
The last time I was leading worship
services at the jail, one of the inmates asked me afterwards if I would pray
for him to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
From the way he made his request, I was pretty sure he was asking if I
could pray that he have a Pentecost-type experience, that the Holy Spirit would
make Himself known dramatically, by helping the man speak in tongues or have
visions. But I wonder if what He didn’t
need much more, in that dark place full of so much trouble and pain, was the
Holy Spirit’s presence in the way that Saint Paul was describing, the Spirit
active in our weakness, giving us hope when all seems lost, praying for us when
it is so very hard to pray at all. When
I prayed for him, I asked that God would renew the Spirit’s work in him, the Holy
Spirit who had always dwelt within him since he was baptized. I asked that he would receive the sign he
needed, the blessing that would help him know God’s love and goodness.
I’ll have to ask him the next time I go
back to the jail which kind of experience he had. If he’s like most Christians I’ve known, it
will probably be a bit of both—the Spirit in power one day, and in weakness the
next, but never absent or indifferent.
The Spirit always giving us just what we really need to live in
fellowship with our good and gracious Lord.
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