The Spirit is a Wind

 Acts 2

Come Holy Spirit
Yvonne Bell

May 19, 2024

Pentecost Sunday

 

Pentecost is the day we celebrate

the big arrival of the promised Holy Spirit

to the church.

 
Jesus promised to send the Spirit to the disciples

at various times in the scriptures.

He said God would send the Advocate,

the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete.

The Spirit is a gift of God to the church.

But what were they supposed to do with it?

 

One time, about 15 years ago,

my mother got Bob and I a gift.

It was a handle with about 20

metal prongs with plastic tips on it,

We were was like, oh thanks.  This is great.

What is it and what do we do with it ?

 

I think that’s what the gift of the Holy Spirit is like for the disciples.

Thanks for this, what do we do with it?

 

We eventually figured out that this

This gift was a head scratcher.

It turned out to be great thing, we loved it.

 

But I don’t think that the Spirit was as easy to decipher.

We know the Spirit as a dove, a beam of light,

The breath that moved over the waters,

Wisdom that dances in the entrance gates,

The Spirit is images, and notions, and feelings,

and hopes, and dreams, and inspirations.

It’s hard to put what the Spirit is into words.

The Spirit is the thing that is working to complete

God’s mission on earth, doing whatever

is necessary moving around whatever is there.

So it’s many things and nothing that we can clearly see.

 

I think that wind is a good metaphor.

You can’t see where it came from or where it’s going

but still you can feel it. You know it’s been there.

 

The Spirit is nimble, it has to be to adjust to our world

and move around all the barriers we’ve made.

It’s in front of us leading the way,

it’s behind us pushing us to new things

it’s beside us comforting us in our fears.

 

The Spirit is the force that creates movement

and change in our lives.

The thing that motivates us, opens our hearts,

opens our minds, our wallets, our arms.

The Spirit is the movement of individuals, people,

countries, the whole of humanity to new and different places.

 

We often try to contain the Spirit,

but like trying to contain the wind it’s a futile attempt

I think that’s why maybe the church has lost its impact

in the last few decades.

We think the way to go is to hold the Spirit in a neat little package.

We’ve tried to domesticate it and make it predictable.

We’ve tried to institutionalize it.

But the Spirit doesn’t work that way,

the Spirit wants to get loose, to get out and move around.

And the Church has been left behind.

 

Sailors know you can’t tell

the wind to move one way or another.

You can’t say, wind blow this way.

The only thing you do is just figure out

which way the wind is blowing

and adjust your world to it

instead of the other way around.

 

The same with the Spirit

The Spirit doesn’t like to stay in one place.

It wants to move, it wants to go.

Like the wind, the spirit of God does as it wants.

Our job is not to try and contain it.

Our job as baptized people of Christ

is to follow where the Spirit leads.

 

And the big question for the church is always

where is the Spirit leading us?

We should ask this about us individually,

us as a church, us as a nation, and as a world.

 

The world is changing so rapidly.

It’s hard to keep up with changes in technology,

with the changes in family structures,

changes in work, things that we assumed were

true and our parents assumed were true,

are no longer true any more.

We can’t depend on them.

 

And I think that some people think

that the role of the church is to try and stop

everything from changing.

To insist and pass laws that make things go back

to the way they were before.

Or at least to complain about the changes endlessly.

 

But what if some of those changes are the Spirit

trying to make a new reality for all of us.

 

What if the church of Jesus as a whole

followed where the Spirit led,

instead of trying to control the Spirit?

The church and the world might be better for it.

 

Here’s what I think I’m trying to say:

I see so much negativity about the state of the world today.

Especially from my generation.

 

I think a lot of people almost see that

God has abandoned us to our own devices,

that we’re just going to Hades in a handbasket,

so we should just give up and hope for the end.

But what if we tried to see the Spirit’s movement

and coaxing in every problem and challenge?

What if we saw every crisis in the world,

like poverty, housing, racism, climate change, hatred,

as a challenge for the church to help the world solve

with the love of God and the way of Jesus.

 

Instead of just decrying the state of the world

instead of trying to take everything back to the way it was

(which wasn’t so great anyway),

instead of being outraged by everything,

and constantly trying to divide people,

and punish those on the other side.

What if every problem was seen

as the Spirit giving us an opportunity

to share God’s love in different ways?

 
 

When those disciples ended that day of Pentecost

I think that they thought the Holy Spirit

had done its most amazing work.

Gathering faithful people from all over the world,

everyone understanding the disciples

even though they didn’t speak their language.

Rushes of wind, tongues of fire . . .

 

But there was more in store. Much harder stuff.

The persecution from Saul (who later became Paul)

led the disciples out of Jerusalem,

out to the Ethiopian Eunuch, then the Caesarea,

and even to Gentiles, then to Macedonia, and to Rome.

Prison sentences led to miracles.

Every crisis was an opportunity for the Good News

of Jesus Christ to be shared.

 

In the same way, I think that the Spirit may be doing

her most amazing work right now.

 

The Spirit is a gift. It can be a difficult gift.

We might wonder what we’re going to do with it.

We sometimes might want to put it in its box

and send it back where it came from.

 

But this gift can lead us to new places,

this gift is there to guide us and lead us,

and this gift is out to save the world.

 

To summarize,

the Spirit is like the wind.

We try to contain her, keep her in her place.

But the Holy Spirit will not be held back.

She will not be stopped.

She will do her work.

And our job is only to follow where she leads.