SPIRIT OF LIFE

Rev. Dr. Mary Lou Howson

Genesis 11:1-12, Acts 2: 1-18

May 23, 2010

"It's [an ancient but] ever new story – the building of a great tower, quickly followed by a descent into babble. We citizens of the 21st millenium seem to be standing amid the bricks from our own Babel towers. It all began when Christians aligned themselves with Emperor Constantine and commenced an effort to build Christendom, to reach to the heavens by seamlessly joining Christian faith and earthly nations. Then came Western thought, and humans seeking to derive from disembodied intellect the universal truths to which the West then expected others to bow. (Michael A. King, "Living the Word, Sunday, May 23, CC 5.18.10, p. 20)
We have thought the spirit, the power of life and wholeness, needs our particular earthly forms of power to bear God's life into the world. We have tried to claim: that our particular towers reflect God's will for all of us, that our worldly success is a sign of God's favor, that our particular version of faith is the only one that pleases God, that our particular moral and spiritual practices are the only ones that touch God's heart, that linking our particular brand of faith with political and economic power truly expresses God's will for the world.
In fact, these approaches are towers built for our own egos, security, and self-righteousness before God. They may reflect how we work in the world, but the Holy Spirit is not held in bondage to our human desire for earthly power.
Rather at Pentecost, the Spirit opened a new pathway. Here no one culture, kingdom, or sect held the keys to the kingdom. People across kingdoms, cultures, and religions beliefs suddenly heard and felt the Spirit's powerful presence in their own languages and were bound together in a new community that opened them to new possibilities and transformed them to step into a new way of living in the world. The transformation was an intimately personal that called people into a new way of being in community with other believers and with the world. What am I talking about here? I ran across a website that included descriptions from several people of how they understood the Spirit's work in their lives and in the world. I want to share some of these with you because their diverse perspectives help us to understand more fully. We need to listen for both the personal implications, and the social and community ones. And remember to ask yourself what earthly towers of power the Spirit wants us to claim for ourselves as believers.

Bird Shadows/Holy Spirit
My God is in the next room, cooking unseen feasts
and humming; moments of ache before rain when the whole June cloud is ready to burst through though no drop has yet fallen; dandelion blades that insist adamantly they must reside directly in the middle of your neighbor's blacktopped suburban driveway; sights of the shadow of a bird flitting
by the sill near the bed of an aging Grace, who can no longer move but counts herself lucky because at least she can still see. This is my God: expectant and grinning wild and near. Callid Keefe-Perry

In nudges and whispers. Like a seed growing, imperceptible at first. Like wind, invisible, refreshing, transformative. Like water, cleansing, renewing, powerful. Unpredictably. Uncontrollably. Praying: for us, with us, in us, through us. Convicting, like a judge in a courtroom. Comforting, like a mother with a frightened child in the middle of the night. We know her work by experiencing it. She will not be pinned down, can only be described with analogies. But wherever there is forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, grace, she leaves her fingerprints. Amy Julia parker

Always the one connecting, making us into the Body of Christ, God's hands in the world.
Closer to us than our own breath and breathing, the Risen Christ fills us with his own Spirit -- quietly, intimately. With this breath, this power, we then go about the everyday, unspectacular, grubby work of forgiveness. Breathe, forgive; breathe, forgive; breathe, forgive. Although we often long for the dazzling or spectacular, we live in a time, a world, in need of people who breathe in, regularly, the quiet power and grace of Christ's Spirit -- and people who, likewise, breathe out, regularly, the power and grace of forgiveness. Our world -- so spectacularly broken and burning -- needs people for whom reconciliation is as normal and natural as breathing. Sam Hamilton-Poore

The Spirit is at work wherever there is community. The Spirit is at work wherever there is gratitude. The Spirit is at work wherever there are "sighs too deep for words." The Spirit is at work wherever there is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control," for these are the fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit is at work as the "whole creation groans in labor pains" birthing new life. The Spirit is at work wherever "young people prophesy" against injustice and "see visions" of hope and wherever elders still "dream dreams" of a better world. Carl Gregg

It is easy to get swept away by the vision of God's dream for the world. Unlike the brokenness of the present, it is whole. Unlike the violence of the present, there is peace. Unlike, well, what is actual, something more is possible. The Holy Spirit is God's continuous gift to the present that protests what is with what could be. She is the always-active agent of God's coming. Life in the Spirit then, is one that dreams God's dream during the day. Tripp Fuller
What would it look like, if instead of building towers, we built an altar and knelt before it as we waited for the Spirit's leading? What would it look like if we invited God into our prayers, if we asked the Spirit to pray in us so that we could recognize the path and take the risk of following it? What if we truly waited for a God who is both wild and near?

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