The Spirit Still Moves!

This is a reworked sermon; the original can be found here. The poem at the end is by Callid Keefe-Perry, co-convener of the Emergent Cohort in Rochester, NY.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord;and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be,God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

This is the Word of the Lord.

The Feast of Pentecost was, like Passover, a Jewish festival. It commemorated, in part, the day that Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. In a very real way, that event was the birthday of the nation of Israel. It was the day that the Hebrews ceased being escaped slaves, following a pillar of cloud and flame, and became a cohesive people, dedicated to the worship of the one true and living God, guided by stringent communal and sacerdotal laws.

Moses came down from the mountain, and nothing would ever be the same. From that moment the Hebrew people would go on to found a great nation, respected and feared for its valiant warriors and famous for its wise kings.

But those days, glorious as they were, were gone. Beginning with King Nebuchadnezzar, the people of the once-mighty Kingdom of Israel had suffered under one oppressive foreign power or another for six hundred years.

By the time this particular Pentecost rolled around, the nation of Israel had gone from a magnificent beacon of hope for all nations, an example for the world to follow, to a dim, dusty backwater called Judea. The mighty Kingdome which had been ruled by giants like David and Solomon was now just another province of the Roman Empire, buckling under the weight of corrupt rulers and outrageous taxes. The great things God had done were legends, stories, memories written in great scrolls that the priests read from, that the scribes debated over, that the children learned to read. They were holy scrolls, yes, the very Words of God… but when viewed in the harsh, biting reality of dusty, malnourished, thirsty, conquered and subservient Judea, they were just words.

There was reason for hope, of course. One could not be Jewish and not have hope. God had promised a Messiah, one who would re-establish David’s throne and return Israel to its former glory. Yet as the years rolled by, a person would pop up over there, claim to be the Messiah, would gather up a band of followers, would end up getting himself killed, and the followers would scatter. Theudas was one name, and Judas the Galilean another, according to Gamaleil, a teacher quoted in the Book of Acts.

There had been another one recently, another fellow from Galilee; there seemed to be a lot of promise in this guy. People had seen him perform miracles, they said. The blind received their sight, the lame walked again, the lepers were cleansed. Some folks said he even raised a person from the dead! Still, he had died just like the rest of them. And most of Judea didn’t even notice. People went on with life, went on with the feast of Pentecost. Just like every year before, pilgrims came in to Jerusalem from all across the globe, packing in to once again remember the day that Moses came down the mountain with the tablets of stone.

None of them really had a clue what was going on in that little two-story house right over there.

Not quite two months ago, you see, in the big room on the second floor, the people who had followed that Galilean fellow, the one who had gotten crucified? Well, they had seen, they had spoken with, and touched that Galilean. They had seen, spoken with, and touched him because he had risen from the dead. And not more than ten days ago, they had watched, with their own eyes, as that same crucified-and-risen Galilean ascended into the clouds to sit at the right hand of God.

And even now, if you listened real hard, you could begin to hear a noise – the sound of rushing wind.

When the Law was delivered, Moses ascended Mount Sinai, and God came down from on high to meet Moses there. Moses received the Law directly from God, and when Moses came down from that mountain, one could assume that God went back up, to heaven. ‘Way up there somewhere… distant, removed, and, it seemed, out of reach except through the rituals, sacrifices, and instruments of worship.

On that Pentecost day, God came down, with the sound of a mighty wind, with tongues of flame and a message in all languages for all people…

…and nothing would ever be the same.

Peter’s message, shorter than any I have ever heard or preached, started a firestorm that, to this day, burns unabated. Three thousand that first day responded to God’s grace; in the months and years that followed, God continued to move in directions that no one could anticipate, and at a speed that very nearly left the Apostles in the dust. People who would never have been allowed in the Temple courts came joyfully into relationship with their Creator: eunuchs and Samaritans and slaves and women and even Gentiles!

And God still moves today. God has not gone back to heaven, up there, in the distance, removed and remote, no. The Holy Spirit is here! Still active, still moving in directions no one can anticipate, and at a speed that leaves us breathless in its wake. Maybe the noise isn’t like the wind, and perhaps we don’t see many tongues of fire, but the Spirit still falls today.

The Holy Spirit falls across the globe, in countries where being a Christian will still get you imprisoned and killed, as well as in our own country, where in many areas it seems you can find a church on every corner. The Holy Spirit falls in cathedrals, and it falls in storefront churches. The Holy Spirit falls in suburban America and in the colonia of Reynosa, Mexico

God’s Spirit moves in traditional denominational circles, and in new and growing fellowships outside of traditional church models and boundaries. Places like “Ink,” in West Virginia, a small discussion group officiated by Brandon Mouser, which meets at a local Books-A-Million. Places like Pete’s Candy Store, a bar in Brooklyn, where Jay Bakker and Vince Anderson’s “Revolution New York City” meets every Sunday afternoon. God’s Spirit still inspires and supports people like Pastor Nar Martinez, who has spent a lifetime mentoring young people, or Phil and Stephanie Shepherd, who reach out to the marginalized and forgotten through their church, “The Eucatastrophe,” in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Holy Spirit still moves, still falls, still empowers, in ways we cannot recognize… but move and fall and empower it does.

The website Patheos.com challenged a variety of theologians, speakers, and writers to tell, in 100 words or less, how the Holy Spirit moves today. Their responses were both interesting and challenging. For example, Sam Hamilton-Poore, Adjunct Professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary, wrote, “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.”

Author and speaker Brian McLaren wrote, “On the grass-roots level, there are tens of thousands of Christians who aren't waiting for denominational leaders to fix things. They're just getting on with it. They're doing it, living it, making it real in their lives, in their neighborhoods, through small groups and mission trips and so on. When you have leaders at the top working for needed change, and people at the grass roots doing the same, and when you're confident that the Holy Spirit is behind it all, eventually the tide will turn and a new day will come.”

God is still here, the Holy Spirit still active, alive, vibrant. The Holy Spirit still moves, still falls, still empowers, in ways we cannot recognize… but move and fall and empower it does.

And just like on that Pentecost when the Spirit fell on the disciples, we in whom the Holy Spirit resides are called upon not to draw inward, but to reach outward, to be a beacon of hope. The Good News of the Gospel, the evidence of the now-present Holy Spirit is that God is not distant, incomprehensible, our only point of contact through ritual and Law, through recitation and rote prayer.

God in the Holy Spirit is active, right now, moving in corporate boardrooms and dirt-road slums and in public housing; moving in mansions and mud huts and in the rubble of neighborhoods destroyed by natural disaster; moving in great crowds of people and small-group prayer meetings and across the table at a Waffle House.

The Holy Spirit is moving.

“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.”

Let us pray.