The Holy Spirit is out of our control, and that’s the best news ever, because that means God’s love could actually bring about healing and hope for all.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year C
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
This was a day of chaos.
The sound of rushing wind – think tornado noise – filled the air, something that looked like flames danced on a hundred and twenty heads, and a hundred and twenty voices spoke in multiple languages about what God is doing. Think of the confusing sound of just seven or eight languages saying the same thing at once that we just heard in our Acts reading, and multiply that by fifteen, and you get a sense of it.
We did not hear a doctrine of sanctification this morning. We heard a chaotic, brilliant, probably frightening, awe-inspiring, confusing, exciting scene in the middle of Jerusalem where the Holy Spirit of God was acting.
That’s where we need to stay. With the story. With what happened. And is happening. And this story proclaims the Spirit of the Triune God working in the world cannot be controlled. We aren’t in charge.
But rarely are we willing to let it sit there.
Since this moment in Jerusalem, theologians have formulated doctrines about the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about what this means. But when we take Scripture and build doctrines on top, those doctrines become what we try to trust. The more it’s codified, the further you get from God’s actual activity.
Virtually all our theology of the Spirit in the Western church was formulated by white men of European ethnicity. People like me. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. But when those white European-descent men say that how they understand God’s Spirit is the only way, we’re in trouble. I’ve personally heard a Lutheran theologian say to a student that you can’t bring your own experience or your sense of revelation into theology. As if our accepted theology is revelation handed down without change. That’s just ignorant. All theology is deeply shaped by the experience of the theologian.
Now, if you’re afraid the Spirit could do just anything anywhere, it’s convenient to pretend you’ve got the clean, non-experiential truth about her work. So you can control the message.
But if we see anything at Pentecost, it’s that the Spirit is out of control.
So let’s go back to the story. What actually happened that day?
Apart from the beautiful chaos and noise and preaching, ultimately a lot of people decided they wanted to join the believers that day. Luke says 3,000, which is a lot. But even if you think Luke might exaggerate, if he exaggerated by a full 1,000 percent that still leaves 300. That’s pretty amazing.
But what drew them to want this? Not a doctrine on the nature of the Triune God, or the Holy Spirit. Something in the whole amazing chaos of that day, in what the believers proclaimed about what God is doing, and the joy in their faces, drew them in. As with last week and our jailer, these people saw what the believers had and said, “Can we have that, too?”
And after this, this enlarged community shared everything with each other so no one went without, they worshipped and lived together. And they had the goodwill of everyone, Luke says. They were changed and others noticed. They were transformed by the Spirit of God and made a difference in the world. Stay with that story instead of making a doctrine about it and you’ll see God.
Staying with the story means giving up any hope that we can control the Spirit.
And that can frighten people, as we’ve seen throughout Christian history. What if someone says the Spirit is leading them to something that we don’t like? Like a theology that challenges us or a direction we haven’t thought of? Church history is littered with stories of hatred and ostracism and heresy trials and destruction because some Christians followed the Spirit in a way other Christians didn’t like.
And discerning where the Spirit is working is hard. Even on this Day of Pentecost some saw all of this and decided these one hundred and twenty women and men were drunk. If you can’t tell the difference between inebriation and the coming of the Spirit, shouldn’t someone be controlling this?
But if you want to believe and trust in the living Triune God whose Spirit blows wherever she wills, the answer is no. The Spirit of God is out of our control, according to all these stories.
But it’s not all wide open. We can reliably know if something is of the Spirit.
Look at what Jesus says today, in verses we also heard a couple weeks ago. The Spirit, the Paraclete (Advocate) is called alongside you and me and all God’s people, to remind us of all Jesus said.
That’s how you can discern. Just as you go back to Pentecost to see the truth of the uncontrollable Spirit, Jesus says the Spirit alongside you will send you back to what God’s Son said and did. You can know if something is of the Spirit when it’s consistent with Jesus.
And notice that Jesus didn’t teach a doctrine of justification, either. Jesus, God-with-us, is our justification. Jesus revealed the face of the Triune God for the creation, and it was and is a face of love and benevolence, of grace and forgiveness, of welcome and challenge.
If the Spirit truly works within the boundaries of what Jesus said and did, then if we see love of God and love of neighbor, love of enemies and prayer for persecutors, love for all those struggling and in need, love willing to lose itself for the sake of another, if we see anything of this heart of what Jesus said and did, we can trust that the Spirit is there. Even if we’re challenged or threatened by that movement.
And if someone claims the Spirit’s influence to do evil, to hate, hurt, oppress, to do violence of any kind, we know they’re not of the Spirit. The work and purpose of God is love, Jesus taught and showed, and the Spirit reminds us of that.
It’s good that we’re not in control.
We can’t imagine every way God’s love can change things, heal things, make a difference, and we don’t have to. That’s the Spirit’s job. And we can’t control where the Spirit moves and works because of our limited imagination. We might be standing in the way of God’s love and that we never want to do.
Pentecost shows that God is out of our control but bringing life to the creation, and that’s great news. Because if we really want this world to be healed, if we want all the pain and suffering in our country and world to be eased, all the hatred and destruction from even our highest elected leaders to be stopped, it’s wonderful that God’s got better ideas than we do and can’t control them. But we can get on board.
And do listen for the Spirit in your life, where she’s speaking to you, or calling you to new ways of healing and hope. They might be ways you hadn’t considered. But they will certainly bring life.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
