PENTECOST May 30, 2004

Today is the Day of Pentecost. It is the birthday of the Christian Church, so Happy Birthday. It was also the Jewish Harvest Festival, so Happy Thanksgiving as well.

Preeminently, though, Pentecost is the celebration of the Holy Spirit without which neither the Church nor the harvest, nor in fact life itself could exist or be sustained.

For those of us in the broad stream of the Christian faith that flowed from the Council of Nicea and affirms a Trinitarian conceptualization of God, the Holy Spirit is as important as God the Father, as important as the life of Jesus, and yet we speak of it far less – at least in the Episcopal Church. In part that may be because the spirit is simply hard to talk about. Spirit means breath or wind and, as the Gospel says, "It blows where it will, and you do not know whence it comes or wither it goes." In today’s lesson from Acts the Spirit appears as fire, which is also very hard to get hold of, and when you try you an get burned.

It may be that we avoid discussion of the Spirit because the Spirit so often in the history of the Church has been associated with splinter groups, and breakaway communities with private revelation and teachings that came to be seen as heretical and misleading. That was true from the earliest days of the Church. It was true in the Middle Ages. And it is still true today. The very writing and adoption of the Gospel according to Luke and the Book of Acts as officially sanctioned Holy Scripture may be part of a process of trying to bring the power of the Spirit under the control of the institutional Church. That certainly was true for the creeds and the later developments of Trinitarian doctrine – but Spirit always resists such control.

One of the biggest arguments in the history of the Christian Church centered on an issue involving the Holy Spirit. This was the debate about the so-called "filioque" clause in the Nicene Creed. (It’s so much fun when you can bring some obscure information from seminary into a sermon.) Filioque, in Latin, means "and the son" and the filioque clause refers to the part in the Nicene Creed where we say that the Holy Spirit "proceeded from the Father, and the Son". The filioque, "and the Son", part was added by the Church in the West late in Church history. It wasn’t part of the creed adopted at Nicea and was strongly resisted by the eastern portions of the Church. It became the chief theological bond of contention in the split between the Eastern Orthodox expressions of Christianity in Greece, Russia and elsewhere, and the Western Catholic tradition that followed the pattern of the Church at Rome.

As is the case in many strong disagreements, the two sides in this argument, I believe, were not so much in disagreement over one point, but rather emphasize points that arise from different perspectives. They were each afraid that if they conceded the perspective they would undermine the whole theological structure that had been built upon it.

What I would like to do this morning is to briefly share the understanding of the Spirit inherent in each of these views, and talk a little about how we can apply these understandings to our lives today.

The Roman focus, the Western focus, the focus of the filioque, the double procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, I think is meant to emphasize the action of the Spirit in history. We encounter the first procession of the Spirit from the Son in the breath of life that is breathed into Adam, which is the first mention of Spirit which follows the speaking of the word of creation. Here Spirit is life, or the life force, the energizing principle of human beings, and by extension an energizing principle of all creation just as the Son, the Word, the logos, is the ordering principle of creation. The Spirit puts the already ordered world in motion. And that is really the beginning of history.

The second example of the perspective of the Spirit comes with the birth and baptism of Jesus. It is the Spirit that comes to Mary. Jesus is conceived, we say, "by the Holy Spirit". The Spirit descends at the Baptism in the form of a dove and the ministry of Jesus is begun. Until that time Mary only "pondered these things in her heart". So again here the focus is on energy – the Spirit is the energy behind the transformation of the divine incarnation, and the energy that puts life into the incarnate Word and sets the ministry off and running.

In the lessons we have for today from Acts and from John, the disciples are off alone waiting as they had been waiting since running away from the cross, and waiting since witnessing the risen Christ. It is only with the coming of the power of the Spirit that they are moved to action to start the Church’s mission.

This image of divine energy is important for our life, our ministry, and our mission as well. At Baptism and Confirmation it is the Spirit that is invoked to come into our individual lives with a transforming power that moves us and enables whatever "calling" may be potential in our lives to be heart and acted upon.

The Spirit, proceeding from the Son as well as from the Father is, I think, the understanding of Spirit that is present in some forms of prayer, particularly intercessory prayer, and particularly prays for healing. In most intercessory prayer, healing prayer, there is an expression of need, of insufficiency, of something missing in life, and the power of the spirit is invoked to supply what is needed. When I visit people who are in the hospital, or sick at home, I anoint them with the words, "As you are outwardly anointed with this Holy Oil so may our heavenly Father grant you the inward anointing of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." In this as well the Spirit is understood as divine energy, moving and activating the already existing structures of wholeness and health. Filioque.

But there is another way to look at Spirit. A way that flows more from the East than from the West. It centers not on the double procession of the Spirit from the Son as well as the Father which places the primary activity of the Spirit in history, but looks before that, emphasizing the co-eternity of Father, Son and Spirit, placing Spirit before time, and our connection with the Spirit as an experience beyond time.

When the universe was created, Genesis says, before the first Word was spoken by God, "The Spirit was moving over the face of the waters" the waters of chaos, the face of the deep. It was that deep combination of chaos and spirit that is organized and structured by the Word. "Let there be light … let there be dry land … let us make Adam in our own image." Spirit here isn’t so much an energy of creation, but a basic component of creation, like space or time, like a dimension that somehow pervades everything. From this perspective we don’t "have" Spirit, we "are" Spirit.

One entry point into this way of experiencing Spirit is the phenomenon of language. Language on its surface is a logical phenomenon. It would seem to be fully under the dominance of the Word. Our understanding of this second person of the Trinity, the ordering principle of the universe that is incarnate in the life of Jesus, the Son, is built around language. Yet, notice in the story of the coming of the Spirit to the apostles that one of the effects of the Spirit is that they could speak in languages that they themselves did not understand. In the letter to the Corinthians Saint Paul speaks of a similar experience when he says, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…" Here its is not just other languages that come out through the Spirit, but a special spiritual language – the phenomenon of speaking in tongues. And the practice of speaking in tongues today is widespread among Christians who focus their attention on the Holy Spirit. There is also prophetic speech. In the Nicene Creed we say that the Spirit "has spoken through the prophets" giving them a perception of truth beyond the historical and often beyond the logical. In all these expressions (speaking languages that aren’t understood, speaking in tongues and prophetic speech) normal language is transcended, normal boundaries in life drop away. And in that openness, in that non-objective clearing, we become aware of the spiritual dimension that is always there, but can’t be directly experienced when we’re stuck in the historical presence of our ego.

Prayer in the Spirit, in this Spirit at least, is never prayer "for" something. It’s the contemplation that comes when we experience union with God and with all that is in this original eternity of Spirit. We sometimes shy away for it because of its proximity to chaos. Without a balance from the Word, and from the Church, from some kind of sacramental structure, encounters with the Spirit can be overwhelming. But given such balance and structure, openness to life in the Spirit, as well as Spirit in life, can yield abundantly the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, Paul tells the Galatians, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These are not so much ‘powers’ for mission and ministry as they are elements of a human life that is resting on a deep foundation.

I hope our lives express both East and West. I hope the chances and changes of our lives reflect their eternal security in the depth of the Spirit, and that that same Spirit be focused and magnified in our lives, and through our lives, to transform the world and all of creation.

Thanks be to God.