"Receive the Holy Spirit"

Yesterday we had the great privilege of hosting the Diocese for the Eastertide confirmation service.  There were many people from several parishes who confirmed and received into our Episcopal Church.  We prayed that God would strengthen them with the Holy Spirit, empower them for service, and sustain them all the days of their lives.  It was a good day, a great service, and I thank everyone who contributed in making our church a place of hospitality for the Diocese.  Our choir and organist did a magnificent job in supporting the liturgy and singing the anthem, Harold Friedell’s  “Draw us in the Spirit’s Tether.”  We also had two of our members confirmed, Jamesetta and Sammy Cooper, and one member received, Marybeth Hanavan.

Today is the Day of Pentecost.  Pentecost commemorates God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.  At Pentecost we celebrate the church's outreach to all nations, and we renew our commitment to the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel of John we are told, "Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, ‘Peace be with you.’…. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”  Jesus then said to them, ‘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.’”

Jesus breathed on them.  "Jesus breathed the Spirit upon the disciples."  The word for breath in John's Gospel is the same word as found in the Book of Genesis when God blew into Adam's nostrils the breath of life so that he became a living being.  As a biblical image, breathing is a sign of life.  When Jesus breathed upon the disciples, he shared with them the Spirit that conveys Jesus' life-giving power to forgive sin.  In Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin, the word for spirit suggests the idea of a driving wind.  Jesus' breath is a holy and powerful force. 

Bound up with this gift of the Spirit and the forgiveness of sin is the sending forth of the disciples.  "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."  It is through this giving of the Spirit, the breath of life, that Jesus has effected a new creation.  It is a transformation of humanity, the forgiveness of sin, and a mission to the world.  God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is a tall order for anyone who professes the Christian faith.

The gift of the Spirit comes to the community.  It is the responsibility of the church to work for reconciliation and unity among all people.  Reconciliation, restoring to wholeness what is broken, and bringing women, men and children into a community of loving worship of God, are the ministries of those who have received the gifts of the Spirit.  To accept God's Spirit in our lives is to realize everything that separates us from God, from other people, and from other religions and creeds.  We accept the Spirit in the knowledge of our need for God's cleansing spirit of love and truth.

According to the Book of Acts, when they were "filled with the Holy Spirit they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."  The late Krister Stendahl, former Dean of Harvard Divinity School wrote, "the first item on the theological agenda for Christian[s] …should be to find a theology of religions that frees us from coming out on top; to find a theology wherein I like to say, We Christians can sing our song to Jesus with abandon, without feeling that we have to find what is better with us than with others.'"  (Harvard Divinity Bulletin Fall/Winter 2003)

St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians supports what we heard in the Acts of the Apostles and in what we can glean from Stendahl’s statement.  "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." 

From these readings it is clear that the Holy Spirit did not come to each person alone, or to scattered individuals, but to "all of them" as they were engaged in the customary act of communal prayer.  The point is that we receive the Spirit as a community, and we receive it when we are engaged in prayer as Jesus taught us.  This is why baptism is a public event.  We welcome the newly baptized into the household of God, into the community of the Holy Spirit.

Religion and life in the Spirit belong together.  Religion, broadly understood, has to do with ways of living, ways of being, knowing and doing.  Those of us who are concerned about living into God’s gift of the Holy Spirit should connect their religious life with their spiritual life.  In creation when the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, a wind from God swept over the face of the water.   The wind from God was God’s breath, God’s Spirit creating light and life. Everything was created for goodness, the earth and all that is in it, and “Behold, it is very good.”

The Book of Common Prayer states,, “The Holy Spirit is...God at work in the world...The Holy Spirit is revealed in [the Hebrew Scriptures] as the giver of life, the One who spoke through the prophets, [and]...in [the Christian Scriptures] as the Lord who leads us into all truth,.. [who] brings us into harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation” (pp. 852, 857).  It is through the blessing of the ordinary things of life -- water, bread, wine -- that we are in communion with God and with one another, and we are in touch with the loving and graceful power of spiritual living.  Amen.