FALLING SPIRIT

Acts 10:44-48
“While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.”

I feel like there’s something you should know up front. I have something of a love affair going on with the Holy Spirit. It’s been going on for quite some time now and at the ripe old age of 28, I find that when I look back I can’t pinpoint where it all began. Yet, as I was thinking about the passage for today and the Spirit and my own fascination with this particular member of the Trinity, I found that there was one moment when I think my love for the Spirit didn’t necessarily begin, but became crystal clear.

It was in the fall of my senior year in college and I was a little stressed out. I had signed on for an honors project for the year studying youth ministry and spirituality and I was already behind. Over the summer, my one task had been to define spirituality so I could use it consistently in my project. And, it was not for lack of trying that I was behind. I can’t even tell you how many books on spirituality I had read, but to no avail for they all defined spirituality differently and I could find no common denominator. So, if I tell you that I am a perfectionist, and always prepared, you can begin to imagine the stress I was feeling as I walked towards my adviser’s office, convinced I had failed already. Rather than telling me I was a complete failure, which was nice of him, my adviser sympathized gave me a another book to read, suggesting it might help with my search for a definition.

At first I was confused because this was not a book on spirituality, it was a book on theology, and not just theology, but feminist theology, which I had not read before. But, I was nothing if not a diligent student and so I proceed to read Elizabeth Johnson’s book, She Who Is. And about 80 pages in, Johnson defines the Holy Spirit. She writes, the Spirit is “She-Who-Dwells-Within, divine presence in compassionate engagement with the world.”

That, for me, was the moment. You hear people tell stories about love at first sight – when they glimpse a stranger and know that person is the one for them. Or, stories about conversions when someone steps into a church for the first time, or the first in a long time, and everything changes for them. I’ve never had either of those experiences, but I know what they’re talking about, because that was the feeling for me, when I read this definition of the Spirit. It was as if all that I had learned about faith and religion and God, and all that I had experienced of God suddenly came together and formed a complete whole. It was, perhaps, not quite as life-changing as a conversion experience or love at first sight, though it has shaped my life, but it completely changed the way I look at the world and at faith.

When you start looking for the Spirit, in the world or in the Bible, the Spirit ends up being everywhere. In the very first verses of Genesis, in that first cosmic creation story, the Spirit hovers, or vibrates, over the face of the deep, imbuing creation with Her energy and Spirit. I don’t know about you, but I find God most in nature.

There’s a beautiful scene in the movie Phenomenon where all you see is the wind moving through the trees with this lilting melody in the background. It’s a scene that play at pivotal points throughout the movie, as characters look for comfort and meaning in a world that sees chaotic. For me when I see, or hear, the wind moving through the trees, I have this image of the Spirit gently swaying through creation, stirring up breezes and life, rocking the world in comfort, and brushing her hand gently across our faces.

In the second chapter of Genesis, in the second creation story, God forms humanity out of the dust of the earth and breathes the Spirit into our bodies, filling us with life. The Spirit then becomes not only outside, in creation, but in us as well. I have the image of our breath being a gossamer thread that connects us to God – as we breathe in and out we remember that our breath, our life, is not our own. The Spirit becomes that in which we live and move and have our being.

If the Spirit gives breath to creation in Genesis, by the time we get to the prophet Ezekiel, later in the Old Testament, we see the Spirit as a forceful wind recreating life. In the book of Ezekiel the Spirit becomes the stormy north wind that conveys God’s judgment against Israel. The Spirit is rough and challenging, pushing the community to be who they were created to be.

Perhaps the most well-known passage in Ezekiel is that of the dry bones from the 37th chapter. In the second and third grade Sunday school class two weeks ago we talked about this “Halloween” of a passage in which the Prophet Ezekiel is taken to a desolate valley filled with dry bones signifying the community of Israel in their exile. God comes to Ezekiel and has him prophesy to the four winds, calling upon them to knit back together this broken community. And as bones clatters against bones and sinews and muscle and skin begin to cover them, a lifeless army is brought together before Ezekiel’s very eyes. But it requires a second calling to the Spirit in the wind to bring breath and life back into this community. And so the Spirit comes from the wind, bringing together those who thought they were lost, those who have felt the harsh judgment of God’s disfavor. And the Spirit brings new life.

In the New Testament, the images of Spirit as breath and wind expand to include fire. Earlier in the book of Acts, where our second reading for today came from, the Spirit descends on the believers gathered in Jerusalem and lands on their heads as tongues of fire so that each understands the message of the gospel in their own language. The image of God in fire brings back memories of Moses standing before the burning bush, encountering God for the very first time. When asked who Moses should say is sending him God replies, I am who I am – or – I will be who I will be.

It is in fire that God first identifies Godself to Moses who will lead the Israelites out of slavery. And it is in fire that the Spirit lands on the heads of those who lead the church. The vibrant, purifying, and consuming fire of the Spirit conveys the energy and empowerment we need to go forth into the world, sharing the message of who we are and who God is. In the book of Joel, from the Old Testament, God says “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” At Pentecost we see God pouring out God’s Spirit into the church so that our sons and daughters may prophesy and our elders dream dreams and the young people see visions.

In tenth century Rome, when the day of Pentecost was celebrated the church attempted to dramatize the mystery of the Holy Spirit. According to one author, there were “‘Holy Spirit holes’ in the ceilings of the churches, opening them to the sky, dramatizing architecturally the openness of the church to God and the fabulous fact that the Spirit cannot be contained within the church.”  This is the image of the Spirit we encounter in our text from Acts for today.

If the Spirit is traditionally imaged as breath, wind, and fire, it is also equally imaged as a bird. Indeed, the traditional icon for the Spirit in the church is that of the dove. When Jesus is baptized at the beginning of his ministry, the gospel writer Mark reports that “just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like dove on him. And a voice came from heaven [saying], ‘You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (Mark 1:10-11). There are a lot of counter-cultural elements in the Bible. But, this is one of my favorites. Jesus is identified, blessed, and told God is pleased with him before he starts his ministry. So frequently in our culture we are blessed only after we have achieved something, but God chooses to bless us first.

Yet, this is not the end of the role of the Spirit in Jesus’ baptism. Immediately after God announces God’s pleasure with Jesus, Mark writes, “And the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness” where he was tempted for forty days and forty nights. The Spirit not only comes upon us to mark us as God’s own and reveal God’s pleasure with us; the Spirit also comes to push into places we might not choose to go on our own.

In Celtic Christianity, the Spirit is not imaged as a peaceful dove, but rather as a wild goose. Rather than a passive bird, the goose is a wild one – turbulent and abrasive in its honking, it seems to have a will of its own. This, I must admit, is the image of the Spirit I have in our passage for today. Bear with me as I read the first line of it again: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” This is not a polite Holy Spirit; it interrupts Peter in the midst of his sermon. Moreover, this is not a passive dove descending but a Spirit falling.

If we had read the story that preceded these verses you would have seen even more clearly the way in which this Spirit is pushing the boundaries of the Church in uncomfortable and inconvenient ways. According to one commentator, the question the book of Acts is trying to answer is “will the Gentiles be saved?” For this new community that would become the church, the gospel was always intended for the Jewish community. Jesus, after all, was a Jew and his message, so the early church thought, was for the Jews. But, here they are in the book of Acts with the Jewish community rejecting them, persecuting them, and the Gentiles accepting this message, which wasn’t even intended for them. The book of Acts, then, records this struggle of the early church community to figure out who is in and who is out.

Peter, in our passage, is speaking to the circumcised, Jewish believers, to explain why he thinks the gospel ought to be extended even to the Roman military officers who are occupying Israel. You can imagine that this is a hard argument to have to make; indeed, even Peter came to this belief rather unwillingly. Yet, in the middle of his sermon the Spirit interrupts, falling onto the Gentiles who are present identifying them as God’s own.

The Spirit pushes this early community into places and relationships they might not have chosen on their own. This is no comforting Spirit sent to make these early believers feel good. This is a Spirit leading and guiding an at-times-unwilling-Church into the vision of the future God has laid out for them.

There is no one image of the Spirit that dominates our tradition. No single, unified story to tell that explains who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does. And this is not an oversight. The Spirit is the breath and life of creation – of the natural world and of you and I – the Divine Breath that sustains the universe. The Spirit is the Go-Between God – that of God which dwells within us. But the Spirit is also the harsh north wind that challenges us – continually blowing – turning us and again, often against our will, back to God. And the Spirit is the fire – the energy and inspiration we need to bear witness – to who we are, to who God is, and to the vision of the world God has given us. And finally, the Spirit is the wild goose, always flying in front of us creating Holy Spirit holes in the most inconvenient of places … hoping we will follow.

The call for the church, for you and for me, and for all of us together is not to be perfect, not to get it right every single time, but to follow. To be open enough to remember that the Spirit is never where we expect Her to be. To be flexible enough to trust the Spirit even when it feels uncomfortable and She takes us places we would rather not go. To remember that the Spirit is She-Who-Dwells-Within, divine presence in compassionate engagement with the world.

Amen.

Charge/Benediction:
Storyteller Brian Andreas writes that, “Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life.”

So, with that in mind …

May the breath of the Holy Spirit comfort you,
May the winds of the Spirit change you,
May the fire of the Spirit empower you,
And may the Wild Goose lead you places you would never have found on your own.

Amen.

The last of which leads me to an amusing anecdote: I had to give a presentation in class a couple weeks ago, after the spider on face incident, and in the middle of it I swore a spider was crawling down my back and I had to consciously restrain myself from pulling up the back of my shirt and asking my professor, a Franciscan monk who was sitting behind me, to pull off the imaginary spider. Fortunately for everyone involved my self-control was ironclad strong; although to this day I think that particular spider is hiding somewhere on my person – all because I did not ruin my presentation, grade, and integrity by pulling up my shirt in the middle of class.

Or, and here’s a crazy idea, DON’T MESS WITH TIME. Seriously. Time is an imaginary construct, we invented, we abide by it. With all this freedom in determining how time works why on earth did some one develop a system that required changing time. And don’t come back at me with this whole energy saving business because clearly that’s a load of hogwash. Obviously the world is out to mess with me; and I don’t like it one bit.

I do know that some of you crazies like it because it gives you more light in the evenings. So, for those of you living the dark corners of the country, fine, good for you. But for those of us living places where it is plenty light in the evening already why are you taking away the morning light? Do you have any idea how much harder it is to get up in the dark? Do you realize that you have effectively pushed my wake up time back from 7:30-8 to 8:30-9? That’s a whole hour. Jerks. I do not have an hour to lose at this point in the semester. GIVE ME MY HOUR BACK!!

Not that I’m bitter or obsessed about this.

My friend Jina wrote for Christian Science Monitor this summer and two of her stories have just been published. This one is about Genocide, which is her particular passion (stopping it, not perpetrating it) and is about Mark Hanis and the antigenocide charity that he founded. It’s an intriguing story and quite inspirational for those of us who sometimes feel there’s nothing we can do.

The second story is about women who ride motorcycles – also very intriguing and enjoyable to read, if not a little less politically and world-concern motivated …

The thing is that Christian Science Monitor now tracks how popular their stories are, so if you click on one of these, they become more popular. Which, as politically-minded people that you are, means you should at the very least click on the first story at least once to show the magazine that issues of genocide are important. Jina tells me the story on motorcycle-riding women is already one of the most popular, so you could just read that one for fun …

Sadly, on our last day of “vacation” I got an e-mail letting me know I could not register for classes until I had completed the required immunizations. I personally don’t remember any mention of this particular obligation in the admission or orientation information, but Adam ever-so-kindly told me ‘duh – everyone knows you have to get shots to go to school.’ Clearly IF that information was shared with me I did a phenomenal job of blocking it – and for good reason: Thursday afternoon I was the slightly-less-than-grateful recipient of a tetanus shot in my left arm AND a meningitis shot in my right arm. And this coming week I will be receiving yet another TB test.

My memories of my first tetanus shot do not do justice to the sheer pain still coursing through my arm today. I faithfully take advil every four hours and still … raising my arm above my head (like to put my shirt on or get something down from the cupboard, or wash my hair) … so painful. And a meningitis shot? Not that painless either – the problem with a shot in both arms at the same time is you really can’t sleep on either side and as I’m a side sleeper, this is quite obnoxious.

Meanwhile, I am dutifully studying for the GREs and I am getting stupider. I took my second practice test today after almost a month of fairly regular studying and I did worse.

I’m not really feeling like life is treating me too kindly these days – and it is starting to miff me.

Now, if you know me, you know that’s just a dumb bet – there’s nothing I like better than reading and betting me I can’t do something I was going to do already, well, that’s just silly. But, nevertheless, he bet me and so I have spent my week completely engrossed in Harry Potter and Adam has spent the week (from what I could gather from behind my book) regretting he ever mentioned anything about reading or books since I rarely moved from the couch unless absolutely necessary.

And, I am proud to say that I only have one book left and a whole week to read it. It has been a little stressful, if you must know, as I still had to work, go to the gym, do some research, and write a sermon, but you know, you do what you have to: it’s a rough life and someone has to endure it so I suppose it might as well be me.

Adam never set the conditions of the bet, which he thinks means there aren’t any, but I say it just means I get to decide what I win. Any ideas?

Oh, and also, the books are just as good, if not better, the second time around – I had forgotten so much! I can’t wait to see the latest movie and read the book. I can see now why some religious people object to the series – it has me completely bewitched.

So, you can imagine my dismay when one of the best radio stations I can find in Princeton calls itself ‘soft rock’ and has that disturbing, overly melodic little soft rock jingle to go with its name. I would like to posit that this station has, in fact, incorrectly labeled themselves and are not a soft rock station. They play artists like Matchbox 20, Tracy Chapman, James Taylor, and others of my favorites. While I acknowledge that their choices tend toward folk – I do not think folk is the same as soft rock and am offended and shamed by their correlation on this station.

Shamed to the point that I hid the preset in the middle of the others and never leave this station on the radio when I get out of the car for fear someone will be with me the next time I get in and hear their pathetic soft rock jingle and think a little less of me.

But, I leave the preset there, and when the pop stations that come in are all playing the same song, which they’ve played repeatedly for the entire month we’ve been here, I switch over to this ‘other’ station and enjoy some quality music for awhile.

I just want to say – it’s not me, I don’t like soft rock; it’s them, they’ve made a mistake. I am not old enough for my favorite songs to be soft rock ones. I protest.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. You should judge this book by it’s cover – at least by the cover on the hardback edition. It is a beautiful book about a family’s decision to eat locally for a full year. It is honest, funny, informative, perceptive, prophetic and reflective all without being kitschy. Website here.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. A book without an ending – at least without an ending that satisfies me. True to real life, this book develops the characters of a haphazard family in India during a time of political turmoil. The characters come alive, the inheritance of loss is beautifully described, but the plot stagnates and leaves me wanting more resolution.

The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits. I picked this book by its title and cover – and the adage held true (though in reverse of how it was initially meant): don’t judge a book by it’s cover. I was not a fan of this particular novel. The dialog for much of the book is intentionally confusing, which I found frustrating and the plot was both lagging and a bit superficial.

Paper Clips. A moving documentary about a school in rural Tennessee that started studying the holocaust and decided to collect paper clips as a way of getting their minds around what 6 million (the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust) looks like. The movie is human and shows the ways in which the project took on a life of its own that moved the people running it and transformed a school, a community, and perhaps a nation still looking for ways to grieve such a massive loss. Documentaries aren’t generally my thing, but this one had me captivated.

Eragon (the movie). For a movie based on a book – this one was good. Granted it’s been a few years since I read the book, but the movie could stand alone as the start of an interesting epic, and with the book behind it, it grows even richer as a story. It made me want to pick up Eldest, which I haven’t read yet.

Gandhi (the movie). Long – really, really long. Three hours, but three hours I’m glad I watched. The acting was incredible (I didn’t realize it was Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi until the end and then I wondered how he had pulled it off) and I learned so much about his life and the situation in India.

One Voice by the Wailin’ Jennys. Josh introduced Adam and I to this song this past spring and it is still one of my favorites. The harmony is beautiful. Definitely worth the 99 cents it will cost you on iTunes.

(You Want To) Make a Memory by Bon Jovi. I know – eighties ballad, pop rock – it’s true. But I enjoy this song. Not quite as much as ‘It’s My Life,’ which I could rock out to all day everyday, but still really good in my pop culture music world.

[stunned, appalled silence]

“I get them confused so frequently – Jersey and Eden”

“Are you sure it’s not the naked children running around in front of our apartment that confuse you?”

Life is still incredibly busy and stressful with school and life … BUT I have found time to read (over the course of a few weeks) one of the best books I’ve read in a long time: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert You must buy this book. You could borrow a copy, but I’m pretty sure this is a book worth owning. Since I don’t have a lot of time, and you might not either, I will not proceed to give you the highlights in three sentences or less: This is a memoir written in her early thirties after a hard divorce during a year of travel in Italy, India and Indonesia. She is funny, reverent, irreverent, honest, a great writer and someone you’ll feel like you know by the end of the book. Two sentences – ha!

I really can’t say enough about this book except that for people living two completely different lives, I felt like I knew exactly what she was talking about 98% of the time (yes, that’s a precise equation, thank you for asking). I will now go back to my loads of work and you will go buy the book. Amazon is open 24 hours should you be reading this late at night, but of course it’s always good to support the local bookstore. I leave it up to you.