May 27, 2012 – Acts 2:1-21
Acts 2:1-21
Spirit of Love
Day of Pentecost – May 27, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
You all know Michelangelo’s painting of the Creation of Adam?
It’s the one with God in a big white beard reaching out to give Adam the divine touch,
who reaches out to God in turn.
This person said it seems as if after creating Adam and giving him the touch of life,
God is about to turn and go back into the heavenly place and turn things over to Adam.
As if to say, “Well, work’s done. Have fun!”
I looked closely at the painting this week and couldn’t decide if this is really true or not.
But it does kind of give the impression that once God is done setting things in motion
God retreats and lets creation take its own course, for good or ill.
The painting does kind of send the message that God’s involvement with creation
Ends with the big bang of starting things off.
I mean, when we think of creation, and God’s creating activity,
do we think about “way back when” or do we think about the breath we just took?
or the very breath we are taking now?
The Festival of Pentecost celebrates the work of God’s Spirit.
The Spirit, certainly, that brooded over the mess of shapeless mud on the first day of creation,
the Spirit that gave life to all things.
But in the biblical story, the work of God’s Spirit is just not finished with
the creation of human beings on the sixth day: it’s an expansive spirit.
The Spirit is best thought of energy,
the energy that is at work still in animating and creating all things.
It is a creative energy: it brings life.
This spirit or breath or wind – it’s all the same word in Hebrew and Greek –
this spirit or breath or wind is powerful,
When you harness the wind’s energy like the huge the wind farm near Moosomin,
you realize just how much energy there is in it.
The Psalmist says today, When you send forth your Spirit things are created and come to life.
When you take away their breath or spirit, they die.
The Spirit is at work in making things live: it can even cause the dead to live again in
Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of dead, dry bones.
It’s an energy that is at work throughout creation bringing life.
It is God at work bringing life.
Like our Thanksgiving at Table for the Easter season has it, God is the one right now who is:
Beyond the galaxies, under the oceans, inside the leaves, pouring down rain,
opening the flowers, feeding the insects, giving us the divine image.
This is an expansive Spirit.
It is the Spirit that was at work in the lives of Sarah and Abraham and Moses and Miriam and
Deborah and Isaiah.
And it is the Spirit of God that was most powerfully at work in the person of Jesus.
In Jesus we find this massive, cosmic energy focussed into a single person,
like the rays of our unimaginably powerful sun focussed by a lens into a single point.
And when this energy is focussed in a single person, we do not find a muscley superhero.
We don’t find a warrior king.
We don’t find a person of any worldly significance at all, really.
We find a Jewish peasant.
Who weeps with grieving friends.
Who offers forgiveness to those who have wronged him.
Who serves the vulnerable and feeds the hungry.
In Jesus we discover that the vast cosmic energy that suffuses all things,
the power at work in creating and sustaining life,
the force that is responsible for all that is:
in Jesus we discover that this divine power is the power of love.
In Jesus the loving creative Spirit becomes a person.
And on the cross we truly see the depths of that love revealed.
A love that will give itself for the sake of the other’s life.
The power that is at work in creation is a power that comes from God.
And like all things that come from God it can be misused.
And we would be fooling ourselves if we didn’t recognize that.
It can be turned to power over rather than power for.
It can be turned to destruction and violence rather than nurture and care.
But in Jesus we see that creative energy, that Spirit, at work for life.
I think this is why, in the Gospel reading from John,
Jesus names the Spirit he is about to give his disciples,
the Spirit he breathes on them after he is raised from the dead.
He names the Spirit the Advocate, or helper, or encourager;
paraklete in Greek: literally one who is called to your side,
one who refreshes you and makes new.
Properly focussed, the divine Spirit at work in all creation,
the divine Spirit personified by Jesus,
the divine Spirit embodied by the church, is a Spirit of advocacy, a Spirit of help,
a Spirit of refreshment.
The Festival of Pentecost celebrates and gives thanks for this gift of Jesus to the church.
John portrays it being given as Jesus breathes on the disciples on the evening of the resurrection,
like Rhiannon showed us in the hilarious youth skit on Talent Night.
Luke portrays it dramatically being given 50 days after the resurrection in a very public way.
The important thing is that they are united in seeing the church as the community in which
the divine Spirit of loving energy and advocacy and help is embodied, is come to life:
the Spirit of advocacy, of standing with and witnessing to the love focussed in Jesus.
The vast energy focussed in Jesus now unleashed in an expansive way in the life of the church.
If Jesus represents this vast cosmic energy’s intensification,
I think it is also true to say that the church represents its expansion,
like God’s deeply breathing out into the world.
Today in Acts the Spirit fills each nook and cranny of the house the disciples are in and so
drives them out from their gathering place into the streets of Jerusalem.
Shortly they will be driven out into Samaria and from there to Asia Minor and
from there to the very ends of the earth.
And when the church is driven out it speaks of the expansive loving Spirit that
became a human person in Jesus.
When the church is driven out it becomes the loving body of Jesus.
When the church is driven out of its four walls it embodies the loving, expansive, helping,
comforting Spirit that is called to the sides of those who need
their spirits and lives refreshed with the goodness of God.
It is an expansive Spirit of love the church makes tangible.
I have stood by your side in court rooms and in hospital rooms.
I have stood by your side in funeral homes and in food banks.
I have stood by your side before this altar and
I have stood by your side at the graves of those you love. And you have stood by mine.
The thing about Luke’s vision is that he recognizes that this Spirit is something that is
given to and poured out on all flesh: all flesh.
It’s not given to the ordained only: it’s given to all for the sake of
a creation and its peoples who are groaning.
It’s given to old and young, it’s given to men and women, it’s given to sons and daughters.
It’s given so that the ministry of Jesus can continue.
It’s given so that we can bear Jesus and his loving, life-giving Spirit to one another.
And it’s given so that we can bear Jesus and his loving, life-giving Spirit beyond the walls of
this building to a community that sorely needs it,
so we can stand by the side of those with whom Jesus wants to be standing.
When one of our home-bound is visited by one of our members for a time to share
fellowship and friendship, the ministry of Jesus continues.
When our meal teams get together and stand side by side serving at the side of the vulnerable,
the ministry of Jesus continues.
When you stand by the side of the vulnerable children of this neighbourhood;
When food is brought to those who are grieving;
When intimacies and tears are shed;
When a stranger whom no one else will embrace is hugged:
the ministry of Jesus continues.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus will say this astonishing thing to his disciples:
Those who trust me will do the things I have been doing;
indeed they will do even greater things than these. (John 14:12)
Even greater things?
Greater than forgiving the nearly unforgiveable?
Greater than feeding the 5000 hungry?
Greater than embracing the vulnerable and defying injustice and loving unto death?
Do we trust Jesus enough to believe that when he says it?
He says it because he is one, and we are many.
He says it because if he is the Spirit intensely focussed, we are the Spirit expansively breezed.
The good news is that this vast cosmic Spirit of grace is given to us.
The creator has not left us. Jesus has not left us. He has sent us the Spirit.
It will uphold us when we are weary and it will give us hope when we are grieving.
It will challenge us when apathetic and it will drive us when lethargic.
It will comfort us when we despair and it will refresh us when we fail.
It will stand by our side and lead us into all truth, the truth that looks like Jesus.
If we can trust that, then together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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