Pentecost belongs to the Baptists. That’s how many Episcopalians feel. If you want to feel the Spirit sway the church like the Spirit filled the disciples, you should drive down St. Georges Avenue, make a right when you come to Popeye’s Chicken and then decide if you will stop at White Rock Baptist or Morning Star Church.
For many people, the Holy Spirit manifests herself in lively worship, in exuberant praise, in soul stirring preaching. All these signs of the Spirit’s presence are cultural ways of experiencing the Holy Spirit. When Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit, he gave that gift to the entire church, not only to the more enthusiastic churches.
Pentecost also belongs to Episcopalians. As members of the Body of Christ, we too receive the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we live in a church culture where our emotions are more subtle, our worship more traditional, our preaching more colloquial. Our religious lives so intertwine with our daily lives that we forgo the spectacular Holy Spirit in favor of the subtle Holy Spirit.
Of course we are pulled by that heart warming presence of the Spirit. We feel her presence in song and in prayer. We sense her presence in fellowship and work together. We experience her presence when we receive the Holy Eucharist. We Episcopalians engage the Holy Spirit at a deeper level of the heart, the place where the Spirit works to transform us into agents of Jesus in the world. This deeper, more subtle work of the Spirit, involves that challenging action of the Spirit of which we heard Jesus speak in the Gospel.
Jesus said the Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. The Spirit comes to us after Jesus goes from us so that Jesus and his mission might continue through the work of the Spirit. Jesus came as the herald of God’s new reign.
In God’s kingdom, all have a place at the table, all find themselves loved and respected, all find themselves called to bring that message to the world.
But we live in a world where some are excluded, where some are not loved and respected, where some are prohibited from the church. Since we live in this world, the thinking of the world infiltrates our hearts and souls with plans and schemes which are not in line with God’s vision of the world. The Spirit stirs an awareness in our hearts of the places where we have compromised God’s reign with the values of the world. Sometimes we think we have done the right thing when we have really have pushed for our values and not God’s values.
Those hidden places in our hearts where prejudice and racism lurk are illumined by the light of the Spirit. She transforms our ignorance with compassion. Those hidden places in our hearts where gender superiority lurks are illumined by the Spirit. She transforms our desire for dominance with equality. Those hidden places in our hearts where fear holds us back from doing something new and creative. She transforms our fear with the power of love.
The Spirit comes to us with the power of God’s feminine energy. She upsets the apple cart, invites new ways of thinking and acting, new patterns of relating and empowering. Perhaps we might all begin to open our hearts to discern how ready we are for this new energy of the Spirit, an energy which is more than a feel good swaying to the music but a life altering invitation to a new heart and a new spirit.
Welcome or not, the Spirit will be knocking at the door of your heart, knocking and inviting you, inviting you to dare to do something new and daring, inviting you to change the tired ways of the world, inviting you to take a chance of Jesus.