On Patriots Day, at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, there was a man who had been through a lot in life. He’d been through more than any of us, we hope, will ever have to face. One of his sons had been killed in Iraq about ten years before, and when this man heard the news, he became despondent, and ultimately set himself on fire with a can of gasoline and a propane torch. He survived, but five years later he lost another son, who himself committed suicide, never having recovered from the family’s loss. When the bombs went off that day at the finish line, in the chaos of that moment, this same man who had been so damaged, and lost so much, saw someone near him on fire, just as he had once been. And it was him who climbed a barricade, put out the fire, tied up the burning man’s wounds, and stayed with him while he was taken away to be saved.
What does a story like this have to do with today? The Pentecost story is a story of transformation and redemption very much like this one. It is the story of an entire roomful of imperfect and uncertain disciples, and we should remember that when these disciples were gathered in that room in Jerusalem, they sat in that room lost. They were people who had in their time abandoned Jesus, misunderstood instructions, lost heart, argued about status, and even today, are gathered indoors, waiting for they don’t know what, completely uncertain about what to do next, who they are, what they can possibly do. They have seen the risen Christ, but still, there they are, perhaps wondering if it wasn’t time to go back to the lives they had left behind.
And it is the gift of the Holy Spirit that changes all this: they are given a new life and confidence, possessed by fire and energy in the Acts reading, touched with the breath of Jesus in the gospel, but the end result is the same. Suddenly a period of fear and confusion and discouragement was over, and people who seemed directionless were talking with people they’d never seen before and never communicated with before, all of a sudden filled with a passion and clarity of purpose that we only see glimpses of in our own lives. They are still damaged and imperfect people, but filled with the grace and the power of God.
When we pray for the Holy Spirit to come to us, as we do every week in this church, and as we do at every baptism and confirmation, what we are praying for is this, this gift of renewal and new direction. It is the gift of knowing that our life is not the dull muddle that it usually seems like, that we’re not trapped or stuck in a room, and not only are we not trapped, but we are needed, in big things and in small, to do the work God has chosen for the damaged and the imperfect and the uncertain. That is to say, chosen for us.
But let’s be honest: Do we really want this gift? Our new pope has preached quite a bit about the Holy Spirit in his few weeks in office, but what he says is that too often we say nice things about the Spirit but in fact the idea of it upsets us if we think about it too closely. The Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes us forward, it pushes the church forward, it makes demands, it makes changes, it overcomes and ignores all our usual excuses. He calls the Holy Spirit the strength of God, it is what gives us the strength to change and go forward. But we are not always ready to go forward, we are human. There is still the temptation to resist, to go through the motions of belief without wanting to be pushed too far by it.
I can’t imagine what that call of the Spirit will for anyone here, when it will come, what it will feel like — only you can possibly know that. It may not be all that dramatic — perhaps you will simply realize that you are someone who can be the presence of Christ to one person. Today, on Pentecost, the imperfect are redeemed and given the strength of God, to do great things and small things. We don’t feel ready, we don’t feel worthy. And the Spirit is with us today, and tells us we are wrong.