Jesus told the disciples a lot of things that they had trouble understanding, even some things they probably had a problem believing. One of those things was this, he said that after he was dead and gone from them, leaving them behind, that they would actually be better off and more fortunate then, and the reason he gave was that then, they would have the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, he said, would give them everything they needed and more, not just to live, but to live in joy, to live as his followers, to be able to do the great things he told them needed to be done.
So why do we think he said that? How could it be possible that an invisible power and presence, mysterious and hard to understand, could be better than a deeply loved human being right in front of you, looking you in the eye, and answering your questions, showing you exactly how to live? It doesn’t make sense to us. It’s not what we think we would want. We would want Jesus there to keep leading us, keep us in the training program for a lot longer, be his number two or number three, but not without him present.
But the evidence that Jesus was right about the Spirit is in the lives of the people he made that promise to. Here on Pentecost Sunday we hear what happened to them. They were transformed, and it was the Spirit that did it. They went from a period of uncertainty to a time of energy and vision, from depression, hidden indoors in a room, to a sense of mission that just couldn’t hold them back. They got started doing what they were meant to do. They didn’t miraculously become different people, they didn’t become academically brilliant or have every skill imaginable, they were still former fishermen and tax officials. But they were electrified with a sense that the moment had come, they remembered why Jesus called them. He had seen what they could become, what they could do for others, going out to widen the circle of believers, telling the story of Jesus over and over by what they did and said.
Here on Pentecost Sunday 2020 we all find ourselves more locked up in a room than usual. It’s a time of loss and frustration and uncertainty. But even in years when there isn’t a pandemic, we all have a tendency to hunker down when it comes to the Holy Spirit by making sure that Spirit doesn’t have a way to get at us. So many of the stories we hear about the Spirit are over the top, not for us. The Spirit seems to ask too much of us, it seems to be sending us off doing something dramatic, or even worse, doing something new, and change, well, change isn’t always welcome, even when it’s time for change. How do we know what the Spirit wants of us, how do we know it’s real, and how do we know it’s right for us?
Of course the main answer to that question is that’s between you and God. That’s a conversation we can each have in prayer, and there aren’t many better topics for prayer than where we are being called next in life. But here’s one message that it’s hard not to take away from these Pentecost stories. The Spirit wants walls taken down, and divisions brought to an end.
That’s one way you can tell when the Spirit is active, if it is bringing division, keeping people apart, then the message you’re hearing is not of the Spirit. The power of language the disciples received in the Acts of the Apostles didn’t mean they spoke languages that no one had ever heard before, it meant that suddenly they could communicate with anyone, that there were no boundaries that marked off someplace they couldn’t go. That is the sign of the Spirit, people suddenly realizing that possibilities that seemed far off are not that distant at all.
The Spirit wants divisions healed, and distances reduced. If there is a sense of division between you and God, something that is keeping you from a sense of God’s love and intense interest in you, then the Spirit wants that division taken away. If there is something dividing you and someone else, something that is a burden that is preventing life and growth, the Spirit wants to offer the life-giving promise of healing that division, or moving beyond it. And if there is something that is dividing us all from one another, the rich from the poor, those who have from those who don’t, black from white, those divisions are not from God, for God there are no people on the margins. The Spirit wants that territory crossed every day like it’s not even there, when people go out on the margins, they begin not to be the margins any more. The Spirit can do that. It doesn’t ask us to do the impossible, we are not going to become miracle workers overnight, we are all still who we are, but the Spirit does ask us to let go of our grip, always tightly hanging on to what we think is the limit of what God has made possible in this world and the limits we think of the love that is possible for us to give. Even now, that promise of Jesus to those reluctant disciples is still the promise made to us, that with his Spirit, there are no borders to what can be brought together in love.