John
15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Pentecost
Day
I tell you the truth: it is to your
advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come
to you.
Well,
the disciples are clearly not buying that, and it’s no wonder they feel sad.
Jesus is telling them that he is physically leaving them and they won’t see him
anymore, but that somehow, because of some mysterious Advocate, they’re going
to be better off as a result. Their teacher, their friend, their inspiration is
going to disappear, and as they hear that hard news at the Last Supper, no
promise of anything is really going to comfort them.
But
Jesus never spoke a truer word. All the pageantry and hoopla of this special
day, all the festivity of Pentecost, can only happen because Jesus physically
went away. And to explain why, let me turn to that most influential work of
modern theology known as Star Wars. In
the very first Star Wars movie,
Obi-Wan Kenobi is training Luke Skywalker to be a Jedi knight and to channel
the power of the Force. Towards the end of the movie, Obi-Wan is dueling with
Darth Vader, and as they fight, he yells to Vader that he can’t win, because if
Vader strikes him down, he will become even more powerful than before. And
right after he makes that mysterious statement, Luke comes running in. And when
Obi-Wan sees that Luke has arrived, he holds up his lightsaber and stops
fighting. Darth Vader instantly kills him, and Luke screams in horror. But, as
Obi-Wan knew, it is the best thing that can happen to Luke, because he can no
longer rely on Obi-Wan’s power or just observe the way that his mentor channels
the Force: Luke now has to do it himself. Only then does he know the full power
available to him.
I
don’t know how you think of the Holy Spirit: As a divine force? A ghostly
personage? An abstract concept? What I do know is that all four Gospels attest
that the Spirit fills Jesus at the moment of his baptism, when God says, You are my beloved son and I am so pleased
with you. In the Gospels, the Holy Spirit is the love which the Father has
for the Son, the love which Jesus has for his Abba. Think about that. The Holy Spirit is connection, the Holy
Spirit is intimate relationship, the Holy Spirit is love. But our job is not to
observe this incredible closeness Jesus has with the One he addresses as Daddy,
to look on from a distance and say, “Wow, that’s amazing!” Jesus does not
command us to admire him. Jesus calls us to follow him. More than that, to be
like him. More than that, to be one with him. The same loving intimacy he
shares with his Abba he wants us to
share in as well. So, yes, he needs to go away: only then can we have that same
relationship ourselves. Only then can we experience the fullness of the Holy
Spirit, who is the very essence of loving relationship.
This
is why the Spirit, more than anything else, is the Great Connector, the One who
makes us one with God and one with each other. Just look at that familiar
reading from Acts. When the Spirit falls on those assembled disciples, they go
out into the streets and burst into speech. But they are not speaking
gibberish, they are speaking in the languages of everyone gathered in Jerusalem
from all around the world. Language barriers simply disappear and walls crumble
as the Holy Spirit of God turns a diverse and disparate crowd into a community.
So staggering is that reality, so unlike our normal human divisiveness, that
onlookers have no way to understand it or account for it: They must be drunk! But they’re not: they’re just fully alive and
fully connected. They are, in short, filled with the Spirit.
And
so are we. God is not stingy. When we were baptized, God did not give us a
little bit of the Spirit. There is no such thing as a little bit of the Spirit.
God poured out her whole self into each one of us, giving each one of us the
fullness of the Spirit, though the language of ownership is not quite right. We
don’t actually have or possess or control the Spirit: the Spirit moves through
us, continually connecting us with God, with our deepest selves, and with the
people around us. Really, the Spirit is God’s connecting love at work in our
lives and in the world. Catherine LaCugna concludes her book God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life with
this sentence: “The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest
possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth.” That
includes each and every one of us.
So,
I imagine there are people sitting here right now who are thinking, “Well, I
don’t feel the Spirit.” But if we are not feeling it, it’s not because the
Spirit isn’t moving through us. The Spirit is actively present in every moment
of our existence. But we are not always primed to feel that Presence: we are
too often geared to feel cut-off and isolated, to be in competition or struggle
with others. So we stifle the movement of the Spirit in our lives or we ignore
it or we just fail to recognize it. Here’s what I suggest, and what helps me to
be more alive to the Holy Spirit. You are perhaps familiar with the expression,
“Don’t ask God to bless what you are doing. Do what God is blessing.” Well,
what God is blessing is loving connection. Where in our lives are we feeling
the desire and the drive to connect? That’s where the Spirit is blowing. Every
impulse to pray, for example, is the work of the Holy Spirit. Every time we are
moved to reach out in love to someone who is needy or hurting, that is the
Spirit. When we try to bridge the chasms between races and religions and social
classes and political parties, the Holy Spirit is blowing. If we want to feel
the Spirit, then we need to move with the Spirit. And all the wonderful fruits
of the Spirit, like love, joy, peace, and all those good things will come our
way naturally when we just flow with the Spirit and do what the Spirit is
blessing.
Not
long ago I was visiting a homebound member of the parish who had long resisted
having a Lay Eucharistic Visitor bring her Communion. But then finally she let
down her guard and changed her mind. She’s been through a tough time recently,
and I was checking in to see how she was doing. She was clearly not feeling
well, but then she started talking about the person who now brings her
Communion, and she lit up. She was so happy about that, and felt so thankful
for that connection. And as I listened to her and saw her smile, I could feel
the Spirit. In that relationship, she was experiencing God.
In
countless ways, every day, the Holy Spirit is working to connect people with
God and each other. During his earthly ministry, Jesus knew that and lived that
with awesome results. And now he calls us to do the same. Because the same
Spirit that moved through him with such power is moving through each one of us
right now — tirelessly, relentlessly, endlessly seeking to connect.
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