Spirits In The Material World
Acts 2:1-21

May 30, 2004

On Pentecost we are spirits living in the material world. We are not ghosts or bodiless beings freed from the corruptions of the world. Bystanders at the festival concluded quite naturally that the babbling disciples were intoxicated. The title song (Sting and the Police) bemoans, “There is no political solution To our troubled evolution.... Where does the answer lie? Living from day to day, If it’s something we can’t buy There must be another way.”

The material world will never go away. In some ways, it is more persistent and eternal than the Gardens of Eden and Kingdoms of Heavens great people have worked to build. That’s because the material world is a lot easier to maintain. For most people, it is the default key on the computer. When our spirit lags, we revert back automatically to things material. Living authentically and spiritually is the most rewarding, renewing, and life-giving thing that we do, but also the most demanding and the hardest work. One can never live spiritually by rote or going through the motions.

The famous story during the feast of Pentecost, seven weeks after Passover and Easter, is typically ambiguous for a Biblical tale. People have read it and tried to imitate its events and skills, but have arrived at a number of readings and quite a few different action strategies. Let me offer one more reading and direction.

The apostles had been repeatedly told that their vocations would not be set and complete until they had received the Holy Spirit. It was a very physical event with the wind rushing in on them as if it were alive, tongues of flame descending upon them, igniting and overwhelming their consciousness. There they were, speaking languages they had not known, and I bet that after the wind had died and the Spirit had departed for the moment, none of them could remember a foreign word they had spoken. The disciples were never intended to become great linguists proclaiming the Gospel to an ever wider population. Instead, all those non-native speakers crowding into Jerusalem were able to understand what the disciples had said, and it was the Gospel that zapped them too.

The Holy Spirit is the least understood person of the Trinity. Many religious people sense strongly the presence of God, and Jesus’ fully human, fully divine encounter enables many to understand how one can approach God as a human being.

However, the Holy Spirit is much more vague and much more pervasive. The Spirit is that which truly inspires you, enables you to look at something or someone differently, compels you to be creative and fresh and insightful. “The Spirit moved me” is not an non-genuine claim.

We still resist the power of the Spirit largely because we have seen the Spirit used poorly and manipulatively all too often. A lot of individuals and churches invoke the Spirit to justify any idea that comes into their heads. The big problem with the Holy Spirit is that there are no quality control standards. There is no easy way to test whether it is the Spirit flowing through you or simply your own ego trip passing through.

But there is a way to test the waters of the Spirit: by the results and effects of the Spirit’s activity on the lives of other people. By their fruits you shall know them. The Holy Spirit works not when you are inspired to great heights, but only when others are inspired and instructed and healed as a result of your inspiration. You can feel awfully good and empowered by the Spirit in lots of things you do, but if you keep that experience to yourself and no one else benefits from your being inspired, then that really wasn’t the Spirit working in you. The real lesson of Pentecost is that everyone heard the Gospel being preached in their own personal language. The speakers faded away in importance; the changed listeners are the evidence. “If I speak in the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” In other words, you aren’t spiritual.

Being spiritual in the material world is an adventure that will lead you where you cannot imagine. Spirituality is the process of tying things together - ideas, people and personalities, physical bodies, time and events. Yet the moment I believe I have systematized our faith, tied it all neatly together in an attractive package, that I can put it on automatic pilot and find a comfortable routine of doing God’s work, then I am uninspired. At that point I have begun to make the Christian faith and the Christian Church into another piece of the material world, an uninspired piece whose primary function is to serve the needs of our own egos and purposes, and the continuance of our institutions. The Church without the Spirit is a zombie - neither really dead nor really alive.

What makes being spiritual, being caught up in the power of the Spirit of Pentecost, so difficult is that your world is being recreated again and again. You cannot take anything for granted; every moment must be lived afresh and to the fullest. That is exhausting. That is the reason the Spirit moves in mysterious ways to give you strength when you are tired, to give you love when you are angry, to force you to look at the world in an uncomfortable way, to grant you courage when you really are afraid.

These people are not drunk: the young men and women are seeing visions, and old people are dreaming dreams. You and I are captured by the Spirit to live every moment, to perform every task, to help every person, as if it were for the very first inspired time.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan