Holy Spirit Living

First of all, I've posted before in this blog that Pentecost is not a Season. Pentecost is the last Sunday of the Season of Easter. The summer Sundays are called "ordinary time," meaning they are "ordered" (as opposed to "ordinary-as-in-mundane"). The confusion comes because sometimes this time is referred to as "the Season After Pentecost," and these Sundays are referred to by a formula like "the Nth Sunday After Pentecost." Our paraments are red for only the one Sunday, and the season is back to green for Ordinary Time.

Here's the thing about the timing and season of Pentecost, the timing and season of the Holy Spirit: everything we're doing now is in the season after Pentecost. This is a theme of the Gospel of Luke. Luke likes to divide history into large eras: the time of Israel, the time of Jesus, and the time of the Church. As Jesus' time on earth is ending, the main thing he promises is the coming of the Holy Spirit. The time of the church, for Luke, begins on Pentecost. In the book of Acts, persecution of the church in Jerusalem starts in earnest after Pentecost. It drives some of the Christians into "all nations, beginning in Jerusalem," (as Jesus says near the end of Luke), or from Jerusalem to "Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth," (like Jesus says in Acts). The rest of the story of Acts proceeds in basically that order: Jerusalem, the places around Jerusalem in Judea, the places more north of Judea, which would be Samaria, and then around the Mediterranean to Rome, that is, to the rest of the known world. It is as though the Holy Spirit is driving them out of their comfortable church in Jerusalem so that the rest of the story can occur.

Of course, the time of the Holy Spirit is not limited to after Pentecost. Many times in the Old Testament, when a prophet is about to speak, it says, "The Spirit of the Lord was upon" them. In Genesis, chapter 1, the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep. The Spirit has been active in creation and in the lives of the God's people since the beginning. The Spirit of the Lord gives Samson strength. The Spirit of the Lord gives victory to the armies of Israel. The Spirit of the Lord lets prophets see as God sees and proclaim to the people of God. The Spirit of the Lord gives ecstasy to Saul, and he enters a prophetic frenzy with the prophets; according to the prophecy of Samuel, Saul became a new person. In the Spirit, David danced before the ark of the Lord. Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is the personification of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit picks up Ezekiel and shows him the valley of the dry bones. The time of Jesus, also, is not exclusive of the time of the Spirit. In the baptism scenes, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove. This is the meaning of the word Christ. Christ and Messiah both mean "anointed." Jesus was anointed, that is he was baptized, by the Holy Spirit. Just like the prophets of Old, the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him.

The Holy Spirit is always associated with life. God's Spirit moves over the face of the deep. That's God's Spirit alive before the world began. It is God's Spirit that gives us life. God breathed God's Spirit into the dirt and it became alive; dirt plus Holy Spirit equals human life. All the perceptions of the prophets, all the strength of the armies, all the sheep in the pastures and grain in the fields; that's all life. When Jesus is resurrected, he shows his life by eating with the disciples. Jesus' promise of the Holy Spirit is a promise of life in community. When Pentecost happens, the community grows: "and that day about three thousand persons were added." When persecutions start and the church is driven out of Jerusalem, they grow in extent as well as in numbers. Each time more people are added to their number, each time Paul plants a new church in Asia Minor, the group grows qualitatively as well. The gentiles are added, and the rules of life change to accommodate the uncircumcised.

As long as we live we change. Motion is part of life; growth is part of life; learning is part of life; adapting to new situations is part of life; all of that is change. Our relationships grow and change; that's part of life. Sometimes we have cutoffs in our relationships; that's part of life. We have the Spirit-empowered ability to work for reconciliation; that's change, too, and that's part of life. We meet new friends and our relationships increase, and our groups change; that's growth and change, and that's part of life. We remember those who've departed, and that memory is part of life, too. We have hope because Jesus lives and the Spirit is life.

All this adds up to "Holy Spirit Living." Living in a way that is attuned to the actions of the Holy Spirit--attuned to actions we can take because of the Holy Spirit in and among us--is living in the Spirit. Living attuned to the Holy Spirit is living in loving relationships. It is expansive, ever-changing living. It is expecting good things in our life. It is expecting our lives to increase because God is the abundant provider of good things in the Spirit. Jesus was raised; Jesus lives now; Jesus is always living. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit, and we now live in the time of the Holy Spirit. We are living empowered by the Holy Spirit to have life and have it abundantly. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us and we are made new. As long as we're living, we're experiencing change. We are growing in so many ways, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and blessed by that growth and that change.

--Chas