When
I was growing up on the farm we had an electric fence to keep the livestock from pushing against the regular fence. Being curious, or
foolish, or both, my brothers and I would play games with the electric fence.
You could hear the click, click as the electric charge pulsed through the
fence. So, one game was to see if we could pinch the wire between the clicks.
If you timed it right, you could pinch and let go of the wire between electric pulses and never get
shocked. Of course, if you didn’t time it right, you got a bit of a jolt. We also
experimented to see what would conduct electricity. If you place an old section
of rubber hose on the electric fence, nothing happens. If you place a dry stick
or an old dry bone on the wire, nothing much happens. If you do the same with a
loose piece of wire . . . electricity gets conducted!
The
Holy Spirit is like divine electricity given to energize, empower, transform,
and sometimes jolt the Church into action. Disoriented and disillusioned,
fearful and uncertain, the followers of Jesus who gathered in the upper room on
Pentecost were bereft of the life, energy, and power they had known in his
presence. Then the Holy Spirit charged – shocked is not too strong a word –
them with new life and power.
That
first generation of the Church was not energized by some new religious insight.
Nor were they energized by some new ethical ideal. They were energized by the
power of Spirit of God – the same Spirit that had descended upon Jesus and that
he had promised to pass on to his followers. The current of that Spirit
electrified them with the love, peace, joy, and hope of Jesus. Empowered by his
Holy Spirit, Peter and the others were transformed and became transformers who
shocked the world, turning it upside down with the power of the good news of
what God had done and was doing through Jesus the Christ.
The
Church is like an electric grid, charged through with the Holy Spirit. It is an
ever-expanding grid that extends through out the world and back through time to
the original Pentecost. As one definition has it, the Church is an
ever-widening sphere of an ever-deepening reconciliation. The Holy Spirit is
given to the Church to empower and energize that reconciliation which is a sign
of the promised “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21).
Pentecost
is a reminder that the divine-human drama centers not on the individual but on
the community. While not strictly a matter of either/or, it does matter where
we put the emphasis. By the Holy Spirit, God calls us into community where we
learn to love one another as God loves us. In, with and under that community,
the Holy Spirit moves like an electric current empowering the Church to make
our “life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world,
that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer
despair.” (BCP 429).
While
the Spirit is free to blow where it chooses, the normal way its presence and
power are
The
Holy Spirit is given to us personally primarily through that connection. So
connected, individuals are energized and empowered by the love and joy of
Jesus. As we learn to love in community, participate in worship and sacraments,
pray, study scripture and serve we are continually energized and recharged by
that same Spirit. Like the Apostles before us, we too are charged with the
spiritual electricity of new life, new creation. And, unlike my crude
experiments on the farm, whatever in us that resists conducting that Spirit –
the rubber, dead wood, and dry bone of our sinfulness and brokenness – will be
transformed into live wire.
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