Did you ever like ghost stories? Has anyone tried to
tell you about haunted houses where strange things have gone bump in the night?
Have people talked to you about “ouija” boards and mysterious séances? Have I
now managed to get the hairs on the back of your neck standing straight up?
You may remember those days when adults standing up
front in Sunday School or Scripture spoke to you about the “Holy Ghost”. This
term changed to the “Holy Spirit” once little boys like me kept sounding a low
and ominous “Woooooooo” whenever “Holy Ghost” was mentioned.
Perhaps you did a hunt through the Bible to find out
how many times the word “spirit” was mentioned and where. Yes, you are quite
right, “spirit” is first mentioned in the second verse in the story of creation
where the Spirit of God hovered/brooded over the face of the waters.
Spirit is free. Spirit cannot be locked up (even
though “spirits” can be bottled). We can’t nail spirit down. Spirit comes from
God for spirit is within the triune God at the time when God alone existed.
Although spirit can be contained within God, spirit emanates from God as God
wills.
Pentecost celebrates the season when we, the one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic church recognises that God, through Jesus Christ,
has made spirit available to us where we are no matter who we are. We become
energised by spirit because the Holy Spirit is God expressed in energy with us,
among us, around us, and between us.
Too often we have looked upon the Holy Spirit as just
a personal spiritual relationship between us and God – “We’ll build a world of
our own that no one else can share” as the Seekers used to sing. I’ve heard
many stories of spiritual journeys where it is just the person and God with the
person pre-occupied with personal identity. Spirit is personal but by no means
individualistically confined.
Spirit involves relationships. When the prophet
Elijah was about to depart forever, his apprentice Elisha asked to inherit his
spirit (2 Kings 2:9). Jesus promised his disciples that by leaving them the
spirit could then and would come. (John 16:7-15). In Jesus Christ, God had
become matter. With the physical body of Jesus departing, God as matter would
be replaced by God as energy. Einstein would have understood this relatively
well.
Matter is confined to one place and one time. Energy
is not. With Jesus ascended, the Spirit could be seen to be free to be wherever
disciples gathered or scattered. When we gather for worship, the Spirit warms
us like coals in the fire-place. When we scatter to serve, the Spirit becomes
our energy expended for the world around us. When we are weak, this gives us
strength.
This has come home to me personally earlier this year
when a new chapter began for me with my need for regular peritoneal dialysis to
support my weakened kidneys. The warm support I have been receiving continues
to be my strength as I adjust to living with this attached lifeline catheter of
mine. This has underlined for me the presence of the Holy Spirit among us 24/7.
So many of us can attest to the spirit moving among
us at worship and fortifying us for service. This has kept us going for now
over 2000 years and will nurture and sustain us for as long as God wants. Like
Elisha and the first disciples we have inherited the Spirit from those who have
since physically departed. We can pray that when our time eventually comes for
us, too, to depart we will have mentored others so that they too may share in
the joys and challenges of the Spirit as part of both the gathered and the
scattered people of God.
