“WHOSE SPIRIT?”

            

Pentecost is coming up again so it’s time to rummage around for our red stuff to strut on the day so we can celebrate the coming of the Spirit giving birth to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We recall Jesus breaking the news to his first disciples that he will be leaving them forever but in his place will come the Spirit to be their constant companion.

This is not something to be “spooked” about despite its earlier translation as the “Holy Ghost” bringing up all those ghost stories we may have enjoyed telling one another as children. When you look at it, it has been quite common, then and now, to talk about “spirit”, particularly the spirit of some one close to us accompanying us in our memory long after they have gone.

Since last Pentecost we have farewelled several friends close to us. They no longer fill those familiar places. We have attended their funeral services and see their images now reduced to a picture on the front cover of the order of service celebrating their life. We know we shall never see them again but from time to time we experience something of their spirit welling up in our memories urging us to emulate a sample of their qualities as part of us. This is what Jesus meant when he said the spirit would take his place.

We need this spirit more now than ever before. We have cause for concern about the growing meanness we find in the world around us. Along with extreme weathers around the globe we find extreme attitudes and behaviour reflected in politics and religion, stifling moderate voices. Our last federal election saw the dreadful spectacle of the contenders for government vying for the mantle of meanness towards desperate asylum seekers. TV programs now cruelly mock other cultures within our midst.

Is this the sort of spirit we want nurtured in the society of the future? Surely, we yearn for a better way. Out of those whom we have farewelled recently the spirit of one stays with us. When we said goodbye to David Ellis we lost a friend who was without words. We lost a friend who could scarcely move his afflicted body yet we know the influence he had among us will stay among us. Through him, we have become more open and inclusive. We experienced his love when that was as much as he could give. We have become enriched because of him.

David could look us in the eye and engage us despite a world now hurrying by with individuals isolated with head down each immersed in an electronic security blanket, communicating not with eye contact but with thumbs on keys oblivious to surroundings even at the risk of their own safety.

Federal Budgets widen the all too wide gaps between people, forgetting the way that Jesus took healing others giving them the hand-up they needed to resume life. Despite the unfairness of his limitations and his total dependence upon the good will of others, David in his powerlessness bridged many gaps around him and helped make us the people we were called to be.

David’s spirit, I pray, will stay long with us. It will remind us of the purpose of the Spirit that Jesus left behind to present to us both with words and without words what this aching world is meant to become despite all the forces arraigned unfairly against us.

Let Jesus breathe on us again this Pentecost so that his spirit, reminded by the saints who have left us, becomes our spirit living and working for redemption around us.