“AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT”

      

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.