Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
The Reverend Paul DeLain Allick, St. George’s Church, May 31, 2009

Isn’t it just awfully hard to be human sometimes? This transitory life is full of stress and hardship. Many of us are being hit hard by the economic downturn. Some of us are experiencing strife within our families. We have lost loved ones. For those of us who are fortunate enough to still have jobs, these jobs can take over our lives and leave us very distracted and stressed out. Many of us are experiencing health issues that go from uncomfortable to painful and scary.

And for those of us heavily involved in institutional Church leadership, ordained and lay, we know that right now it’s just darn hard be part of a mainline Church. Our beloved Episcopal Church, like all mainline Christian institutions, is experiencing precipitous decline. We are unsure how to pay our bills. We are unsure how to communicate to the outside world what is we are about and what we have to offer. And on top of all that we are facing the very collapse of our Anglican Communion in the disputes over human sexuality, female leadership, liturgical language and fights over how money is used.

But here’s the thing: the Christian Disciple and the Christian Church can never get all the way down. No matter how much our health scares us, how much grief we bear, how much financial and career stress we are under, how hurtful our loved ones can be, no matter how empty the pews and the Church treasury get, no matter how hopeless our ability to remain in Communion with each other seems, we will never fade away and we will never be completely down. Never; not for eternity.

Our faith keeps us going; it gives us hope. Now this can sound trite and sentimental but it isn’t. It is powerful. It is the power of God in our lives. Jesus sent us an Advocate to empower us to be his disciples and to be the Church. It is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is among us and within us. He is leading us toward all truth. He gives us strength to bear our crosses and wisdom to teach us that eternity is now. This transitory life is only a small slice of our existence. Albeit, it is powerful
slice which tests us to the core but there will be much, much more.

St. Paul in his message to the churches in Rome reminds us how this hope works. We do not hope in what we see but in what we don’t see, yet. You can’t hope in what you know to be a fact; you can only hope in what will be and it keeps you going. We lean on the Holy Spirit for all of our strength. Even when we can’t muster a prayer we don’t give up because the Spirit prays for us. As St. Paul puts it, the Holy Spirit, “intercedes for us with sighs to deep for words.” God in Christ knows what we are going through. Why we are going through it isn’t apparent yet. But God is very present with us in the pain and the struggle.

Jesus says to us in the Gospel today, “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Revelation continues, even now. What God is revealing to us in Christ did not end when the Bible was put together. It continues. Jesus is still teaching our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Jesus is still teaching us what his life, death and resurrection is all about. In the same way he is still teaching us the meaning of our own lives and the meaning of the Church’s life, even this parish of St. George’s.

We are in the midst of a spiritual process. If everything was finished and done there would indeed be very little hope but hope remains because revelation continues.

We along with the Roman and Easter Orthodox communions even believe that physical death won’t stop the process. We pray for those who have died. The Catechism teaches us that we pray for the dead “because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God’s presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is.”

The original Apostles and disciples of Jesus were really down when  the Spirit showed up. In this story from Acts we see a reversal of the story from Genesis, the Tower of Babel. At Babel humanity thought in its arrogance that it could get along without the power of God. That
pride and that trust in human will led to confusion and misunderstanding. Humans were scattered and separated.

At Pentecost, humanity’s dependence on the power of God led to
understanding and unity. Those original disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God. It was the same power of God that breathed life into us at creation and continued to speak through the prophets. At Pentecost humanity goes from spiritual confusion and dryness to receiving visions, dreams, prophecy and signs from heaven.

And so we have the Holy Spirit. We have the Church, that is we have each other. The best thing for us to do when we are down is stand up and declare the power of God even when it feels hopeless. That is when we know what real faith is about. And there isn’t anything trite or sentimental about that. We have fruit to bear and produce; we remain strong in the face of the cross. Each we day rise with Christ from the grave and call upon the power of the Holy Spirit.

St. Ireneaus, the great theologian of the first century, taught about the Holy Spirit. He said that Jesus sent the Advocate to us in order to prepare us to be an offering to God. We would become like a superb loaf of bread. We begin as dry flour. The Spirit is the water forming us into a lump of doe becoming that bread. We are like parched ground or a waterless tree that ,”could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above.” St. Irenaeus said, “If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God.”

The power of God in our lives is all we have and it is enough. The power of God in Christ is the hope of reconciliation. The Holy Spirit is the moisture to heal our broken and dry hearts, minds, bodies and souls. He is the dew of God that keeps the body of the Church and the body of each disciple from being scorched.

St. Ireneaus reference from: The Liturgy of the Hours, Volume II (pp. 957-58)
Catholic Book Publishing Corp. New York 1976