I have a couple of Holy Spirit stories that I like to pull out on Pentecost. One comes from the days just before I started university and was discerning the call to the ministry. At the time I was going to a small Presbyterian church out in the country. The minister there was into End Times stuff and for a twenty-year-old looking for certainty in life, the End Timers with their contrived biblical roadmap to the soon to come end seemed to have a keen bit of certainty to offer.
I was also beginning to date a girl who went to a Nazarene church that met in an elementary school cafeteria. I invited her to go to church with me one Sunday and she came and “tolerated” our traditional, uptight, rational Presbyterian service and our preacher who just knew the world was soon to end. Afterwards she said, “You need to come to our church. We’re spiritually alive.”
Well, I didn’t quite know what to do with that but I figured I owed her one and so I went. I didn’t know what to expect and to be honest her terminology of “spiritually alive” scared me. Were prophets going to start uttering in tongues and expose all my sins? Amazingly, as soon as I stepped in the door of the cafeteria, I felt a “sweet, sweet Spirit” in the place that I hadn’t felt before – the presence of the Lord. They passionately sang praise songs and raised their hands. The minister was a good teacher. At prayer time he asked for requests and gave time for people to share what they were going through. There was so much emotion being felt and released in that service; everything from joy to grief.
That day, I left my little Presbyterian church behind (but obviously not Presbyterianism) and started attending that Nazarene church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. People started to think that I was going overboard. Probably. But, it was just that I was enthusiastic about the things of the Lord rather than what other people my age were interested in; which was hanging out, drinking, and whatever else came with that. I was finding healing for the anger and unforgiveness I had grudged up within me over my parents divorce when I was a child. I was finding purpose and a reason to live when before I was floundering. I discovered that God had always been with me, and a new awareness that he is present, with me, always, came to me.
In the Apostles’ Creed we confess, “I believe in the Holy Spirit’ and that’s what we’re getting at here: God is always present with us and in us carrying out the healing, liberating, and transforming work in each of us that Jesus came and did once and for all. Oddly, even though I was raised in and around the church I never heard much about the Holy Spirit until I started going to that Nazarene church where it was evident that God isn’t just this white-bearded old man enthroned somewhere way far off judging my morality whom I won’t meet until I’m dead. God the Holy Spirit is present here with us now opening up our relationship with God.
It may be that we all haven’t typically heard much about the presence and work of Holy Spirit over the years. We’d feel much safer to talk about a one off miracle or being “Touched by an Angel” than something as “scary” as God being always with us, and personal, relational, communicative. It seems safer to just be good people with private beliefs and keep God at a distance. But, you know, if you read the Bible from cover-to-cover one thing that you notice in the storyline is that Bible is a testimony of how God is present in his creation with his people; with all people.
Starting at the beginning with Creation, if you look at Genesis 1 from the context of ancient writings instead of trying to make it a Modern scientific account of how God created things, you find that it is a hymn telling how God made creation to be his temple in which he can come and repose and enjoy us; and that God made humanity to be the priesthood that looks after it. In Genesis 2 and 3 God daily visits Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Even after he expels Adam and Eve from the garden, God stays in relationship with them and their family though unseen. Throughout the days of the Patriarchs, God keeps the relationship going promising them a land and to make them a great nation.
When the Israelites wound up in slavery in Egypt he heard their cries and delivered them from Pharaoh. As they wandered in the wilderness he went before them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He had them build a tent or Tabernacle for him to reside in whenever they paused from wandering.
When they went into the Promised Land, God continued to let his presence reside in the Tabernacle in a place called Shiloh as he continued to establish them as a nation on the land he promised them. Once they became a kingdom, Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem and God came to dwell in it in the form of a thick cloud, the glory of the Lord, that was so heavy the priests couldn’t stand and minister. The Temple was the place on earth where heaven and earth were open to each other. When Solomon dedicated the Temple his prayer repeated numerous times the request that when people came to the Temple to pray God would hear in heaven and act on earth.
Over the next couple of centuries as Israel continually turned away from God to worship other gods, God sent prophets to call them back. He finally had to kick them off the Land as he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden. He let the Babylonians conquer them and take them into exile in Babylon. When that happened the prophet Ezekiel had a vision in which he saw the glory of the Lord, that heavy cloud, leave the Temple and head east to Babylon where God would be with his people.
After the exile there is no account of the Presence of the Lord returning to the rebuilt Temple. He’s still looking out for them, but the Temple wasn’t what it used to be. But then comes Jesus, God the Son become a man, and at his baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan where the Israelites first entered the Land, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and he becomes the new Temple where the Living Presence of God among his people dwells.
After Jesus was put to death, and was raised, and then ascended, on Pentecost the Holy Spirit then descended upon Jesus’s followers and the people of God, the disciples of Jesus become the new Temple full of the Glory of the Lord. The Book of Acts records the early spread of the church and we see that wherever Christians gathered, there the presence of the Lord dwelt on earth. Paul even goes on to say that each individual disciple is a temple of God. God was filling the whole earth with people filled with his presence.
Finally the Bible ends with in the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation, we see heaven and Earth made new and God coming from heaven to dwell permanently on Earth. We, the followers of Jesus today are part of that ongoing story of the Book of Acts until those last two chapters of the Revelation come about. Each of us is a temple of God where he lives. When we are gathered together he comes and dwells with us and his presence can be felt. Just as God promised Israel a Land so today he promises to be present with us.
The presence of the Holy Spirit should not surprise or scare us. If you are not so sure about the presence of the Lord stuff, just pray and ask God to show you. Jesus said: “So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk. 11:9-13) If you seek him, you will find him. The presence of the Lord changes everything and in a very good way. Amen.
