Dynamos

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 24, 2015

Pentecost

Dynamos

Selected Texts

“The Spirit sets us free to accept ourselves

and to love God and neighbor….

The Spirit gives us courage

to pray without ceasing;

to witness among all people to Christ as Lord and Savior;

to hear the voices of peoples long silenced;

and to work with others for justice freedom and peace.”

These are words from our Brief Statement of Faith,

words we say when we reaffirm our faith

in the Holy Spirit,

when we say, “We trust in God the Holy Spirit,

everywhere the giver and renewer of life.”

It’s always seemed to me

that the Holy Spirit has baffled us more than a little.

We get God,

and we get Jesus,

at least sort of;

but when we talk about the third person

of the Triune God,

the Holy Spirit,

I’ve always sensed that we Presbyterians

find ourselves confused, muddled, flummoxed,

uncertain as to what we should think or believe.

Michelangelo gave us as stirring an image of God

as we could ever hope to find

in his famous paintings

on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,

an image that endures for most of us.

And it’s easy for us to picture Jesus in our minds

from all the pictures we’ve seen in Bibles,

in Sunday School textbooks,

and in classrooms around churches,

churches everywhere, including our own.

But the Holy Spirit?

How are we to picture the Spirit?

Is the Spirit a “he”?

A “she”?

An “it”?

In the earliest years of the church,

there was an effort to define the Spirit as a she,

as Mother, through whom we are reborn,

with God our Father,

and Christ our brother.

The effort eventually fizzled

because there was nothing in the Bible

to support the idea.

Those of us old enough

to have had our thinking shaped by the words of

the King James Bible may be even more confused.

A bad translation from Hebrew and Greek,

through Latin to English,

gave us the inaccurate,

and really quite terrible term, “Holy Ghost”.

                                                              

It is a term that has endured over the centuries,

as bad as it has been,

perhaps because we grasp the concept of “ghost”

better than we do the concept of “spirit”.

It is on Pentecost that we shine our brightest light

on the Holy Spirit.

We get out the red stoles and paraments

and listen to the wonderful story Luke gave us

in the Acts of the Apostles,

the story of all of the Apostles gathered together

shortly after our Risen Lord had ascended into heaven

right before their very eyes.

The Apostles had elected Matthias to replace Judas

as the twelfth disciple,

and then they waited,

waited to learn what was expected of them,

waited to learn

what they were going to be called to do,

Jesus final words to them burning in their brains:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit

comes upon you.”

(Acts 1:8)

Power – for what purpose?

“And suddenly from heaven

there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind,

and it filled the entire house

where they were sitting.

Divided tongues, as of fire,

appeared among them,

and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…”

(Acts 2:2)

It is wonderful imagery:

tongues of fire resting

on the head of each apostle!

It had to be true –

who could make up something like that?

We speak of this story

as if it is the Holy Spirit’s

first appearance in the Bible,

other than the Spirit’s brief appearance

in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism.

But the Spirit of God blows through

all the pages of the Bible.

The breath of God is found in the Old Testament

as well as the New Testament,

the Spirit of God always there,

gracing God’s children

with the presence of God,

awakening God’s children to their calling;

and, as we say in our Brief Statement,

gracing all God’s children with courage,

gracing all God’s children with power.

It was the Spirit of God

that graced Sampson with the power

to break free of his bonds

after he’d been captured by the Philistines:

“the spirit of the Lord rushed on Sampson,

[and] the ropes that were on his arms

became like flax that had caught fire,

and his bonds melted off his hands.”

(Judges 15:14)

It was the Spirit of God

that graced Gideon with power;

not the physical power of Sampson,

but the power of leadership;

to lead God’s people as their judge,

“the spirit of the Lord

took possession of Gideon”

(Judges 6:34)

The Spirit of God graces with power,

graces with courage,

and even graces with life,

as we know from a favorite story,

the story found in the Book of the prophet Ezekiel

the story of the Valley of the Dry Bones.

You remember the story, don’t you:

how centuries before the birth of our Lord,

the prophet Ezekiel was brought out by the Spirit

and set down in a valley of

bleached, dried bones,

human bones,

and then the Lord God said to Ezekiel,

“Prophesy to the breath;  

prophesy, mortal,

and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God:

Come from the four winds, O breath,

and breathe upon these slain,

that they may live.”

And the bones rattled;

those dusty, brittle, lifeless bones,

began to rattle with life,

life that came from the Spirit of God,

life that came from the breath of God.

Reading this story we are so taken by the imagery

that it’s easy to miss the promise

God made to his children,

all God’s children,

a promise made centuries before the dove

descended upon our Lord as he came up

out of the waters of the Jordan:

“I will put my spirit within you”

(Ezekiel 37:14)

“I will put my spirit within you.”

This is God’s promise to us,

a promise that goes back to

the beginning of time,

that we will have God’s Spirit,

know God’s Spirit,

find strength, energy,

courage, determination

and life through the Spirit,

God’s Holy Spirit,

the very breath of God within us.

God’s Spirit will help us,

as Jesus promised us,

guide us,

sometimes nudge us the way we should go

when we’ve lost our way.

Speaking through the prophet Joel

God reinforced his promise, saying,

“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

Even on the male and female slaves…

I will pour out my spirit.”

(Joel 2:28)

The Spirit graces us with power that is more

than the physical power Sampson had

that allowed him to break his bonds;

it is a power that moves us,

It is a dynamic power

that helps us to know life in its fullest,

its richest.

The Greek word that we translate as “power”                

is the word “dynamo,”

and it is such a perfect word,

for the power we receive through the Spirit

is dynamic power,

vibrant power

that leads us to fullness in life –

if we let the Spirit lead us.

The Apostle Paul teaches us

that we are to live by the Spirit

and be guided by the Spirit,

our lives reflecting the fruits of the Spirit,

as we talked about last week:

“Love and joy,

peace and patience,

kindness and generosity,

faithfulness,

gentleness”

(Galatians 5:22)

Conversely, when our lives are filled with

“anger,

strife,

quarrels,

dissension,

factions”

Paul wants us to understand

that we are not living by the Spirit,

that we’ve closed ourselves off

to the grace-filled,

grace-giving,

community- building power of the Spirit.

(Galatians 5:20)

It is an extraordinary gift we’ve been given,

this power,

for it is power to be our best:

It is power to be forgiving

power to be accepting,

power to be compassionate

power to be generous,

power to be big hearted, open hearted,

power to be open minded,

power to be patient,

power to love,

love family, neighbor

and even enemy, as our Lord teaches us.

The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann has written,

“The Spirit calls us into life:”

the life God wants for us,

the life our Lord calls us to.

Moltmann captures it perfectly with his words:

“In the experience of the Spirit,

the spring of life begins to flow in us again.

We begin to flower and become fruitful.

A … love for life awakens in us…

We go to meet life expecting the rebirth

of everything that lives,

and with this expectation

we experience our own rebirth,

and the rebirth we share with everything else.”

This is life in the Spirit,

life from the Spirit,

life from the breath of God.

In the words of the hymn,

Spirit of the living God,

fall afresh upon us:

fill us,

renew us,

shape us,

empower us,

embolden us for service.

Spirit of the Living God,

awaken us to life,

true life.

AMEN