A few years ago I was serving in a
parish that had a regular routine for the Feast of Pentecost. They asked
everyone who spoke a foreign language to read the Gospel in that language. One
person would read, then another, and another, and so on. Finally, the deacon
would read the Gospel in English.
We decided to do it differently one
year. And, we made what we were doing a surprise, to see if people could get a
sense of what the first Pentecost was like. Instead of reading the Gospel, we
decided to have people read the Acts lesson because it tells the story of the
first Pentecost. We had about fifteen people read in their native languages.
The other thing we did differently
was instead of reading from the lectern, we had all the readers sit in
different places throughout the congregation. The first reader read in English,
and when he reached the point where the lesson says, “Each one heard them
speaking in the language of each,”[1]
he stood up and kept on reading. That was the signal for the next person to
begin reading the lesson in another
language. Pretty soon we had people popping up all over the congregation in a
cacophony of voices rising and falling as people overlapped and then faded out
as they finished. I think we heard Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Italian,
Tagalog, Mandarin, Navajo, Korean, and a host of other languages. When the last
reader finished the lesson in English again, we sat in silence.
A few people were quite startled. In
addition, some of the people who popped up were people we didn’t see very often
so one or two people didn’t recognize them. They thought they had just wandered
in off the street and might be crazy, or drunk, or even dangerous. One of the
ushers started forward to remove someone who popped up reading a foreign
language, and then realized what was happening and sat back down. After the
service, one person was quite angry because it was disturbing. Later that week
the person told me that after some reflection, perhaps being startled was part
of what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit agitates as much as it advocates,
and provokes as much as it comforts.[2]
Which brings me to this: it’s always
puzzled me why we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Because no matter how we try to
cover it up, the coming of the Holy Spirit means agitating as much as it means
advocating and provoking us as much as it means comforting us. The Holy Spirit
gets us out of our comfort zones and into new and uncharted territory.
I hate to tell you this, but if you
want to stop the action of the Holy Spirit, at least for a while, there are
only two phrases you need to memorize. One is: “We’ve never done it that way
before.” The other is, “We’ve always done it this way.”
So why do we pray, “Come Holy Spirit, come?” Maybe…just
maybe… we pray for the Holy Spirit to come because we’re a little bit bored and
a little bit passive. We think if the Holy Spirit would come, just once, and
maybe just for a little while, say a couple of minutes, then life would be a
little better. Not a lot, you understand, because that’s uncomfortable, but
just a little.
I think if we were totally
honest, what most of us really mean when we pray – okay, please don’t throw
your hymnals at me – but what most of us really mean is, “Come Holy Spirit and
let us stay exactly the way we are but feel better about it.” Be careful though,
because if our prayer
gets answered, I guarantee you, your life will get turned upside down and
inside out when the Holy Spirit comes. People learn new languages and speak new
tongues. Fires get lit and once lit are impossible to put out.
Life
is different. Make no mistake about it. The Holy Spirit provokes and agitates
as much as the Spirit advocates for us and comforts us. We can’t have one
without the other. The action of the Holy Spirit is exciting, and most of us,
if we’d admit it, would rather not get too excited. It takes too much energy
and besides, it’s too unpredictable.
This
really is good news. The Holy Spirit we celebrate on the Feast of Pentecost,
the same Holy Spirit who came to the disciples gathered on the first Pentecost,
has a way of being disorderly, disruptive, and difficult. But this same Holy
Spirit is the Spirit who gives us courage, confidence, and comfort. This is the
same Holy Spirit who guides and guards, who shines light in dark places and
breathes new life into us as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. This is
the same Holy Spirit who removes our fear and joins us in prayer when we say,
“Come Holy Spirit.”
This
is the same Holy Spirit who comes to us and stirs us up by agitating us as much
as advocating, and provoking us as much as comforting us. So “Come, Holy
Spirit, Come. And light us on fire.” AMEN.
The Rev. Nicolette Papanek
©2016
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