By R. William Carroll
Few of us will ever experience the Holy Spirit in the same dramatic ways the first disciples did on the Day of Pentecost. Most of us will never exercise the same ecstatic gifts found in the Neo-Pentecostal movement.
Still, the Holy Spirit is the gift of Christ for all who believe. Episcopalians believe that the Spirit is given to each one of us in Holy Baptism, and that the Spirit is always, already present, even before we are baptized, leading us to the waters and preparing us to receive the Gospel.
In the Gospel appointed for Pentecost this year, Jesus says that the Spirit leads us into all truth. The Spirit is also the fullness of love. Romans 5:5, a verse Augustine loved to cite against the Pelagians, states that the love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that is given to us. This love heals our wills and makes us whole. In Christianity, love and truth belong together. Christ is the embodiment of God’s love. Not the love that God has, but the love that God IS. Jesus is also, as he says in John 14, “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Jesus also says that the Spirit declares to us the things that belong to him. It is no accident that the Spirit comes on the final day of Eastertide. The paschal candle remains lit on the Day of Pentecost, because the Spirit comes to unite us in the confession of resurrection faith and to equip us to share that faith with others. The candle is extinguished, because the light of Christ now burns in US. We are like the bush at Sinai, burning but not consumed. We share the paschal fire that burns at the heart of the Church by sharing the story, welcoming the stranger, and serving the neighbors God gives us. We share it also by bearing witness to the truth before the rulers of this age.
At the heart of the Church lies this Gift, who is him-/herself divine. The Spirit is another word for grace, what the scholastics called uncreated grace (see Karl Rahner’s brilliant essays on this subject). The Spirit unites us in a single faith, gathers us in a single Body, and sends us on a single mission.
The work of the Spirit is to make us holy. The Spirit is the anointing one. The Spirit is the one who unites us to Christ, the anointed. The Spirit, as Paul tells us in Romans 8, conforms us to the image of God’s Son, and makes us cry out (as he did) “Abba, Father.” The Spirit is the principle of our participation in the Paschal Mystery.
The Spirit is also the principle of freedom in the Church. He/She is God’s left hand, just as the Son is the right hand, the Logos, the principle of reason and order. The two are inseparable. But we ought not to forget that without the breath of the Spirit, the Word cannot be given voice. In the Church, we are given over to a tradition that precedes us (and which will be after us), and yet we are living beings and we ourselves contribute to that which is handed down to us. The Spirit is not safe. One of our beloved hymns (#296) tells us that “the Spirit shakes the Church of God.”
And yet, the Spirit’s mission, at its heart, is to drive us ever deeper into the mystery of Jesus. The Spirit’s presence makes him contemporary and present always (“even unto the end of the age”), just the Spirit was active in his conception, overshadowing Mary and working through her free consent, so that the New Creation might begin as the old one did, with the Spirit hovering over the waters.
Nothing that is ugly, false, or evil can withstand the Spirit’s power. The Spirit is the Lord God, who is all beauty, all truth, all goodness. God is supreme Love, without remainder. Hatred cannot withstand God’s relentless and powerful love. And, in the power of the Spirit, God is transfiguring the world, so that we come to share Christ’s crucified and risen glory. In the Spirit, we know love that endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things. In the Spirit, with Christ, we are “more than conquerors.” For even in dying, we are reborn to eternal life, through the Lord and Lifegiver.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we sigh “Thy Kingdom Come.” When God’s Kingdom does come, this too will be the ministry of the Spirit.
Come Holy Spirit, sweet living charity, Lord God. Come, we pray, and fill us with the fire of your love. And lead us now and always into truth.
The Rev. R. William Carroll is rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His sermons appear on his parish blog,and he also blogs at Living the Gospel. He is a member of the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.