Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Ah, the Spirit of Truth. I think we are dearly wishing for this Spirit these days. Certainly in our secular world, as we are bombarded by accusations of Fake News, as we hear conflicting accounts of current affairs, as we watch events unfold before our eyes and wonder how much of it is engineered and manipulated to elicit certain beliefs. There are times when we yearn for Jesus to send that Spirit of Truth to blow through the world and blow away everything that is fake. We yearn for the Spirit to speak truth to power.
And not just in the world. In the church, too. We don’t talk about it as much, but we’re short on truth in the church, as well. We are not as forthcoming and honest about our history as we like to think we are, particularly when it involves the institution-sanctioned persecution of others. We hide or overlook the messy stories of our past, particularly when they involve clergy abuse. We have a tendency to silence those whom God sends to be truth-speakers in our midst, particularly when their words point out our inconsistencies or hypocrisies and call us to change.
And yet, in the church, too, we yearn for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit. We cry out for renewal, for freedom from bondage, for new life. Despite our fears and misgivings about what might happen, we do, deep down in our souls, crave this Spirit of Truth, who is also the Spirit of renewal, and freedom, and new life. We know, as Jesus says in John, chapter 8, that “the truth will set [us] free.” The Holy Spirit, the bringer of truth, will set the body of Christ free. And so we cry out, “Come, Holy Spirit!”
Actually, it’s more like we whisper, “Come, Holy Spirit.” For one thing, European or Scandinavian-descended Lutherans aren’t really a shouting-in-church kind of people. For another, the Holy Spirit coming is, well, overwhelming. Although we talk about the Spirit of Gentleness, and the Spirit of Tenderness, and the Spirit of Peace and Serenity, just as often when the Holy Spirit comes, it comes as the Spirit of Disruption. The Spirit of Unsettledness. The Spirit of Change. Because these are the things that Truth does. Truth disrupts the hold that the Fake has over us. Truth unsettles the systems of power that keep some down and lift others up, and it unsettles those who are caught in those systems. Truth brings about change––to us, and to the world.
We see this disrupting Spirit in our Pentecost Story. The story in Acts is full of disruption. It begins with a “violent wind.” This is not a light, refreshing, Mediterranean breeze. This is a blast of wind, that rushes in, whips the dust off the floor into our eyes, scatters our neatly arranged piles of paper out the window, slams the doors, blows our carefully tidied hair, and expectations, into tangles and disarray! The Holy Spirit begins the Pentecost story with the kind of wind that starts tornados, and hurricanes––ready to disrupt!
And then, this Holy Spirit comes to rest, as a tongue or flicker of fire, on each person in the room. Now don’t be fooled––the disruptive movement of the Spirit has not calmed down. We might look at the candle flame on the altar and think, oh, that’s not so bad. I mean yeah, it’s fire, but what’s one little flame? Well, in the Roman Empire, the coins, like they do now, had a picture of the ruler on them––the Roman Emperor. And the Roman Emperor claimed for himself the status of divinity. The Roman Imperial Cult established that the Emperor was, literally, a god. And to symbolize that divinity, the coins showed a flame over his head. The flame over his head was a marker of his divinely-ordained, never-to-be-challenged, never-to-be-disrupted authority. The claim that the apostles had flames over each of their heads was no whisper, no calm, flickering single flame. It was, to Jews back then, a clear shout of truth to power––a powerful protest against the Roman Imperial Cult that demanded worship of the Emperor and that was, in effect, a cult of death. The Holy Spirit was there to disrupt the religious institution. Not of Jerusalem, but of Rome. Not to shine on it with a gentle glow but, with all those combined tongues of fire, to burn it down.
And then there’s the disruption of Spirit-blessed diversity. That’s what it is when the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to speak in other languages, so that in the immense, international crowd gathered for the Temple festival, “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” Spirit-blessed diversity. To the outside ear, it sounded like chaos, cacophony, unintelligible babble. (It was, actually, the very reversal of Babel.) But to God, and to those blessed by the Spirit, it was the Spirit’s disruption of sameness, sounding a loud and lively harmony of voices.
Now this disruption is all well and good when it happens somewhere else, some time very long ago. From our comfortable present, we admire those disruptive moments in history that have brought us to today, because we have benefitted from the disruption of Pentecost. We have benefitted when God has sent and empowered truth-speakers in our midst in the past. The church word for them is “prophets,” and if we like the truth they spoke, and if we’ve benefitted from their holy disruption, we’ll use that word. Luther was a prophet. He spoke the truth of God’s grace to the power of the exploitative church. He spoke the truth of our equality in baptism to the power of the hierarchy. Martin Luther King Jr., named after that first Luther, was another prophet. Blessed by the Holy Spirit, he spoke truth to the powers of racism and white supremacy.
But if we don’t like the disruption these Spirit-empowered people are bringing, ah, then we call them something else. If we don’t benefit from the changes they’re calling for, if we find that we are the ones who are being brought down, that we are the ones who are being unsettled, then we use other words for them––“heretics,” or, prominent in the news these days, “protestors,” or “activists,” and if we really don’t like the truth they’re speaking, “troublemakers.” Only the word we use isn’t so polite. Martin Luther was a prophet to us Lutherans who like what he said. He was a heretic to those who didn’t. To those whose positions were disrupted, and unsettled, and changed, to those who were enjoying the systems of fake power, he was a “troublemaker.” Martin Luther King, Jr., was a prophet to those of us who believe in racial justice. He was also labelled a possible traitor to the country by those who didn’t like his message. Again, to those who were enjoying the systems of fake power, he was a “troublemaker.”
But we know that these two prophets, along with others in our past, were empowered by the Holy Spirit. The changes that they brought were disruptive, but they were avenues for new life. God used them to bring our dry bones to life. And so even now, when the church has found itself too often on the wrong side of power and we find ourselves calling more and more prophets “troublemakers,” we still yearn, deep in our hearts, for God to act. And so we begin, albeit in whispers, to call the Spirit.
Ah, and God hears our whispers. And God sends the Holy Spirit. Indeed, God has never stopped sending the Spirit to us. As Luther says in the Small Catechism, in his explanation to the Third Article of the Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit” means that “the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.” The Holy Spirit is daily at work in our midst, keeping us in the true faith. Through the Holy Spirit, God keeps the church in truth. As disruptive as that might be for us, God does it because it brings us new life. God does it through our sons and our daughters. God does it through our young people, and our old people. God does it through those who are slaves to the systems and yearning to break free. God gives them voices to speak the truth that God loves all without exception, that diversity is a gift from God for our benefit. To speak the truth that power is meant to make us all equal, to be used to overcome inequity and poverty and oppression. To speak the truth that we are created to give life to the whole earth, not just to a privileged few. That when one suffers, we all suffer, and when one lives, we all live. To speak the truth that God is the one who brings the dry bones to life, and that God empowers us to do the same.
And this truth is disruptive. When the Holy Spirit speaks through these people, through these prophets, it seems as if the heavens are splitting apart and the earth is coming to pieces. It seems as if the light has darkened and the mood has turned red. It seems as if chaos and disruption are all around us. And only after that, only after these things, only after Truth has spoken to power and put power in its place does God’s great and glorious day come to pass.
The liturgical colour for Pentecost is red. It’s the colour of fire, the colour of blood, it’s often considered the colour of anger. It’s a peculiar choice––it’s definitely not a softly affirming colour, like pink, or light blue. It’s not gentle on the eyes, or calming. It’s a strong colour. A disruptive colour. It’s perfect for this way that the Holy Spirit––the Spirit of Truth––is present among us. This red is a reminder to us of the way that God calls us, as individuals and as the church, to be in the world––as disruptive truth-speakers. God calls us, and God empowers us, through the Holy Spirit––the Lord, the Giver of Life, the Spirit of Truth. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[N.B. I am deeply grateful to the June 2016 students of Introduction to Spirit and Community at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary who developed this idea of the Holy Spirit as disruptive.]
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