May 31, 2020
/Pentecost
Acts 2: 1-21; Psalm 104: 25-35,37; 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-13; John 7:37-39
The Rev. Jimmy Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
I grew up in a house that was full of love, and care, and I was provided for. But our family was not very good about church attendance. I think I’ve shared that with you before – which is that for the first twelve or so years of my life I could probably count one Easter and one Christmas Eve service that we attended as a family. Likewise, you probably can guess that there was not much in the way of conversation about the Holy Spirit around our house.
So, for most of my life the Holy Spirit has been a vague, misty, thing that I did not understand. Even after attending church for many years later in my life, I still did not hear much about the Holy Spirit. Whenever people would talk about the Holy Spirit, I found myself uncomfortable around them. My discomfort was not for any good reason, it’s just that I began to associate any kind of talk about the Holy Spirit with a kind of Christianity that seemed judgmental, intolerant, racist, and bigoted. This is an unfair assumption, I know. It is just that the kind of people I most recall talking about the Holy Spirit often appeared that way to me.
So, for many years I avoided the Holy Spirit, I kept it at a distance, because I didn’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t trust people who claimed to be full of it because those people often seemed to act in very condescending ways to others. This belief entered with me into seminary, where I successfully spent three years keeping the Holy Spirit away. Not only was I able to distance myself Holy Spirit filled peers who gladly would have told me everything I was doing wrong and how my faith was not strong enough, but I also kept the Holy Spirit away who by pouring myself into academics: theology, eschatology, ethics and on and on. I pursued academics because I thought intellectual knowledge of God would maybe make the Holy Spirit clearer to me. Maybe I was missing something. As you probably would expect, book knowledge did not fill the hole inside me that I that I did not know at the time could only be filled by the Holy Spirit.
After a time in seminary I realized my pursuit of God through books and academics was kind of interesting, but I did not like where it took me. It took me to a place of passive, unknowing, dull, complacent spirituality. Eventually I got fed up with all the academics. I was tired of theory - I wanted proof. I wanted to know that there was something good out there I could trust but no amount of reading Karl Barth, Schleiermacher, Rowan Williams, or any other big-time author could convince me.
Since I could not find proof of God in books or classes – I began to look for proof of the Spirit elsewhere, and eventually I found it. I found proof – not that academic proof, something better, something that made me feel better. I found proof in a glass bottle. 100 proof, to be more specific. I feel in love with alcohol. What a wonderful Spirit it was! I could touch it, I could taste it, it made life fun, and for a moment while caught up in it, I would forget the emptiness inside me.
I pursued this Spirit with great enthusiasm for quite a while. But then a problem began to emerge, and it was this. This Spirit of drink I had fallen in love with was powerful, in fact more powerful than I, and inevitably I began to lose control of it. I wanted more. This desire for more grew steadily in me until I became entranced by this Spirit, bewildered by this Spirit, and finally the enslaved to it. Gradually I realized like with my studies in seminary, no amount of this Spirit would fill the emptiness inside. I was seeing a therapist at the time to help me make sense of my condition. After listening to me go on about this inability of mine to control my desire for this Spirit, she asked a rather peculiar question. She said “Jimmy, did it ever occur to you that you might be an alcoholic?”
Well, I did not like hearing that question very much. Alcoholism is a problem other people had – not me, I mean was a priest, and had a master’s degree. She stopped me. And asked the question again. “Jimmy, do you think you might be an alcoholic?” I could not answer then, but I knew inside me the answer, yes, I am. And so, I stopped, and found a community of people like me, who share this. They are like family to me. Here is the miracle I discovered: our most desperate moments are necessary for authentic spiritual growth. In this community of people in recovery from addiction I finally, finally have found the Holy Spirit. I looked for it in a book, and it wasn’t there, so I turned to a bottle, it wasn’t their either – instead I found it in people who share their burdens with one another and who love one another.
After a lifetime, I think I finally have learned what the Holy Spirit is, at least for me, and it is God’s ability to do for us what we are incapable of doing for ourselves. It is one of the most powerful things I have ever experienced. I want to briefly share a quote from author and priest Henri Nouwen who describes the Holy Spirit in this way. He says:
The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised to his followers, is the great gift of God. Without the Spirit of Jesus we can do nothing, but in and through his Spirit we can live free, joyful, and courageous lives. . . We cannot create peace and joy, but the Spirit of Christ can fill us with a peace and joy that is not of this world.
I want to close this morning with a few words about the events which have occurred in Minneapolis, and are happening across our country and in the city of Houston. With the death of George Floyd, we are once again confronted with another African American man being killed by law enforcement. We are confronted again, with another life cut short, another grieving family, another grieving community, another place for all of us to lament and confess. We are once again appalled, and we cry out, forty years after the civil rights movement in this country “How can this be?” We grieve. It is an act of faith to grieve. But our grief is not enough. Faith without works is dead. There is action and there is more action.
The events of this week are a stark reminder, that we cannot overcome racism on our own. Civil Rights laws and ordinances move us in the right direction, but there are not enough. I believe we are powerless to overcome our racism, and so we must turn it over to God. We must allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts, to teach us a new way. Ask yourself: when you see a person of another color, do you see them through the lens of your prejudice? What would it look like if you saw them through God’s eyes, as God’s child?
I have an African American friend, and in talking this week, he called me brother, and I could not be more grateful, because neither he nor I would let the actions of others affect our relationship with each other. I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit, because I know I could not do it alone. AMEN.