Did you know that the word “conspire” means to breath together? Take a breath. Now blow it out again. There! You have just launched a conspiracy. You can hear the word “spirit” in there too –to conspire –to be filled with the same spirit, to be enlivened by the same wind. That is why the word appeals to me, anyhow. What happens between us when we come together to worship God is that the Holy Spirit swoops in and out among us, knitting us together through the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the breaths we breathe. It can happen with two people and it can happen with two thousand people.
Now take another breath. If you have studied earth sciences, then you know that our planet is wrapped in a protective veil called the atmosphere, which separates the air we breathe from the cold vacuum of outer space. Beneath this veil is all the air that ever was. No cosmic planet cleaning company comes along to suck out the old air and pump in new. The same ancient air just keeps recirculating, which means we breathe star dust left over from the creation of the earth. We breathe brontosaurus and pterodactyl breath. We breathe air that has circulated through the rain forests of Kenya, and air that has turned yellow with sulfur over Mexico City. We breathe the same air that Plato breathed, and Mozart and Michelangelo, not to mention Hitler and Lizzie Borden. Every time we breathe we take in what was once some baby’s first breath, or a dying person’s last We take it in, we use it to live, and when we breathe out it carries some of us with it into the next person, or tree, or blue-tailed skink, who uses it to live.
When Jesus let go of his last breath it hovered in the air for a moment and then it was set loose on the world. It was such a pungent breath –so full of passion and life –that it did not simply dissipate as so many other breaths do. It grew, in strength and in volume, until it was a mighty wind, which God sent spinning through an upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. God wanted to make sure that Jesus’ friends were the inheritors of that breath, and it worked.
There they were, about 120 of them, moping around wondering what on earth they were supposed to do without Jesus, when they heard a tornado headed their way. Before any of them could head to the basement, that mighty wind had blown through the entire house, striking sparks that burst into flames above their head and they were filled up with it –every last one of them. And then something clamped down on them and the air came out of them in languages they did not even know they knew.
Like room full of bagpipes all going at once, they set up such a racket that they drew a crowd. People from all over the world, who had gathered in the city, leaned in the windows and pushed through the doors, surprised to hear people speaking their own language so far from home. Parthians expected to see other Parthians, Syrians looked for other Syrians, and yet all they found were a bunch of Galileans all of them going on and on about God’s mighty acts like a bunch of PhDs in middle eastern languages.
Before the day was over the church had grown from 120 to three thousand. Shy people became bold, scared people became gutsy, and lost people had found a sure sense of direction. Disciples who had not believed themselves capable of tying their own sandals without Jesus’ help discovered abilities within themselves they never knew they had. When they opened their mouths they spoke like Jesus. When they laid hands on the sick, it was as if Jesus was touching them. Suddenly, they were doing things they had never seen anyone but Jesus do, and there was no explanation for it except that they had dared to inhale on the day of Pentecost. They had sucked in God’s own breath, and they had been transformed by it.
The book of acts is the story of their adventures. In the Gospels we hear about what God did through Jesus. In acts we learn about God’s actions through the Spirit, by performing artificial resuscitation on bunch of well intentioned bumblers and turning them into a force that changed the history of the world.
The question that remains for us is whether we still believe in a god who acts like this? Do we still believe in a God that blows through doors and sets our heads on fire? Do we still believe in a God with the power to transform us, both as individuals and as a people, or have we come to an unspoken agreement that our God is pretty old and tired by now, someone to whome we may address our prayers but not anyone we really expect to change our lives?
As we ponder these questions, we may find ourselves trying to figure out what the Holy Spirit is anyway. How do you describe the Holy Spirit? What do you tell people when they ask? Even Jesus had a hard time with this one. “the spirit blows where it chooses,” he said in John, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
Apparently, not even Jesus can come up with a concrete description. There are many, many different stories and theories on the Holy Spirit. I hope none of you rests until you have felt the Spirit blow through your own life, shifting things around, opening things us. There is nothing that you can do to make it happen, except to pray words like “Come, Holy Spirit”. If you don’t want changes to blow through then forget those words…don’t use them at all. But if you are the type of person who goes out on the front lawn or sits on the back porch when there is a storm moving through so that you can feel the power that is whipping the trees around, then you are probably a good candidate for those words of prayer.
Asking for a Spirit experience is only half the equation, however. The other half is recognizing it when it has happened. That is a little tougher. I think that there are a lot of people I the world who say they have never encountered the Spirit but when they start talking about their lives it becomes pretty clear that they have. Most of us just don’t know how to name it. We write experiences off as coincidence or some such thing. I want to be clear, each of us has the right to name our own experiences (or not).
Once you get the hang of it, the evidence is easier and easier to spot. Whenever two plus two does not equal four but five –whenever you find yourself taking risks you though you did not have the courage to take or reaching out to someone you had intended to walk away from –you can be pretty sure that you are learning about the presence of the Holy Spirit. And more than that, you are taking part in it, breathing in and breathing out, taking God into you and giving God back to the world again, with some of you attached.
Take a breath. Now just keep on breathing. This is God’s moment-by-moment gift to us. We can call it air or we can call is Spirit. It counts on us to warm it up, to lend it our lives. In return, it promises to fill us with new wind, to set our heads on fire.
Do we still believe in a God who acts like that? More importantly, do we still experience a God who acts like that? I do not know what your answer, is, but if you do not have one, I hope you will discover one. Join the Gospel of the Holy Spirit Conspiracy and see what happens next.
