A HOLY WIND - May 11, 2008
Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23
This is truly an auspicious day -- when we celebrate both Mother's Day and the day of Pentecost, which is the birthday of the church.
But more important, it is the day we are reminded that it is the Holy Spirit that speaks to our heart.
Holy Spirit comes from the Greek words hagios, which means holy, and pneuma, which means breath, or a gentle wind. And the words for 'wind,' 'breath,' and 'spirit' are the same in both Greek and Hebrew.
So the Holy spirit, this wind that is the breath of God, is the healing breath of God's spirit.
Sometimes this healing breath is a gentle stirring that moves us little by little.
The 12th-century mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, once told a little parable:
"Listen, there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus, I am a feather on the breath of God."
This feather takes us back to creation, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, and they hear the sound of God at the time of the evening breeze.
This Holy Spirit, this Holy Wind, is about movement. It is the feeling of being alive as we put our face to the fresh, gentle breeze and know that God is there.
Sometimes we can see the effects of this Holy Wind: leaves blowing on the trees; a flag flapping on a flag pole; the wind filling sails on a sailboat, moving it across the water; the Trade Winds blowing the vog away from the islands, keeping the air cool and fresh.
But, you say, wind can also be fierce, and destructive. There are tornados in the Midwest that threaten even the strongest buildings. We know about Hurricane Iniki that destroyed or damaged so many buildings on Kauai.
David Bennett writes about the power of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind:
"I must admit that I am not very fond of mighty winds. Growing up, I was always afraid of storms, fearing that one would destroy my house. This might be because a tornado touched down about a mile from my house when I was a toddler, and I remember seeing the remains of houses as my parents drove by the storm damage. To me, that the Holy Spirit is called a Mighty Wind means that the experience of God's Spirit is not always going to be nice, orderly or proper, as we tend to define these terms today in our church's culture, and is in fact going to be scary and paradigm shifting."*
But this wind, this Holy Spirit, is the breath of God, it is Jesus breathing the breath of life into us, to move us just enough so that we won't fall down or be destroyed. It is the breath of life that will allow us to move with God, and we will be able to be that feather, or that flag, or that sailboat moving on the breeze floating through life on the breath of God. That breath is the creative wind that blows through our lives to clear out the baggage that we carry around to bring new energy, joy, happiness and peace.
The Holy Spirit is personal, and Fred Craddock remembers the first time he went to a minister to talk about something personal. He says:
It was tough as toenails. It was hard to go and talk to a minister. I had been baptized about two years. Some fellows that I worked with in a box factory went uptown to get a hot dog or a hamburger for lunch. We had an hour for lunch. I still had on my nail apron, and they had on their nail aprons; we drove nails to make these boxes. We passed a blind man on the sidewalk with his guitar, a sign that said, "I'm blind. Please help me." and a tin cup taped to the neck of his guitar. It suddenly occurred to the three of us to play a trick. Each of us took some nails from our nail aprons and dropped them in his tin cup, noisily, and he said, "Thank you, thank you very much. May God bless you. Thank you very much."
"That began to eat at me; of all the ugly, terrible things to do. Well, I couldn't get rid of it, so finally I did what some people do only in desperation; I talked to the minister. I went to the minister and told him what I had done, and he sat up at his desk and said, 'Are you aware that this country is in the biggest war of our history?' It was World War II, the last year of it. 'People are dying by the hundreds every day; soldiers have been away from their families for years. We don't know how this whole thing is going, people dying, starving. And you are worried about nails in a blind man's cup?' He let me go.
My little problem was swallowed up in the problems of the world, but it wouldn't go. Finally, I went to the youth minister, Mignonne. We didn't pay her, but she was a minister. I told her what I had done, and she told me that was a terrible, terrible thing to do. She felt bad, like I felt bad, and she said, 'God forgives you for that, but why don't you next week when you have your lunch hour, why don't you go to that same blind man and tell him what you did and ask him to forgive you, and then if you have a nickel or a dime or a quarter, give it to him.' I did, and that poor man forgave me, and he smiled and said, 'I know how it is. Lot of boys are full of mischief, aren't they?' He forgave me, I had been baptized already, and I was carrying that around.
"Now that may not seem big to you, but think about what you're carrying around right now. Would you like to get rid of it?"**
It is the Day of Pentecost -- the day the Breath of God, the Wind of God, comes to blow through our church, and to blow through our lives.
Amen
Pastor Fran
*David Bennett, "Come upon us mighty wind," ancient-future.net/pentsemon.html
**Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, p. 101-102
