Spirit Filled

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?
Well, did you? When you were baptized, did you receive the Holy Spirit? Do you know?

Some of us may not be sure. 

Christian teaching about the gift of the Holy Spirit – when it comes and what it means – has changed and varied over the centuries and over our lifetimes. If you grew up in the Episcopal Church – or a few other churches – you might have been told that you get the Holy Spirit at Confirmation. And then more recently you might have been told that the church has been changing our mind about that. That’s the way I learned it.

Other traditions see the Holy Spirit as completely independent of sacraments or the church’s schedule – either it’s what empowers faith for everyone in the first place, or a special gift that only some receive, with spectacular or special symptoms – visions, miraculous healing, and speaking in tongues. Other traditions barely talk about the Spirit.

So there’s probably a variety of experience in this room – just like there’s a variety of experience in the earliest days of the church. Like when Paul gets to Ephesus, and meets some disciples – some followers of Jesus – and finds there’s something a little different about them than the ones he knew in Corinth or Jerusalem or Phiippi. So he asks them: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” And they promptly reply, “What Holy Spirit??”

In it’s original context this is mostly a story about how sometimes the Christian message spread incompletely, and about how Paul brings these eager, faithful people into a more complete faith. But it’s also a story about baptism, and how Jesus, in baptism, gives us all the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We heard the story of Jesus’ own baptism today. Jesus receives the baptism of John, a full-immersion dunking in the Jordan river that symbolizes the repentance of God’s people, a cleansing from sin. (Though Mark is, by the way, pretty careful not to imply that Jesus himself had any sins to repent and be cleansed of!).

That baptism of John that Jesus experienced is the same baptism that the people Paul meets in Ephesus had experienced. Water that cleanses them, that marks their change of heart, and washes away the old stains of sin. But when Jesus is baptized, something different happens – something more. When Jesus is baptized, the heavens rip open – the everyday separation between God and humanity is torn – and Jesus sees the Spirit descend, hears God say, “You are my Son. Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

And from then on, baptism is changed. It still symbolizes repentance and cleansing. But in the name of Jesus, in the way of Jesus, baptism means that we, too, receive the Holy Spirit, we too, are called out by God, proclaimed as God’s own beloved, well-pleasing, children.

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? 

Yes. 

Because Jesus did, yes, you did, whether you know it or not. 

But how do you know?

I mean, I definitely did not see any doves when I was baptized. The sky and the church roof stayed closed and ordinary that day; I didn’t hear voices from heaven. I didn’t start speaking in tongues, proclaiming God’s will and word that day, the way the disciples at Ephesus did with Paul. I still don’t see visions, hear heavenly voices, or speak in tongues – unless the ability to order beer in Spanish counts.

I don’t think most of us see visions, hear voices, and speak powerful prophecy at baptism, or most days of our lives. But whatever you experienced at your baptism, whatever you were taught, the witness of scripture insists that when we are baptized into Jesus, we – you and I – are filled with the Holy Spirit, and receive that as a gift.

Paul knows this, and keeps reminding his friends and fellow Christians that there are all sorts of ways to see that we are living with the gift of the Spirit – not just speaking in tongues, but the ability to translate and understand these words of God; not just prophecy, but service, generosity, teaching, everyday healing, mercy, and leadership.

The tradition of the gifts of the Spirit that Paul knew, that Paul looked for in the disciples in Ephesus, starts with the words of Isaiah telling us how we’ll recognize the Messiah:

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:2)

And when we baptize someone in the Episcopal Church today, we recognize and pray for those same gifts, in different language:

Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit, we pray. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. (Book of Common Prayer, page 308)

Have you ever felt yourself full of joy and wonder at the world that God has created? Ever needed the courage and strength to persist, and found it?

Ever felt full of generosity, compassion, or encouragement, and found a way to act on that, or nudge others along?

Ever felt inspired, even a little, to love God;

ever needed to hear God’s guidance on your next steps and somehow found your way forward?

If you said yes to any one of those things, then you know – you’ve lived the proof – that you’ve received the Holy Spirit, whether or not you ever see doves, hear a heavenly voice, or hear yourself speak in tongues.

You received the Holy Spirit, in baptism, and like Jesus, that’s how we know ourselves to be children of God. And that’s why God calls us to baptism in the first place. We’re called to baptism to become the people of the Spirit, the hands and feet and hearts and heads filled with the Spirit’s gifts in this world and for the world.

You see, if you or I only come to baptism for repentance and cleansing, for an admission ticket to church or to an eventual heaven, we may get that,

but we’re only halfway there.

We are baptized with the Holy Spirit – you and I – not so much for forgiveness as empowerment. We are baptized for action. We are baptized with the Holy Spirit not so that we can enter heaven someday, but so that we begin to make heaven real here and now.

Receiving the Holy Spirit, we become children of God, like Jesus, the leaders and engineers and builders of heaven. We receive the Spirit so we can be the people who by generosity, mercy, leadership, courage, strength, wonder, and faith, make God’s kingdom real on earth, here and now.

So if Paul – or any other preacher – ever asks you, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” you should all be saying yes.

You did. We did.

We received the Holy Spirit, and it’s time to make sure we know it and live it. Because God’s gift of the Spirit to us is, in fact, God’s plan for the world.

You are God’s child, beloved, Spirit-filled, empowered for action, here and now.

Let us make God well-pleased.