Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?
We heard Paul ask that of a small group of Jesus-followers in Ephesus this morning, and now I want to ask you for a show of hands:
Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became a believer?
(if you’re not quite sure, go with what feels like the true answer, not what you think is the “right” answer)
I asked you not to go for the “right” answer if you’re not sure, because basically, whether you showed your hand or not, you are all right.
The Episcopal Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is given to each of us in our baptism.
But our church’s teaching on that has been, mmm, less than perfectly clear through the years.
So I know a lot of people - including me for many years of my life - who would have answered Paul the same way those disciples in Ephesus did centuries ago:
“No, I didn’t even know there was a Holy Spirit to get.”
I also know folks who have been a bit concerned about receiving the Spirit because that might get us into something embarrassing, like speaking in tongues or preaching in the street.
And then there are lots of us who know the gift is given to us at baptism but don’t know if we’ve ever experienced receiving it.
What’s more culturally accessible is knowing that we’ve been baptized (all of us who have been baptized) into the forgiveness of sins – much as those who received John’s baptism in the Jordan so long ago were baptized. We know, mostly, how the sins and errors and omissions we’ve wound ourselves in, the petty or substantial evils that have left their mark on our hearts, the general failure of human beings to love God and one another perfectly – are all washed away in the water that conveys God’s gift of generous love, and we become forgiven – and repeatedly forgiveable – people.
We – or our parents and godparents – generally expected that from our baptism, along with the recognition that we belong – to Jesus who enfolds us in eternal life, to God and to one another in the church.
(That’s easier to track, since you find yourself on the church’s mailing list.)
The Holy Spirit part is often…. fuzzier and less certain.
And – well, let’s do this with another show of hands – how many of you, when you were baptized, saw or heard or felt something like a heavenly bird descending on you?
Anyone experience something like this when you supported or sponsored someone else for baptism?
Experiences like the one Jesus has, as John baptizes him in the Jordan river, are extremely rare among modern Christians (and as far as I can tell, historically, too.)
But deep in the heart of the church is a conviction that we must receive the Holy Spirit. That Jesus’ baptism and the descent of the Spirit are a model for what we, too, must experience, becoming children of God with Jesus.
Jesus himself promised that Spirit to his followers, more than once. The Spirit that will enable us to bear witness to the love and truth of Jesus, empower us to participate in miracles (often the slow and subtle kind, rather than flashy and sudden miracles), inspire us to act like Jesus, abide in us to draw us closer to God.
So we must receive the Spirit.
We need it.
Paul knows this – and immediately acts to make sure that the Jesus followers in Ephesus, and everyone who follows them, receive, and are filled with the Spirit of God, promised by Jesus, which empowers us to proclaim – by word, by action, or both – the good news of Christ.
And since that day, the church has prayed, and baptized, and laid hands on new believers, right down to you and me and the next person to be baptized at Trinity, so that we receive the Spirit, that we’re empowered to proclaim, to show, the extraordinary power, wonder, and love of God – just like Jesus himself begins to do after his baptism.
And I know – with Paul, with the example of Jesus, through the experience of generations in the church – that we, you, have been given that Spirit.
The thing is, you and I might not have felt that the day we were baptized.
Some of us have felt it – then or since.
But any of us here might live a full life trying to follow Jesus, to believe, with the church, in the good news of Christ, and still be wondering if we’ll ever start feeling empowered, or inspired, or enabled by, or filled up with, the presence or power of the Spirit of God.
Sometimes (often?) we need help to recognize and receive that gifted Spirit, that spark in us that is the life of God, breathing in us.
We need something – a situation of challenge or opportunity – a ritual or special moment – to evoke that spark already in us. To make the Holy Spirit already given, a tangible, noticeable, vivid part of our lives, our selves.
I wonder, a little bit, if that’s part of what brought Jesus to John, at the Jordan river, all those years ago. The fullness of God was in him – the Spirit was him already – and being also just as human as you and me, I wonder if Jesus wanted or needed something to make tangible, visible, vivid the truth already in him.
(I’m out on my own little theological limb here, don’t take that as the gospel truth, but…)
Then I wonder a bit if that’s one of the reasons the Episcopal Church encourages us, when we’ve been baptized, to keep renewing that baptism each time someone else is baptized, and repeat the beliefs and promises we claimed at baptism – the things that honestly, aren’t very practical without the gift and work of the Holy Spirit in us. To choose confirmation when we are ready to make a personal claim on the promises and beliefs someone else claimed for us when we were younger. And to – from time to time – get a little wet, just a sprinkle of ritual, to refresh our first experience of baptismal water, renew ourselves as people ready to receive the gift of that empowering, inspiring, challenging, vital Spirit.
Maybe one of us, or more of us, will feel and receive that gift turned loose in our lives today, as we repeat our commitment of faith and promises of how we live our beliefs – promises we need the Spirit to help us fully carry out. As we renew promises about the practices of faith, love, witness and action that demonstrate the work of the Spirit in us, whether we ever see a diving heavenly bird or not. Maybe you’ll feel the Spirit turned loose in you as get just a little wet, sprinkled with a bit of Jesus’ immersion in the waters of the Jordan and our own baptismal water.
I want that for us. I want that empowering of the Holy Spirit, which lets us “witness to” – proclaim and share – our experiences of God’s love and power.
That might mean you start to prophesy or preach; to tell the world about God’s presence and will and work, like those disciples in Ephesus when Paul renewed their baptism.
But it also might be that what’s set free in you is the “witnessing” of discovering and sharing God’s work in the world by just reading the Bible with other people;
deepening the love with which you pray, or gather in church;
opening your heart to a stronger desire to forgive and be forgiven;
inspiring you to see just that bit more easily the face of Christ in other people;
empowering you to make a claim for justice or a move to make peace, in an everyday way in your family, workplace (school), or community life.
We need that, all of us – that’s the strength of our community at Trinity, when you come right down to it – those not-so-preachy, not-so-flashy inspirations and experiences and openings that the Holy Spirit works in us.
I see that work among us, the Holy Spirit in and among you, and me, whether you raised your hand to claim that Spirit a few minutes ago, or not.
Maybe you see it, among us, too.
And maybe, if I asked that first question with a plural “you” – have you, have WE received the Holy Spirit, as we become believers? – maybe your hand would go up with confidence, lifted by that Spirit.
Have we received the Holy Spirit?
I say “Yes”, and you say…..?
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