June 5, 2022
Pinwheels can be a lovely metaphor for the Holy Spirit: wind and breath and energy. It is an action-packed reminder. The streamers we have here today are lovely for their approximation of the sense of flow and motion and colors of the Spirit. Yet my time-tested favorite metaphor is of a puppy or a dog who has never abandoned puppy ways. There once was a dog I knew – Raven: named in the spirit of that provocative dark bird. Raven’s are associated with wisdom and healing, but also with being shape-shifting tricksters changing the world for the better, but doing so from outside our expectations. Raven, the black labrador retriever, loved loved loved me. Raven is still around, but is at home with their person back west. When I drove up to the house, Raven would sprint to the front gate with loud happy barks. When I came into the house, Raven would do all the things dog caregivers don’t want dogs to do to guests: licks everywhere, and jumps that knock people over, and sniffs and sniffs, and greeting me like it is a full-body contact sport. One time I thought that Raven’s joy had broken my nose. Her wild joyful tail certainly broke a pot on the steps in my honor. Seeing Raven, I felt like I was the most beloved and interesting creature in the universe. When I went to bed at night in the guest room, my door would be shut, but sometime in the early morning, nearly every time, Raven would nuzzle the door open and climb right into the bed: an action of sweet comfort and weighted closeness. Her caregiver was concerned about all this invasion, but honestly, I loved all the love.
Raven is a real dog, impossible to deny when in her vicinity. So you might wonder: how can the idea of a dog help all of us to understand more about how the church outlines the theologies of the Spirit of God, how we make meaning around the beautiful understanding of the Holy Spirit being the third person of the unified One God, and what can we possibly understand about such a mystery and why should we try? A dog is, or should be, a free character. The traditional language in Christian theology about the Trinity is about persons, but the ancient intent of such ideas is somewhat like what we would call a character. The third character of the Trinity: a character like Toto or Scooby or Clifford. Dogs, embodied and imagined, they parent, they guide, they comfort – all-important characteristics of the Holy Spirit. Dogs make judgments – we cooperate with their ability to sense and judge: such as when we train them to be bomb-sniffing dogs. A dog has an actual shape: it isn’t cat-shaped or bird-shaped – and its very presence reshapes our duties and spaces – also facets of the Spirit. A young dog in particular, can be all energy and most canines may remind you of breathiness through their panting. Two of the ancient words associated with the Holy Spirit The Hebrew ruach meaning energy, and the Greek pnuema meaning breath. The energy of the panting ‘dog’ can feel to us like a tempest, however, that is just what it is, an essence that knocks over our water classes and tramples muddy footprints across our clean floors.
The character of a dog as an illustration of the Holy Spirit helps us recall the activity of guidance, shaping, and energy. And lastly, there is that thing that mystical thing – that very chemistry of relationship beyond explainability. It’s that thing about why we experience connection with other creatures unlike what we might feel about even a very important rock. This mystical relationship knows you – knows what is going on in your life, Nudging (maybe smacking you) with direction towards wholeness and justice. Guidance, shaping, energy, and relationship: four core characteristics of our theologies regarding the Spirit of God.
In our Acts of the Apostles lesson, the people are gathered for the Jewish Festival of Weeks – 50 days after the Passover, and told to us in its Greek name – pentecost like pentagon – indicating a multiple of 5. We moderns can get a bit flustered by the whole speaking in tongues weirdness, we may hope that such a thing never happens to us. So much that we don’t notice that the people in the story are less amazed by that than they are astonished by understanding one another. We all know, real understanding feels like a holy wonder. Understanding isn’t just tolerant attentiveness, it is truly listening and seeing meaningfully comprehending-ly. The understanding that amazes in this lesson is the kind that doesn’t get stuck in an idea, but becomes incarnate takes shape and purpose and direction in lives. It takes divine love in deeply. And this is exactly what Jesus asks in the Gospel lesson – to be One with his one-ness, to not only like (thumb up) and comprehend (nod), but vitally – to live in holy unity – with all its wild shakeups and incandescent delights.
It is easy enough to think yourself into distancing us from God who created the universe – push God out beyond space itself, let it be beyond – and just too much to possibly understand. It is also easy enough to place two thousand years, and thousands of miles, and the path of history itself between us and Jesus – give him a best teacher mug and think you are done. However, the power of the Spirit of God as a character of God’s unified self is like that puppy metaphor – there is no pushing it away. A living breathing young dog is no clockmaker or good news guy. The Spirit of God isn’t just for charismatics, clerical types and/or mystics. It is not manipulatable, nor has she retired.
Again and again these days I check my device to find a sports score or time; and again and again my heart skips and I weep and I see classrooms like the ones I knew in South Texas. And I am hard-pressed to stop the doom scrolling as I watch the malice and menace of gun violence shatter bodies and lives. So many. We are so lost. So much sin and grief. In this very place, Jesus asks us to do his works in his love and doing nothing in the context of such terror is a dereliction of sacred duty. Our ability to transform ourselves and our society, our ability to be changed and act for justice is as boundless as the Spirit itself. If you are stuck in the grief and the fear then, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit SHOUT to us today that it is our heads in the sand that should be scaring us instead. The Spirit is what is moving toward life instead of what is stuck in the mud; and just to keep things interesting, the Spirit paradoxically is also what is still when all the world is a swirl of madness.
The importance of Pentecost, of understanding the closeness of God’s very character isn’t a once-a-year visit. Let should give thanks every day and with our whole lives for the tangible guidance and deep love and the brooding presence of the Spirit through delightful hours and through the terrible days. I invite you this summer to plug into our understanding of God’s very presence close at hand, like a puppy who knocks over pots and licks your face, and tries to climb into your lap. The Spirit is close and you cannot box it. Being aligned to the reality of wild presence of the Spirit of God is why we do what we do in word, prayer and sacrament – and how we make our way with God’s help through whatever comes next.