Nearly every year at Pentecost we share Luke’s story of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, with tongues of fire, and the disciples’ speaking the Word of God in many languages. It’s an amazing story, the Church’s original ‘Fourth of July’, and it’s one worth telling and retelling …but today, we share it only in passing. Instead, this Pentecost, I suggest we acknowledge that despite the record of the New Testament - which attributes just about everything that the early Church does and reaps to the working of the Spirit - most of us find God the Father much easier to speak about, and Jesus the Son easier to know. So today we consider not so much the dramatic advent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, but the mysterious nature of the Third (and surely least known) Person of the Trinity.

My own experience of the Spirit may not be remarkable in any way, but that may just make it worth mentioning. As a child, I thought of the Holy Spirit as otherworldly, perhaps, but mostly because of “his” apparent absence from the world I lived in. I knew the Spirit had once been called a “Ghost,” but was fairly sure that he never materialized like Casper. I wasn’t at all sure that he ever showed up in our little church - not if that would mean our falling out on the floor, clapping, or doing any of a number of things that seemed pretty unMethodist by the mid-late 20th Century. Someone told me to think of the Spirit as the bond of love between God the Father and God the Son, and that sounded nice, but I knew well enough even then that as strong as love may be, it’s not exactly a person by itself. Hence, I supposed, the Spirit’s seemingly rather vague and invisible nature.

But it turns out that not everybody is like the pew-sitters of my little church. If the Spirit was seldom given a front row seat at Vale UMC, in college things were different. Together with friends in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, a group a bit like the high school ministry called Young Life, I quickly learned that while mentioning Jesus was always appropriate, references to the Holy Spirit were now also par for the course. As the team responsible for planning worship, we often said we could count on the Spirit to really liven things up, to get people on their feet and excited. This made sense, because we sure made a lot of joyful noise! But after awhile, it began to nag at me: as much as we talked about the Spirit moving, we worked mighty hard to gin up energy and enthusiasm. Most often we did this by leading with a sort of high-energy, forced cheerfulness that at times may have masked what we were really feeling.

To put a fine point on it, at some point I began to wonder if the emotive pitch of our worship events (at least sometimes) had more to do with the style of the speaker, the quality of the music, and which students actually showed up, than it did with the unpredictable, powerful movement of the Holy Spirit. Inwardly I began to worry (and looking back I think I was not alone in this) that something seemed wrong about our invoking the Third Person of the Trinity to simply sign off on what we were working so hard to perfect: namely, the manipulation of group energy. After all, anyone can get you to cry, laugh or feel pumped up. But we called it worship.

But then, something happened one Tuesday night: Scott Carmichael stood up in the middle of praise time, his voiced choked with anxiety and nervousness, and shared that his mother had been diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness. He just hadn’t been able, he said, to share the news with any of us previously. The group listened, then a few got up, gathered around Scott, hugged him and offered prayer for his mother and family, right then and there. It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t loud - but it was clear enough to me, even back then, that the Spirit of that moment was none other than God the Comforter. I think we all knew it.

The Gospel of John shows us that on the eve of Jesus’ departure from his friends, he took pains to explain to them that after he was gone, there would come another to comfort and lead them in the Truth, One whom he would ask his Father to send to them. Jesus calls this One Who is to come by a Greek word, Parakletos - which is not easy to translate. Our Bibles variously render the name as One Who comes among us as a Comforter, Advocate, Helper, and Intercessor on our behalf - and all are fair translations. Interestingly, this Spirit Who comes beside us to guide and console us seems to be trusted by Jesus to do exactly the things Jesus did when he was here.

Jesus says clearly enough that the Spirit is why we are not left alone after his death and Ascension. He also says that the Spirit is of God, from God - and doesn’t depend on us to be authentic, but on the faithfulness of Christ to send the Spirit to us. The world will neither see nor recognize the Spirit at work, but if we remember and embody what Jesus taught to his community, the Church, then we will know the Spirit among us.

Think about that: by God’s design, the Spirit Who placed Jesus in his mother’s womb, 2,000 years ago, still brings Jesus to us, today. That’s why a group of people can talk about or admire Jesus enormously, but only when Christ is present, by the Spirit, do they become the Church, his physical Body on earth. The Spirit makes possible something otherwise impossible: coming to know and adore God in a uniquely personal way that transforms our lives, and in doing so saves us from the pointlessness of an anxious, fearful existence that ends with death. Without the Holy Spirit, this new way, this Truth and this abundant life would be unknown.

Of course, there is much we don’t know about the Third Person of the Trinity. But in the community of the Holy Spirit, we see the power of God at work - sometimes in miracles that are otherwise inexplicable. But as much as we like the striking and the spectacular, I like to say that I have been to very few spectacular Bible studies. I work hard to prepare a good study, but by this point in ministry I have learned that in Bible study, the blessing will come, if it does come, from among us, from the leading of the Spirit of Truth, when someone shares an epiphany, challenging or even changing the way we see God at work in our hearts, in our church, in our world. That is a Spirit-filled Bible study.

So it is with worship: a sermon can be brimming with sentiment or pumped up with bluster, the music can be toe-tapping or heart-strumming, but in the end, it will be in the often unseen, quiet movement of the Spirit that lives will be transformed. I think Jesus knew this about us - that we’d be gathered here together, worshipping God the Father, through His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. That we would listen to, reflect upon, and sing the words of the Scriptures, respond with the confession of our sins, the expression of our faith, the offering of prayers and thanksgivings to our Father, and the giving of our gifts to the One Who is worthy. This is why, I believe, the Spirit moves in drum-thumping Pentecostal theater halls, but also in little Catholic country chapels - why the Spirit moves in heady, well-reasoned Presbyterian sermons and old-time Methodist hymns borne aloft by electric organ.

Worship is not the only way the Spirit surprises us and moves among us, but it is a familiar way, maybe even an ordinary way - making possible an open invitation to the boundless, depthless love that is between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Come among us, Holy Spirit. Come.

Amen.