More than an event in time
While the Bible never states categorically that the Spirit of truth only appears after the resurrection of Jesus, our history and tradition in the Christian church has seemed to confirm this. Somehow the Spirit of God gets forgotten until Jesus breathes it into the disciples or – following the story as recorded in Acts – it descends on the disciples like tongues of fire and grants them the ability to speak the message of Christ in the languages of the world in which they live.
From that story in Acts, the Spirit of God has come to be characterized most closely with what we call spiritual gifts. The gift of speaking in tongues is often viewed as the gift that confirms that the Spirit of God is present in a believer; yet, there are a variety of gifts and all of them are given not for the specific benefit of the believer but for the good of the whole community. Every way in which the Spirit is revealed in the lives of believers is a sign of the presence of that Spirit and when those gifts are used to build up the community of faith they are to be used as true gifts of the Spirit.
But is the era after Christ truly the first time that the Spirit of God is made available to the people of God? A careful reading of the Old Testament reveals to us that the Spirit of God not only has always been present in the world but has been available to the people of God through the centuries.
Remember what I said last week about the Spirit of God. The Spirit is the creative force in God. It is the inspiration and breath of God. And it is the feminine side of God. Our attempts to view God simply as one form of who we are – while certainly understandable when we examine the majority of the writings we have about God – does not really give us the full picture of the God who has been a part of this world from its beginning. The words of Genesis 1 in which God says that humanity will be created in the image of God both male and female speaks volumes about the God of this world. Truth be told we have no words to express the unity of creation and creativeness that we truly find in God. The very title that God uses to express to humanity who he is does not reveal whether God is male or female: I AM is the great declaration made to Moses. I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus echoes this in the passages we have from John’s Gospel and the very utterance of that phrase causes people to drop back in awe and wonder. There is the real sense that they are in the presence of the God of all things. There is no better way to capture the essence of who God is than to say that God is.
The imagery that we are given – a Father who loves his children, a Son who is begotten by the Father to be born into the world, to live and die for the sake of the ones called by adoption into the family, and a Spirit that is a gift of both the Father and the Son to guide and lead us in all truth – these images are designed to draw us into a relationship with God that we can identify with and so be able to more clearly understand who God seeks to be for us and how we can be assured that God truly cares for and understands us.
But let us go back to looking at the Spirit of God. The book of Proverbs is full of wise advice. And while some things there we may have questions about, the majority of what it says is as valid today as the day it was written. “Wisdom is calling,” one version of the text translates. “Understanding is raising her voice! On the heights along the road, where the paths meet, she is standing; by the gates leading into the city, at the entrances, she cries aloud. People, I am calling you, raising my voice to all mankind.” (Proverbs 8:1-4, The Complete Jewish Bible, tr. by David H. Stern)
The image we are given is that the Spirit of God is present with the people of the world; the Spirit is present in places where it is next to impossible to ignore or miss her and yet it seems that people are walking right by. I am sure all of you have experienced that at one time or another. Someone is trying to impart a bit of wisdom to someone or even you but you or the other person act as if nothing is being communicated. We are good at turning a deaf ear to wisdom and obviously we are not the only ones who have ever done it.
But I want us to understand today that while the Spirit of God was poured out in a new way – perhaps even a deeper way – the Spirit of God has ever been available to the people of God. And throughout time, it has never been a case where the Spirit of God was absent but rather that people were not willing to listen.
The passage from Proverbs speaks to us of how the Spirit that is wisdom has been with God from the very beginning. And while we may want to argue what came first – the Spirit or the Word – in the end what really matters is the intention and design of God in which the Spirit that moved over the face of the abyss and the Word that was spoken brought about the creation we know today and that both the presence of the Spirit and the Word revealed by God in Jesus Christ combine to give us a clear sense of the direction we are to take in life and that we have a spirit of discernment from God to guide us.
The passage from Acts is certainly dramatic and its effect on the people on that first Pentecost of the new church was amazing but I still find greater comfort and strength from the way in which Jesus shared the Spirit of truth with the disciples in the upper room. All of us are in need of the Spirit of truth to guide us in our daily lives and to help us with the decisions we are faced with each day. That is the Spirit that Jesus breathed into the disciples; but the Spirit that he granted them was no different from the Spirit of which Solomon spoke in the Proverbs. That Spirit had always been with them for God had always made the Spirit available to the people but Jesus made it real for them in a new way. He emphasized to them that the intention of God had always been to grant us wisdom and discernment to guide our thoughts and actions in ways that would grant us a fuller experience of the life first granted by God in the creation of humanity.
In verse 6 it is recorded: “Listen! I will say worthwhile things; when I speak, my words are right.” And in verses 32-34: “Therefore, children, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction, and grow wise; do not refuse it. How happy the person who listens to me, who watches daily at my gates and waits outside my doors. For the one who finds me finds life and obtains the favour of the Lord.” (The Complete Jewish Bible, tr. by David H. Stern)
May we all be guided daily by that same Spirit that moved over the face of creation, that guided the people of God throughout time, that descended like a dove at the baptism of Jesus, that attended him throughout his ministry, that was with him through his agony and death and that was breathed by the risen Lord into the disciples not to puff them up with pride but to give them a wisdom and a truth that would enable them to go out into the world with a confidence to live as the people of God!