Sermon: I Wanna Hold Your Hand, but That's Not All! (Pentecost, May 24, 2015)

Day of Pentecost (B)

May 24, 2015 (BLC confirmation, SMLC baptisms)

Acts 2:1–21

Romans 8:22–27

John 15:26–27; 16:4b–15

            I have been reading a wonderful and fascinating book called The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. It is about a kid who grows up in a bad part of Newark, but ends up going to Yale for college. His mom works extremely hard through his life to give him every possible opportunity, though she can barely afford to feed him. His dad is a drug dealer, but a very loving and present father, who is well-loved in the neighborhood. When Rob is 7, his dad is arrested for a murder he probably didn’t commit. His mom responds by working even harder, and finding a way to send Rob to private school, where he meets wonderful friends who are his kindred spirits. As Rob grows up, he is quietly tormented by his reality, even as he continues to excel in everything he tries, and win the hearts of teachers, drug dealers, and big time CEOs alike. I haven’t finished the book yet, so I don’t know how it ends, but so far it is clear that Rob is able to thrive as he does because he has so many

different people from so many different walks of life surrounding him and walking alongside him. And while many of these advocates and helpers are a comfort to him, what really makes them worthy companions for this brilliant, thoughtful boy is their ability to push him to step beyond what his background might indicate is possible, and to be the best that he can be.

            I’ve been thinking about the story of Robert Peace this week as I have been reflecting on the role of the Holy Spirit, especially as one who advocates for and helps us. As you may have figured out, today is the day in the church year we call Pentecost. It is sort of the birthday of the Church, or you could say, the baptism of the Church – the day the Holy Spirit swept into the lives of Jesus’ followers in dramatic fashion, with wind and fire and many languages spoken and understood and prophecy.  To hear Luke tell it in Acts, we get the impression that this day and this Spirit was unlike anything they had experienced before, and would push them to new and exciting places.

            The image we see of the Holy Spirit in this story from Acts portrays the Holy Spirit as empowering, enabling, dramatic, exciting, perplexing, giver of prophecy – all very strong and active images. But Acts isn’t the only description we get of the Holy Spirit today. In the Psalm, the Spirit is creative and renewing, calling things into existence. In Romans, we hear of a Spirit who is here to pray on our behalf, to intercede for us when we find we don’t have the words, and to pray “with sighs too deep for words.” Here, the Spirit is a Helper, a Comforter, a Companion for us in our weakness. And then finally in John we hear about the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, one who speaks on our behalf. Here she is one who once again gives us the words, but now it is words to proclaim Christ Jesus, to be witnesses. The Spirit is there to comfort and encourage, to walk alongside us.

            So many different roles of the Spirit in these four texts, and even more if we were to look beyond today’s assigned texts. Is there one name we can use to help us understand the many facets of the Holy Spirit? In fact there is: Paraclete. No, not parakeet, and not “pair o’ cleats” (though you can be sure my divinity school’s soccer team took full advantage of this too-good-to-pass-up pun when

we named the soccer team the “Paracleats”). But no, puns aside, “Paraclete” is a compound Greek word that literally means, “to come alongside another.” So when we call the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, we are calling her, “one who comes alongside us.” Perhaps that coming alongside is to comfort, perhaps it is to help, perhaps to advocate, to encourage, to empower, to sustain, to pray for… all of these roles of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, involve some sort of coming alongside.

            And yet, as comforting as it may be to think about God coming alongside us in all we do, we mustn’t get too comfortable in this image. Professor David Lose, who currently serves as the president of Philadelphia Seminary and will be the keynote speaker at our Synod Assembly this weekend, takes issue with thinking about the Paraclete as one whose primary role is to comfort. He complains that though we may prefer to think of the Spirit as Comforter, that’s not quite the whole of it. “I think we’ve misnamed the Holy Spirit,” he writes. “The Holy Spirit is as much agitator as advocate, as much provocateur as comforter… [We mustn’t] reduce the work of the Holy Spirit to making us feel better… [The] one who comes alongside might also do so to strengthen you for work, or to muster your courage, or to prompt or even provoke you to action.” In other words, the Paraclete may take you by the hand, but then pull you somewhere you wouldn’t have gone, or drag you into something you don’t think you can do!

            So this of course can get scary and dangerous for us in a hurry! To be comforted, to have our hand held, to be helped by the Holy Spirit all sounds very nice, but it also gives the impression that things are just fine the way they are, and I don’t need to do anything differently. But sometimes our best advocates and helpers are that precisely because they don’t just hold our hand. I think back to the story about Robert Peace with which I started this sermon. He could have just sat back and given in to the life of so many other young black boys who grew up in the 80s in Newark, whose dads were in prison and moms could barely scrape by on their own. But instead he was pushed and encouraged and empowered and advocated for and inspired to apply to an Ivy League college, to see just what he might be capable of, to try to give back to the world some of the gifts he had clearly been given. His most important companions came alongside him, but did not merely hold his hand.

            The Holy Spirit as Agitator, as Mover and Shaker, as Won’t-Let-You-Sit-Back-On-Your-Heels-and-Watch-er… yes, this is a challenging image indeed, but it is one I think is especially helpful and important on this day, when we not only celebrate Pentecost, but also celebrate the Confirmations of two young men at Bethlehem, and two children’s Baptisms at St. Martin. Baptism is certainly an occasion upon which we talk about the Holy Spirit coming upon us and into us, and Confirmation is an affirmation of that moment, a time when young people say, “Yes, I believe that

the Holy Spirit did come upon me at my baptism, to empower and inspire and counsel and sustain, and I believe that this actually matters for my life!” So how might it look like for these four young members – two confirmands and two being baptized, and next week seven more being confirmed at St. Martin – what might it look like for these young people to have the Holy Spirit “come alongside” them?

            My prayer for them is that it will look like a life of gutsy and courageous service, looking at the needs of the world and at their particular God-given skills and interests, and seeing how those gifts might be used to serve those needs. I pray it will look like a continuing knowledge of and trust in a God who would never lead them into something that cannot be accomplished through Christ who strengthens us. I pray it will look like courage – courage to be agents of change where it is needed, to be healers where no one else will dare venture, to be bold in faith when everyone else seems to have given up. And most of all, I pray it will look like an abiding trust in a God who promises to be present with us in so many and various ways, as our Advocate, our Encourager, our Savior, our Creator, our Paraclete, and in all things, our Sustainer of Life. Praise and thanks be to this God, and may we all be empowered by the gifts God brings to us by the Spirit.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.