The Invasion [Pentecost C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 2:1-21

The Invasion

Do not be fooled: this Pentecost story, the one written in the Acts of the Apostles, was not a one off.  It was not an isolated event.  It is not an historical footnote confined to dusty old books.  Yes, it did take place many centuries ago.  And it is true that the exact events of that day – including those mysterious flames and the spontaneous language skills – are hardly typical.  But don’t be fooled: this was not an isolated event.  It was the beginning of something quite significant; it was the beginning of the invasion.

It is not as if this Pentecostal occasion was the first time the Holy Spirit visited our planet.  In fact, the same Spirit first hovered over the primordial waters, in the very beginning, when chaos was first being put in order.  But this was different.  This time, in these last days, it was more like a contagion that meant to spread through the entire human race.

As the rising sun announced the new day, on that Pentecost morning, the Spirit came concealed in the breeze: moving ever so stealthily, unseen, blowing in the wind.  That invisibility cloak, that is how the Spirit breached the enclosure, got into that holy hideout where one-hundred and twenty followers of a crucified criminal were gathered, not even two months after his tomb was found to be empty.  Once inside, the unseen visitor was revealed, appeared to them as sudden flame.  It was a house fire but nothing burned – nothing except the occupants. 

But then like smoke filling up their lungs, that same Spirit – violent wind, unquenchable fire – went from on them to in them.  The writer of Acts says they “were filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus says, in the Gospel, “[The Holy Spirit] will be in you.”  I say, they were possessed: the first fruits of a divine invasion.

The Spirit began to spread quickly.  Those filled with the Spirit broke free of their quarantine and spilled into the crowded streets.  One could say that then, what was in them got out, but the truth is more nuanced.  Because it didn’t get out of them so much as it multiplied.  The Holy Spirit first possessed the one-hundred and twenty, but by the end of the day, the count had exceeded three-thousand – three-thousand filled with the Holy Spirit.  That Spirit, on that day, spread like an air-borne contagion, floating on the words that escaped from the mouths of those who had first been engulfed by the flames.  And they didn’t have to understand it to spread it.

That was a long time ago.  But you see, this story from Acts is not a fairy-tale we read each year on this red Sunday; it is the prologue to the story that is our life.  Two-thousand years later and the invasion is still happening.  And we, like the one-hundred and twenty, are now the possessed.

Through us the Spirit is still spreading, is still being caught.  In fact here today the movement will grow, by four.  Given the orderliness of our baptismal liturgy, you could say that possession is less dramatic, less spontaneous, now than on the Church’s first Pentecost.  But the effect is very much the same.  What happens is this:  A priest invokes the Holy Spirit, that same ancient Spirit that blew through Jerusalem.  And then, as stealthily as in the first century, the Spirit comes.  And settles, not as flame, but in the crystal clear water of the font, harkening back to the Spirit’s first terrestrial visit, when the Spirit danced across the waters of creation.  The haunted water is then poured onto the head of the one seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  At first it is on them and then it gets in them.  They are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever – possessed and possessed.  Just as Jesus promised: “The Holy Spirit will be in you."

Baptism is not a benign experience.  The Holy Spirit that waters your head and enters your heart, that lives in you, means to change you.  And the change is not subtle or polite; it is ontological.  You are being transformed into something new, into the likeness of Christ.  The very Spirit of God is at work within you – making you a child of the Most High God, and if a child of God, then an heir of God, and, as Paul reminds us in Romans, a joint heir with Christ.  The Spirit within you is transfiguring your mortal nature into immortality.  You are being remade to inherit Heaven.

But not yet.  There is a reason the Holy Spirit is roaming this earth, looking for willing hosts.  Before we get to those joys of Heaven, there is still work to do here.  That is why Jesus told his disciples, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”  The same Spirit that was poured out on Jesus in the River Jordan, the same Spirit that healed the sick and set the captives free, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, that same Spirit dwells in you.  It is in you.  And it is transforming you into Jesus, growing you into the full stature of Christ, because the world needs some Jesus.

Do not resist the invasion.  Let the Spirit that is in you take control.  That Holy Spirit means to change you from the inside out.  So that the Pentecost movement can continue to spread.  On day one there were one-hundred and twenty; we’re now in the billions.  And if there is that much Holy Spirit in this world, that many people possessed by the Holy Spirit, that many lives being remade in the likeness of Christ, then I see no reason why the same Spirit that is transforming us for Heaven cannot work through us to make Heaven of this earth. 

Pentecost was the start of something special, but it was just the beginning.  The work of the Holy Spirit did not end in Acts chapter 2.  It is still happening.  It’s happening in you.  The Spirit of God is in you – ready to be spread, to be shared, to be caught – ready to be set loose in this world.  It is in you; let it out.