You know that feeling when you get in the passenger side of a car with a driver you’re not sure you trust? How you anxiously and immediately buckle your seatbelt? How you helpfully inform the driver of upcoming red lights and cars in their path? How you continuously scan the roadway, clutching whatever is handy? How you discover you weren’t breathing when you pull into a parking space and finally draw a full, deep breath? When we are passengers in a vehicle, we don’t control what the driver does, what the car does, what the traffic does. We are simply along for the ride, maybe picking music, consulting the maps app, or making lively conversation.
On this Pentecost Sunday, 9 days after Jesus’ ascension, though Jesus had instructed them that the Holy Spirit would come down, I imagine the disciples felt the pressure, the vacuum of a post-Jesus world. I imagine they assumed they had better get to work, that they had better get on with ministry similar to that of Jesus. If we read Acts chapter one, we learn that the disciples had no idea what that meant, though. They appear to be stalling, to be stuck, to be…well, the same witless disciples we met in the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Thanks be to God that the Holy Spirit swoops in as wind, like fire, and through language. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples open their mouths and out comes the good news of Jesus in languages they had never spoken. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter stands and raises his voice and quotes the prophet Joel proclaiming the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh, sons and daughters, young and old, enslaved and free.
As humans do, for the nine days between Jesus’ ascension and the day of Pentecost, the disciples likely assume they are in the driver’s seat of this ministry in a post-Jesus world, but they are wrong. They are simply along for the ride, traveling in the direction that the Holy Spirit drives them. They contribute, for sure. Once the Spirit fills them, they don’t run for the hills like Jonah or ask to sit at God’s right hand in the kingdom like they did earlier in the gospels. If you’ve been watching our Daily Meditations throughout the season of Easter, where we have been reading through the book of Acts, you already know that the disciples really do get up and follow the call of the Spirit. They share the good news. They heal people. They forgive sins. They baptize with abandon. They empower new leaders within the early Christian community. They’re on it. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they do what God wants done in the world. But equally obvious in the book of Acts is the fact that they are only on it because the Holy Spirit fills them.
We, the body of Christ, have also received the Holy Spirit at Holy Baptism. Collectively, the Spirit fills the church on earth, empowering us to do together what we could not do alone. We might think ourselves the drivers, but we depend on the Spirit to drive us. Our own agendas, our own plans and ideas, our own attempts to do the work of God fall, sadly, flat. When we seek out the direction of the Holy Spirit in prayer, when we relentlessly ask for the Spirit’s guidance, when the Holy Spirit drives us, we get where God wants us to go.
I am not a good passenger. I was only able to describe the feeling of anxious passenger in a car because that is actually what happens for me when someone else drives. I like control and struggle to give it up even when someone I love and trust who absolutely will do everything they can to keep me safe is driving. I do a little better trusting the Holy Spirit but only because I have seen time and time again that the Spirit works. In maybe year 10 of ordained ministry, after doing all I could to control situations, after dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘t,’ after doing my homework and preparing for meetings, I learned to say: The Spirit will work. And of course, then, once I am out of the way, the Spirit does…work! The Spirit working is not my choice. The Spirit doesn’t answer to me. The Spirit blows where and how it wills.
Where the Spirit blows, a way is made, a way for acts of justice and forgiveness and grace, a way for community that not only tolerates diversity but celebrates it. How else do we, people of Grace, account for the ministry we are able to do with so few people and so little funds? Collectively, we are recipients of incredible generosity, and each one of us, each one of us contributes valuably to our life together. But we would not be here still, in the city for good, if we were not already filled with the Holy Spirit, if we had not allowed the Spirit to drive our mission.
The same is true of the ELCA and ELCA-affiliated institutions with our vast array of hunger, relief, public health, education, human service, advocacy, and faith formation programs both in the US and abroad through which we educate, raise up leaders, provide health care, build sustainable food systems and clean water resources, deliver aid to refugee camps and domestic disasters, resettle refugees, care for our elders in their homes, and many other acts of justice and grace. Really, how is this possible? We do it, yes, we get on board. But this is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, through us, for the sake of the world God loves!
In these days when Covid-19 continues to plague us, when police brutality continues, when those in power abuse that power, when we are staring a climate crisis in the face, we wonder: what are we to do? On this day of Pentecost, we might instead wonder: what is the Holy Spirit already doing, and how can we get on board? We might be anxious like a passenger in a car, having no control of where we go. But the good news is, people of God, the Holy Spirit is the driver. If we allow the Spirit to drive us, to set our course, we might be surprised where we end up. We might be uncomfortable, but we, like those on the first Pentecost, will be amazed and astonished and discover God’s own purpose. For the Spirit, for its presence in our lives, for the ways it drives and compels us, we say: thanks be to God! Amen.