Holy Wind, Holy Fire, Holy Spirit!

If you all remember last week, we celebrated Ascension Sunday. And as part of that, we talked about Jesus’ ascension promise to the disciples, that they would “be clothed with power from on high.” As you may remember, this “power from on high” that Jesus is referring to is the power of the Holy Spirit. Today we celebrate the fulfillment of that promise. On this Pentecost Sunday, we remember the giving of God’s very Spirit to the believers in Jerusalem, and we celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled those same believers to begin the Christian Church.

So the Holy Spirit is power. As I thought about that this week, my mind kept wandering to Batman; most particularly, to that original Batman movie from back in the 60s. I’m sure many of you know the one I’m talking about. I really get a kick out of that movie, for lots of different reasons. One of them is that now famous fight scene on the deck of a boat, where Batman and Robin are trying to fight off every villain known to the heroes. As Batman kicks at Penguin and throws punches at The Riddler, the movie freezes every few frames to insert an expression. “Kabaam!” “Swoosh!” “Aargh!!!” It is a comical scene, made even more comical by the expressive interludes intended to help us see Batman and Robin’s clear superior powers. And then, of course, there’s Robin’s humorous comments: “Holy demolition, Batman!” “Holy bill rights!” or “Holy sardine, Batman!”

Do you begin to see why Batman kept coming to mind this week? I mean, take a little imaginative liberty for a moment and think about if this first Pentecost scene had been narrated by Robin instead of Luke. “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven, Holy Wind!” “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire, Holy Fire!” “All of them were filled with the…Holy Spirit, Batman!” And “KABLAAM,” that’s the power of the Holy Spirit!

It’s quite a dramatic display, isn’t it? Not unlike all the hoopla in that old Batman movie. Of course, this coming of the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ promise of God’s continuing presence with us. How could that first Pentecost be anything but incredibly amazing? But it’s difficult for us to imagine such an event. It’s hard to conceive of the power of that violent wind and the tongues of flame. We can barely conceive of a cacophony of voices and languages, where all can still hear and understand everything that is being said. Yet this is what happened with God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, and it happened because of the power Holy Spirit. Because we weren’t among that first gathering of Christ’s church, we have difficulty understanding the power of the Holy Spirit that was experienced by those first believers on that day. As we read through Luke’s accounting of Pentecost, we might even wonder, “what’s the big deal?” “What does the Holy Spirit have to do with everyday life? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with my life?”

It's a good question. Without the dramatic wind and tongues of flame resting on our shoulders, it's hard to imagine what the big deal about the Holy Spirit is. So on this Pentecost Sunday, as we celebrate together the giving of the Holy Spirit, we are going to learn together what the "big deal" is, and hopefully understand a bit better exactly what the Holy Spirit does have to do with our lives.

Have you ever taken a moment to think about all the functions of the Holy Spirit that are described in the Bible? We are ever aware of God's many names and attributes: Father, Creator, Almighty, Everlasting, to name just a few. But what about the Holy Spirit. Paul alone describes the Holy Spirit in these ways: he says the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26), sends spiritual gifts to equip the church for its ministry (1 Corinthians 12), reshapes the character and temperament of cooperating believers (Galatians 5: 22), and empowers such mysterious gifts as speaking in tongues and interpreting the meaning of such speech, or receiving and speaking a divinely inspired word of prophecy or song (1 Corinthians 14). Yes, the Holy Spirit does all that, and that's just what Paul tells us! That's just one little part of the Bible!

The Holy Spirit is God's very presence right in our midst! And all that the Holy Spirit does in the lives of believers makes a big difference not only for those individual people, but for the whole world. Look at what the presence of the Holy Spirit did in just one day on that first Pentecost. People were gathered from all over the Middle East. They were speaking in all these different languages, and they all understood each other. And because of it all, a little later in this chapter of Acts, we are told that day alone, 3,000 were added to their number. This was the first day the church existed, they were starting from scratch, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, three-thousand were added to their number right of the bat! Holy Spirit, Batman!