Pentecost - What’s it all about?
I remember my first step.
Okay, here’s the scene:
I was the lone clergyman in a rather large New England church. I had spent two years at the post.
I was fixing coffee and hard-boiled eggs for our monthly clergy meeting, which was for priests from local churches.
You need to know that the eggs symbolized these meetings, which were usually filled with hard-boiled and stale arguments about high and low churchmanship.
I heard the speaker mention the Holy Spirit.
Seriously, I thought, I spent three years studying in seminary and two years as a curate in this New England church. Why had I not heard of this Holy Spirit before now?
And who is this priest anyway who is telling these tales? He’s not part of our group.
Turns out he was a guest from a neighboring church, talking about, among other things, people being healed at Yale Medical Center by prayer and the Holy Spirit.
What on earth?
That was exactly the right question!
After the meeting, I made a beeline to our guest, “I don’t have any idea about what you were talking about.”
I did not take him up on his invitation to come to Darien and talk, but two years later, when I was on staff at Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis, I had lunch with him.
Over lunch, that same priest, The Rev. Everett L. Fullam, prayed for me to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
That man became my mentor and friend.
I began to explore the teachings of the Episcopal Church on the person and work of the Holy Spirit and wondered even more why I hadn’t crossed Holy Spirit’s path before now.
He’s everywhere in our Prayer Book.
Here are a few glimpses of what I found:
In our creed every Sunday we attribute our life to him in the Nicene Creed - “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.”
Life, right from the start. “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” -- Genesis 1.2
"Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Genesis 2.7
We are born anew by the work of the Holy Spirit.
In our Catechism, we have a series of questions regarding the Holy Spirit. Here’s one.
Question: How is the Holy Spirit revealed in the New Covenant?
Answer: The Holy Spirit is revealed as the Lord who leads us into all truth and enables us to grow in the likeness of Christ.
Every time we celebrate communion, we trust the Holy Spirit is sanctifying the bread and wine and us.
“We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant. Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”
The Proper Preface for Pentecost Sunday is jammed full of what the Holy Spirit does.
“Therefore we praise you… Through Jesus Christ our Lord. In fulfillment of his true promise, the Holy Spirit came down [on this day] from heaven, lighting upon the disciples, to teach them and to lead them into all truth; uniting peoples of many tongues in the confession of one faith, and giving to your Church the power to serve you as a royal priesthood, and to preach the Gospel to all nations."
Here’s a place you’ve not likely been lately, the Articles of Religion. In the back of the Prayer Book, Roman numeral XIII, says something quite striking. Basically, anything we do apart from the Holy Spirit has the nature of sin.
“Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of the Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, (i.e., being saved) or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not
but they have the nature of sin.”
I discovered that the Prayer Book is really radical in its statements about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. It's really rich!
Years later, I spent five years working for Episcopal Renewal Ministries, where Terry was on our board. I traveled from one Episcopal Church to another every weekend, sharing about the Holy Spirit.
I hope to share some of those teachings in this format in the weeks of Pentecost.
Let's learn how to follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!
When did you first hear about the Holy Spirit? Or have you not heard much about Him? Let me know in the comments below!
Note: You can read about Terry Fulham's time in Darien, Connecticut in the book Miracle in Darien.