Three weeks ago I was rolled out of surgery and out of a recovery room and into a room which I was told was a very nice room.  I was told that it was private, I was told it was roomy, I was told it had a great view.  I was told it had a refrigerator and comfortable chairs and even a cot for visitors.  And I could care less.  (chuckles, pause).  I could find only three things that I could actually see and locate.  One was the lights over me in my face, the other was the bed I was lying on and the third were the IVs in my arm.  Anything else I could care less and I could see nothing more.  And it reminds me in a way of the early disciples, men and women, that gathered in that room the first Pentecost.  There were only three things they could know and locate:

#1.   That Jesus, their leader and their friend, was
gone.  They had the sense of loss.

#2.   That they had fear.  They were afraid of the authorities outside, and

#3.   They could see, and they made sure that the
doors were locked. 

That Pentecost they found themselves limited in their vision, limited in their views, limited in their concerns and along comes the Holy Spirit.  How it happened we don’t know exactly, but the best they could describe it, it was like a rushing wind, like an awesome fire.  And the Spirit came and opened their vision, opened their views, opened their concerns, changed their attitude, changed their behavior and they went out and changed the world. 

Today we celebrate the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit, our companion and advocate for our spiritual journey, the Holy Spirit who we need for our spirituality.  And yet I’m very careful when I use the word spirituality because I think it sounds vague, it sounds eerie, it sounds almost ghostly, when our spirituality is life, here and now, at its richest and deepest meaning.  Spirituality is the magnet within us, which draws us to God.  Spirituality is the energy and the wisdom that roots us in God and pushes us beyond ourselves.  And yet most of us most of the time have a notion of spirituality that is false.  Our idea of spirituality is shrunken, it’s limited, it’s reduced.  It’s very much like my view – I could see the lights, I could feel the bed under me and I knew about the needles in my arm.  Our spirituality is very much like the early disciples’.  All they could see and locate were the loss of Jesus, the fear of the authorities and the lock on the doors.  Our spirituality really gets dehydrated and limited and lost when we think of it as a particular religion, or we think of it as our private personal piety, or we think of it as having to get separate from the world and separate from the world and its concerns.  And the Spirit comes along, the Holy Spirit, and gives us the “big picture” - calls us beyond ourselves, calls us to be inclusive of all men and women on this planet, calls us to be connected with all creatures in our universe, calls us to be people who don’t hide behind locked doors but are sent, and people who are willing to make a difference.  That’s the spirituality and the spirit Christians need and our Church needs and each one of us needs.

So we celebrate the Spirit.  We look for the Spirit, we long for the Spirit that will give us the “big picture”, that will push us beyond ourselves, that will make us more inclusive and more connected, and make us a people who are sent and who are willing every day of our lives to make a difference.

This weekend we reflect on Mother’s Day.  Mothers are a good example of spirit.  Mothers look beyond themselves – they have to.  Once that first child is born, it’s never the same again.  They’re inclusive, they gather the whole family - everyone at the family table – and they certainly make a difference.

There are a lot of people today, I am one of them, who like to refer to the Holy Spirit as “she”, as the feminine face of God.  Now God is neither male nor female.  God is neither masculine nor feminine but God includes both and is beyond both.  We have to pray that the Spirit might come and shape our spirituality, the spirituality of our Church, might inspire us and change us.  We pray that she do it soon, she do it often, she do it well and that we let her in.  Amen.

/rcr