Series Intro - Holy Spirit | 6/8/25
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Have you ever experienced a moment that felt like the Holy Spirit was present or communicating with you?
How did you recognize it?
Try breathing in and out slowly, repeating "Yah" and "weh"—what feelings or thoughts arise?
Are there aspects of the Holy Spirit that confuse or challenge you? How do you respond to the idea that some elements of faith are “holy mystery”?
Which fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) do you see growing in your life.
Which one do you feel invited to cultivate more intentionally?
How can your personal connection with the Holy Spirit bear fruit in your church, neighborhood, or workplace?
Transcript:
(Singing) The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. For such there is no law.
This song saved my life my senior year of high school. In youth group, we had a senior celebration where all of the high school seniors were brought up on the stage to do a Bible trivia game.
And I was like, I have this in the bag. I am going to win. I also am rather competitive, so I had a really good feeling about this. I knew my Bible trivia because I went to a Christian school growing up, so I lived and breathed the Bible at this point. But part of the rules of the trivia game was that I was invited to phone a friend, but I could only phone a friend at the beginning before I knew my question.
So, in my competitive nature, I was like, let me just make sure I have all my resources. So, I invited up to the stage the one person who I knew was just the most brilliant man on the face of the planet—my dad. But as he was coming to the stage, I knew I made a slight mistake because my dad was Jewish.
But, you know, I was so glad he was moral support. That’s what he was. I needed him on stage with me. And so, when the question was asked by Kirk Dana, my youth director, my question was: What are the fruits of the Spirit? And I blanked. My mind went blank. So, I turned to my dad, and he was like, “You’re on your own, kid.”
And that’s when this song popped into my mind. And I sang it for all of my youth group. I don’t remember if I won or not, but I got my question right, and that was all that mattered. I may have gone off to college knowing all of the fruit of the Spirit thanks to that song, but at that point, I had never given much thought to how those fruits become a reality in someone’s life, how they grow, or what makes them flourish.
But in order for us to bear the fruit of the Spirit, I think we need to first understand where that fruit comes from. We can’t have these fruits, these gifts, without the person of the Holy Spirit. So how fitting that today, as we begin a series for the whole summer on the fruit of the Spirit, which comes from the Holy Spirit, we begin on Pentecost.
It’s a day in the life of the church where we celebrate the Holy Spirit and how that Spirit helped the church come alive in the hearts and minds of those early disciples. Without the Holy Spirit’s work, none of us would be in this room, and none of us would be participating in worship online.
Let me say that again: without the work of the Holy Spirit, we would not be in this place, worshiping together today.
So, who and what is the Holy Spirit, and how does the Spirit move and work in our lives?
To answer these questions, we join the disciples who have gathered in a house for worship and to support one another as they continue to wonder, “What on earth do we do next?”
This story comes to us from Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 13:
When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven in Jerusalem. When they heard the sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look! Aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans? Every single one of them! So how then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language—Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs? We hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages.”
They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” while others jeered at them, saying, “They are full of new wine.”
Friends, this is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we say together: Thanks be to God.
Will you pray with me?
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh upon us this morning, that by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, you might meet us where we are. You might open our hearts and our minds to what it is that you have to say to us today. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
I was standing in a large gathering room, and everyone was together. There were young adults from three different countries: the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and America, particularly from Florida. I was on a mission trip in Santa Clara, Cuba, with my campus ministry, Campus to City Wesley, out of Jacksonville. Five of us from Jacksonville and five of us from the Wesley Foundation at Florida Gulf Coast traveled to Cuba together for a gathering of young adults. It was such a beautiful experience to be in that room worshiping with people who didn’t speak the same language as me.
I knew the worship songs that we were singing so well that I could truly hear each of the different languages all together, and it was beautiful. I was standing with my fellow travelers, and right next to me was an adult who was just a little bit more “adultier” than I at that point. But we were worshiping together, and I felt so in tune with God—until there was a crash two rows in front of me as a woman fell to the floor and started what looked like convulsing.
I was scared. So, I went to go help her when I felt a tap on my shoulder. My adult friend next to me said, “It’s okay. She’s just having a physical experience of the Holy Spirit.” And I go, “What?” But sure enough, a few minutes later, the woman stood up and was just fine.
But I was not fine. I was a little bit scared and freaked out, and wondering what I had just witnessed, because up to that point, I had never experienced anything like that. That was not who I had come to know as the Holy Spirit. I couldn’t make sense of what I was witnessing in light of all that I had come to know and believe in my own faith journey.
I was scared and very, very confused. And I wonder if this is what it might have felt like to hear the loud howling of the wind in that gathering place where all of those disciples were on the day of Pentecost—to see on top of Mary and Peter’s heads those tongues of flame, to hear James begin to speak in a language that I didn’t recognize but yet could interpret and understand, to feel that small heat radiate from our heads above us as we turned to try to look at what was happening for ourselves, to catch a glimpse of this miraculous moment.
This was unexpected. This was unlike anything they had ever witnessed as they walked all over kingdom come with Jesus himself. They, too, must have felt fear, wondering, “Maybe we’ve done it this time. We are about to combust.” They, too, must have been confused as they heard all of those languages jumbled together.
And if we took a moment to really think about this, I wonder if we don’t also feel that fear and confusion any time we try to understand those elements of Christian faith that everyone else seems to simply chalk up as “holy mystery.”
In that moment, when I was standing in that worship space in Cuba, I realized I really didn’t know anything about the Holy Spirit—how it moved, or how it worked. At that point, I had talked a lot to the Holy Spirit and even given credit to the Holy Spirit for lots of different things in my life. But really, I was just mimicking the language of the faith that I had heard from others who had poured into me—people like my grandparents and my youth leaders, my pastors, and other faithful people who were part of the congregations I had been a part of.
But it was never an understanding for myself. And I would be willing to bet that many of us in this room, too, that we talk a lot about and to the Holy Spirit, but have not had the language of our own. Maybe some of us in this room, too, are a little bit confused by, or maybe even fearful of, the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, over the last ten years since that Cuban experience, I’ve been piecing together a framework of who the Holy Spirit is for me through the perspective and lens of Scripture. And I think that framework might help us to understand and identify how the Holy Spirit works in and through our lives today.
As I share this framework with us this morning, I want to offer a reminder: that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—should not and can never be put in a box. This understanding that I have come to about the Holy Spirit is not the one and only way to experience God as Holy Spirit. Jürgen Moltmann, a German theologian, says it this way: “The experience of the Holy Spirit is as specific as the living beings who experience the Spirit, and as varied as the living beings who experience the Spirit are varied.”
This means that the way that we experience the Holy Spirit is not a one-size-fits-all model. It is a relationship that is built over time and an invitation for us to pay attention to those things we face in our lives that are simply unexplainable.
The first way that we experience the Holy Spirit through Scripture is as the giver and the sustainer of life.
In Genesis chapter one, we see the Holy Spirit described as God’s wind sweeping over the waters of the deep. And when God creates humanity, that very same Spirit breathes into us the breath of life. The Hebrew word used in this first chapter of Genesis and all throughout the Old Testament is ruach, which is translated as “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.”
Therefore, the very first breath of air that humanity breathed was the Holy Spirit. That life source, that breath, continues to sustain us as we breathe in and as we breathe out. We call this the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And that means that there is never a moment in our lives that we are without God’s presence. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit with every breath that we take.
Beth Felker Jones, in her book God the Spirit, describes the Holy Spirit like this: “The Holy Spirit is not aloof, one who might dispense a few rare favors if summoned in times of need. The Holy Spirit is with us every day, at every hour, in our joy and in our sorrow.”
God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is always present with us. And this idea of God being always present is deeply a part of Jewish understanding. God, as the giver of life, shows up in four letters that they believe represent God in Judaism: YHWH, or Yahweh.
Jewish scholars and rabbis say that these four letters represent natural breathing sounds or aspirated consonants—that as we breathe, we are saying the name of God: as we breathe in “Yah,” and out “weh.” Yahweh.
Do that with me. Yahweh... Yahweh...
With every breath we take, God is with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. That is God’s wind, God’s breath, filling our lungs. God is with us.
As we breathe in the Holy Spirit, we also believe that this very Spirit is longing to speak to us and to communicate things of the divine. In that gathering place of the disciples, as the tongues of flame blazed upon their heads, I wonder if, in their confusion, they remembered some of Jesus’s parting words to them before his arrest and crucifixion.
In John 14, we hear Jesus reassuring the disciples, saying, “I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you. In a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. I have said these things to you while I am still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
In the book of Acts, we see the Holy Spirit beginning this advocacy work in the days of the early disciples. Everyone had their own language of their homeland, but were taught a common language to use while traveling from place to place. So, the impact of hearing the story of Christ in their own home language was that they were able to understand, with greater nuance and deeper clarity, the good news of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
And the people outside of that house were able to hear the good news—maybe for the very first time—as the Holy Spirit communicated to them and taught them in a way that they could best understand, in a way that would pierce their soul so deeply and so intimately that there could be no question.
When I was a pastoral intern in Pinehurst at Pinehurst United Methodist Church in North Carolina, I was able to serve three summers there. The first summer, I had the blessing of meeting Kay and Ron Essek in their home on a home visit. Kay had been diagnosed not too long before with aggressive cancer, and just a few short weeks later, Kay passed away. But I had gotten to know them in such a beautiful way.
Kay’s funeral was the first funeral I’d ever helped to be a part of, and what a holy moment that was. My second summer, Ron came into the church and to my office and said to me, “Marisa, it has been a whole year without Kay. Will you come and pray with me?” And I said, “Of course.” So, we exited the church and went outside to the memorial garden.
We stood in the center of that garden and held hands. I can’t remember the exact words of that prayer, but in the middle of it, a gust of wind kicked up and rustled the leaves of the trees. And so, we paused in that holy moment. As the prayer ended and I opened my eyes, I saw Ron crying.
This is a man who did not cry easily. And he said, “Marisa, when the wind blew, I heard Kay. And she spoke to me. She said that she was all right and that I will be all right.” In that beautifully holy moment, Ron heard a much-needed word of assurance from his sweetheart, and the rustling of the wind—her memory—reminded him that he was loved and that he wasn’t alone.
That message was communicated by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that good news that Ron heard made it possible for him to take the step forward he needed to in that second year of life, in a way that he could never have imagined, and in a way that he didn’t plan to do on his own.
As the Holy Spirit communicates to us, we trust that the Spirit does. But we have to listen and be attentive to that message. And as we are attentive, we also believe that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do things that we could have never fathomed on our own.
The rest of the Pentecost story, after the passage we read this morning, I invite you to go home and read just a little bit further, because you will see Peter speak an impassioned message to the disciples who were gathered in that space.
And let me tell you: this speech is the best dang pep rally speech I’ve ever heard in my life. It spurred those disciples on to the important work of making disciples of every nation—that charge that Jesus left to those disciples as he ascended into heaven. This is where the Church was born.
But remember the story of Peter—that good old disciple who was always the first to answer Jesus’s questions and only sometimes got it right. Do you remember when Peter denied Jesus? Not once, not twice, but three times? Do you remember when Jesus had breakfast with Peter on the beach and Jesus implored him to care for his sheep, to be the solid foundation for Christ to build the Church upon?
Peter could not do that work all by himself. The speech that we read in Acts is not a speech that he could have made all by himself. That was the work of the Holy Spirit empowering him to take a step forward in faith and leadership.
Friends, when we live our lives in such a way that is in tune with the Holy Spirit, we too are empowered to do things that we cannot do on our own.
We are empowered to say “yes”—to throw in our lot with a particular body of Christ in front of a whole congregation, something we’ll have the opportunity to do in just a few moments.
We are empowered to join a Bible study or a small group where we might not know a soul, but we know that our souls need them.
We are empowered to offer words of encouragement to a coworker or a neighbor who shows up day after day while also raising three children all on their own.
We are empowered to stand up and to speak boldly when the evil of injustice and oppression strikes those whose voices are consistently silenced.
We are empowered to bear love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
It is when we bear these fruits—when we are in touch and in tune with the power of the Holy Spirit within us—that others in our lives, in our communities, and in the places we live and work and have our being, that they experience God’s love in a tangible, embodied, very real way.
This is who the Holy Spirit is: the Spirit of the Living God, weaving together a garden of hope where the only fruit that is produced and offered to the world is good and life-giving and offers hope where there is no hope.
Beth Felker Jones puts it this way again in her book: “Life in the Spirit is a life in which we become the trees who bear the Spirit’s good fruit, in which we are given gifts for building up the community, and in which we are sanctified—made loving—as we are drawn into the love of the Triune God.”
Friends, when we allow ourselves to be in line with the power of the Holy Spirit, we join God’s mission to transform the world—so that the world we live in looks more and more like the wide, embracing world that God designed for us from the very beginning, when the Spirit of God hovered over those waters of the deep.
It is when we are in line with the Holy Spirit that God’s love through us is made evident.
And friends, now is the time to cultivate and bear the good fruit—to bear witness to the transformative work of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because our community, our state, our nation, and our world need it.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.