God, speak to Me (John 20:19-23)

The man whispered, “God speak to me.”

And a magpie sang. But the man did not hear.

So the man yelled, “God speak to me!”

Thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen.

The man looked around and said, “God let me see you.”

A star shone brightly. But he noticed it not.

And the man shouted, “God show me a miracle.”

And a child was born. But the man was unaware.

So, the man cried out in despair, “Touch me, God, and let me know you are here!"

Whereupon God reached down and touched the man.

But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.

Source Unknown

There are really no big secrets to the spiritual life, the life of faith. In a nutshell, it is about waking up to the reality of God all around us. But most of us, most of the time (myself included) are rather like the man in the poem; we don’t see what is right in front of our eyes.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit chooses to blow through our lives with gusto to get our attention, to wake us up. My first encounter with the Holy Spirit was a bit like that. I was in my late teens. I was like the man in the story; not seeing God. I had left home to go to university, and with it I had left behind most expressions of Christian faith that my parents had gifted me with since I was an infant. I had some fun, in fact quite a bit of fun, but after a while I got myself into trouble. I decided to go back to church, and during that service I was blessed with a Holy Spirit encounter. As I prayed, I was touched in my imagination by flames of fire. Tears came to my eyes. It was the beginning of my return to Christian faith. My eyes were opened by this gift, this breath of the Holy Spirit.

It is a huge privilege being a Christian Priest, and over the years I have had the honour of hearing many people’s Holy Spirit stories. Some people encounter the Spirit dramatically, often in times of crisis: the death of a loved one, the break up of a relationship, a challenging new life situation, or in the pit of despair. For others, and perhaps most commonly, people encounter the Holy Spirit gradually, like a persistent gentle breeze rather than a hurricane.

C. S. Lewis wrote, famously, of his gradual conversion to Christianity over more than two years. I expect you know the story. “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen,” he writes, “night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England" (Surprised By Joy, ch. 14, p. 266).

This was his conversion to theism, but it took Lewis another two years before he converted to Christianity. On 19th September 1931 he and his friends, J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, talked into the small hours of the morning. A few days later he wrote to another friend: “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ, in Christianity . . .. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it." A reluctant convert, and one of the great twentieth-century English intellectuals, it was through a lengthy thought process that the Holy Spirit ultimately opened C.S. Lewis’ eyes and led him into faith.

Dramatic Holy Spirit encounters often seem to manifest at the beginning of an individual’s faith journey. Especially if that person has his or her eyes tightly shut. But the Spirit can also move a body of believers; a whole church even. Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells of a powerful group encounter with the Holy Spirit. After the execution of Jesus, the disciples were not seeing God; they were hidden away in fear for their own lives. Gathered in a room together, suddenly there was a rushing wind and tongues of fire. Through the touch of the Holy Spirit they were dramatically transformed from fearful, grieving individuals into a courageous group, who then went out and proclaimed the gospel to people from all four corners of the earth.

The Holy Spirit moves, and Christ’s inclusive gospel of God’s love comes to life. It is a gospel for all people, for all nationalities, for all languages. But as we read on in Acts, as we have been doing at morning Mass for the past week or two, it turns out to be far from a bed of roses for the disciples. Soon after Pentecost Stephen is stoned to death for preaching this gospel of inclusion. The enthusiastic early church is persecuted just as Jesus was persecuted. Paul is beaten and left for dead for preaching this gospel. Not everyone warms to the message that God’s love is for all people. Some people, especially the traditional religious leaders, want to keep God’s love for themselves; it is their club, and they will fight vehemently to keep imposters out. It is a false spirit, not the Holy Spirit, that urges us to pick up the stones of prejudice, jealousy, anger and oppression.

As much as dramatic beginnings, the work of the Holy Spirit is also about sustaining our Christian life. These everyday Holy Spirit moments are usually much less intense. They are about how we live our lives, the decisions we make, the openness we cultivate towards God and others: our worship, our devotions, our routines, our ethics. These are the “God speak to me” moments; ordinary, subtle, and as with the man in the story, easily missed.

St John the Evangelist’s Pentecost story is very different from Luke’s in the Acts of the Apostles. There is no violent wind in John’s gospel; there are no tongues of fire or glossolalia. Rather, it is the risen Christ who comes and stands among the anxious, grief-stricken disciples. “Peace be with you,” he says. Then he simply breathes on them, as he perhaps breathes on us today: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

On this Day of Pentecost, today, like the first disciples, may you, may I be open to receive once again the mystery and grace of the Holy Spirit. Whether she blows through our lives like a mighty wind, or almost unnoticeably touches us like the breath of those we love, may we remain open. May we pray “God speak to me” but then look, listen. And as we all face the challenges of life during this pandemic, may we be filled afresh, by God’s grace, and through faith in Christ, with the great gift of the Holy Spirit.

Veni sancte Spiritus … come Holy Spirit.

(image: Holy Spirit Painting by Beth Clary Schwier)