The Power of the Holy Spirit

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on the Power of the Holy Spirit.  We often assume that the Spirit of God is gentle, but creation isn’t gentle nor is the beginning of life.

Now when we talk about the Holy Spirit what are we talking about? First of all we are talking about power. At the very least the power of the wind! And wind can be either gentle like a person’s breathing or like the Tornado that wiped out Joplin, Missouri in 2011 with speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour.

One of my best friends in High School was Allen Huddleston. We met in Mr. Dick’s Social Studies class. We both liked history and Allen would eventually go back to our alma mater – Pattonville High School to teach in the Social Studies department. And while that is a nice beginning to the story I’m about to tell you it wasn’t such a nice thing growing up in Tornado alley for Allen and his family.

Allen’s father, who I never knew, was a baptist preacher in southern Missouri. He preached on Sunday’s and worked as furniture store salesman during the week. I came by this when we were talking about our families one day. Allen and his brother lived with this older woman whom Allen called Mom, but her picture wasn’t the one that was displayed in his bedroom.

So I asked him who the woman and man were in the picture on his dresser and he told me about a Saturday night worship service back when he was 5 years old in his Dad’s one room church. That night while services were underway a category 4 Tornado rolled through this small southern Missouri town, where all the faithful had gathered for worship and prayer. That is until a tornado smashed through the church and turned it into kindling. Allen just remembers waking up, and staring up into a violent dark sky with rain, hail and wind blowing all around him. No one else in the church made a sound because no one else in the small church was alive.

This was back when the only warning you got was when you saw it coming down on you. Back before Dopler radar and all the technology that help folks in the Midwest get to safety during Tornado season. June through September a storm can rise up in the midwest that will take your breath away in minutes. I’ve seen severe thunderstorms in St. Louis that have wiped out power in the entire St. Louis area for days.

A few years ago our family drove to St. Louis to visit family. The day we arrived it was hot and humid very uncomfortable weather but within minutes the winds picked up, the smell in the air turned from the scent of hot and sweaty into grass and dirt, the sky darkens rapidly, you see huge lightening bolts, then uddenly the temperature drops by 20 degrees and you know to seek shelter. Time to head for the basement.

This is the power of the wind when it is destructive, but the very thing that we call destructive God calls the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the power of Kiluha in Hawaii, which to date has forced nearly 2000 people out of there homes permantly. There is no coming back from a lava flow. But in this manner new land is also made. New more fertile growth arrives and the process of creation continues.

I can understand why our ancestors saw the weather as a sign of God’s judgment and anger or as a sign of God’s blessing. Creation is a very messy business and can be violent from our vantage point. That’s why the Pslamist says that God leads us beside still waters. It’s the psalmists way of saying that while creation is violent and chaotic at times it’s also that same force of wind that can calm the waters and restore peace to our lives and to our land.

Most of us are not touched in this way but if you take life’s ups and downs then rather than being judgment it is God’s creation groaning for completion. Paul puts it like this: “For we know that the whole of creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together…” (Romans 8:22) The Spirit of God is both tough and gentle.

For example, the Holy Spirit can give you the courage that says yes to life in spite of the destructiveness you have experienced around you and within you. The Spirit can reveal to you that you have hurt somebody deeply, but it also can give you the right word and opportunity to be reunited with that person. The Spirit can make you love, someone you profoundly dislike. The Spirit can transform your moods of aggression and depression into stability and serenity. It can turn dead hearts into ones that beat again.

The Spirit can liberate you from the baggage of your past and from open hatred against those by whom you feel violated. The Spirit can awaken you to sudden insight into the way you must go in life. It can open your eyes to a view of life that makes everything new. The Spirit can give you joy in the midst of ordinary routines as well as in the depth of sorrow.

The Spirit can throw you into a hell of despair about your self and then give you the certainty that life has accepted you just when you felt totally rejected. The Spirit can give you the power of prayer. In fact it intercedes on our behalf with sighs too deep for words.

Several years ago a young man called me on the phone needing to speak with me desperately. He did not know me, but had heard that I was also going through a divorce and might be able to help. I asked him to come in. I remember how hopeless he was. His wife had just left him. He had just lost his job and was facing the real possibility of becoming homeless.

He asked me what he should do. I remember vividly and with a confidence I rarely assert in these situations, but did this time, telling him to pray! He said to me: “I don’t know if I believe in God.” I said, “Don’t analyze this just do what I tell you. I want you to pray these words ever day and every time you start feeling hopeless: “Lord be with me and get me through this.”

Then I want you to look at every thing that you used to call coincidence or luck as answer to your prayer. Phone calls that come out of the blue when you need them the most. Doors that open unexpectedly leading to job leads. It leads to anything and everything. And whenever you want call me and tell me what’s happening. But you must do this a lot through the days to come.”

Sometime later I got a call telling me that things were calming down in his life and what felt like utter destruction was turning out to be something he could get through. He thanked me but it isn’t me, though I may have been one of God’s angels though unaware of it at the time. It’s God answering your prayer. Jesus told us to keep our eyes and ears open so we could see and hear the manifestations of his Spirit in our lives. Sometimes that Spirit speaks in that still small silent voice that reminds us: “Be still and know that I am God.” Or it can wake you up in the most terrifying of ways.

Like the wind the Spirit blows where it wills! It is not subject to rule or limited by method or to our understanding. We can not change the ways of the Spirit.

We can only call upon its power. We can only pray or maybe just sigh or cry as Allen did over his family. Tears and tears for years for Allen. I asked Allen if he still believed in God and he said to me: “Believe in God. I know God! Only a fool says there is no God.” Allen met the God of the whirlwind. The God who came into Job’s life.

Why does the Spirit run at the pace of a child’s breath one minute and the next at 300 miles an hour blowing and tearing up everything in its path. Is it because of judgment? Or is because that is the very nature of life. Life is not safe. It is not always predictable and secure and everytime we try and tell ourselves otherwise: We end up deceiving ourselves.

But through it all Paul reminds us that nothing be it a lava flow in Hawaii or a mighty tornado in southern Missouri can separate us from God’s love and ultimately from the eternal nature of life itself. In good and bad. In joy and sorrow. God goes with us. So buckle up. We are in for the ride of our lives as long as we live. Amen