The point being, at some point in time we have to grow up. Hopefully that means that we actually mature, and not just grow older. Those are two different things. We can spend a lot of time growing older, but do we ever grow up?
Over the last few posts, we’ve been spending some time talking about the Trinity and the roles of each person of the Trinity, and how that can be confusing.
And I think a lot of the confusion comes from the role of the Holy Spirit. It is the hardest to understand and pin down because we don’t have an actual person to identify it with.
With God as creator, we can often picture and old man with long flowing white beard, or for some of us we might think of George Burns or Morgan Freeman (depending on your favorite movie).
Jesus is easy because he was a real person, and with however inaccurate they may be, we have lots of paintings of him.
The Spirit doesn’t work in that same way.
The first time we see the Holy Spirit in definitive action and doing something with a regular group of people is on the day of Pentecost.
Today we’re celebrating the Holy Spirit for Pentecost. Technically this is getting posted a week early, but I won’t be here next week.
Next Sunday the Serve Team will be giving us the message and they’ll be talking about how the Holy Spirit leads us to action to help and serve others.
This is the role of the Holy Spirit. The grace that comes from the Holy Spirit is sanctifying grace. Its job is to help us do the things that we should do, to help us grow up. To move beyond our teenage years and mature a little. For some of us that takes a little more work, but we’ll get there.
I’ve been asked in the past, can you be a Christian and not try to live better? My first answer is of course not, but then I thought about it some more. My new answer is that I suppose you can, but why?
Why would you want to? Why would you choose to live your life as a 12 year old? When we want to be a Christian without growing, this is what we're saying, that we want to live life as a permanent 12 year old.
There are times when I still act that age. In fact, I remember one time when I was substitute teaching a group of 12 year olds, and we were in science lesson. The kids were reading about the three states of matter, solid, liquid, and…..gas.
What do 12 year olds do when they hear that word? They giggle of course. And what does their substitute teacher do? Especially when he still has his moments when he’s their age? Try not to laugh really hard and how funny they think it is.
And that’s the reason why we still need grace. When we accept who Jesus is, and the gift that he gives us, we still need grace because we’re going to laugh at silly things. We’re still going to have times when we haven’t grown up and we do the things we aren’t supposed to, or we just aren’t as mature as we should be.
That’s okay.
In fact, this is the lesson that comes on Pentecost. When the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, we read that they were able to speak other languages to be heard by the crowds of people who were gathered around them.
But that’s not the only experience of the Holy Spirit that they will have, and not the only way that will be had by others.
Pentecost is not about having a specific experience of the Holy Spirit, but knowing that everyone experiences the Holy Spirit in a different way…each in their own language you could say, each as makes sense for them. This is so that they can grow up and mature.
The Holy Spirit is the hidden strength that gives us grace when we need it, and a foundation to stand on when we’re growing up. That looks different for each of us, but that’s good…that’s also why we have such a hard time seeing the Holy Spirit as a person, and that’s okay.
There are times when we share in the experience with each other, and many times we experience it on our own.
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