One of the amazing birds that comes to our New Zealand shores is the Godwit. The Godwit makes the world’s longest non-stop migration to get here. It comes from Siberia and flies down the Alaskan coast and over the pacific to our shores to breed and then in autumn it will reverse the journey to feed in the Artic summer.
"First you hear it: The faraway honking of geese in flight. Relentless honking, as if to clear the sky ahead of errant sparrows and stray robins, lest they be ploughed over by the oncoming steamroll of birds; ceaselessly honking avian encouragements to ‘press on!’ to a destination I would never know.
Then from the north, the vee of birds comes surging into sight high above the buckeye trees: the lead goose, breaking the air and setting the pace, then dropping back as another, then another, leads the way through the ocean of sky.
And then on those evenings when the air is really still, comes the sound of wings: a distant relentless churning of air, mocking gravity’s pull on sleek heavy bodies coursing to their winter home."
We domesticate the Holy Spirit when we say that the Holy Spirit is only for some people and not for others, like it was an optional extra on a luxury car. In the narrative of the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, the third person of our triune God, falls on and fills all the believers.
IN Acts chapter 1 the disciples had been told by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem until they received God’s power and he would then send them out to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the world. They waited by meeting together for prayer and fellowship. The on Pentecost, the Jewish festival for harvest time and new wine, the spirit of God descends on them as they are gathered in the upper room.
What was new about this event was not that the Spirit of God came and filled human beings in the Old Testament God’s spirit was given to specific people for specific tasks. But now at Pentecost we see that all the believers are filled with the spirit. Just like in this image of a candle lit vigil the spirit manifested itself as tongues of fire and descended on all who were present. Not just the twelve, all the believers and they started speaking in different languages and praising God.
As Peter explained to the crowd who had come because of the physical manifestations that accompanied it, this was what God had foretold through the prophet Joel. That in the end days God would pour out his spirit on all his people regardless of gender, age or social standing. I could pray for young Samuel to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit at his baptism this morning we can pray for God to fill us all and he will and does. The more wrinkles the more room there is to expand to accommodate the Spirit's presence.
Now in classical Pentecostal circles there used to be and still are in some places the belief that to be filled with the Holy Spirit you need to speak in tongues. That’s wrong and I’m sorry that has made a lot of saintly people feel like second-class citizens. It was one of the damaging excesses of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements because instead of promoting unity in the Spirit it caused elitism and disunity. When you read the passage in acts 2 you see that Joel’s prophecy was that all people would prophecy. Not speak in tongues. To prophecy is to tell forth God’s word speaking it out, not to fore tell events. We are all empowered to speak what God puts on our hearts. I speak in tongues I’m not anti tongues but it is only one way God chooses to speak through His people. As Paul says he speaks in tongues more than anyone else but he would rather say one or two words that people understood than a thousand they didn’t. At Pentecost the manifestation of tongues was prophetic it showed that the good news of Jesus Christ was for all people from every tribe and tongue. It foretold the fact that the good news of Jesus Christ would be preached in all the world’s languages. But it wasn’t the only gift God gives to his people by the Holy Spirit.
The other misconception about the Holy Spirit not being for all believers is that all this Holy Spirit stuff was for the first generation of the church, to go back to the motor vehicle analogy it gave a kick start but in the quote from Acts 2 we used in the baptism this morning the promise of God’s spirit was not only for those who believed but for their children as well. That is a Jewish way of saying for succeeding generations. Generation after generation.
In the Old Testament there is a bird image of God as a mother eagle pushing her children out of the nest and off the high cliffs they live on to teach them to fly and as they plummet to the ground the mother eagle swoops down to pick them up before they hit the rocks below and carry them back to the nest only to do it again and again until they learn to fly. (New Zeaalnd Poet James K Baxter uses the image of the mother eagle for the Holy Spirit in his poem 'The Song Of The Holy Spirit http://howard-carter.blogspot.com/2011/05/song-to-holy-spirit-james-k-baxter.html ) Throughout the book of acts we can see a pattern of the Holy Spirit pushing the Christians out of their nest. Through persecution they are pushed out of Jerusalem and share the good news with other towns in Judea. In Acts 10 the Holy Spirit pushes Peter out of the Jewish nest to the gentile Cornelius’s house. The Spirit pushes Paul across the Aegean sea to Macedonia. Down through history when Christians have become inward focused and thinking its all about what happens in here, the spirit has stirred people up to follow the wild goose out to the people and world that God loves.
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’
Maybe the spirit is calling you to take flight today. What are the dreams that God is giving you. The visions he has instilled in your hearts. What are the words and the actions that the spirit has placed in you to speak to the world of Christ? We often talk about a wild goose chase as an act of futility, like we talk about chasing the wind. Yet As Christians it’s not futile the Spirit of God wants to be found in us wants us to catch hold of what he wants us to do and calls us to follow him for the sake of the world that God loves.
Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn responds to that call like this:
I’m too old for the term but I’ll use it any way
I’ll be a child of the wind till the end of my days.
(for full lyrics see http://howard-carter.blogspot.com/2011/02/child-of-wind.html)
Sorry you have not got a lot of encouraging comments on this reflection, which is excellent. I shared it with the Celtic Christianity and Music Facebook group. God bless you!
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