The Holy Spirit flows rather than appears

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042318.cfm
Acts 11:1-18
John 10:1-10

The procedures for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit do not take place according to institutional religious practices. Apparently, according to Peter’s experiences outlined in Acts, Chapter 11, the Holy Spirit himself coordinates the entire Baptism of said “Holy Spirit” pretty much on his own. And, almost always whenever he calculates that the baptism will stick. The Holy Spirit will engage believers as he so desires, but every detail of the timing and ushering about of participants belongs to him, and not to anyone else. 

Since the Holy Spirit is in total concert with the Father and the Son we can assume that God knows what he’s doing, and each person of the Trinity is given reign to do so. Just to clarify, or to attempt to clarify.

Baptism by water falls into the Church’s leadership, whether Roman cleric in source or from “elder” denominational wheelhouses. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though, or “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” as Luke reports it, seems to be a wholly Holy Spirit deal. 

Cataloguing and categorizing God’s activities — even titling them — can be fraught with peril. Also, analyzing God’s motivations beyond what he has revealed to us smacks of gerrymandering on a cosmic level. Nonetheless, that’s what we scalawags from the “Royal Priesthood” of the pew end up doing.

We — the sandlot theologians, the toy chemistry apologists, and the community theatre evangelists — do not worry about wasting God’s valuable time. The more qualified religious and ordained authorities may consider that their efforts help to unburden the truly overwhelming amount of stuff on God’s plate. The fools like myself and other difficult to pin down field agents of God see the Trinity as supremely pleased with scads of things to do. Peter and Paul and Thomas are our mentors. Though eager and driven, our apostolic heroes resemble us in their offensive natures, their blunt naiveté and caustic manners. Consequently, whether Roman/Orthodox Catholic in practice or Australian/American/European/African/Etc Evangelicals and Protestant, we all tend toward the belief that God wants to spend inordinate amounts of time with us. We pewists, folks of the less important body parts of Christ, do not have enough, or maybe any, well developed skills at religious notions. So, we just let that part go to the experts.

We can expect that the body magisterium and the clerical Church should do the coordinating for such sacraments as baptism by water, ceremonial washings, initiations, and the like. Priests, ministers, ordained, and anointed religious folks, and their assigned staffs, have important servant-based and methodical essential roles to play. I’ve taken part in most of their festivities and been summarily served quite nicely. No one, though, picked folks like me to be on that team. We’re too busy bothering God to be much use to those being organized by God. 

Which is why the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is so important. It is at those points, the critical revelatory moments after our initiation as Christians (of all types), that God begins our formation. We blue collar Christians have a rather long list of forming yet to accomplish. We’re either the reason for the design of eternity, or the natural result of the initial clowns who messed up God’s design in the first place; and, therefore, the ones God so loved that he sent his only Son to conquer (obliterate, really) death. Everyone loves a holy man or woman consecrated to God. God surely does! We’re the ones he fretfully, some worry regretfully, loves with exhausting and unrelenting insistence. 

“What did he do now?” and “You’ve got to be kidding,” are two common phrases uttered from the throne of Jesus about the Petrine, Pauline, and Thomophyles of creation’s suburbs and hinterlands. “Forgive them for they know not what the dickens they are doing.” On his throne, Jesus wears sacred garb of the most lovely weave. In our alleyways and our poverty, Jesus comes in the Holy Spirit wearing overalls. Our plebeian foibles are obviously more free-wheeling Holy Spirit territory than gathering the Father and Son for templed talk in the hallowed halls of the high and holy Churches.

God has much better things to do than herd us about, you might argue, like keeping the galaxies from crashing together too soon. However, God is cleverly using a potty-mouthed real estate developer to bully a despot into giving up his nuclear weaponry. This important negotiation raises eyebrows, yet seen in the light of God’s interventionary ways, it defines the global specter of God’s strange desire to work wonders, especially when the peon ranks of humanity stand in power. Maybe there are only peons, but that’s too much for the elitists to deal with. It’s best, sometimes, to allow formation to happen to all of us, even those who feel quite certain that their formation has already been accomplished. 

So, perhaps (or, most certainly) our grasp of God’s love rests in daily and hourly interventions of the divine. Whether in monumental or unessential moments the Baptism of the Spirit awakens our sensibilities to God’s grace. We peons and pewists get sleepy quite often. Repeated awakenings come to our aid out of necessity.

Over time, however, we have supposed that the lighting of candles, bowing our heads, wafting incense, and calling upon holiness are blueprints rather than their proper name — inspirational preparedness for accepting grace. From a structural codifying of the religious landscape, or from the seats of the high church, these things kind of look the same. The knave goes here, the altar should be at least 36 inches from any steps, the baptismal font shouldn’t be more than 24 inches deep, and so on. We don’t want anyone tripping, hitting their head and drowning, for goodness sake. Consulting professionals and setting the table for the proper number of folks just makes sense. 

“OK, we’re almost ready for you now, God! When you hear the trumpet that’s your signal. And, a one, and a two, and …..”

While any sane property or event manager will refer you to drawings, catalogues, scriptural references, and calendars, the Holy Spirit’s patience and perfunctory behaviors weave with whatever materials are available, and wherever the gift of the Spirit will be received. Yes, the Sacrament of Confirmation makes a great gathering space for the Holy Spirit. In fact, God is assuredly giddy with pleasure at the heartfelt machinations to celebrate his presence. Like children giving their parents weird drawings of the family members, God beams at industrious love.

But, like the suit or dress purchased special for our Confirmation it may not be until the third time the clothing was worn that the Holy Spirit actually breaks through to grant salvific grace to a new grateful believer. Several aha moments likely have to pass before we finally grasp the treasure of “life-giving repentance.” Quite often, I believe, we’re wearing our pajamas or a floppy hat and hiking boots and can no longer fit in, or even find, our confirmation attire when God finally breaks through. In fact, quite a number of field work Confirmations (forbid me for even saying it) come from the sanctified touch of a wandering sacred one (probably ushered to us by an angel) who mouths the words of Jesus’ redemptive love. And, we are then forever changed. 

Some of us go through the celebratory Confirmation as an adult. Even though the Spirit has moved in and put up several bookcases of witness in our hearts, those Confirmations where we call upon the Holy Spirit are mere introductory taps on our front door. Witnesses are required, and testimony. We need a Peter to be dragged to face us with the challenge to let the Holy Spirit in. Then, the ceremonies, the gathering places and times reveal their essential purpose. Witness followed by testimony followed by more witnessing is a cyclic part of our holiness. The Holy Spirit gathers us from everywhere, to praise the Father and to ingest the Son — in Word and Bread.

We need to practice the functionary components of how belief takes place in order to grasp its actuality. The more we repeat something the more we make that something a reality, even to the extent that we eventually find that we believe things that we didn’t even realize we believed. I’m talking about walking the walk, following the path, expecting that God will get through to us eventually. Not because God needs to keep trying, but because we do. 

It’d be nice to be wearing our Confirmation clothing, under the proud watch of our family and friends, when we witness and testify. For religious purposes, that would be ideal. But, Baptism of the Holy Spirit will likely take place before or after and among complete strangers who’ll be our eternal friends. 

What is necessary, however, is to belong to the community that hallows God’s presence as it annually gathers a pewful or two of new believers under the watchful and prayerful guise of a bishop, and in the midst of glorifying, indwelled hearts. The more of those components, fashioned into blueprints by studious theologians, surrounding our faith life, the more we honor each other and witness. But, even just one or two for now, adding a few even decades later, will make their way to God’s fridge-door heart. Our own weird drawings of our family of faith have prominent places there.

There’s one of me in hiking boots, grateful to the witness of strangers, the love of my Joanne, and the prayer filled images of my parents. That was almost a decade after my church-held baptism of the Spirit. In fact, I’ve sent off a thousand other drawings where that baptism seems to need reminding, even repetition. It’s part of every formation of each of us.