What Took The Spirit So Long?

First Sunday After Epiphany, January 3, 2016.  Year C

The Rev. Virginia Tyler Smith

Today, on what is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, we always read about the Baptism of our Lord. Most of the gospels tell the story in a similar way: John was preaching, Jesus arrived, John baptized him, and immediately a spirit came down in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Lord pronounced Jesus to be blessed and to be pleasing to God.

And our other readings lead us up to this. Our other readings tell us of water, and fire, and that great voice, and the glory that is God, and the power of the spirit coming to those who believe.  But I have to tell you, that these readings have always raised questions for me.  For instance: In Acts, we have Peter and John going to those who have been baptized so that they may do some additional laying on of hands in order to bring on the Spirt.

Clearly this passage shows us that the spirit is not something that we choose, but rather, something that adopts us. But does it take the intervention of another—like Peter and John to make that happen? Can the Holy Spirit come on its own? 

QUESTION: did Jesus have the holy spirit within him PRIOR to the dove descending on him….

This is the 3^rd chapter of Luke.  Prior to this, we have the annunciation to both Elizabeth and Mary, we have the birth in the manger, we have Herod looking for Jesus and the wise men coming to celebrate him. We have Joseph taking the family to Egypt and then coming back to settle in Galilee, in Nazareth, we have Jesus teaching in the templet and being lost for three days, finally chastising his parents and saying, “I have been in my father’s house, we have John arrested for what he has been proclaiming….so clearly a lot has been going on related to the unique and powerful presence of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit just shows up NOW???

What was the role of the dove—to bring the spirit? To show where the spirit comes from (above), and what form it takes (something that moves freely through the air)? To show how perfect it is (white).  Or was the dove simply POINTING to the spirit—a portion of the spirit connecting God to this realm.  Was the dove the lens through which God was then able to speak…or was that dove the clue for everyone that “hold on, something big is about to happen here?”

We can’t know what the holy spirit looks like, or how it acts, so we tend to think of it in terms of the dove, or wind, or somethings, that, like the Isaiah reading and psalms tells us, shakes us to our roots.  We tend to think that when the spirit comes to us, that it’s an immense, climactic moment, like when the dove descended to Jesus.  And that a voice will come out of the cloud, and with a James Earl Jones-like voice announce what is the great thing that is happening, or that is about to happen.

But what if it’s not like that at all? What if the fire, and the water, and the voice, and don’t show up, and instead, we’re just left with a simple moment? 

The reason that I ask these questions and sort of poke at some of the more tricky parts is because there comes a point in our reading of scripture when we have to ask the questions of the text in order to understand our own relationship to it.  These texts want us to come on inside. They want us to believe and to be relieved—and impressed—by the power of God in the lives of humans.  But these texts also want to point us to God in a way that shines a light on the holy, and pulls us away from the critical questions.  A spirit-- something like a dove--- came, and now we know that this is God’s son, and that God is pleased.  And in fact, that’s where the story ends. We don’t hear about the response of the hearers, or whether they stopped asking questions of John, we just hear that the spirit came.

This week, I met someone who taught me a lot about that kind of a moment.  Her name is Denise.  Denise is in her early 40’s, and she’s an addict.  She’ll be the first to tell you. She started using when she was 13, because everyone in her family drank and did drugs. By the time she was 21, she had four kids. And she’d be the first to tell you that she wasn’t ready for any of that.  She tried treatment.  Multiple times.  The first time, it was because she wanted to do it for her kids. The second time, she thought it would help her get better benefits from DSS.  She was tired of being homeless. But this was all she knew, and though she felt she was meant for something better, she had no idea where she would find the structure or the willpower.  She got arrested for selling narcotics, and told the judge, “You’d better lock me up.” But then, as she described it to me, Denise’s heart sank when they closed that gate and she was in that cell.  She cried for the first thirty days. She had given all four of her children to other caregivers within her family. What had she done? How could she change? She pondered this in jail.

On the day that they let her out of jail, she immediately went back to using.

Ultimately, she went into an outpatient program in which three counselors started to show her that her life meant something. And though she can’t put her finger on the day, she knows there was a moment when the lightbulb went off, and she found the will to take one small step. Before she knew it, she had 30 days sober.  This coming February 15, she’ll have six years. She’s now living in a supported housing environment, she’s reunited with her kids and her four grandchildren, and she’s taking college level math, studying for a job as a pharmacy tech.

I told her that she had a lot of perserverance, especially to keep up with all the strucutre of her housing, counseling and academic programs.  Here’s what she said to me: “First, I wanted to do it for others, but I had to learn to have a relationship with myself.  And to do that, I have to make a choice. Lot’s of choices, every day. I try every day to have a plan before I leave my apartment, because otherwise it would be way to easy to go back to the chaos. I don’t want the chaos or the drama. I don’t want to look over my shoulder. I was living an animalistic level as an active user. I had one goal. After a while, you’re not getting high, you’re just chasing.  I want to live, not just exist.  I did what I had to do when I was using—no matter what it too—to meet my goal of using. Now I do whatever I have to do to meet my goal of staying clean and living a good and simple life.”

I admire her clarity—but it wasn’t always that way. Something, some conversation, some moment gave Denise the strength to take that first step. She knows it was the Holy Spirit, and she knows that she still depends on that spirit every day.  But she also knows this: she is beloved.

She was the first person in her family to break the cycle.  Generations of a single family have been slave to what Denise calls “the enemy.”  There came a time when Denise was willing to say that she couldn’t do it alone. She was willing to make herself vulnerable, to receive what came to her, in the form of the Spirit, and in the form of good treatment.

And now she shares it with others, as an NA speaker and sponsor, working with her treatment programs as a peer counselor, going into the schools to speak.

I have to tell you that when I sat with Denise, I saw the Holy Spirit in this woman. I saw the light in her eyes that told me she had been given a second chance at this one life, and that with God’s grace, and forgiveness, she is going to make each day count, so that she can be God’s beloved too. 

       

When Denise made that first step—just for that moment, on that day, she lived into what I’ll call a baptismal moment—a time when the spirit descended and when God made his love for us known. But it was only one. 

What was your baptismal moment?  Maybe there is more than one. Think of how many miraculous moments you have witnessed in which somehow the spirit came forth and let you know that what was happening was both important and giving you a new reality.

Think about the coincidences, the near misses, the times when luck was on your side.  It wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t luck.  God has chosen us, even before we knew of God.  And God comes to us many, many times within our lives, to keep drawing us back.

I asked if, when the dove showed up to Jesus in the river Jordan, that was the first time the Spirit was showing up.  The answer is: not by a long shot. The spirit had been there all along, but this was just one of his showier moments.  The spirit shows up all the time, in ways that we don’t anticipate and can’t imagine.  And if we don’t answer, he doesn’t go away. He just waits, until the time is right.

Denise doesn’t remember exactly how it happened that her time became right.  But it did. And I never expected that when I met her yesterday, that I would have the experience of God’s presence that I did.

But what our gospel teaches us today is that, if we are open to the idea that the Spirit can come into our midst, He will.  And while we might expect that he will rattle the trees, and come with great gusts, we also have to know this: it won’t be what we can imagine.  I read something this week that summarizes it nicely: we can spend our lives preparing. We can run around tidying our houses and making everything just perfect.

We can prune the garden, and set out the tray of cookies. We can try to make it all perfect, and sit by the front door and wait. But odds are, that’s not when God will come to us. God will sneak in when we are unloading groceries and walking in through the side door. God will come to us when we’re knee deep in fertilizer, cleaning out the garden beds.  God will come to us when we’re tired, and frustrated, and just can’t fight anymore.  And once again, he’ll offer us a way.

You know, and I know—and the scripture makes it clear-- it’s not up to us. It’s up to him, and it’s on his time. The question is: when he calls, when that moment comes, when he says you are his beloved, will you allow yourself to believe it?  And will you answer?

By the grace of God,  and with his help, I pray we each will.

Amen.

QUESTION: What does it mean to be baptized with fire?