Dear Friends
It was a year or two ago. Stevie was having a hard day. The previous day and through the night the wind had been ‘blawin’ a hoolie’. The West end of Aberdeen is a leafy suburb, and Stevie was a road sweeper. Through the night the wind had whipped through the trees, blown over the odd wheelie bin, and the pavement was a mess.
I was walking along Carden Place and stopped to say hello. Stevie wasn’t happy. It was obvious from the way he used his brush, like a defensive weapon pushing back the forces of chaos. You can say a lot about someone’s emotional inner climate by the way they use a brush!
It wasn’t just the litter; it was the carpet of green leaves, twigs and occasional branches that obviously annoyed him. “It’s July”, he said. Stevie poured so much heartfelt complaint into that two word answer. And I could see where he was coming from. Leaves are for October, when they have the blowing machines and extra folk to do the tidying up. And it was his day to do the streets that were tree lined – he even showed me the highlighted map of his day’s work.
I thought then, and I’ve thought a lot about it since. The wind of the Spirit of God blows where and when God pleases. The Holy Spirit takes us by surprise, inconveniences us, propels us from behind and pushes us forward, blows in our faces and wakes us up. “You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with those who are born of the Spirit” (John 3.8)
And sometimes the Holy Spirit gets in the way of our tidiness, tears up our wee roadmaps of what we plan to do with our day. Other times the Spirit blows when we don’t expect it, and is not required to explain or apologise for any inconvenience caused. It is one of the pivotal moments in the history of the church of Jesus’ followers, that the sign of the Spirit’s arrival was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. The result for that scared group of disciples, hiding away and silenced by their fears, was a regenerated hopefulness, a reckless boldness, and an overwhelming need to throw open the doors and follow Jesus out into a world where the wind blows and new languages of love, grace and hope are spoken.
I wonder sometimes if we occasionally have a Stevie attitude to the disruptive, creative, unpredictability of the presence and power and purposes of the Holy Spirit, blowing through our comfort zones, upsetting our set ways, tugging at us and even pushing us from behind with the latent energy of the Spirit of Life.
The work of the Holy Spirit, especially in the book of Acts, is the creation of the community of Jesus. Sure there is the miracle of the Gospel preached in whatever languages were understood by all the people in the busy cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem. The list of ethnic diversity in Acts 2.9-11 is always fun to read out loud. Healing and preaching, boldness and joy, grace and generosity, hopefulness and fellowship, compassion and courage – these and more were the gathering evidence that God was at work. The Holy Spirit was let loose on the world, a world which crucified Jesus and in which resurrection had negated the worst the world could do.
The stable centre of all this is described in Acts 2.42, and this too is the work of the Holy Spirit. “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.” Christian community is not something we create; it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who takes of the things of Jesus, explains them to our hearts and minds, draws us together, and orchestrates our gifts.
Quite understandably, the continuing disruption of our church life by the pandemic has deprived us of much that we have previously known and experienced together as a church. We don’t know how the future will look. What we do know is:
- i) Jesus our risen Lord, will build his church just as he promised.
- ii) The wind of the Holy Spirit blows where God pleases and will mean changes, disruption, and the hard work of being the people of God right here and right now.
iii) It is the work of the Holy Spirit to equip us, sustain us, guide us, energise us, and impel us forward to God’s future.
Yes, I too have a lot of sympathy with Stevie. Sometimes in the plans and purposes of God there are more leaves in July than in October! But don’t look at the leaves; listen to the sound of the wind, the loud, rushing movements of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Spirit of holiness, wisdom and faithfulness,
wind of the Lord, blowing strongly and free:
strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping
Spirit of God bring your fullness to me, to us, to your people.
Your friend and pastor,
Jim Gordon
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