Minister: Marv Vose

The Lost Part of the Trinity:  What Exactly Is This Thing Called The Holy Spirit?
Acts 19:1-7 (The Message)


A mother was watching her two children play next door.  They were building a house there and the basement had been dug out so there was a big hole.  As Mom washed dishes, she watched her son take a little doll, put some water on it and then toss it into the big hole.  Then his little sister would run down into the hole, get the doll and bring it back up.  Then they would repeat it all over again.  Now Mom is a good Mom, so she is suspicious!  She goes outside and asks, "What are you playing?"  They respond, "We are playing baptism."  So the Mom says, "Do it again for me."  The little sister brings the doll up again, hands it to her brother, who sprinkles it with water, waves his hands over it and says, "In the name of the Father and the Son and In the Hole He goes" and then he tossed the doll into the hole.  Don't you just love that story?
Now you and I know that what he should have said was "Holy Ghost" not "in the hole he goes!"  But children aren't too sophisticated around the subtleties of the trinity or theology. 
            And it isn't just children.  There are lots of folks who have trouble understanding it.  And it's nothing to be embarrassed about or ashamed of.  It is a difficult topic.  If you look at the scripture we read for today, those new disciples hadn't even heard of the Holy Spirit.  They were anxious to learn, when Paul told them, but it was a whole new concept and experience.
            In fact, if you look at scripture, the word "trinity" is never used.  It was expressed there, but the word "trinity" is absent.  II Corinthians 13: 14 is probably one of the earliest expressions of the trinity.  It reads like this:  "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."  It's the close of Paul's letter to the church at Corinth. 
            But it wasn't until the fourth century that the concept of the trinity was generally embraced and put into our creeds.  Even today theologians struggle with the concept of the trinity.  The classic understanding is that God is "One substance, and three persons."  But how is the Holy Spirit a "person?"  It gets complicated. I had a clergy colleague asked, "What exactly is this thing called the Holy Spirit?"  Here is someone who has gone to seminary.  He had actually taught in seminary.  He had been a pastor for decades, and yet he was asking the question. 
            And yet it is worth our effort.  It's worth struggling with the concept of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit, because this is the best way we have come up with to begin to somehow grasp that which is beyond our understanding.  And if we limit our understanding, or give too much focus to one part of the Trinity, then we limit the fullness of God.
            We're really pretty good at understanding the concept of God as creator.  We live in Colorado!  We see the splendor of God every time we look at Pikes Peak!  We see the beauty of God's creation all around us and we are reminded of the source of all this grandeur and beauty.  We are good at seeing God as creator! 
            But did you ever wonder what God would be like if we saw God solely that way?  Anthony Flew is a British philosophy professor and a leading champion of atheism for more than a half century.  He was very big in the circle of atheists.  If you were talking about atheism, his name would inevitably come up.  He proclaimed the lack of evidence for God in universities in Great Britain, Canada and the U.S. 
Just recently, he changed his mind.  This is what he said in a video entitled "Has Science Discovered God?"  Biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved."  Flew has told the Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. (The Gazette, December 12, 2004)
He has begun to believe in God as creator.  But he doesn't believe in a personal God.  He doesn't believe in an after-life.  In fact he calls the God of Christianity and Islam "Omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins." And so, if we limit our trinity to God as creator, there are some significant limitations.
We do really quite well with the idea of Jesus as a person of the Trinity.  The Bible is filled with stories of Jesus.  We feel like we know Jesus.  The stories tell us who Jesus is and who God is.  But at the same time, Jesus was an historic figure.  After his life, death and resurrection, he went to be with God at God's right hand.  So if we stop here, we have a very distant God!  And yet many people stop at this second person of the trinity and live with a God who is transcendent, but not immanent.
And that really is where the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity, comes in.  We see Jesus recommending the Holy Spirit to us.  In John, chapter 16, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for his leaving.  He tells them, "...it is for your good than I am going away.  Unless I go away, the Advocate (some translations say "comforter") will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you."  It is clear that Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit.
A children's Sunday school class studied this chapter of John one week.  Apparently, they were using a translation that used the word "comforter."  After the class, one of the children met his parents and they asked him what they had been studying and he said, "It was a kind of funny class today, but it seems like the Bible tells us that Jesus is going to give us a warm blanket!" 
 If we are going to approach the totality of God, the Holy Spirit has to be there!  But in order to get there, we have to overcome some obstacles.  There is some resistance to embracing the concept of the Holy Spirit.  Part of it is from our tradition.  If you look at the tradition of the Protestant Reformation, you will see that we compensated for some abuses in the church and focused on the primacy of scripture.  It was the ultimate!  We studied scripture.  We preached scripture.  We lived scripture. At the same time, the Enlightenment was moving us away from some of the awful superstitions of the day.  And both of those were very important and very helpful, but in that rush to rationalism, the Holy Spirit got moved to the sideline. 
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was asked if such and such a pastor had the Holy Spirit.  Wesley replied with some disdain, "Yes, he has the Holy Spirit.  He has swallowed it feathers and all!"  What Wesley was talking about was balance!  There are some who ignore the rest of the Trinity and focus only on the Spirit.  And that can be as detrimental and excluding the Holy Spirit. 
When we see those folks who focus only on the Spirit, it makes us a little uncomfortable.  We aren't sure we want God quite that close.  And if God gets that close, what will God want us to do? 
But, if we don't overcome that resistance, we miss out on some incredibly important parts of God!
            The Book of Common Prayer describes the Spirit like this.  "The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity, God at work in the world and in the Church even now."  But if we don't take the Holy Spirit seriously, we miss out on all of that work in the world and the church.
            Henry Blackaby wrote a wonderful workbook entitled, Experiencing God, Knowing and Doing the Will of God.    He was serving a church that sensed the need to start a ministry on a nearby college campus.  But their pastor had never done that kind of ministry.  The church had never done that kind of ministry.  So the denomination folks said the way to start was to do a Bible study in the dorms.  So they tried for a year and nothing happened.  They flopped.
            One Sunday, Henry pulled his students together and said, "This week I want you to go to the campus and watch to see where God is working and join Him."  So they did!  They were all looking for where God might be working.  On Wednesday, one of the girls reported.  "Oh, Pastor, a girl who has been in classes with me for two years came to me after class today.  She said, ‘I think you might be a Christian.  I need to talk to you.'  She remembered what her pastor had said.  She had a class, but she skipped it.  The two of them went to the cafeteria to talk.  She said, ‘Eleven of us girls have been studying the Bible, and none of us are Christians.  Do you know somebody who can lead us in a Bible study?'" 
            As a result of that conversation, they started three Bible study groups in the girls' dorms and two in the men's dorms.  Now they had been trying to do it on their own and failing, but when they started to look at what God was already doing and work alongside that, incredible things happened. 
            The scripture we read today describes the Holy Spirit so well! Paul asks, "Did you take God into your mind only, or did you also embrace him with your heart?  Did he get inside you?"  When people talk about the Holy Spirit, they say things like it is God in action.  It is the love of God, the presence of God, the power of God.  It is God making each of us holy.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.
            All of that is pretty important isn't it? 
            Bill Hybels is the pastor of a church in Chicago.  In one of his books, he talks about the work of the Holy Spirit in his own life.  He had had a long day and an exhausting evening meeting.  He'd made it to his car and was driving out of the church parking lot, when he noticed someone walking to their car.  In that moment, he had this sense of God's leading that he should offer some kind of assistance to the person. 
            Now, his first reaction was "why?"  The person didn't seem to be having any trouble.  And his second reaction was "why me?"  It had been a long and exhausting day.  He wanted to go home.  So he just kept driving and rationalized his disobedience.  But by the time he got to the road, his spirit was so unsettled that he gave in.  He decided that his disobedience was causing him more stress than following. 
            So he headed back and pulled up alongside the person and said rather awkwardly, "Is there any way I can serve you?  Can I drive you to your car?"  The woman, whom he had never seen before, gladly accepted the offer.  Just as she was about to get out of the car, she said, "There was an announcement in the bulletin tonight about the need for administrative help in the church office, and I've been feeling God leading me to apply for that position.  What do you think?"
            They talked about it for a bit and then they both drove off.  Know what happened?  She applied for the position and ended up spending almost ten years on staff.  Would it have happened if Bill hadn't followed the prompting of the Holy Spirit?  How much did it impact the church and his life and her life, by following that gentle nudge?
            What about us?  Do we notice the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?  Do we pay attention to those nudges?  If we miss them, how much are we missing out on?  Here's your assignment for the week.  Here's what I would like you to ponder this week.  How active is the Holy Spirit in your life?  How much do you allow the Spirit to do?  Are you missing out on God's work in your life?