The Incredible Holy Spirit

       I remember when I was ordained a priest.  It was in 1975,  December 13,  at St. Philip’s church in Moon township.  I had a late calling to the priesthood, I spent some twenty some years in the broadcasting business.  When the station that I was working for basically went bankrupt and we were all laid off, I needed to find another job.  I had thought about ministry a number of times in my life, but I had always put it off.  I loved being in television, it was always challenging and the work was fun.  It was only when economic necessity forced my hand, that I went back to the idea of ministry.

The process was incredibly easy.  I talked to my rector, had an interview with Bishop Robert Appleyard and was enrolled in Virginia Seminary that fall.  Things were much less complicated then.  There was a shortage of clergy and there were not all of these modern day hoops to jump through.

My ordination was a great day.  Along with Bishop Appleyard, some twenty or thirty priests laid hands on me.  I will always remember the weight of their hands almost pushing me through the floor.  I was glad when it was over and the stole of my office was put over my shoulders and I was presented to the congregation for their applause.

It took years for me to sort out what happened that day.  Something in me had changed.  I discovered that my real education was just beginning.  I found that while my seminary had taught me theology, church history and much about the bible; how to be a priest was not one of the courses.  It was up to my parish to teach me that subject.  How to comfort, how to listen, how to lead.  That was the fairly complicated course that my two parishes taught me.  The Holy Spirit came to me through the people of the church, through their lives and their struggles.  They taught me what the church was all about.

One year, I had twenty-seven funerals, many of the people who had died were pillars of the parish.  I did all of the funerals, and spent a lot of time with the families.  Late in that year, on my way out of the church, after one of them,  I remember one of my altar guild members meeting me on the stairs.  “And how are you doing”, she asked me.   I burst into tears, all of the grief of that year falling out of me.   She brought me a great gift that day.  I was comforted and given strength in the middle of all of the pain that I had around me.   That’s how the Spirit works.

The experience of the disciples of Jesus after the resurrection has always fascinated me.  He comes to them in the upper room where the doors are locked because they are afraid and he shows them his wounds.  These disciples of Jesus were terrified because of their fear of the same people who crucified Jesus.  They all thought that they were next.

Even after his appearance, they were still afraid.  John’s gospel talks about Peter leading them all back to the Sea of Galilee, where they simply went fishing again.  It is only when Jesus appears on the shore that Peter scrambles out of the boat to come face to face with him, where Jesus forgives him for his denial of him and sends him to feed his sheep.

In Matthew’s Gospel, there is another wonderful incident where the eleven remaining disciples go to Galilee to meet the risen Jesus.  The Gospel says poignantly:

                                         Now the disciples went to Galilee, 
to the mountain to which Jesus had directed 
them.  And when they saw him, they worshiped
him, although some doubted.

Although some doubted! These followers of Jesus were still not convinced of the resurrection. As Jesus tells them in John’s Gospel:

                                       I still have many things to say to you, but you
                                   cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth
                                   comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he
                                  will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever 
                                  he hears, and he will declare to you the things that
                                  are to come. 

The incredible part of the Easter story is that the disciples were not at all  convinced by the fact of the rising from the dead by their leader.  It took the coming of the Spirit to bring it home to them.  How the Spirit came to these fearful followers is detailed in the Acts of the Apostles, the second book that Luke wrote about the incredible ministry of Jesus and the beginnings of the church.  In the second chapter of Acts, there is the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit on these people, and the phenomenon of the listeners to them hearing what they said, each in their own language.  After that powerful event, there was no doubt among the disciples.  They went about building the church in full confidence of the truth of the reality of the resurrected Christ.

That Spirit is still with us.  In subtle, sometimes silent ways, the Spirit of God empowers the church to be the hand of God in this world.  That’s why we do what we do and how we are led to show the truth of the Risen Christ to the world.  The Spirit is how I was sent to seminary, and how this church was started.  God bless us in our continuing journey.