What's Better than Spiritual Fireworks

Following a long tradition in my corner of the Christian world, my parish has just celebrated Pentecost. One of the readings for the day presented a jarring and stirring scene. The account puts off some of us, excites others, leaves still others with questions.

Jesus’s followers were, the Book of Acts tells us simply, “all together in one place.” Then everything changed: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” And there was fire lighting the tongues of the speakers on hand.

Luke, the story’s narrator, goes on to describe the astonishing, contagious conviction the disciples display. They speak to the crowd with a power beyond their own energy or ingenuity. They are so exuberant that some in the crowd suspect the preachers have come straight from a morning bender.

What might that picture mean for us? I’m drawn to the story’s possible meaning for now, and I have been for decades. I’m curious about how what happened then could inject new life into my own experience of faith and church now.

Years and years ago I became part of a church that felt that the vitality of the early followers of Jesus could revisit Christians in our own day. The fellowship had begun as a Bible study at a midwestern Mennonite college, and the group felt fueled with youthful idealism. They drew a crowd of seekers, folks that ranged from the granddaughter of a prominent local Amish bishop to a convert from the town’s drug subculture, to say nothing of church-goers who simply wanted a more visceral experience of worship and prayer. There were stories of healing in answer to intercessions, and certainly heartfelt worship on Sunday mornings. Small groups created intense community.

I even wrote a story about them for a denominational magazine. “They believe,” I said, “God is placing them on the front edge of the Spirit’s new doings in the modern age.” So struck was I that I found a way to move there for a time so that I could participate.

There was something exhilarating in what we experienced. But as my searching continued, my wife and I moved on, finding greater depth in a lively Episcopal parish, which we soon joined. The majesty of the liturgy and the prayers stretching back centuries drew us. I saw a leadership structure that lent stability and solidity to the church’s work, something that that young church plant struggled with. Spiritual depth endures and flourishes for the long haul, I realized, often more reliably than exuberance.

But still, I ask, sometimes wistfully, in what sense is God active? How does the Spirit move? What can we expect? Especially when we don’t limit ourselves to what is sometimes called the charismatic renewal movement?

And here I’m helped by another passage we also read on Pentecost Sunday.

When Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel, his favorite name is Advocate. “I will ask the Father,” he promises, “and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”

Sometimes that word for the Spirit gets translated as Comforter. But that strikes me as too mild. At root of the word in the original language is “someone who comes alongside.” One called to come and fortify. Who lends his own power to ordinary pursuits. And an Advocate like that seems to offer hope in the hard and harsh moments, not just the ones giddy with spiritual delight.

Fireworks—spiritual and otherwise—have a place, as that first Pentecost displays. But doesn’t our need have more to do with a deeper charge? Not the flash and dynamism of fiery exhilaration, but something more lasting. In our day in which COVID has made so much topsy-turvy, in our time when loneliness has become, as someone put it, a public health emergency, I’m thinking that that Presence has more to do with what we most long for and live for. I want to keep alive Pentecost’s flame, but also find a quieter warmth brought by the One who comes alongside, and who will sustain me for every season.