God’s Spirit works behind the scenes

Sermon on Romans 8:12-17 and John 3:1-8

Today, I want to reintroduce you to someone. Someone you have all met before, just maybe rarely noticed. Or noticed but called by a different name. Or by no name at all.

She is humble. She doesn’t try to get attention. She is happy to live for her family. The nuclear family of three. And the much larger adopted one. She loves them all, she cares for them all, she is always there for them all.

She is the ribbon of love wafting through relationships. Connecting the dots, matching soul-mates. People who seem to know everything she sends seeking. Doubters she sends stories to hear and hearts to discover. No effort is too big, no tool too low. She will always make do with what she’s got.

She is really good with people. And with animals. And with flowers and every other living creature in the universe. She can make you look in the right direction just in time to see that shooting star vanishing in the universe. She can turn your eyes to look into the eyes of a stranger, seeing Jesus Christ in him. Or at least a neighbor who deserves to be seen. She can push you in many different ways, from gently to firmly, forcing you to walk new roads. She might help you get lost for a while and you might not enjoy that at all. But you won’t really have a say. And she won’t guide you out until you have figured out your mess or your needs or your fears or all of it.

She is the most powerful force on earth, totally untamed, yet often unnamed, unrecognized.

And once in a while, she will even provide an answer, whispered in the wind, screamed against the waves, shouted over the coffee grinder, smelling through the scent of freshly baked bread, and breathing through a glass of poured wine. And someone will look up and say: “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Or: “I feel like I really need to call my friend.” Someone else will suddenly feel free and light, like being lifted from a burden he didn’t know he was carrying. Or from a haunting thought, or a deeply rooted feeling of unworthiness engrained by years of doubts and disrespect from others.

She keeps to the background, preparing people for meetings and conversations, whispering loving words in weary ears, touching, sometimes mending tired hearts. Sometimes just holding them until it’s time to rest.

She sets up dates, connects strangers through shared memories, stands with worried parents and mourning communities.

She has seen it all. And everything and everyone still touches her deeply. She was there at the very beginning of all things and she will be there till the end, tending to any possible needs.

Often, she is so quiet, she is easy to be ignored. Other times, she stirs up quite a tumult and confusion, but most people don’t make a connection between her and the events. She is the breath that brought Adam and Eve to life. She is the one who fills the creation with never-ending praise and life. She is the one who claimed Jesus in his baptism. And the one sent to us by Jesus. The one who makes us pray to God in all the different ways. With our words and thoughts, dreams and bodies.

The advocate, the Holy Spirit. The force behind it all, connecting God Father and God Child. The one sanctifying us with her presence and love. Calling us into adopted childhood. Making us the chosen children of God. Not just the ones God has to love anyways, like a parent whose love we might take for granted because it’s their duty in a way.

No, we have “received a spirit of adopting,” Paul writes in his letter to the Romans. And that spirit saves us from falling back into fear. Have you ever stopped fearing? Have you ever stopped worrying about something? Yes? That was the Holy Spirit at work, right there. Reminding us of who we belong to, who we can trust, how we can live and breathe freely. Not high-spirited but with high spirits, prepared for new adventures. Prepared for seeing God in everyone and everything. Prepared for giving glory to God.

Through our spirit, the Holy Spirit bears witness to God father and God son. To God creator and God redeemer. To the guys in the heavenly co-op. To the two persons most of us feel like we know a bit and have some kind of a relationship with. But the Holy Spirit? Well, she is always around so we start taking her for granted, start dismissing her, start giving the glory to God alone. Often meaning God father when we say God. The triune God is so hard to imagine, so mystical in God’s existence, that we confess it in prayer – and that’s about the only time we mention it.

Martin Luther was very blunt about it: Where there is no Holy Spirit, there is no church. No matter how many buildings we might call churches or how many self-proclaimed preachers might say differently. The Holy Spirit turns a community of strange strangers into a communion of saints. She makes us holy saints, calling the sinners holy and beloved. If you ever get anything out of my sermons, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. Unless you hear me preach hate or selfishness or other things not in alignment with Jesus’ Gospel. Then, it’s either just me talking or you captivated in your own thoughts.

Without the Holy Spirit, there wouldn’t be any church on earth. Period. Had Jesus not sent the advocate to help us live into being God’s children, we wouldn’t have made it.

To me celebrating the Holy Spirit during 1 or 2 Sundays a year, Pentecost and Holy Trinity, sounds like Mother’s Day. Once a year flowers and signs of love, songs of gratitude and recognition. We give God the glory. We try to find God in our daily lives, we look for signs of God… When it’s actually the Holy Spirit working her ass off.

Just like Mother’s day. Since we don’t really appreciate mothers enough during the year and all their emotional and mental work along with the hours of unpaid work within households, we feel bad. Rightfully so. And so, we glorify and spoil them once a year. Posting pictures, writing words of gratitude, sending flowers.

That’s great, really! I wish, my family actually did that. But that’s not what makes mothers or mothering figures appreciated and seen. And if the world started honoring and paying mothers and women for their labor behind the scenes, and give them equal pay and equal rights anywhere, we could very well be waiving off the mother’s day once a year.

It’s like that with Holy Trinity. If we started embracing the mystery of the trinity more including the beauty and power of the Holy Spirit, we didn’t need that one Sunday a year to be reminded that there is more God than Father and Son. That actually, the one doing most of the work in our lives, is the one we often forget. We rarely pray to or thank or even name.

The Holy Spirit to me is like a mother holding it all together, working her job and nurturing her family, keeping contact with friends, remembering birthdays, sending cards, connecting with neighbors, arranging playdates, stocking the fridge and keeping track of garbage day. While the Father gets all the glory for his grilled steaks and yummy salad during a dinner with friends. And the mom smiles and nods, yes, she is so thankful to have such a great husband, while already planning the next week’s childcare and pick-up and dinners.

During the synod assembly at the beginning of May I witnessed the Spirit at work. Before every ballot, someone publicly invoked the Holy Spirit. At first, I was irritated. Why did we suddenly care about the Spirit? Was it to cover up church politics? To sanctify our human ways of playing to power?

While it probably was exactly that in parts, the Spirit isn’t someone to play with. We might mumble words, not fully grasping what they mean. But words are powerful and to call upon the Spirit of God will have consequences. Not necessarily the ones we want or anticipate. Most often we will be surprised by the outcome. Because that’s what the Spirit does. She surprises us. She is God in all her awe-striking beauty, whirling around us. Taking us off our feet and into new spaces and spheres. Guiding us into new worlds. Leading us back to our roots. Connecting us with people long lost to our hearts.

So often we talk about how we see God present in this world, how we see God acting in this world. And so often, we say God, and mean God father. Attributing everything godly to a father figure.

The Spirit’s work is the unnoticed work. Which in our society is largely known as women’s work. Emotional work, mental work, relationship work, organizational work, holding the world together.

There are some who claim to know her though in this world. Some who claim to know her better than she knows herself. Some who claim to own her. Onto those, she looks with pity. Whoever wants to own the Holy Spirit, really needs to evaluate their faith and their motives. God’s Spirit is like the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” We are not the first ones to wonder about the Spirit, the advocate, the winds of power swirling through our respiratory systems.

Yet, we aren’t the ones telling the Spirit how and where and when to blow. All we can do is take a deep breath and dance along. Every day! And call her who she is, the Holy Spirit, God’s triune Spirit, the breath of life and love forever. Amen.