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SERMONS

Pentecost
May 31, 2009

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

As a boy I became fascinated with the Appalachian mountains, and the folk lore of the people who have lived there for hundreds of years. One of my teachers kept copies of the old Fox-Fire series books in his classrooms.

You might recall the series, it was published in the early seventies, and it is an anthology of oral histories and how-to articles about life in the mountains. There are articles on beekeeping, soap making, snake handling, hide tanning, moonshining, faith healing, and such things.

Glancing through those books one day I say a strange picture of an old man in overalls holding a two pronged stick pointed at the ground with a group of people walking behind him - Water Dowsing.

I had never heard of it before - maybe you haven’t either. This art, or craft, where a person takes a two pronged stick, or a couple of metal rods, and walks across the landscape, and their movement indicates the presence of water.

I was fascinated by this idea - that a person could attach a kind of antennae to themselves, and have some probability of locating water. It’s been around for thousands of years - seen on 8ooo year old cave paintings - some even wonder if that was what Moses was doing in the desert, out there hitting rocks so that the water might gush out.

Does it always work? No. But it works enough that folks do it to this day.

On this Feast of Pentecost we are celebrating the presence of a spiritual power so real for Jesus that it has a proper name: we call it the Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, Jesus calls him the Advocate, the word in the original is the Paraclete. This name is used only five times in the whole of the New Testament, and four of them are in John’s Gospel.

Jesus tells his friends this Advocate brings gifts for them. Counsel, wisdom, guidance, direction. The Holy Spirit, the Advocate, comes to steer, and point the way, toward Jesus in his absence.

It strikes me that this Advocate is not unlike the person who can find water where there seems to be none, the mystifying water-dowser. Jesus promises to be in our midst like an ocean, yet each one of us knows times when we feel that we are walking in emotional and spiritual wastelands.

We cannot find the water. We cannot find the presence of God. We cannot find the path of Jesus Christ, yet we know it is there. Perhaps we have known that spirit and presence of God before; perhaps we have lost our way.

We know that God’s presence may be in our very midst, like having water under our very feet, we are just having trouble finding it. And so we need a guide, an antennae, some one, some thing, who will point the way, who will say, "Dig here. Dig here. God is here."

I am one of those who believes that God’s Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Paracletos, is closer to us than our own breath. The Old Testament "Ruach Elohim," Spirit of God, moving out across the waters of Creation in Genesis, who comes to light gently in the branches of our own hearts, as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That voice, that light, that unseen hand, the thing we call serendipity, coincidence, and synchronicity, who opens doors in our lives, showing us Jesus Christ, and showing us that God is alive in our midst.

The power and the presence of this Spirit are real; this Advocate is here, simply because Jesus told us that He would come, and the Church remains.

Are you looking for water in your life? Do you need a guide to find Jesus?

Notice where and when Pentecost takes place - it takes place when the community of Christ’s Body is gathered. They are not out on the "golf course." The physical togetherness of the hearts and minds of believers creates a space for the Spirit to be manifest. There are no solo acts in the way that follows Christ. Simply being in the presence of other believers is a way to find the presence of the Spirit in our lives. To be with others who are on the journey is the beginning of knowing where to find that spiritual water that we need.

One of the surest signs that the Holy Spirit has gone water-dowsing in our souls is that we feel the stirring of deep waters within us. Yet this is water that we do not drink; yet it is water without which we cannot live a powerful, spiritual, and complete life.

More often than not, we can know the Holy Spirit is guiding us toward Jesus, because it helps us find the water of our old, old tears. Tears that live just beneath the surface of our well-ordered and well-manicured lives. Tears that we have bottled up, wandered away from, and sometimes forgotten. Tears of the old hurts, the old wounds, tears of our first fears and falling away.

Jesus knows that we will need help in finding, and facing, these waters.

The Advocate comes to help find such tears. When we can gracefully and safely bring to the surface of our dry and dusty lives our old, old tears, then we can know without a doubt, that the Holy Spirit is in the midst, and that we are walking directly into the arms of Christ.

We might say that the Holy Spirit helps us along a "trail of tears" in the direction of Jesus Christ. Because when we can dig beneath the surface of our barren and dusty lives to find these waters, then we will have life, and we will have it abundantly.