May 7, 2008
This Sunday, we celebrate Pentecost – the Spirit creating and empowering the people of God to go and be Christ’s presence in the community.
You and I live in a world that is hungry for Spirit. The more we have and have to do, it seems the more hollow we are. With the increase of technology, we “know more,” but we don’t know “why.” This has lead to an increase in people talking about “spirituality.” Just check Barnes & Noble. Spirituality sells because people are searching for Spirit.
Phil Jackson, coach of the LA Lakers basketball team wrote a book, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior . He grew up in Montana and North Dakota, the son of not one, but two Pentecostal ministers. He describes his mother as being “as passionate about spirituality as anyone I’ve ever met.” He talks about his father as a gentle man, stern disciplinarian, a literalist of the King James variety. According to the Pentecostal tradition, true faith was having an experience like the first Pentecost. And yet at the “appropriate time” it didn’t happen for him.
“It was agonizing. I worked hard for the next two or three years, praying long hours, asking forgiveness for my sins and ‘tarrying in the Spirit’ after services. Still nothing. I felt like a failure, and yet I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Was it my sinful nature? If so, I didn’t feel like a sinner. Was it my lack of faith? Perhaps, but I was no less committed than my brothers. So, rather than reject the faith outright, I avoided the issue. I dodged services and started working on my jump shot.”
His quest for Spirit never left him, and it intensified after his marriage ended. On a road trip to New York to play the Knicks, he picked William James’ book, A Variety of Religious Experiences . He says,
“I couldn’t put it down. Reading (these) stories, it was clear that mystical experience didn’t have to be a big production. It didn’t require hallucinogenic drugs or a major Pentecostal-style catharsis. It could be as uneventful as a moment of reflection. When I finished the book, I put it down, said a prayer and, all of a sudden, experienced a quiet feeling of inner peace. Nothing special – and yet there it was. This was the experience I had longed for as a teenager.”
The world is full of God’s Spirit and our experience of Spirit may be profound or it may be quite… well, nothing special, just a calm, empowering, energizing presence that moves us out of our selves and into caring for others in Christ’s name. The key to it all is to be attentive to Spirit within us and in our world!
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