Empowered by the Spirit

On April 22, 1967, a rainy day in Belvidere, as children were leaving the school around 4 pm, a tornado ripped through Belvidere along Highland street, breaking nearly every window of the fairly new high school and killing 8 students. The storm killed a total of 25 people and injured hundreds, and left rows of homes devastated. If you have ever been near a tornado you know the power of winds reaching 90 or 100 miles an hour. It is said that such winds can cause a straw to be plunged into a plank of wood.

In more recent years, we remember the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and how even today, mission trips still go to the Diocese of Louisiana to help build houses and clean up storm damage. Wind is indeed a powerful natural force. These winds are fearful forces beyond our control, beyond our ability to do much other than predict that they are headed our way so we may remove ourselves from the force of destruction.

On our farm in western Illinois, my dad used to say that there was nothing to stop the wind that came all the way from Texas. In some early summers before the crops were established in the fields, the wind would whip up the topsoil in the fields around the house and coat the surfaces in our house with a layer of dust. I still catch myself stacking glasses and cups upside down in the cupboard, which we used to do at home to keep dust from gathering in them. Wind’s power calls us to pay attention in our daily lives.

We hear today in Acts, of the power of another wind—the power of the spirit—Ruach in Hebrew, which is translated both spirit and wind. The power of the rush of wind of Pentecost entered all who gathered at the day of Pentecost. They miraculously heard people from around the world speaking in their own language. And this power entered the disciples just as Christ had told them it would, empowering them to witness to the new thing God was doing in the world, telling the world of the love of God for all the world.

The great power of the rush of wind of God’s spirit began the church. From that day, the disciples were changed into evangelizers. Peter, the formerly timid guy, became the pillar of the church, preaching boldly. The power of God’s spirit sent apostles across Israel, across the lands of what is now Turkey, across Greece, and eventually to Rome, the greatest city of the ancient world. The power of God’s spirit took down old ideas and replaced them with the idea of universal love and forgiveness, and started a church that would reach every corner of the earth.

And this power lives on today.

Corrie Ten Boom tells of the power the spirit of God in her life. Corrie was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II in Ravensbruck concentration camp with her sister Betsie, where Betsie died in the ovens. After the war, Corrie became an evangelist, preaching the gospel of God’s love and forgiveness around the world. One day, after giving a sermon in Germany, she tells that she was greeting people lined up to meet her. Suddenly, a man from the audience came toward her. With a rush of emotion, she immediately recognized him as a guard from the prison camp. He came offering a handshake, as the memories of the camp and the ovens flooded over her—the grief, the hardship, the suffering. She tells what happened next: “I fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take his hand. My blood seemed to freeze. I knew I had to forgive him if I wanted to receive God’s forgiveness, still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.” She began to pray, knowing if she could not find the power in herself to forgive, she could at least raise her hand. Slowly she took his hand, and when she did a rush of genuine forgiveness came over her. She said, “I forgive you brother.” For a long time they grasped each other’s hands. Corrie recalls that she realized it was not her love; she had tried to reach out but could not, but it was God’s love empowering her to reach out to the former prison guard and to speak the words of forgiveness.

The power of the spirit, like a tornado, overcomes our own weakness, bursts the stubborn pride we have, gives us courage to speak love in the midst of hate and fear. Unlike the power of the tornado, which devastates all it touches indiscriminately, the power of the spirit of God rushed over the apostles with creative force, just like the winds blew over creation, making people creatures in God’s image.

The power of God’s spirit enters ordinary people, like the apostle Peter and the former prisoner Corrie ten Boom, to function beyond their ordinary capacities. To go beyond their human limits, to see things in a different way and speak out for love.

Unlike the tornado that is feared, the rush of wind of the spirit can be welcomed, because we are safe in God’s realm, kept close to God’s will for us as apostles spreading the good news. Suddenly, the words of other people that sounded like babble to us can be understood in the wind of love. Suddenly we are overcome with spiritual understanding and able to function beyond our normal capacities.

In the Old Testament, the spirit of God descends on selected prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and on Moses who led the Israelites of out slavery. But in the new testament, the rush of wind on Pentecost affects all who are there. God is doing a new thing in the church that begins with the life, death and resurrection of Christ. God’s spirit empowers everyone to go beyond their capacities in the spread of the love of Christ.

Look for where the spirit is leading you to go beyond your human frailties and be more loving than perhaps you feel you can be. See how God is trying to empower your love to touch the world around you and spread the good news of forgiveness.