This is the day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. In honor of this, I decided to not prepare a sermon today. Instead, I’m just going to stand here and let the Holy Spirit tell me what to say. Uh....

As Christians, we are not to become empty-headed ventriloquist dummies sitting on the Holy Spirit’s lap: we need to continue to use our God-given minds. Some would disagree with this, believing that the Holy Spirit works solely through the emotions. The Holy Spirit thus becomes the “Holy Spouter.” From this perspective, one can tell when people are in the throes of the Holy Spirit because it just comes gushing from them. If you don’t experience outbursts of religious ecstasy, you’re not really in touch with the Holy Spirit.

We Lutherans and many others in the mainline tradition hear the charge all the time that our faith is too quiet, too passive. Actually, I’ll admit we do often seem restrained: we seldom allow the Holy Spirit to stir us in any obvious way.

The story is told of the stranger who comes to a Lutheran church for the first time, and when the pastor is just a few minutes into his sermon, the man suddenly shouts out, “Praise the Lord!” The congregation gasps, the pastor grabs at his heart and knocks his notes to the floor. Gathering himself, the pastor goes on, but a little while later the man cries, “Amen!” The congregation gasps again and starts mumbling among themselves. The pastor is clearly shaken but manages to soldier on. Things have just settled down again when the man screams, “Preach it, brother!”

This time, one of the ushers comes running up the aisle and tells the stranger, “Look, sir, this is a Lutheran church, you have to keep quiet.” “But I have the Spirit within me!” the man declares. “Well you didn’t get it here!” the usher assures him.

If Garrison Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion) has taught us anything, it is that Lutherans can take a joke, even if it is at their own expense. And, goodness knows, we aren’t perfect. But in this case, the calmness of our faith may not be a problem. The Spirit also moves quietly. The most common biblical metaphor for the Spirit is the wind. Winds range from tempests to breezes, and a summer breeze can move one’s heart as much as a winter blast. Sometimes, those who are enamored with stormy religiosity miss the subtle movements of the Spirit.

Have you ever read the end of the book of Matthew? Matthew ends after the resurrection with Jesus telling his disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” His final words are, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And then he leaves! In the words of our creeds, he ascends to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Has this ever struck you as odd? Douglas MacArthur vowed, “I shall return.” Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened, “I’ll be back!” But Jesus said he’d always be with us. The book of Matthew begins with an angel telling Joseph that Mary will bear a child who will be called “Emmanuel”: Emmanuel means “God is with us.” The assumption is that, unlike Elvis, Jesus is not leaving the building! (After every Elvis Presley concert someone would announce that Elvis had left the building, so the faithful would finally go home.)

Today’s gospel lesson is part of Jesus’ long good-bye to his disciples in John that begins in 13:33 “Little children, I am with you only a little longer,” and doesn’t end until his prayer for the disciples in chapter 17 and subsequent arrest in chapter 18. One gets the feeling that the disciples didn’t want their champion to depart. But Jesus could do more than just promise he’d be back: he could promise they’d never again be alone because he would have the Father send the Holy Spirit.

Today’s first reading describes the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost after Jesus’ death. Before we can comprehend this, we need to understand what the Holy Spirit is. Throughout the ages, there have always been misconceptions and false teachings about the Holy Spirit. The key is that the Holy Spirit cannot be thought of without reference to the Father and the Son. Far too often, the Spirit is “worshiped and glorified” as if the third person of the Trinity possesses a life separate from the first and second. Obsession with the Spirit can get one into a lot of trouble.

We are all called to open ourselves to the workings of the Spirit, and sometimes pensive Christians are afraid to do this, but as today’s gospel says, the main task of the Spirit is to remind us of everything Jesus taught about the Father. The Spirit, then, does not lead us away from careful study of the scriptures and doesn’t condemn thoughtful worship or regard quiet, humble service as trite. We are not being asked to abandon our minds in favor of our emotions. The Spirit is certainly demonstrated in ecstatic prayers, faith healings, and speaking in tongues but is also evident in Bible studies, in many forms of worship, in contemplative prayers, and in the loving ways we treat each other.

So, if the Spirit is not to be thought of as a separate being from the Father and the Son, how are we to think of it? One of my professors at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, told of a lengthy course he once taught on the Trinity in his church. After weeks of very intense and learned discussion, an elderly woman who hadn’t said anything told the group that she always thought of the Trinity as a marble cake: one cake with three distinct strands that can’t be pulled apart without destroying the whole. My professor threw up his hands and said, “Good enough, class is over!”

So, what does this strand that is the Holy Spirit look like? Who did Jesus send to us as we await the second coming? Jesus says that the Father will send an advocate for us in his absence. The Greek word that our version translates as “advocate” is paraklatos, paraclete. Literally, a paraclete is “one who stands alongside.” The divine paraclete is here to defend us when no one else will, to teach us what we don’t know, and to help us do what we need to do. In addition, the Spirit is here to build us up when our morale is low and give us new hope.

Perhaps the lowest point of my life so far occurred when I failed to finish my dissertation in English literature in the allotted time, and my doctoral program crumbled around me. A two-year relationship had just ended, and friends and favorite teachers just walked away. There was nothing for me to do but leave school and move back to my parent’s house with nothing to show for the time I’d spent in school but a wonderful cat I’d adopted named Marlowe.

One night, with everyone gone, I opened the door to let Marlowe in, but he just stood there. His mouth had a cut on it, so I figured he’d been in a fight. I took him up in my arms and called a veterinarian, who agreed to meet me at his office though it was late. All the way there, Marlowe wrapped himself warmly around my arm and rested quietly. The vet looked him over and said that it really didn’t look like he had been in a fight. Marlowe didn’t move until the doctor opened his mouth, and then he let out a terrible cry.

The doctor told me to go home, that he’d take some x-rays and call me. He called me shortly after I got home and told me that Marlowe had a crushed skull. He’d been hit by a car, and the doctor asked for permission to put him to sleep. I fell asleep that night crying, “Now, they’ve killed my cat!”

The next morning, I heard my nephew, Cody and my niece, Aubrey Jo coming up the stairs after church. I really wanted to be left alone that morning. But five-year-old Cody tiptoed in and showed me a picture he’d drawn in Sunday school of me and Marlowe. “Thank you, Cody, that’s wonderful,” I said. Little Aubrey, three years old at the time, came thumping up the stairs after him, banged open the door, marched up to my bed and announced, “Your cat is dead.”

My mouth dropped open, and after I gathered myself, I said, “Yes, Aubrey, that’s true.” “A car hit him and cracked his head open!” she proclaimed and shook her head once, decisively. God had sent an advocate to help me, but she wasn’t exactly the kind of angel I was expecting, nor did she come with the kind of message I was looking for.

At that moment, I thought of myself as a tragic figure, but Aubrey turned the moment from high tragedy to low comedy. I wanted someone to come and tell me all the deep, hidden meaning behind what had happened, but Jesus sent the Spirit in the form of a little cherub instead to remind me that real tragedies require a noble hero who falls through no fault of his/her own. We, however, more closely resemble characters in a farce, who are funny because they consider themselves tragic figures but are neither noble nor faultless. They are bounders and fools pretending to be kings and heroes. And so are we.

The reality check that Aubrey gave me was more valuable than any sympathetic shoulder could have been at that moment: “Your cat’s dead: what are you going to do about it?” I grabbed Aubrey, and the three of us wrestled and bounced on the bed until it was time to eat.

The “why” is of little significance when a cat gets run over, or even when a girlfriend leaves and friends betray, or a dissertation doesn’t get written. The question is, “What are you going to do about it?” What I ended up doing about it was visiting Trinity Lutheran Seminary. In a sense, I stand here today because of all the rotten things that happened to me at that period in my life. And none of those things hold any importance to me now. Through the workings of the Spirit, I have moved on.

Besides defending, teaching, motivating, and uplifting, it is the Spirit that unites us. Remember the tower of Babel? In this story people’s obsessions with their own personal power cause them to try and build a tower to the heavens to glorify themselves. Their attempt only gets them defeated and divided. Their arrogance forces God to confuse their tongues, giving them different languages so they won’t try it again.

Today, we heard that when the Spirit came at Pentecost, fiery tongues settled on each person in the room. When the Spirit took control of them, they didn’t speak in the same language: They communicated in whatever language the Spirit gave them the power to speak. The lesson here is that it is the Spirit that enables us to communicate with anyone, to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” regardless of what languages they speak: to communicate with the rich and the homeless, Moslems and Buddhists, seniors and teenagers!

We are not alone: Jesus has not left the building. An advocate has been sent who will defend us, teach us, encourage us, renew us, and unite us. Pray that the Spirit comes to this place that we might go out and reach others. Next week is Holy Trinity Sunday. To an unchurched observer, it might seem that the Fundamentalists worship God and Father, we Lutherans (with our relentless emphasis on God’s grace) worship the Son, and the Pentecostals worship the Holy Spirit. Today, I would urge us all to reclaim the Holy Spirit in our religious life because, after all, it is through the Spirit that the Father and Son come to us.