It was the custom at the Roman Catholic school which I attended as a child to begin each and every class by reciting a prayers from our little pocket-sized “Day by Day” student prayer book. One of the prayers which we would repetitively recite has always stuck with me.

As I began working to prepare this sermon for you today, I was unable to get it of my mind. This prayer is called, simply, the “Prayer to the Holy Spirit”.

If you are comfortable dong so, I now invite you to close your eyes as I read this brief prayer to you a few times.

“Come, O Holy Spirit, come.

Come as the wind and cleanse;

come as the fire and burn;

convert and consecrate our lives

to our great good and your great glory;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Amen.

In this prayer, we evoked the Holy Spirit to come to us as the wind, and to cleanse us. We then evoked the Holy Spirit to come as the fire, and to purify us.

The imagery used here has always fascinated me. There was something strange and penetrating about use of the image of fire and wind to describe God that caused me to pause-- even as a little child.

I have always believed whole-heartedly in the Holy Spirit, yet I won't pretend to completely comprehend the Holy Spirit. When we try to talk about Her, the third member of the Trinity, our attempts to use decisive language often fail us. We end up using metaphors and similes and complicated images which seem to bring us closer to the Holy Spirit – yet do not explain away Her mystery.

Scripture, too, relies heavily upon a variety of images to describe the the Holy Spirit. As you know, the day of Pentecost was when the Resurrected Christ sent the Holy Spirit to come among the disciples.

Like in the prayer I read to year earlier, the first lesson that we heard today from the Acts of the Apostles relies heavily on the images of fire and wind to describe the way in which the Holy Spirit came to the disciples on the day of Pentecost. This passage likely felt familiar to us.

The narrative begins with all of the disciples gathered together in a room. Scripture notes that 'Suddenly, from heaven, there came a sound like a rush of violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.'

The sound of the wind here is described as being nothing short of a “violent” sound, like the wind that accompanies a fierce storm. I imagine the sound of this wind may have been like the noise that accompanied a storm that I lived through some years ago while I was living in New Orleans. We had been told to expect just a mild tropical storm, but the winds grew stronger in the night. The wale of hurricane-force winds woke me out of my sleep that night. I went to the door where the wind against it sounded like a freight train slamming into the house.

If the Holy Spirit arrived with the sound of a mighty wind, then the disciples' fear must have increased dramatically! They would have been stunned by the time that the Holy Spirit then descended upon the disciples “like fire”.

We all know the awesome, potentially dangerous nature of fire. From a very early age, we are told what to do when we encounter fire: we are to stop, drop, and get out of there!

Yet we get a sense from this account of Pentecost that whatever fear that the disciples had quickly turned to exuberance. Each person received a distinct tongue of fire, which then rested upon them. With these flames came the gift of new abilities to build community and the empowerment they needed to carry out their new mission.

These images of the wind and the fire in our scripture lessons today give us a sense of the awesome, and even potentially dangerous power of the Holy Spirit. After hearing the way in which the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in Jerusalem, we can consider ourselves warned: the Holy Spirit, which we evoke does have the power to turn our lives right side up... to covert us... even to make us whole.

The brief Gospel lesson that we heard this morning gives a different sort of Pentecost narrative which shows not only the earth-shaking power of the Holy Spirit, but also the gentleness of the Holy Spirit.

In John's account, the group of believers that received the gift of the Holy Spirit was a larger and more inclusive community of believers than the eleven alone. The group consisted of not only leaders, but of all believers.

Jesus spoke “Peace be with you”. And Jesus then breathed on the disciples. And as he breathed on them, he spoke: “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

Jesus gave the Holy Spirit by way of his own breath. This hearkens us back to creation story in the book of Genesis. In the creation story, when God created man and woman, God breathed the breath of life directly into their nostrils, thus bringing them to life.

Jesus filled the people with new life and implanted in them his own divine spirit. Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit within his people on the day of Pentecost, transforming all who believed into a new creation.

The gift of the Holy Spirit as the breath of Jesus is one of empowerment and hope. Jesus empowered the people to do the work he called them to do, and filled them with the hope that they will share in his new life and resurrection.

On this Holy Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the way in which the the Holy Spirit is continuing to dwell with us in the world today. Today we celebrate the ways in which the Holy Spirit still shakes our lives like thunder... yet gently guides us along pathways that which will give us joy and peace.

Today is my last Sunday morning that I will be with you here at St. Margaret's. I will soon be graduating from seminary. And soon, my fiance Peter and I will be traveling to New Orleans where we have accepted our first calls.

I believe that it was the Holy Spirit who prompted me to first visit St. Margaret's Church two and a half years ago. At the time, I was in my first year of seminary and in search of a site where I could do my field education.

As soon as I walked into this church, was received with warmth by the ushers, and especially when I first heard Susan's warm invitation for all to feast together at the alter... I knew deep down that I had found my seminary home.

I have learned a great deal from this church. I have been filled with joy at this church. And I will leave this morning having a real sense that the Holy Spirit is empowering this community to do wonderful work.

My prayer for you, the parish of St. Margaret's, is that you will continue to be inflamed with the Holy Spirit. I prayer that God will continue to set your hearts of fire with a love for Christ, a love for one another, and a spirit of gentleness.

AMEN.