Pentecost

This Sunday is Pentecost.  The time traditional Christianity marks the birthday of the Church and also as a celebration the coming of the Holy Spirit.

We have heard the myriad of reasons Armstrongism had difficulty with the Holy Spirit.. Is it God's power sent to us, is it a 'real' person, or what is it?

Judaism has always talked about the Shekinah as the dwelling or settling presence of God in people.  It is is used as the feminine attributes of God in the Talmud. The Hebrew ruach means “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.” 

“The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:2; see also Isaiah 42:1). This prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus; at His baptism in the Jordan River, John saw “the Spirit of God descending like a doveand alighting on him” (Matthew 3:16).

For many Christians, the Holy Spirit is an active force in their lives.  Here is one such story.

After the service, I sat with one of my favorite parishioners, Miz Eula Jefferson. As we ate our marvelous feast, we shared some small talk about the kids playing jump rope and baseball - and, my, hasn't he gotten tall, and isn't she so pretty - when Ms. Jefferson zeroed in on me.

"Lemme ax you a question, Rev," she said in her South Carolinian drawl.

"Sure," I said.

"So, do you believe all that stuff we just sang in there?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.

"Oh, you know, 'bout the Holy Spirit?"

"Well, yes, m'am. I mean... I'm not sure what you're asking, Ms. Jefferson."

She smiled and shifted her weight in the folding chair that was shifting in the soft grass of the church lawn.

I should have known by her smile that I was in trouble.

"Well," she said, "I don't mean no offense, and mebe it's just me, but in my experience - and you'll 'scuse my french - White People don't know shit about the Holy Spirit."

I laughed. Right out loud. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

"I can say that to you, Rev, because you ain't like most White people," she said as she took my hand.

"Really?" I said, "How so?"

"Oh, you crazy, girl."

I laughed again. "Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment."

"Huh!" she said, not smiling. "If I was to believe what was in them songs about the Holy Spirit, then I gotsta believe that you White people don't know shit about the Holy Spirit. 'Scuse my french."

"Tell me about that," I said, softly. I really wanted to know.

"Well, where I growd up, we had a name for the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, we call her "Holy Ghost," but mostly the women call her name 'Shekinah'". She pronounced it "Shek-e-NAH". It sounded distinctly Hebraic.

"Lemme tell you about Shekinah," she said, tilting her head back and looking out somewhere beyond the chain link fence that surrounded the church - the one with the barbed wire curled all around the top that had been put up after the 1967 riots that I was trying to get the diocese to take down. Well, at least the barbed wire.

"Oh, she come to you. Sometime when you call her and sometime when you don't. Sometime, she talk all sweet and nice and sometime she knock you upside the head and knock you on your behind so's you can't talk no sense no how. It all depend on how long she been tryin' to get your attention and if you've been mindin' her."

"First thing she do, though, if you haven't already met Jesus, is to introduce you to Him. So, you start listenin' and readin' an learnin', and pretty soon, your life gonna be completely turned upside down."

"That's if you payin' attention," she said. "If you not, then Jesus calls Shekinah back in to start working over your soul."

"Lemme tell you somethin'," she said, "That girl is crazy. CRAZY. You know what I'm sayin'? C.R.A.Z.Y.," she laughed.

"Shekinah will stop at nothin' - absolutely nothin' - to get you right with God.

Jesus will talk and teach, but if you don't be gettin' it, Shekinah will come into your life and slap you silly until you do."

"Now, lemme give you a for instance. Remember Rosa Parks? Yes, chile, I know you do, cuzin' you preached on her jus the other Sunday. And, you preached it, girl. That was good preachin'. I about had a 'glory attack', flat out, jus hearin' a white girl preach so well about one of us."

"So, Rosa Parks is tire. She tire to the bone. Weary in her soul kinda tire. Bus driver say, 'Back a the bus', and she don't wanna. She know it ain't right. She know it cuzin' Jesus tole her so."

"She knowd the teaching of Jesus, but what she gonna do? The White man say, 'Back a the bus' and you know you gotsta do what the White man say do."

"Well, chile, I knowd women like Miz. Parks. She jus roll her eyes and prayed, 'Lawd, gimme strength'. Now, here's the thing," Miz Jefferson said, leaning into me so I would hear her clearly.

"You gotsta be real careful what you pray for wid the Lawd," she chuckled, "because sometimes, you gets jus what you prayed for, and then, your whole life be turned upside down until you got it right with the Lawd."

"Well," she laughed again, "the Lawd done answered her prayer cuz fore you know it, here come Shekinah, big and bad as life. She done took one look at the situation, looked right at that sign that said, 'Whites only' and it caused her to get so mad  cuzin she knew that the Lawd didn't write that sign. White men wrote that sign."

"So Shekinah, she start to breathin' fire and she done blowd that poor woman, Miz Parks, right into that seat that was supposed to be for White peoples only."

"And the rest," she said, as she sat back in her folding chair, "is Civil Right's history."

"Yes, chile," she sighed, "that's the power of Shekinah. That's Holy Ghost power. Jesus will teach you what God wants, but Shekinah shows you the glory of God. And, that glory look like justice."

We were quite for a while as we both let that story swirl around us before the power of it sunk into a deeper place in our souls.