by Christopher Edmonston
Several weeks ago I opened my Twitter account. On this particular day Twitter announced: “Trending: Holy Spirit (16 hours).” I had an immediate thought: “16 hours? Don’t these people know that the Holy Spirit has been trending for 2000 years?” Sadly, they don’t.
The event of Pentecost unleashes the Holy Spirit upon the world. Pentecost is among the most important God events preserved for us in Scripture. Near the very end of the second chapter of Acts — after the Holy Spirit has come and many were baptized and Peter preaches what is his finest sermon — we are told: “Awe came upon everyone, because many signs and wonders were being done by the apostles.”
Maybe many people don’t know about the 2000-year trend of the Holy Spirit because the mainline church and her disciples have forgotten that we are, by the Holy Spirit, in the “signs and wonders” business. While Pentecostal cousins enjoy a better Holy Spirit track record, they by no means have proprietary claim on the Trinity’s third person. Why is it that people in my Twitter feed, which is mainline church and news media driven, are hearing about the Holy Spirit on Twitter instead of in our pews? Is the Holy Spirit also trending in our houses of worship and not just on Twitter?
The post-Enlightenment world and our forms of church (largely a product of it) have acid washed the witness to signs and wonders out of our liturgies, our preaching and our minds. So the Holy Spirit is easily ignored as we play to our comfort zones: the historical Jesus, the precision of our confessional language, our devotion to decent and orderly congregational life or the myopia fueled by our favorite and personal cause celebrities.
Pentecost reliably returns 50 days after Easter. With its return is its demand that we remember and proclaim that God does unexpected, divine and wonder-infused things. In our reason-dominated age, a commitment to professing awe and wonder as a work of the Holy Spirit is just the kind of countercultural messaging that our people need to hear. Or else they might think the Holy Spirit is just a Twitter trend and not the transforming power and presence of God proclaimed by the church and unleashed into the world.
So the next time that sage woman, or that wise man, tells us of feeling the presence of God in a not easily explained way, listen to them. Listen closely and tell others of the signs and wonders they discerned. The next time you witness a sign and wonder from God in the form of the unexpected presence of grace, take note. In fact, you should tweet about it and then preach or teach about it. Because the life of the church depends upon the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s 2000-year trend is the breath of church life. It was ordained this way in the very beginning, and it shall be this way until the very end.
The next time you witness a sign and wonder from God in the form of the unexpected presence of grace, take note. Tweet about it and then preach or teach about it.
CHRISTOPHER EDMONSTON is the pastor of White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.
