As I reminded the children this morning, through our baptism each of us has been filled with the Holy Spirit. But when YOU hear that a person is filled with the Holy Spirit? What picture comes to your mind?

I remember one of my daughter Salem 's friends, a friend I'll call Bethany . Bethany and her family were members of a Pentecostal church. When Salem stayed over Saturday night with Bethany and went to church with her family on Sunday morning, I confess this twinge of fear, that maybe one Sunday Salem would be smitten in the Spirit at that Pentecostal church--given the gift of speaking in tongues OR take to swooning in a dead faint on the floor—never again to be welcomed in a Moravian church!

Perhaps it's the kind of spirit possessed stories we heard in this morning's scripture reading and in our culture's caricatures of people smitten by the Spirit that make it difficult for us to relate our own experiences of being smitten, being filled with the Holy Spirit. Some how describing the visual image we heard this morning of the Holy Spirit being mighty wind and tongues of fire, isn't all that helpful in describing how it is the Holy Spirit abides in each one of us.

How do we describe the Holy Spirit to a five year old? To some one who isn't a Christian?

In today's gospel, Jesus tells us he will send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will abide with us and be in us. Since we know that God is love, we we are smitten or filled with the Holy Spirit when we embody God's love.

singing God is love and he who abides in Love abides in God and God in him. Remember that old hymn?

In the words of writer Joan Borysenko: “Everyone of us longs for the same thing-- to love and to be loved. The deep sense of connection, worth and belonging that love provides is as close to heaven as we mortals experience here on earth.” Perhaps this is why Jesus commands us to love one another, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes possible our keeping Jesus' commandment to love one another without guaranteeing our reaching out in love will be successful or accepted.

Because love is never forceful, never coercive, the Holy Spirit who abides in us is always inviting, always respectful of our personhood and free will. Each of us has to be deliberately open to moving in the Spirit's ways to be smitten and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers us to reach out in love, but does not control how our action will be received. In our reaching out in love, in our risking love, we might be rejected, we might even be ridiculed. It may result in people thinking we're crazy or drunk! We cannot control how our offering, our gift of a loving action will be received, all we can do is trust, responding as faithfully as we can, to the Holy Spirit's abiding in us.

Or said another way, if you allow the Holy Spirit to work through your life, if you are open to the Spirit of love's leading in your life, you just may find yourself responding to another's mistake or klutzy action with a kind and encouraging word, rather than sarcasm and derisive laughter. You may find yourself offering forgiveness and saying you are sorry even when you think you did nothing wrong. Whenever you find yourself offering help when you do not know how your offer will be accepted or even exactly what help they might need from you, ---you are being smitten by the Holy Spirit. When you find yourself being gently nudged to take an unpopular but gospel grounded stand, you are being smitten by the Spirit. When you find yourself volunteering for something that just terrifies you, you are being smitten by the Holy Spirit. For remember, Jesus tells us we can do even greater works than he by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. The more open we are to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives the more we can give and receive the kind of love that is God's love. The ever abiding Spirit of God is constantly trying to work in and through our lives beckoning us towards' God's vision of reconciliation, well-being, truth, goodness justice through nudgings, insights, intuitions, indescribable moments where we transcend ourselves and our situations and glimpse something more than the obvious, or that we can control.

Pentecost affirms that God's plan for our lives and Christ's church are greater than we can imagine. Pentecost calls us to think and act outside the box because the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing us out of the safety of the known, of what we can control, of what is familiar. Pentecost dares us to risk because we trust God, and God's purposes as we fulfill Jesus' command to love one another as our selves.

The followers of Jesus were praying together when the Holy Spirit came upon them that first Pentecost. In a few moments we will be partaking of the sacrament of Holy Communion together, a bodily form of prayer and communion with Jesus Christ! Invite the Holy Spirit to smite and fill you anew. Invite the Spirit to blow away the dead or overgrown areas of your life to make a space for new life, for new ways of reaching out, giving God's love and being open to receiving God's love.

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