Filled With the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:5-12)

My colleague and friend, the Reverend Michael McCain, loves horror movies.  From 1960’s Psycho to 2022’s Talk to Me, Michael can’t get enough.  Michael analyzes horror films as commentaries on society, as emblematic of the subconscious fears and drives that motivate us.  Hearing Michael talk about the deeper meaning of a slasher film is akin to listening to a biblical scholar exegete a difficult passage of scripture.

I am not so much a fan of the genre, but I do appreciate the occasional film about demonic possession.  The original Exorcist, which I’m sure I watched as a kid on one of those rare early 80s weekends when HBO was pumped free into our television set in a bid to get my parents to subscribe, terrified this future priest in the best way.  More recently, in 2007 I watched the film Paranormal Activity alone in our Roanoke basement on a pirated DVD, and it scared me so much that I turned on the lights and ran upstairs.

Why bring up horror films and possession in this bright Easter season?  Because in our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that Peter, who previously had been a waffling, insecure mess, is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and suddenly able to do and say things that before were impossible for him or any normal person.  This reads a whole lot like possession, doesn’t it?  What’s up with that?  What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Mainline churches such as ours don’t tend to ask this question.  The Holy Spirit makes us nervous, because so many of our Christian sisters and brothers in more Pentecostal traditions claim that the Holy Spirit has them act so, well, weirdly.  The Holy Spirit also makes us nervous, I think, because in our lives we so desperately want to maintain control.  We (rightly) disapprove of being “under the influence” of drugs and alcohol, substances that seem to take us over and impair our ability to control our impulses and actions.  Beyond that kind of impairment, our desire for control is, ironically, its own kind of addiction.  We want to be able to manage the world around us to preserve our well-being, our health, our livelihoods, our kids.  We want to control everything about our lives, and anything that threatens our control—including the Holy Spirit—terrifies us.

Our apprehension about being filled with the Holy Spirit is not lessened when we read how our Evangelical Christian siblings talk about it either.  Billy Graham said, “To be Spirit-filled according to Scripture is to be controlled or dominated by the Spirit of God’s presence and power…To ‘be filled with the Spirit’ pictures a continual filling. We’re not filled once-for-all but filled constantly.  Consider the Mississippi or the Amazon. Much may be taken from them, but they do not run dry. The sources from which they come keep sending water down their course.”[i] 

This paints a picture of the Holy Spirit coursing through us like a constant torrent, so wild that we are taken over by it and carried helplessly along its current.  Setting aside what we said earlier about not wanting to be controlled or dominated by something other, I think most of us would agree that the experience described by Billy Graham is foreign.  My life as a non-stop, un-damned flood of Holy Spirit power is something I can’t even really fathom.  Can you?  If not, then how might we, as Episcopalians, consider what happens to and in Peter this morning?  How might we understand being filled with the Holy Spirit?

Peter before the Sanhedrin

St. Paul offers us a window in his brilliant Letter to the Ephesians, when Paul says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”[ii]  Paul makes a clear distinction between the possession of drunkenness—that particular kind of being under the influence—and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  They don’t look or feel the same, in other words.  So, the first thing we should recognize is that, unlike being drunk or high, the power of the Holy Spirit does not remove from us our faculties.  Our self-possession is not undercut by God’s Spirit acting within us.  That’s helpful to know.

It’s also important to note that Holy Scripture makes a distinction between the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus promises that God will send the Holy Spirit to his followers, “to be with [them] forever.”  Jesus says of the Spirit, “You [will] know him, because he abides in you, and he will be in you.”[iii]  Again in Ephesians, Paul adds, “You…were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, which is the pledge of our inheritance…as God’s own people.”[iv]

What this means is that the Holy Spirit dwells within us now and always.  Rather than as a torrent, the Spirit abides as that deep well that plumbs our souls.  We experience that indwelling not in ecstatic and uncontrolled spiritual frenzy, but rather in just the opposite: Through those preternaturally still and quiet moments that sometimes seize us even in the midst of the day’s hubbub; those moments of deep centering and grounding; the sudden insight that we and the world are God’s and rest in God.  It is this experience the disciples themselves had when Jesus joined them in the locked room, breathed the Holy Spirit into them, and said, “Peace by with you.”[v] 

That experience many of us grasp.  That we encounter.  We may not have known what to call it, but we should name it for what it is: Our intuition of the eternal indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit within us.

So how does this indwelling of the Spirit differ from being filled with the Spirit?  For that, we can return to Billy Graham’s metaphor but amend it.  As Graham says, the Mississippi River always has water, but it does not, in fact, always flow with power and might.  Just last September, long stretches of the Mississippi were so still and low that barge traffic was suspended.  The river does not always roil and rush.[vi]

That, I believe, gets at our experience of the Spirit.  Usually, as we’ve said, the spiritual well water in us sits tranquil and still, granting us a serene connection to our Source.  Much rarer are the instances when the well rises to become a gushing spring, which then becomes a torrent, which can become a mighty river.  That is being filled with the Spirit.  And we actually know that rare experience, too, though again, we may not have named it as such in our lives: We have all had those moments in which our passion is stoked, our love unexpectedly expands almost to burst our hearts, our energy is replenished when moments before we were fatigued to near-collapse.  This is God’s Holy Spirit filling us.

Note well: I’m not talking about instances of anger, or lust, or other frenzied emotion in which our reason is compromised and our actions regrettable.  Such episodes are more like demonic possession, in which we risk losing control, and that is never the Spirit of God at work.  The Spirit clears, rather than addles, our hearts and minds.  The Spirit hones our actions rather than muddling them.  When the Holy Spirit fills us, the Spirit does so in ways that empower us as God’s instruments, but always in co-operation with our own agency, and always in outward-facing ways to labor to redeem God’s world. 

This is what happens in and to Peter today.  The Spirit that dwells in Peter rushes forth from the wellspring of Peter’s soul when Peter is dragged before the Council.  The Spirit does not posses Peter, taking from Peter his volition and agency, but it empowers him and inspires Peter to speak the truth in faith.

There is space for spiritual discipline here.  The first step is to become aware and mindful of the Holy Spirit that dwells always within us.  We Episcopalians tend to be quite good at that, actually.  We know how to be still and silent.  We are often adept at turning our eye inward to listen to God’s still small voice.[vii]  Tapping into that Spirit—abiding in the Spirit that abides in us—is essential to the health of our souls.  Drinking from that well regularly sustains us.  It also readies for those moments in our lives in which we may be dragged before councils, so to speak, in which we find ourselves living in faith in and for God’s world and in need of power and grace beyond our own resources.  It is then that, like Peter, we may feel the Spirit begin to rise, granting us crystal clarity of heart and mind, power and energy for God’s work before us, and hope that our work will find purchase in God’s great plan of redemption.         

As in Peter, so in us. 

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[i] https://billygraham.org/answer/what-does-it-mean-to-be-filled-with-the-spirit/

[ii] Ephesians 5:18

[iii] John 14:16-17

[iv] Ephesians 1:13-14

[v] John 20:19

[vi] https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-river-drought-farmers-barges-e923b5f5e844ae278f42957b91d83f27

[vii] 1 Kings 19:12, KJV

The Judas Window (John 20:19-31)

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked, for fear of the Jews…”

This is how today’s Gospel passage begins.  Though we are a week removed from Easter Sunday—with the sugar high of jellybeans and chocolate rabbits receding, and with the hysteria of the solar eclipse just ahead—in the Gospel story it is still Easter evening, and if we are to understand the what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the disciples, we must return to that moment.

For us, Easter is a day of joy, in which we worship in the morning, then laugh as we watch our children hunt for Easter eggs, and finally gather with family and friends for a feast.  For the disciples, Easter was a day of discombobulation, spiraling emotions, apprehension, and fear.  Why so?  The disciples followed their charismatic leader—Jesus—to Jerusalem under the misapprehension that Jesus was about to force great change in Judea.  As James and John repeatedly argued, the disciples wanted to be Jesus’ right-hand men in this work, to be worldly, important, and powerful.  On Maundy Thursday all came crashing down when one of their number—Judas, their treasurer, no less—switched sides and helped the Sanhedrin ambush Jesus and drag him into custody.  At that moment, rather than sound the clarion call to rise up, Jesus, his power apparently drained, went meekly with the mob.

The events of the next eighteen hours were crushing.  Judas walked away a rich man with powerful new friends[i]; the disciples scattered into the shadows, despite the fact that at their last dinner together they’d promised to stay with Jesus come what may; and Jesus himself—all alone bereft of his friends—was brutalized and then killed in the most public and intentionally humiliating way. 

And then, just this morning (for them), the disciples have received word that Jesus isn’t dead after all.  Jesus has apparently emerged from his tomb alive and different, even stronger than he was before. 

So, as our Gospel reading begins, we find the disciples huddled in a house, with the door locked and barred.  John tells us that they were barricaded there “for fear of the Jews.”  I once preached a sermon that asked, “Just which Jew do you think they were afraid of?” 

Maybe they are afraid of Judas, who might come with the authorities to mop of the remainder of Jesus’ followers, to finish the job he’d begun three days earlier, once and for all.

Maybe they are afraid of Jesus himself, the Jew they’d abandoned after all their bravado, who they gave up to Judas before slinking away into hiding, but who now has demonstrated by defeating death that he is more powerful than they could have imagined.

Maybe both.  But I deeply suspect that the Jews of whom the disciples are most afraid, and from whom they are desperately hiding, are themselves.  They are terrified of facing who they are and what they have done and failed to do, as they bear the triple shame of 1.) having crassly craved worldly power like adolescent boys, 2.) having so quickly given in to fear and deserted the Jesus who had inspired and changed their lives, and 3.) perhaps even having had the terrible thought that maybe they should have joined Judas in his betrayal, should have switched sides when he did and thus be spared their current circumstance altogether.[ii] 

John’s Gospel leaves it for us to decide.  All we are told is that the door is locked and that the disciples are huddled inside in apprehension and fear of someone.  Today’s account inspires a once well-known, but now mostly forgotten name for the peep hole in a door, the little aperture that allows one to see what is coming outside but not expose the one within.  Do you know what it is called?  The name for that tiny, one-way opening is the “Judas window,” named for Jesus’ betrayer who may return to betray the others.[iii] 

The Judas window is how the disciples might spy who is coming for them, whether it’s Judas himself with the mob, the resurrected Jesus, or the disciples’ own overwhelming sense of shame.  The Judas window is how we, too, guard ourselves against that which threatens us.  It’s a symbol for the barricaded doors in our lives, both literal and figurative, the locked doors of our houses and our souls.  The Judas window is the way we look out at the world warily, charting its comings and goings, while anxiously protecting ourselves from whatever may try to enter in.

As it turns out, the one who enters the disciples’ room is Jesus.  The Judas window ultimately provides the disciples no warning, and the barred door provides no protection.  The resurrected Jesus goes where he wills, and suddenly he is among them.  The disciples cower when they first see Jesus with them in the room.  What will the one who can defeat death do to them?  But Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you.”  He shows them the wounds in which they are complicit, but which God has redeemed.  And he breathes into them the healing and forgiving power of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus enters them just as surely as he has entered the room.  Despite their wary and watchful gaze through the Judas window; despite the locked door of the room and their hearts; despite their shame, Jesus enters.  In every way, Jesus enters.  And the disciples are finally and forever changed.  Only now do they become people of faith and confidence.  Only now can they truly follow Jesus.  Only now, with the Spirit within, them are they able to forgive themselves and others.  Only now can they release their shame. 

Fast forward those two thousand years, from Easter evening with the disciples to a new Easter season here and now.  What might this season of Resurrection mean for us?  We’re not so different from the disciples in that room, I think.  For many of us, we have been peering out at the world through the Judas window of our souls for so long, not allowing anyone truly to see in, desperately barricading the doors of our hearts in the attempt to hide from who we have been or what we have done.  I suspect that’s one reason we so insistently secularize holidays like Easter, so that the holiday itself can serve as yet another barrier against the incursion of Jesus.

But as with the disciples, the risen Jesus goes where he will.  The Judas window provides no forewarning.  The locked door provides no protection.  Jesus will enter into us, and at first that can be cowering.  When Jesus enters, we see starkly the wounds we have caused to God, to God’s children, to God’s world.  We know, in the presence of the crucified and risen one, all the ways in which we have misunderstood, and abandoned, and hidden from God’s goodness and grace.  But in the very next breath, Jesus reveals to us that there is no wound God cannot redeem.  Jesus bestows his peace upon our hearts.  Jesus fills us with his Spirit.  In short, we experience the death of that old life which both defined us and from which we sought to hide—the life that had us anxiously peering out the Judas window day and night—and we begin a new life.  That is Easter.

We then become people of confidence and faith, because Jesus has come to us regardless of who we were.  We become disciples because we now see that discipleship is the work of extending to others what Jesus has done in and for us.  We not only unlock but tear down the doors that seek to block Jesus’ path.         

Like Thomas, we finally say of Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” and we rejoice. 

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[i] We know from Matthew 27:1-10 and Acts 1:18 that things don’t end so well for Judas, but the remaining disciples would not yet have known this.

[ii] Ibid

[iii] This term is still used in Great Britain to describe the one-way window in a prison cell door, which allows the guards to see inside the cell without allowing the prisoner to see out.