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