A few years ago Phil and I were out to dinner with our friends, Barb and Ken, who are Roman Catholic.  Barb asked me what I am preaching on these days, and I said, “The Holy Spirit.  We talk a lot in church about God the Father, and of course about Jesus the Son, but not so much about the Holy Spirit.”  She said, you’ve got to fix that!  The Holy Spirit gets two shoulders!  I said, what do you mean, two shoulders?  She and Ken made the sign of the cross, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–head, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder–right there in the restaurant.  I said, I am going to use that!  In Protestant churches, it is rare to see someone make the sign of the cross.  But what a good reminder of the importance of the Holy Spirit.  He gets two shoulders!

Jesus certainly thought highly of the Holy Spirit.  In the verse printed at the top of your bulletin today, Jesus told his disciples, “I tell you the truth.  It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send him to you.”  Can you imagine how this made the disciples feel?  How could it possibly be an advantage, to let go of the God you can see, in order to receive the God you can’t see?  Isn’t a bird in hand worth two in the bush?

And yet, Jesus told his disciples that it was to their advantage that he go away.  It is to our advantage that we have the Holy Spirit with us, because the Holy Spirit can go everywhere we go!

Pentecost is a special day of celebration in the church because it is on this day that Jesus’ disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  When I say “gift of the Holy Spirit”, I’m not talking about spiritual gifts, such as hospitality, prophecy, administration, healing, wisdom, etc.  We will be learning more about those spiritual gifts this summer.  Today we’re talking about how the Holy Spirit IS the gift!  The Holy Spirit gets two shoulders, because it is the Holy Spirit who sustains us from past to present, birth to death, through goods and bads, through this life and into the next.  The Holy Spirit deserves two shoulders because it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can even profess our faith in God the Father and Jesus the Son!  Each and every one of us here, we have all been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be our constant companion, helper, comforter, and guide.

So we can see why Jesus said we have been given a tremendous advantage!  We have the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us.  But not all spirits are holy.  There are lots of different spiritual phenomenon, and in our scripture lesson today, we see that not all spiritual manifestations are from God.  How can we know if we are indeed being led by the Holy Spirit?  How can we be sure we’re relying on the Spirit of God and not something else?

This year at Lima Church, we’ve set about reading the entire New Testament in one year.  I must confess, I got off track in the second half of April when I went on vacation, and it’s taking me a little bit to get caught up.  If you have fallen behind on the reading schedule, maybe you’d just like to start with Acts.  It’s a great book filled with stories of missionary adventures.  Like the story we’re focusing on today.   Luke records for us that “the two of them [Paul and Barnabas], sent on their way by the Holy Spirit”, went to Cyprus.  I did a little internet research this week, and I’ve got to tell you, I wouldn’t mind a bit if the Holy Spirit sent me on my way to Cyprus!  It is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, and it looks gorgeous!

But when Paul and Barnabas got to Cyprus, they encountered something not gorgeous at all:  a man who was led by an unholy spirit named Bar-Jesus, which in Hebrew means son of Jesus.  Luke calls him a “false prophet” and a “Jewish sorcerer.”  Neither of those descriptors sound like a compliment, do they?  Bar-Jesus was a renegade Jew working as magician in the court of an important Roman official.  This man, Sergius Paulus, heard Paul and Barnabas were in town and sent for them so he could hear the word of God.  This upset the false prophet Bar-Jesus, and even though he was named, “Son of Jesus”, he did not accept the gospel message, and he tried to dissuade his boss from believing Paul and Barnabas.

Luke writes that Paul, “filled with the Holy Spirit”, looked right at the false prophet and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right.”  We would say Paul got right up in the false prophet’s grill.  Paul must have been incredibly convinced he was filled with the Holy Spirit, because he went on to pronounce a curse on poor Bar-Jesus.  Paul predicted that the man would become blind, and immediately mist and darkness came over the false prophet, and he could not see.  Between Paul and Barnabas’ teaching, and seeing his magician go blind, the Roman official became a believer in Jesus.

This story reflects a common pattern in the very early church:  Jews rejected the message of Jesus; leading Romans accepted the message of Jesus; and God confirmed the message with amazing signs.        But apart from giving us a little church history, what does this passage have to teach us today?  I have to tell you, I am jealous of the way the Holy Spirit so clearly led Paul and Barnabas.  They felt the Spirit directing them to go to a specific place at a specific time.  They felt the Spirit showing them who is to be trusted and who isn’t.  They felt the Spirit empowering them to curse someone!  Can you imagine that?  They had a LOT of confidence in their ability to discern the prompting of the Holy Spirit!

Most Christians I meet, we struggle to discern the movement of the Spirit.  We are understandably cautious about where we should go next, who we should trust, and what we should do about people whose views differ from our own.  I would like to think that no Christian would ever pray for a punitive miracle, but I know that isn’t true.  Last week, when I was at Annual Conference, a lay delegate whom I had never met came to the microphone to give a speech opposing one of the resolutions we were considering.  His talk was so inflammatory, the Bishop eventually asked the tech people to turn off his microphone.  I admit, I had some negative fantasies about this man, ranging from wishing he would trip into a mud puddle in the parking lot, to hoping he got ran over in the parking lot!  My thoughts were not pretty, and they weren’t led by the Holy Spirit.  I was angered and hurt by what the man said, and I wanted him to feel as much or more pain than he was inflicting.  It made me wonder about our scripture lesson today, about how Paul could be so sure he was speaking for God, and not just reacting out of his own anger and ego.

Which is why, I suppose, the Holy Spirit gets two shoulders.  Discerning the Spirit requires time, it requires contact, it requires considering more than once whether we are hearing God, or if we are listening to our own motives and desires.  Like the two shoulders, there are two good principles to consider when we’re trying to decide if what we are feeling urged to do or say is the prompting of the Holy Spirit—or if it’s coming from someone or someplace else.

The first principle is, “Do first the things that only you can do.”  Only you can take care of your body.  Only you can be a parent to your children, a wife or husband to your spouse, a steward of the relationships and resources God has given you.  Do first the things only you can do.  We all have to prioritize, and no one has enough time, money, or energy to do all the things they might want or even feel called to do.  Make sure you are caring well for your primary responsibilities.  Whenever someone tells me they think they are called to do a new thing for God, I always ask, how well are you doing at the old things?  Are you faithful in prayer, worship, study, service, and generosity?  Are you putting first things first?  God generally calls people who are faithful in small things to take on bigger things.

When trying to discern the Holy Spirit, remember, “Do first the things that only you can do.”  The second discernment principle is similar:  do the things you are uniquely gifted to do.  In our scripture lesson today, Paul was uniquely qualified to confront the false prophet.  After all, Paul had personal experience with opposing the gospel!  He knew what it was like to be zealously opposed to people learning about and wanting to follow Jesus.  Remember, Paul used to be called Saul.  He was a high-ranking Jewish official who was a proponent of seeing early Christians killed for their faith.  He was struck blind by the Spirit until he could see the truth about Jesus.  My guess is, Paul saw something of his former self in the false prophet, and what seems like a punitive miracle to us may have been Paul’s way of blessing Bar-Jesus—offering him the same experience of blindness that eventually led to seeing the truth.

Do first the things that only you can do.  Do the things you are uniquely gifted to do.  Those are two great principles to keep in mind as we strive to honor and follow the Holy Spirit.  But on this day of Pentecost, we might want to add a third principle about the Holy Spirit, and that has to do with being surprised.  It’s unlikely we will see the heavens open and doves descend on us.  We probably won’t see tongues of fire, or find ourselves suddenly fluent in a foreign language.  But, surprising people seems to be one of the Holy Spirit’s favorite things to do.  Whether it’s a surprise trip leading Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus, or a surprise trip leading John Wesley to the Aldersgate meeting where his heart was strangely warmed, we stand on the shoulders of people who were open to following the Spirit to unexpected places.

This week I heard a story about how, in the Middle Ages, the Church tried to keep people open to being surprised by the Spirit.  Christians in Europe, by and large, worshipped in cathedrals that were adorned with murals, stained glass windows, and sculptures so even illiterate people could learn the stories of the faith.  But did you know that the high ceilings were painted to hide a number of trap doors that were used specifically for Pentecost?  On the day of Pentecost, some church members would climb onto the cathedral’s roof.  At the right moment in the worship service, these hearty volunteers would release live doves through the trap doors, through the painted skies and clouds of the ceiling.  A few moments later, as the doves flew through the church, the trap doors would open again, and red rose petals would rain down on the church members like tongues of fire.

Wouldn’t that be the most beautiful surprise?  Imagine sitting in worship, and seeing the trapdoors in the ceiling open, and doves swoop down, and red rose petals fall.  This practice was done every year as a vivid reminder to be open to all the ways the Spirit leads us—to beautiful places, to controversial places, to dangerous places, to unexpected places.

Jesus gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit so we can embody and advance God’s kingdom.  But it’s not always easy to know for sure if we’re following the Spirit.  So keep these principles in mind:  do first the things only you can do, and do those things you are uniquely gifted to do.  Give the Holy Spirit two shoulders, and be open to both the foreseeable and the surprising ways God is leading you in faith.  Amen.