It has now been a month since the earth in Nepal groaned with a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Buildings collapsed, an avalanche cascaded down Mt. Everest, and devastation ensued. We know now that more than 8000 people died and thousands more were injured.
After the initial quake, the earth continued to groan with a series of aftershocks which went on for days, causing further damage and traumatizing survivors. Even those whose houses still stood slept outside for fear of later collapses. Then last week another major quake hit, causing a few more deaths and further traumatizing survivors.
I've never been through a major earthquake so I can only image the terror and agony of those who have experienced one. I am grateful for organizations like the United Methodist Committee on Relief which give me a way to help when disasters strike.
Separated from human suffering, earthquakes are a natural part of creation. The magnificent Himalaya Range was formed because one tectonic plate pushed under another. Over the last month I have wondered if this quake has perhaps increased or decreased Mt. Everest's elevation by a fraction of an inch or two. It is the intersection with human life that makes earthquakes disasters of terrifying proportions. In the same week as the earthquake in Nepal there were several small ones here in Idaho and then one in Mexico. The earth groans in labor pains all over the globe. The very thing that leads to so much suffering also resulted in the glory of the mountains.
People groaned too as they were trapped under rubble or mourned at the deaths of their loves ones. Though Idaho's earthquakes were minor compared to the one in Nepal, we too groan in grief when illness, injury, or old age take our dear ones from us.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day when we remember the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples gathered in an upper room. Fifty days earlier Jesus had risen from the dead. For forty days the Risen Jesus had appeared to his friends. He told them to wait in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high. For ten more days they waited and then God's Holy Spirit came upon them with the rush of a mighty wind and they began to speak in other languages.
Pentecost shook those first followers of Christ from their fear and confusion into a new creation. Over the millennia, Pentecost continues to shake Jesus' followers from tradition bound ways into a new life.
In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul connected the groaning of creation with the sighs of the Holy Spirit – a different picture of Pentecost from the traditional one with the rush of the wind and the new languages. Paul wrote, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption . . . the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."
As creation groans when one tectonic plate slips under another, thus forming mountain ranges and valleys, so too God groans as God slips a new life on top of our old ones. In the early days of Christianity some people tried to separate the spiritual from the material, thinking that anything physical or material was bad and that only the spiritual was good. Paul reminds us that we cannot separate God from creation. To be spiritual does not remove us from our bodies or from this earth. The work of UMCOR in disaster response in Nepal is as vital a part of being a Christian as is learning to pray. The Holy Spirit intercedes for the people of Nepal with sighs too deep for words just as the same Spirit intercedes for those we love who have cancer.
On this Pentecost Sunday we listen for the sighs of the Spirit. Sometimes it is true that the Holy Spirit blows into our lives with the rush of a mighty wind. The Holy Spirit can sometimes act in our lives in bold, dramatic ways. The New Testament tells of the people proclaiming the good news in languages they'd never known before, for which they had not memorized vocabulary lists or practiced verb conjugations. There are times even today when the Holy Spirit works miracles and acts in dramatic ways.
What we must never forget is that the Holy Spirit also speaks in sighs too deep for words, in quiet and subtle ways. When the prophet Elijah fled from Queen Jezebel, he did not hear God in a great wind, an earthquake or a fire. He heard God in the sound of sheer silence, sometimes translated as a still small voice or a gentle whisper. Paul said the Spirit speaks in sighs too deep for words.
The Holy Spirit touches our lives in many ways. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. As Paul says, "we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."
My first year of seminary, a fellow student and friend learned that his young son had become critically ill and had been taken to a hospital in a city one hundred miles from where we were in school. Because my friend served a student parish on the weekends and only spent a few days during the week at school he had not been home with the family, and had indeed ridden to school with someone else. I ended up driving him to the hospital. As we drove the only prayer I could think to say was "Help." I did not have words to pray further. I did not need to, for the Spirit was already praying for the child who did get better.
In the same way, when I don't have the courage to start a difficult task or even enough insight to figure out that the job needs to be done, it is the Holy Spirit who works within me to get me going. Sometimes I think the Holy Spirit's most important role in life is to nudge us or even to give us a good swift kick in the posterior. In such cases the Spirit's work is not flashy or dramatic. Indeed, more often the Spirit is silent and subtle. And it is vital to the work of Christ in and through us.
Paul goes on to say, "The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." The Spirit's quiet work within us leads us into the life God has in mind for us. As Jesus was God made flesh, God come as one of us for thirty three years, so now the Holy Spirit is God's presence among us. While Jesus lived on earth God took on the limitations of time and space which confine us. Jesus could no more be present in Galilee and in Jerusalem at the same moment than a parent can be at one child's soccer match in Walla Walla and another child's baseball game in Sandpoint all on the same day.
One of the gifts of Pentecost was that God's presence is no longer bound by time and space. God's Spirit moves among us today and among Christians gathering in Zimbabwe. The same Spirit which blew into the upper room at the turn of the first millennia blows among us today.
And that Spirit leads us according to God's will. Occasionally we hear stories of people who do terrible things because they think God has told them to do them. We know that driving the car into a lake with your children strapped in their car seats is not God's will. At best such acts are signs of mental illness and not to be confused with the leading of the Holy Spirit. Dan Schutte, the author of the hymn, "Here I Am, Lord" said, "If you think God hates the people you hate, then you can be sure it is NOT God talking." The Holy Spirit leads us to love not to hate.
A couple of years ago I went with a team from our church to work at the UMCOR-West depot in Salt Lake. We packed health kits to be sent around the world in response to disasters. Once we had a pallet of boxes, we prayed for them and then we pounded on the boxes and said, "When the earth rocks, UMCOR rolls!" When the earth groans and houses tumble, the Holy Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. It leads us to send financial gifts to aid in the response effort far from home. When disaster strikes closer to home, the Spirit moves us to roll up our sleeves and help. When tragedy strikes us individually, God's Spirit sweeps into our lives to comfort and console. When life rolls along on an even keel, God's Spirit whispers to us that we may know God's presence. The Spirit's sighs are constant.