Mark's Remarks 5/11

Today, as well as being Mother’s Day, is a very important day in the life of the church. Today is called Pentecost. This is the birthday of the church, when the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, came upon 3,000 or so individuals and started them moving to spread the good news about Jesus.
Holy Spirit can be defined literally. In the original New Testament it was written in Greek as hagios [holy] and pneuma [a breath, or a gentle wind]. So a better translation might be Holy Breath or Holy Wind. You won’t often hear us say, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Wind.” That just doesn’t sound right. It only sounds weird because we are used to Holy Spirit instead of Holy Wind. But Holy Wind is much closer to the reality of God’s third person. A wind moves things. Of course, when you think of wind, right now, you think of the storm that just passed through, wreaking such awful havoc. Rather, you might think of wind in connection with leaves blowing around on a beautiful autumn day or kites flying in a warming spring breeze. Think of the flapping sound of a flag on a flag pole. Wind moves things. The Holy Wind moved the church to encircle the globe.
We use the wind for a lot of things, making electricity, pumping water, pushing sail boats. One thing about it is this: if we want the wind to help us, we have to be where the wind is blowing. We want to find out where the Spirit is moving around here, and get right in the middle! Will you be there?