We have come to this really strange time in the Church year. It is sort of the Advent/Lent of Pentecost. Jesus has ascended; his disciples are left gaping as they stare into the sky, hoping to catch one last glimpse of him. The Spirit has not yet been poured out, at least we would remember that day when that had not yet happened, just as in Advent we remember the time before the birth of Jesus when the children of Israel had to rely upon this promised Messiah.

This is a beneficial thing for Christians to do. The Holy Spirit is a gentle member of the Trinity, always pointing us toward Jesus. As a seminary professor once, said, “The Holy Spirit is shy.” The Holy Spirit prefers to stand behind something or someone.  Rarely does the Spirit show up front, lest the Holy Spirit detracts or distract from Jesus.

But the Holy Spirit is so necessary. I like to compare the presence of the Holy Spirit to an extension cord. Without that bit of wire and insulation, my light, my radio, my tools don’t really work. They are functioning just fine, but not empowered. But the Spirit does not make the forgiveness or the life which I need. He brings it to me. It is Jesus who died on the cross, not the Spirit. But without the Spirit, the cross is but a historical event, a truth which happened long ago, in a distant place, for people other than myself. It takes the Spirit to make me into one of the people for whom Jesus died, to connect me to Calvary and the Word which gives life. It is the Spirit who makes my heart sing in praise of Jesus, who plants and tends the relationship we label faith.

This Sunday is about imagining what it might be like without that Spirit, so that next week when we proclaim the feast of Pentecost and read the account of that first outpouring, and the beginning of this thing we call the Church, we are ready to hear it. But we don’t focus on the absence of the Spirit; we grow in the Church which has been empowered by that Spirit. We imagine what it must be like, because we cannot actually go there. The Spirit is poured out, our hearts and minds are enlivened and resurrected by that Spirit in the waters of our Baptism and in the Word and Sacrament which impact our senses. In those moments as Jesus prays, we are made one with God, united with him far more intimately than if Jesus were standing right before us. Indeed, he has come “in us.”

We await these uncomfortable ten days between the fortieth and fiftieth day, when the house was shaken and tongues of flame blazed on the heads of the disciples. But while we imagine the discomfort of those days, we don’t really know them, for the Spirit is given us, fully, beautifully, and completely. We really are citizens of heaven!