“Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes 11Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

— Acts 2:9-11

I have often prefaced comments about the Holy Spirit with a slightly different title: that Pesky Holy Spirit. I mean, whenever the Holy Spirit gets involved in whatever we are trying to do, I immediately lose all control and life gets messy. It is as if the Holy Spirit looks at my carefully constructed plans and laughs. My homiletics professor used to say, “The Holy Spirit is not a labor saving device.”

No, she is definitely not a labor saving device. She rarely saves me labor. Usually she gives me more.

Honestly, I feel for the folks in that upper room. There they are, just doing what faithful people do. They had finished counting the weeks, following a nice orderly practice. Everything was proceeding in a reasonable and manageable way.

I picture them carefully planning what they were going to do next. Maybe tell five people about Jesus and then see what happened. A small and manageable evangelism strategy. Perhaps a few gentle conversations with local leaders to gauge interest. Maybe some coffee meetings just to talk things through. It was going to be slow, methodical, and appropriately committee approved.

And then that pesky Holy Spirit blows in, like that one parishioner who says, “Pastor, do you have a minute?” and suddenly your entire day disappears. One minute you have a color coded plan and a sensible timeline, and the next the coming of the kingdom has completely wrecked your schedule and hijacked the next two millennia with the Holy Spirit’s agenda instead of yours.

Honestly, can you imagine how much easier ministry would be if we all did one thing at a time? I struggle to get people serving in the same ministry to work together some days. Could the enhanced worship committee maybe avoid scheduling major renovations during Vacation Bible School? Could finance and SPRC perhaps speak with each other instead of at each other? Small miracles. Tiny Pentecosts.

But then the Holy Spirit comes blowing in with tongues as of fire. Not one giant flame over everybody all at once, but little sparks resting on each person. Tiny bright flames of inspiration landing on every head in the room at the same time. Oh, how wonderfully inconvenient. How gloriously messy.

And honestly, maybe that is still the challenge of ministry. How do we keep the sparks from burning the whole church down while also fanning those flames into compassion, justice, mercy, and service?

Beloved, the Holy Spirit creates the mess and also sets the course. I have come to believe, or maybe simply to hope, that the kingdom of God comes this way too. Little uncontrollable sparks of grace that grow and spread and somehow, by the mercy of God, all those scattered flames become one great fire of love and hope and joy for the world.

Beloved, I pray you will have just slightly more Holy Spirit than you can handle today.