"Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit." [Joel 2:28-29]
The thing about the rain is it lands everywhere.
You might be having a pleasant sunny day, but when a front sweeps through your neighborhood or a pop-up shower erupts above you, the rain will get on everything. It will water the grass in your yard, and also the flowers beside your neighbor's front door. It will soak into the soil around your tomato plants, but also the weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalk down the block. It will rinse off the dirty car you've left in the driveway, but it will also soak the clothes you left on the line to dry in the back yard if you don't bring them in first. And it will fall indiscriminately, not just on your house but on the house of the nice folks down the street and the cranky people you don't get along with three doors down, too.
Jesus himself famously points out in the Sermon on the Mount that "God sends rain on the just and on the unjust alike," giving the good gift of water for fields and crops not only to the well-behaved and righteous but also to the crooked and the rotten as well. And he sees this, not as a failure of efficiency on God's part, but a choice that reflects God's prodigal and gracious way of giving. Rain just goes everywhere, and like the old saying goes, when it rains, it pours.
So it's worth stopping to think about what it means that the promised Holy Spirit is "poured out" on "all flesh." When the prophet Joel starts envisioning God's future action to send the Spirit (a passage that Simon Peter quotes extensively on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts), he pictures something as indiscriminate and widespread as a downpour. The Spirit isn't given only to men, but also to women; not only to the venerably old and wise, but to the young and inexperienced as well; not just to the bosses and the rich but to the enslaved and the lowly. Joel emphasizes the broad range here, as if to say, "This is how you'll know it's God at work--God will send the Spirit far and wide, overflowing on all kinds of people." That's what makes the promised coming of the Spirit newsworthy, and of course that's what Peter focuses on when he quotes Joel in Acts 2.
But for us, even now some twenty centuries later, this word from the prophet means that the Spirit isn't the private possession of anybody. The moment we think we can hold the Spirit in our grasp and keep the Spirit away from someone else, we are reminded that God's Spirit is never in our control and never limited to our list of approved recipients.
Sometimes in church life we forget that, and we appoint ourselves gatekeepers over who we think is "entitled" to have the Spirit's presence or power. It's been there for many centuries in branches of the Christian family tree that decreed women could not preach or lead in the church (despite Joel's clear insistence that the Spirit is given to "your sons and your daughters" to speak, to preach, and to prophesy. It's been in the limits placed along racial or ethnic lines for pastoral leadership in church denominations in this country (see the stories of Rev. Jehu Jones in the Lutheran tradition, or the story of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church as well, as examples). And it continues on with the obstacles that keep some from serving or leading in church life because of who they love, or because they don't have the money for schooling in a four-year seminary program, or because would-be mentors don't see the gifts they have for ministry. Joel would warn us about thinking it's in our power to hold back the Spirit from someone, for whatever reasons. Joel reminds us that when God sends the Spirit, it is on "all flesh," which deliberately includes people across lines of race, status, gender, age, and culture. We cannot restrain the Spirit from being poured out on all kinds of people any more than we can stop the rain from landing on your neighbor's house along with your garden. God does not have to get your or my permission to give the Holy Spirit to anybody God chooses, but rather God seems to have a thing for widespread downpours that cannot be contained by our efforts.
When we pray, as we sometimes do, for the Spirit of God to be stirred up afresh in someone's life, we should be prepared that God will answer, not just for us or the people on our list of approved recipients we deem "worthy," but like the summer rain on all the thirsty ground. After all, God gives the Spirit like rain--and when it rains, it pours.
O God, send your Spirit as you choose, as far and wide as your mercy stretches, and beyond the bounds of the limits we have tried to set up.
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