Pentecost power: The Holy Spirit strengthens us

Most Rev. Dr. Jacob Augustine Welbourne Opinion Jun - 16 - 2014 , 14:21

The Holy Spirit is God’s creative and transforming power encompassing all creation and is not confined to Christians.

But as Christians we affirm the Holy Spirit’s existence in the Apostles Creed and its affirmation of the virgin Birth of Jesus. In other words, the DNA of Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit. So when we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit we receive the Holy Spirit which is cosmic, personal and social.

Through baptism, the Holy Spirit empowers us to see more clearly the world around us and we can use our minds in ways that exceed our human capacity. The truth is revealed in us because the Holy Spirit is the truth.

Having over showered with the power of the Holy Spirit, the Disciples went out from the closed upper room and spoke about the love of Christ and acted out that love. Their listeners also sensed this power.

The words they heard penetrated their hearts and awakened their consciences. There was hope for the people. They obeyed the disciple’s instructions, turned to God, believed the Gospel and received the Holy Spirit themselves.

We are told that 3000 of them were baptized that day. The Holy Spirit continues to demonstrate that love of Jesus till today. To the present day He has been working through the churches to touch the lives of the vulnerable and marginalized in our communities. What is the Holy Spirit in Christ calling on us who receive her power to do?

Essentially we are called to be bold and not submit to intimidation and fear. We are told to get out of our protective upper rooms and move down to the people. The Holy Spirit is the active force of God and helps us to dispel fear when we are filled with it.

The kind of task we are called to do with the help of the Holy Spirit is what Jesus said, Luke 4: 18-19. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors and that the time of Lord’s favour is near”. This is what Jesus commissions us to do.

Today we have a severe ecological challenge due to unsustainable production and unsustainable patterns of growth which have been pushed by economic ideologies like capitalism and communism.

Powerful nations wage imperialistic wars to control our resources; the powerful exploit small farmers, fisher folk, women and unemployed youth. The powerful usurp, occupy and destroy lands of Indigenous Peoples. Corporate corruption is rampant around the world.

The big powers point fingers at each other over exploitation of resources in Africa (the new repartitioning of Africa). China, India and Brazil want to be at the capitalists’ table as new members to share in the spoils of natural resources, trade and finance.

Meanwhile, Western voices are arguing that the populous China’s thirst for oil and other African resources threatens their interests in an increasingly competitive market.

A greedy business community is allowed to speculate on finance, oil, commodity and food prices. The gap between the rich and the poor widens fast, threatening peace. But these are not raised as problems because the liberalized market is like a religion.

Today corporations control more than 72 % of the global trade and continue to plunder in Africa, Asia and Latin America causing an ecological debt, destroying people’s livelihoods with playing around with food prices.

Segregation and xenophobia have taken a new face in migration. Human trafficking that targets women and children is on the increase.

In all these issues, I am afraid, many of our churches have not been bold enough to point out to the main culprits because, I believe, there is some intimidation by those who finance the life of the churches themselves and the churches are fearful of the powerful governments or corporations who are their donors.

In a claim to use language that includes all, the churches avoid pointing to who the real culprits are! We refuse to touch the roots of the problems by making vague statements and generalizations that the churches take refuge in.

We allow the theology of cynicism to destroy what the Church has achieved over the years. Indeed we have not allowed the Holy Spirit to break us out of our fear-filled and closed upper rooms.

Only a few church leaders have had the courage and personal fortitude to boldly confront the earthly empires today. I am afraid. Members of the Church family prefer to focus on internal power struggles turning against each other.

There is a tendency to marginalize those who are critical and we give them labels that discredit them and put them down.

It is my prayer that, as we celebrate Pentecost daily we shall continue to renew our minds and hearts with its spiritual gifts and to give us a new strength so as to persevere in conducting our duties in our society and our Church.

Pentecost also inspires us to serve and love all our brothers and sisters to whatever religion or nationality they belong. Christ’s commandment is indeed to love and to see in every human being the face of God and to love him as God himself love him.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the time to lament the past is gone. Now, during this period of Pentecost the new dedicated life to God and the Church, the time has come to build new things. We must restore and renovate the old, not the obsolete.

We need to have the courage to change personally as Christians. If we have begun to change our ways of conducting economic, industrial and technological transactions: if we have begun to change our behavior in various realms of social life, then it is necessary – and even of primary importance – for us to change spiritually as well, especially in the area of our religious concepts and morality.

Let us purge all of the illegitimate and ill-advised elements – whether introduced by outsiders or by ourselves – which destroy our lives with moral pollution.

The enemy of a nation or church such as ours is not located only outside its borders. The enemy can work (and frequently does work) in our own inner world and life. It is important to fight against this “invisible enemy”.

We must put an end to exploitation and corruption, and eliminate once and for all the incidents of fratricide. We must live this life granted by God with the character and honor befitting Christians everywhere, anywhere. Only such a life will be the source of happiness in our mother land, Ghana..

We believe that every person is precious, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person. In a global culture driven by excessive individualism, our tradition proclaims that the person is not only sacred but also social. Human beings grow and achieve fulfillment in community. It is my sincere wish for renewal and perseverance in service and love, which is the perfection of any human being as it is the fullness of all the laws.

The writer is the Archbishop of the Orthodox Anglican Church of Ghana, and Bishop of the Diocese of Saints Peter and Paul, the Apostles, Sekondi.