NO EXCUSE WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT IS INVOLVED

When the Holy Spirit lives in us, one of the excuses we cannot use to get us out of a mess of our own making is the one that claims we did not know we were doing was sinful. There is a difference between doing something that is wrong and not knowing that it was wrong and doing something we knowingly understand to be sinful. The Holy Spirit helps us in discerning right from wrong, good from bad, sinful from not. On our own we may be able to do the same. But when the Spirit lives in us, as Jesus promised the Spirit would do, we cannot blame others for or sins or even make excuses for them.

We do, of course. We almost have to. That is the only way we can live with ourselves. If we cannot blame someone else for our foolishness, at least we can claim ignorance. We do not want to accept full and total responsibility for each and every one of our actions. It would seem to be too much of a burden, especially given our sinfulness. Not rampant sinfulness, mind you: we are not that bad. But because we know the Spirit is living in us, we are sorely tempted to try to pass the blame when we go against the promptings of the Spirit.

Lest we beat ourselves unmercifully because of this, we can at least take a large measure of consolation in the fact that the Spirit does live in us and that we recognize and accept this fact. We can take further consolation in the fact that the Spirit has probably saved us from ourselves more times than we could count and even more times than we would or could ever realize. The grace of God flowing through the Holy Spirit is a marvelous gift we do not deserve but are so grateful to possess.

That same grace that keeps us, for the most part, on the straight and narrow, is the same grace from the same Spirit that helps us live without fully understanding. Our faith, especially during these trying days, is put to the supreme test. We wonder why the virus, why so many deaths, why is had to happen, who’s to blame, when will it all end or will it?  We have not seen the empty tomb or the risen Christ. All we can see in analogy is the rock rolled back from the tomb asking us to believe.

We believe even as we struggle with that belief. We are not asked to have a blind faith in something we have never seen. That would be both foolish and impossible. But what has happened for each of us is that the Spirit, many, many times already in our lives, has allowed us to experience what Jesus did: resurrection to new life. They came as a surprise, a shock even, but they came and we are thankful.

Granted, our resurrections were not of the same kind. But they were resurrections anyway. We have been dead to sin and we have been raised to new life. The pain that was caused by our sins has been resurrected, if you will, to new life both because of Jesus’ resurrection and because of the grace of God living in us through the Holy Spirit. It will be that way in the days and weeks and months and years to come.

That is the Easter promise and it is one that we have known and experienced in one way or another throughout our lives, whether we were aware of that new life or not.