Philip hovers on the brink of a great discovery: that Jesus is the human face of God. But he doesn't quite get there. Not even, I think, after Jesus tries to explain it to him so simply as to say, "Look at me, Phil; if you see me you see God". That's still too hard for a lot of Christians who just have to complicate things. Mind you, it's fine for Paul & all the other theologians who've succeeded him to tease out our thinking about God. But in the end, no, 'In the beginning...', Jesus is not mind blowing because of what Paul or any of the rest of us says, but because there he is, God in front of our eyes! When the chips are down, that's what's important.
The Spirit is not a doctrine. Any more than Jesus is. Or the Father, for that matter. The Spirit is another 'face' of God, in our heart, this time, rather than before our eyes. Trouble is, some of us forget the heart bone's connected to the eye bone, ... all that kind of thing. It's the Spirit who makes & keeps Jesus alive & present in us & among us. (Don't we say, when we share The Peace, "We are the Body of Christ!....His Spirit is with us! Rather than being a five minute 'smoko' the Peace is a stand up declaration of where we're coming from!) With Jesus before our eyes, & in & among us, in our flesh, now, because the Spirit is in our hearts, making that happen, the possibilities are boundless. Except as we bound them.
Personal & group 'pentecostal' movements often begin with a burst of fire in the spiritual belly, but often degenerate into just another closed system of believing about God. But surely Jesus came to break us out of old, failed, systems, & the Spirit came to keep us living 'outside the square' of religiosity?
Pentecost, like the resurrection, has to keep on happening if God is
to be real for us, & we're to be real for God.
