The Spirit Falls
My parents have two dogs at home. Of course, Rolf and Gracie love Mom and Dad, but they are also quite excited to see John and I when we come home to visit. They frantically run around and bark when we park in the driveway. We can hear them howling from the house. As soon as we open the door they are jumping on us, tails wagging so fast they look like they’ll fall off. And once we enter the house, they prefer not to leave us alone. The dogs will lay under the table while we have a family meal together. It’s really very sweet. The only problem is that the dogs make sitting on the couch a much weightier decision than if they weren’t present. If the dogs like you and you choose to sit on the couch in my parents’ house, it's only a matter of time before one of the dogs will jump up on the couch beside you, nuzzle up against you, and then flop on your lap with all the force of gravity their bodies can muster. It doesn’t hurt. They aren’t excessively heavy, but you get a little stuck. They just fall on you, and they obviously don’t want to be moved. In a sense, they are very literally making sitting on the couch a weighty decision. You can be certain that you will be adding a dog’s worth of weight to your lap at some point.
Obviously, this isn’t true of all dogs. There are dogs that are a little nervous around people. There are dogs who don’t make a habit of sitting on people. But my parents’ dogs live a relaxed life in a loving family. They are pretty comfortable around the people in that house and eager to share affection. It is in their nature to just fall down on people. When the conditions are right, they can simply follow the course of gravity.
Falling is really an interesting thing. When you think about it, it is really easier than any other task. It is natural. When you want to get water up higher, you need to use energy through pumps or buckets and manual work. But when you just let it go, it flows downhill. Everything wants to flow downhill. Even the Holy Spirit.
In Acts 11, Peter describes an important conversion event: the Holy Spirit makes a group of gentiles a part of the church. At this point in Acts, this is fairly remarkable. The early church is stunned and forced to rethink their exclusivity. God is moving in ways that aren’t able to predict or understand. God is opening doors that they thought were walls. They are forced to watch and learn as God expands the boundary of the community to include more and more people. But there is something else interesting in this story. The Holy Spirit falls.
The word used for the motion of the Holy Spirit in verse fifteen gets translated a few different ways. Some translators say the Holy Spirit “came” upon them, others describe it as having “come down” or “rested” upon them. But many translations are pretty direct about how they translate that Greek word. Most of them agree that the Holy Spirit fell upon them.
To “fall on” or “fall upon” can have some interesting meanings. We may use it to describe simply the act of falling, as if someone trips and falls down on someone else. It may describe the act of attacking, as when a group of warriors fall upon their enemy by surprise. It can conjure the image of something fast, as when a rock falls, or something slow as when a leaf falls. It can be very direct and clear, like an apple from a tree, or creating an atmosphere, like the falling of rain or snow. So what does it mean for the Holy Spirit to fall upon believers? What are the implications of this word?
Perhaps the Spirit fulfills all of these ideas. The work of the Spirit creates an atmosphere for our lives. It falls upon the world like a sheet of snow, replacing the barren lifeless cold of winter with a mystical shimmering blanket. But it also is direct, calling each of us to a specific vocation. The Spirit falls slowly, as we grow day by day, year after year, learning more of the heights and depths of God’s love for us and the world. At the same time, it can be sudden. We have a surprising realization about what God wants from us, a eureka moment that can change us in an instant. The Spirit ambushes us, driving us out of comfort into life-giving service with sudden passion and fervor. And even the first meaning could apply. There is almost a clumsiness to the Spirit falling upon us. Not that God isn’t making deliberate choices about where the Spirit falls, but the Spirit also seems to fall just about everywhere. It goes with gravity, and just drops down on the world.
God is our loving Creator. All the world was made by the Triune God as each Person of the Trinity loved the other Persons. The universe is the result of relationship within the Trinity. We are made with God’s love. As a result, we aren’t meant to be separate from God. It is a natural thing for the Holy Spirit to flow downhill onto us. We belong with the Spirit, and by extension, the Spirit belongs with us. Referring to this action of the Holy Spirit as “falling” is a way of remembering God’s love in creation. The Holy Spirit flows onto people because we are where the Spirit wants to be, in close relationship with those the Spirit loves.
When we see these images of the Spirit descending upon people, we often get the impression that this is some amazing miracle. The Spirit is rushing upon them with force and vigor, but that doesn’t mean it is out of the ordinary. There isn’t anything special about the Holy Spirit appearing with power. It isn’t that the Spirit decided to turn up the energy on those days. The Holy Spirit is forceful, vigorous, and powerful. It isn’t amazing that the Spirit comes with power or even that the Spirit appears. If there is a strange thing, it is the fact that the Holy Spirit was separated enough from us to need to return and fall on us. In a world marred by sin, there are times when the Spirit is separated from the ones God loves. However, this doesn’t mean that the Spirit wants to be distant. The Spirit flows down to us with joy and power. God doesn’t want to be far off. God wants to be with us.
My parents’ dogs love people. When they get the chance, they will do everything they can to become closer, even if that means falling right on top of someone. The Holy Spirit is much more powerful than a dog, and as much as this may be difficult for a dog-person to understand, the love of the Spirit is even more powerful, even more remarkable, than the love of a dog. God wants to be close to us, so the Spirit falls upon us with all the power of love and trust. All we need to do is wait for the Lord, God’s love will fall on us.
