Spiritual Hiccups - Where's the Spirit?

I once got a church member very upset with me by preaching a sermon entitled "Not Quite a Christian."  It was based on today's reading from Acts where Paul encounters believers who have not been baptized into Jesus Christ and who do not know the Holy Spirit.  In the sermon, I wondered if we were fully Christian if we did not have the Holy Spirit at work in us helping us to do God's will.  This member, out of her understanding of that classic Protestant notion of "justification by grace through faith," insisted that if you believed in Jesus, nothing else mattered.

I discovered long ago that when people fuss about my sermons, sometimes their beef is genuinely with me, but other times they are upset with what the Bible says and direct that anger at me.  A think my "Not Quite a Christian" sermon was the latter sort.  This person had a personal theology (we all do) that was deeply ingrained in her, and it was so much a part of who she was that even the Bible, certainly not a single Bible episode, could override it.

But can we be Christian, in the biblical sense of disciples of Jesus, without the Spirit?  Might we be totally convinced that the Scriptures accurately point to Jesus as Messiah, but lacking the Spirit, still not fully appreciate what that means. 

The common refrain, "I'm spiritual but not religious," is often little more than a dodge that seems to have a very constricted understanding of what it means to be spiritual.  However, I think it also is a protest of sorts against a Church that all to often seems to be "not quite Christian" in the manner of those believers Paul encounters. 

If the Apostle Paul showed up in our congregations and asked us, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" how would we answer him?  I know a lot of people who, at best, would answer, "We're not sure." 

Where is the Holy Spirit present and at work in your life and in the life of your congregation?

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