We’re moving into Summer and Spring is already behind
us!
We all love the sense
of unfolding new life at this time of year. And it is right for us to rejoice
in the changing of the seasons. It is the creative power of the Spirit of God
at work: as today’s Psalm 104 puts it, “When you send forth your Spirit, they are
created, and you renew the face of the earth.”
This Sunday is
Pentecost – what we used to call Whitsunday. For Christians it ranks alongside
Christmas and Easter as one of the great festivals. It celebrates the day when
the Holy Spirit filled Jesus’s followers, empowering them to begin the great
task of making disciples of all nations. The first Pentecost was the
spring-time of the Church, the day when the first green sprouts burst into the
light of day, the day the Church was born.
The Lectionary
readings are of course all about the Spirit. Let’s have a closer look at them.
In today’s Gospel (John 14:8-17,25-27), Jesus tells
his disciples that he will ask the Father to send them the Holy Spirit.
For what we know as
the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, John uses a Greek
word translated as ‘advocate’. On the night he was betrayed Jesus tells the
disciples, ‘If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,
to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth... You know him, because
he abides with you, and he will be in you… The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of
all that I have said to you’.
These are very
important words. Jesus tells his first disciples that through loving him they will
know the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, which will stay with them
and be in them. And he tells them that the Spirit of truth will teach them, as
well as remind them of Jesus’s teaching.
Surely the same
applies to his disciples in every age, including ours. Jesus teaches us our
faith must be open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit – it must be a living
faith, open to development.
In the 2nd reading (Romans 8:14-17),
St Paul tells the Roman church that this Holy Spirit is a spirit of adoption.
‘When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it
is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of
God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.’
When we pray, when we
seek God’s forgiveness, it is the Holy Spirit - the Advocate whom Jesus asked
his Father to send to those who love him - the Spirit of truth which abides
within us - who reminds us that we are children of God - and so joint inheritors
with Christ of all that is good and true and beautiful in God. What a simply
stunning thought that is.
In today’s 1st reading (Acts 2:1-21),
Luke describes the events of that very first Pentecost.
7 weeks after Christ’s
resurrection, 10 days after his ascension, something happened among his
followers. Something that caught the attention of the crowd – citizens of
Jerusalem and visitors from all over the Roman Empire, alike. Something that caused
the crowd to stop and look and listen. What was it that happened?
The disciples suddenly
experienced the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, in them and in their lives, as
Jesus had promised them. The OT uses wind and fire as symbols of the presence
of God. So it wasAct natural for them to describe their extraordinary experience
in terms of a rushing mighty wind and tongues of fire. And they were changed,
changed utterly by it.
They began to speak in
tongues – this is what first attracts the attention of the crowd – some people
even thought they were drunk! Did they really speak in all manner of foreign
languages? Or is Luke using this as a device to signify the Gospel message is
universal, for every person, from every nation? Or was it just the disciples’
obvious enthusiasm and joy, bubbling forth, that impressed the crowd?
Then Peter comes
forward. Peter the simple fisherman from Galilee, who just seven weeks before
had been afraid to admit he knew Jesus. Peter as spokesman for the others starts
to speak confidently to the crowd, quoting from the prophet Joel; and Peter goes
on to declare his faith in the risen Christ, with such eloquence that we are
told he convinced 3000 people that day to believe and be baptised. What a
change in the man! And Christ’s Church is born.
No doubt in principle
we could explain what happened with, say, the science of psychology. But I
think it’s enough to use the same words Luke did – ‘All of them - the disciples - were filled with the Holy Spirit’, and
they were changed by it. And this sense of receiving and being changed by the
Holy Spirit has marked out and empowered Christians in every generation ever
since.
Notice that the disciples were all together in
one place when they received the Spirit.
It was a gift to the whole
community who followed Jesus. I think that if Christians of different
traditions were more often gathered together in one place, we would receive
more of the Spirit.
I can be a Christian without going to Church, people sometimes say. Well, yes – a taste for
singing hymns and listening to sermons is perhaps optional. But nobody can be a
Christian alone – for as Christians we are those to whom God has given his
Spirit, and the Spirit is a community Spirit. We are not given it for our
individual salvation; we are given it to empower us to be the Church, the
community of believers, so that we may pass on the good news to others, not
necessarily by words but in our lives.
I believe that the
Holy Spirit has inspired people since time immemorial. Long before Jesus’s
patient sowing of the seed with the disciples, the Spirit was no doubt planting
seeds in the minds of the ancient prophets of Israel as they, like us, struggled
to understand their relationship with God. And who can say that the Spirit has
not also inspired what is good in other religions?
But we are Christians -
let us rejoice in Christ’s Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, a living organism,
sprouting from the seed Jesus sowed, and constantly growing in new ways.
So to conclude:
As we rejoice in the
glorious growth in nature around us, let us also rejoice in the gift of the
Holy Spirit which abides in us, and reminds us we are children of God by
adoption, and let us also rejoice in the Church as a living, developing
organism, inspired and guided by that Holy Spirit.
And let us pray that
in this part of Christ’s Church, in the churches of our parish union, in the
Church of Ireland, God’s Holy Spirit will guide us to be a living church, changing
and developing as God wants us to:
God the Holy
Spirit,
come in
power and bring new life to the Church;
renew us in
love and service,
and enable
us to be faithful
to our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
(BCP p149)
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