Anticipating Ascension and Pentecost

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan church on Sunday 10th May 2026, the 6th Sunday of Easter

Jesus' Farewell Discourse, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319)

On this 6^th and last Sunday of Easter, we continue to celebrate the central event of our faith, the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 14:15-21) leads us to look forward, to peek over the horizon so to speak, toward the great events of the Ascension next Thursday, and Pentecost in 2 weeks’ time, when we celebrate the coming of the Spirit which Jesus promised us.

The reading is just a small part of Jesus’s farewell discourse to his disciples. John sets the scene as after the last supper. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet to teach them his example of service. He knows how things will play out. Judas Iscariot has already left to betray him to the authorities, who will arrest and execute him. Time is short for Jesus to prepare his followers for what must come, so his words are dense with meaning. Let me reflect on what they mean to me.

‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you’, says Jesus.

Even as Jesus endures Judas’s betrayal and waits to be taken to his death, he puts aside his own distress to comfort his disciples. He loves them. He will not desert them. And he promises he will continue to be present for them, whatever befalls.

 ‘In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me’, he says. The Gospels tell us the risen Christ appeared to the disciples between the Resurrection and his Ascension, when he returned to his Father - they experienced his presence physically. But I do not think this is what Jesus means here. Jesus is looking beyond the day of Ascension, through the millennia to our own time and into the distant future. Throughout the ages Christians continue to experience Jesus’s reassuring presence, as friend, brother, and redeemer. As Matthew (28:20) tells us, Jesus said, ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. Jesus continues to be alive for us.

‘Because I live, you also will live’, says Jesus. We live – we can be fully human as God wants us to be – because we know, as Jesus tells us, ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.

‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever.

Jesus promises his disciples they will receive the gift of another Advocate - ‘the Spirit of truth’, the Holy Spirit - to teach and support them as a mentor. As we read in Acts, they did indeed receive the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit led them to go out boldly, declaring their belief in Christ, to make disciples of others. The disciples they made in turn received the Spirit and did the same, and so on - down through the years, the centuries, the millennia. Christians continue to be inspired by the Spirit to this day. The result is the Church we know, in all the glorious variety of our traditions. The Spirit will be with us for ever, Jesus promises, helping us to discern the truth.

Notice, Jesus asks the Father to send the Spirit. He does not ask him to send scripture – not the Gospels, nor the letters of Paul, nor any other scripture. The primary gift Jesus asks for us from the Father is the Spirit, the Spirit of truth. Scripture is secondary – while we believe it is divinely inspired, we must also believe that we need the Spirit of truth to help us interpret it and discern the truth.

The disciples recognised the Spirit when they felt it working in them and saw its effects in others. So can we. ‘You know (the Spirit)’, says Jesus, ‘because he abides with you, and he will be in you’.

‘If you love me’, says Jesus, ‘you will keep my commandments’.

We need to take these words very seriously, I think. Jesus loves his disciples, but not in any soppy, sentimental way. His love demands obedience from his disciples. Just as loving parents demand obedience of small children, so that they do not run in front of cars, or burn or electrocute themselves.

‘Those who love me will be loved by my Father’, continues Jesus, ‘and I will love and reveal myself to them’. We cannot expect to feel the loving presence of Jesus, nor the love of God the Father, unless we are obedient.

But just what are these commandments of Jesus? We surely need the continuing help of the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, to enlighten us. But scripture is pretty clear on the bones of it, I think.

·         Matthew (22:36-40) tells us that when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he answers, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”

·         And John (13:34) tells us that Jesus says shortly before today’s reading, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’.

If we follow these 3 commandments, I don’t think we can go too far wrong. But we need the help of the Spirit to do so. And when we fail, as we surely will from time to time, we need to seek the forgiveness that God freely offers to those who are truly penitent.

I hope you will take 3 things away from my words today:

1^st, as we celebrate Ascension Day next Thursday, let us give thanks for the continuing reassuring presence of Jesus, our friend, our brother, and our redeemer.

2^nd, as we look forward to Pentecost in 2 weeks time, let us give thanks that the Spirit, which the Father gave us at Jesus’s request, will continue to lead us to discern his truth.

And 3^rd, let us pray that the Spirit may guide us to keep Jesus’s commandments: to love God, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love one another as he loves us, so that we may know the loving presence of Jesus and the love of his Father.

I finish with the Collect of the Word set for today:

O God,
you have prepared for those who love you,
joys beyond our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love for you,
that, loving you above all else,
we may obtain your promises
that exceed all we can desire:
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

The Living Church

We’re moving into Summer and Spring is already behind us!

We all love the sense of new life burgeoning 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 3^rd person of the Trinity, John uses a Greek word translated as ‘advocate’. Jesus is speaking on the night he was betrayed Jesus. Let us hear his words again:

‘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. The Spirit will stay with them and be in them. And 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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 was natural for them to describe their extraordinary experience in terms of a rushing mighty wind and tongues of fire. And they were changed by it, changed utterly.

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! So 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 for us as 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.

In the churches of our parish union, in our new wider diocese, in the Church of Ireland, let us pray that 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)

The Church is a living, developing organism

 Address given on Pentecost Sunday 23rd May 2021 at St Mary's, Nenagh & Killodiernan church

We’re moving into Summer, Spring is almost behind us, and we have returned to our churches!

We all love the sense of unfolding new life and development 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. May the glory of the Lord endure for ever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.”

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. It is right for us to rejoice in it!

Jesus told his disciples that he would send them the Holy Spirit from the Father.

For what we know as the Holy Spirit, the 3^rd person of the Trinity, John uses a Greek word translated as ‘advocate’ or ‘helper’ in today’s Gospel (John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15). On the night he was betrayed Jesus tells the disciples, ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.’

Jesus goes on to say, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’. These are very important words. Jesus tells his first disciples that they do not know the whole truth. They must trust the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father to guide them. The same applies to his disciples in every age, including ours. It is too easy to say ‘we must hold to the faith once for all delivered to the Saints’, because all truth is provisional. 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 today’s 1^st 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 so recently promised them. The Hebrew scriptures use wind and fire as symbols of the presence of God. So it was natural for them to describe their extraordinary experience in terms of a rushing mighty wind and tongues of fire. And they were changed by it, changed utterly.

They began to speak in tongues, we are told. 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 telling us that the Gospel message is universal, for people of all races and tongues? Or was it the disciples’ obvious enthusiasm and joy, bubbling forth, that impressed the crowd?

Then Peter comes forward, the simple fisherman from Galilee. Just seven weeks before he 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! Thus Christ’s Church is born.

No doubt in principle we can understand what happened through, say, the science of psychology. But I prefer 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, folk sometimes say. Well, yes – a taste for singing hymns and listening to sermons is perhaps optional. And for much of the last year, the pandemic has prevented us from gathering physically in our churches, and still prevents us from singing, though very many have continued to join together as a worshipping online.

The truth is that nobody can be a Christian alone, because 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, the body of Christ, 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 planting seeds in the minds of the children of Israel and their ancient prophets, 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 as Christians, let us rejoice in Christ’s Church as a living, developing organism, sprouting from the seed Jesus sowed, constantly growing in new ways, and guided by the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sends from the Father.

So to conclude:

As we rejoice in the glorious growth in nature around us, and as we rejoice to be able to gather together in our churches once again, let us also rejoice in the Church as a living, changing and developing organism.

And let us pray that in this small part of Christ’s Church, in the churches of our parish union, in the Diocese of Limerick & Killaloe in the Church of Ireland, God’s Holy Spirit will guide us to change and develop according to God’s will:

Almighty God, 

you sent your Holy Spirit,
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

The living church

Address given in St Mary's, Nenagh and Killodiernan churches on Sunday 9th June 2019, the Feast of Pentecost

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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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)

The Living Church

Address given in Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 24th May 2015, Pentecost, Year B

We’re moving into Summer and Spring is almost if not quite behind us!

We all love the sense of unfolding new life and development at this time of year, don’t we? . 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. May the glory of the Lord endure for ever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.”

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 birthday of the Church.

The Lectionary readings are of course all about the Spirit. Let’s have a closer look at two of them.

In the 3^rd reading, Jesus told his disciples that he would send them the Holy Spirit from the Father.

For what we know as the Holy Spirit, the 3^rd person of the Trinity, John uses the Greek word ‘Paraklētos’ in today’s Gospel (John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15), translated as ‘advocate’ or ‘helper’. On the night he was betrayed Jesus tells the disciples, ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.’ He goes on to say, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’.

These are very important words, I think – Jesus tells his first disciples that they do not know the whole truth, but must trust the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father to guide them. Surely the same applies to his disciples in every age, including ours. It is too easy to say as some fundamentalists do ‘we must hold to the faith once for all delivered to the Saints’, because all truth is provisional. 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 today’s 1^st 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?

It is this - the disciples suddenly experienced the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, in them and in their lives, just as Jesus had so recently promised them. The OT uses wind and fire as symbols of the presence of God. So it was 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 on new wine! 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? 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 Peter! And so 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 this - the disciples were all together in one place when they received the Spirit.

The Spirit 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, I sometimes hear people 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 in 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 for us as Christians let us rejoice in Christ’s Church as a living, developing organism, sprouting from the seed Jesus sowed, and constantly growing in new ways, guided by the Holy Spirit who Jesus sends from the Father.

So to conclude:

As we rejoice in the glorious growth and development in nature around us, let us also rejoice in the Church as a living, changing and developing organism, to use the Archbishop of Armagh’s words.

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 change and develop according to God’s will:

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)