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Pentecost 2001

Pentecost Sunday: 3rd June, 2001
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill

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 forever. This is the Spirit of truth.... (Jn 14:15-17a)

Fifty days after the Passover festival, in the Jewish cycle of temple observance came a thanksgiving for the gifts: a thanksgiving for the harvest of bountiful provision from God. In the Christian cycle Pentecost is also a celebration of gifts and of thanks for them but it has quite a different emphasis. The fruits of the Easter triumph and promise are received in a most remarkable way.

A frightened and disheartened remnant of the disciples is transformed. There are outward signs of something strong and powerful. They were all together in one place. Acts 2:1-4a "And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit..." People then from all over the region could hear these Galileans speaking of God in languages that were not their own and not known to them, but in ways were recognisable and understandable to those from those parts. An impressive outward sign. And it certainly declared something about the inclusiveness of the experience.

As Peter immediately was to say to the inevitable scoffers, this was not the fruit of excessive alcohol. And anyway it was, as he disarmingly said, only nine in the morning. This is something quite remarkable. The Church looking back and making sense of the tumbled events of this early period places a very special emphasis here and on the events that this festival day celebrates. Pentecost, Whitsunday – the biggest after Christmas and Easter. Yet for much of traditional non charismatic Christianity, perhaps this is a festival approached with a little sense of ambiguity or uncertainty, that a mass of red balloons or a reaching out for some kind of superficial party time, does not quite address.

Yet something was born here, no less than at Christmas. A different and outreaching manner of living within a community of faith is sealed in this outpouring. Gifts are indeed given and received. God is the source of this empowering. God is the source of these gifts. God who had worked so wonderfully in Jesus Christ is here experienced as the Lord, the giver of life, for the community of those who would believe.

This was all happening in a group that by any reasonable and objective assessment did not have that much going for them. There were clear and obvious limitations. Some of these included attitude and personality; approach to living. According to our account, something had changed. Those who had seemingly lost hope and direction, even taking into account the encouragement of the resurrection appearances, now strikingly found it. Those who had lost the sense of the presence and the power of God at work in their lives were again deeply aware of it and were to celebrate it and to declare it to others.

We are the Body of Christ
His Spirit is with us.
A bold and wonderful assertion. Something to be ever renewed and reaffirmed. Something to be sought, against all the odds.

One of the biggest challenges that many people face is the confronting issue of how we shift from the mode of intellectual assent to a particular teaching or understanding of the ways of God to something that is much more deeply life-shaping or life-informing. How do we embrace the heart as well as the head? How do we start to take the steps that engage those issues that acknowledge that that was then and this is now? What might we do about that?

How do we ourselves as individuals and as a community of faith which chooses to gather in this place, continue to reach beyond the formal, the token, the compartmentalised, to that which really does make a difference? Good taste, yes. Decently and in good order, yes. Colour and movement, yes. Fine music and pleasant smells, yes. Perhaps the company of old friends, yes. The reassurance of some things that have changed not so much in a rapidly changing world, yes. But there is more.

We are called to grapple with the possible reality of a God who speaks the language of love and commitment. Today's celebration is a celebration of some the gifts of the means to put this relationship into effect, and an honouring of those in the first generation of Christians for whom this actually worked.

We are speaking of deep level relationship; with God and each other. This indeed involves much more than the superficial attractiveness of nice things or smooth words.

We can for instance believe or accept at some intellectual level that Christ was born in Bethlehem, but still not be left with a clear understanding of the commitment of our God to this world and to us in this Incarnation. Would our living be different if we did?

We can acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth was executed on Good Friday. We can accept that the disciples witnessed again and again one they believed to be the risen Jesus on and after Easter Day. But it is certainly possible to be taken all through the Easter mysteries and still not have that connecting sense of salvation or redemption, or the life of the world to come – again the commitment and compassion of our God for this world and for us. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, noted St Paul. Would our living be different if we did really believe this?

Today at Pentecost we have again heard that there was a dramatically unusual experience of encouragement and empowerment that left the remaining small band of followers eager and able to get on with the tasks that confronted them. Would our living as a community of faith gathering here be different if we really believed that such encouragement and empowerment was available and accessible to followers now as then?

The early Church was a very fragile place. It is easy to find evidence of almost any of the weaknesses that we can also find today. Consider for instance the likely process of the General Synod coming up in July, that I will have the pleasure of attending. There is evidence of contention over doctrine, questions of inclusiveness and hospitality, narrow sectarianism and bitter feuds. All these aspects of the Church abide. It is still very easy to be disheartened.

We ourselves are a fragile community of pilgrims. We travel the same pathways; we await the same Spirit of renewal and reaffirmation. And this is not easy. And it never was.

So it is that a single sentence can deflate or shatter. So it is that a negative disposition as opposed to a positive one can be utterly crippling. It remains a fact of human nature that some find it very difficult to believe and expect the best of people rather than the worst. Some find it difficult to see any other point of view than their own. Personal disappointment or long-standing bitterness is easily enough projected onto others. Factions and rival groupings can have very sad effects on the possibilities for wider community impact. Some people who claim to know God still seem remarkably pinched and mean, frightened and prejudiced.

In some senses it is reassuring that a quick glance at the Acts of the Apostles reveals that all the above readily describes the situation which faced the first generation of Christians. If it also happens to be making some observations about later generations right down to ourselves here and now, then this needs to be accepted and acknowledged. That simply underlines the truth that each and every generation, each and every community of faith, is in constant need of the grace and gifts that God is only too willing to provide.

So, today's festival celebrates both that giving and that need for transformation: that need for forgiveness and renewal in and through the Spirit of God; that need for the infusion of God's grace in our communities of faith, wherever, whenever.

All week our collect has included the prayer that we be not left comfortless, but that God would send the Holy Spirit to strengthen us. Today our collect asks that that same Spirit should give us a right judgment in all things and enable us to evermore rejoice in the Spirit's holy comfort. These are prayers of assurance and warming security; of hope and renewed purpose and direction.

May these prayers be answered for us here at The Hill in ways of which we can only dream. May something of the grace of that first Pentecost be born and renewed amongst us here, sealed with the continuing outpouring of the love of God, experienced and shared by us here.


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