An event, gifts and grace
Pentecost: 4th June, 2006
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
"And the Spirit will tell you of the things to come." (Jn 16:13)
Today is Pentecost. 50 days since the resurrection. The end of the Easter season in our liturgical life. A day of celebration – looking back to the outpouring of gifts and encouragement to the original group of disciples no bigger than this, that was the beginnings of the Christian Church, and reaching out now with thanksgiving for the promise of those same gifts and encouragement, now in our own time and with our own needs and contexts. We ask for gifts, we celebrate these gifts, we need these gifts. I remember Archbishop Rowan Williams standing in this pulpit 4 years ago speaking so powerfully of the Holy Spirit as that which 'binds us together in a community where we can understand each other's language' – and that is the language of each other's wounds and each other's joys. The holy 'Spirit is shared and the Spirit becomes the lifeblood of community'. The Spirit is indeed 'breathed in' and the community is simply not going to be the same again. Pentecost celebrates the gift and the continuing experience – presence, power, guidance, reassurance, new life, community. What might yet be possible – that is the question left hanging.
Something very dramatic happened to the scattered and demoralised followers of Jesus of Nazareth after the Lord's resurrection. They were utterly changed because of it. There would be no church if it had not happened. The language we use to describe this is the language of gift: They 'received the Holy Spirit'. If we have an understanding of God the creator of all being wonderfully present and able to be experienced in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, then this now is an experienced spiritual presence of the continuing power of the risen Lord yes, and now, as we say in the creed, as 'the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of lifeàworshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son'. We shall further explore the mysteries of the Holy Trinity next week. We struggle to describe it and to name it, but we can acknowledge the fact of the gift, and the difference it made; the difference it can still make.
The accounts in Acts and in John's gospel both agree that something very remarkable happened to that first group of followers. Jn 20:22 has it happening on Easter Day. Luke's version spreads it out. Luke has all those signs and wonders we have just heard retold. The end result is still the same: shaken and uncertain is changed to sense of purpose, inner peace, conviction, new priorities, new hope. Others quickly joined 'the teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers'. There follows in Acts a stirring description of a community sharing and receiving all that was needed, of praiseful, glad and generous hearts. That we are told was the very beginning of the church. It is a wonderful vision of what might be.
And as soon as we ask, well what qualities then might characterise our communities of faith, we have one answer in those much valued 'fruits of the Spirit' that Paul describes in Galatians 5 and which are at the heart of today's epistle. These stand in stark contrast to what he calls the 'works of the flesh'. Here he includes enmities, strife, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions and envy, as well as overindulgence in drink or sex. This is anything but a description of 'communities of understanding'. We know well enough how any or all of the above might tear apart and destroy. We can see it evidenced on the news each evening. We can see it in the Church, in politics, in public life and in private life. We can see it locally; we can see it around the world. To a greater or lesser extent, we can all put our hands up to at least some of Paul's negative list. This is to our shame. We live with such contradictions, even as we reach and hope for that which we know is the better way. Our communities, even this particular community of faith, might well be characterised then by any or all of those positive qualities that Paul also highlights: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. But insofar as they do characterise who and what we are, this is indeed gift and grace.
In the cycle of the Church year, we celebrate today something we are told changed completely the lives and understanding of that first group of followers of Jesus. The Jesus that they had followed had died on the cross. That earthly Jesus was no longer with them to teach and to guide and to inspire. But that was not the end. After the resurrection they were indeed 'not left comfortless'. God was with them, in them in a way almost beyond expression, but utterly real. This is event and gift and grace, all in one.
So how might this be for us? This is something that is actually able to be experienced, that lands right in the midst of all that is so wrong and distorted. This continuing Pentecost experience comes into a world and a Christian community that, despite so many glimpses that are good and inspiring, still falls so far short of the promise. It comes as well right into the hearts of individuals like each one of us – mixtures, as we are, of hopes and fears and doubts and loves – and calls us into community. Pentecost celebrates the gift of God's Spirit, the continuing experiences of God's presence and power and guidance and renewing strength, promised and poured out in every generation from that first Pentecost until now. Sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden, sometimes rejected, sometimes embraced. Each year at this time we are called to celebrate this gift. At all times we are called to live this gift, together.
This Pentecost Sunday finds this particular group together in one place, offering prayer and worship to God. Some of us have been about this for a long time. Others are very new. We are a mixture of ages, circumstances and experiences. Some of us, as it were, speak different languages or would incline to different directions at different speeds. Yet we are here. This city church attracts and intrigues. The tradition, the building, the place, the people, the music, the message, the search – it is all these and more. Together we look for the way ahead.
A day like today celebrates a profound connection. It is utterly to do with how we are brought closer to God, how the spirit of God can continue the transformation of us from within, the recreation of us from within. That is how we will continue to find our direction. We hear of that first Pentecost as something that happened in AD 33, yet we are speaking of it as a living experience potentially also in this generation. We reach out our hands for the body of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, doing something that was also done in AD 33 but expecting and hoping for the inward and spiritual grace here and now. We understand the idea of connecting something that happened long ago with something happening right now, with the same gift being available and ready. May we then share in these life-giving gifts of the Spirit in this time.
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Views is a
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St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
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