a pentecost sermon
Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit.
That’s today’s sermon point, and prayer, and take home point. That is your homework for this week to pray Come Holy Spirit.
I was watching a bit of telly the other night. Some Bear Grylls – he was Chief Scout until quite recently and he has been doing some telly in which he takes some movie celebrity out in to the wild and gets them to do some abseiling, eating something impossibly unpleasant, usually jumping out of a helicopter, all that sort of exciting stuff.
I was watching another episode where a movie star had been left alone to abseil down into an underground cave. It all looked very lonely and scary and all alone. Until Lucy said – well there’s clearly at least two camera crew down this dark hole as well. So the celebrity is not as alone as it seems.
At the end of each episode the celebrity usually says something short and sermon-like about how the experience has helped them have more faith in themselves, helped them grow – that sort of thing.
It makes for good telly.
But even though you know that there’s someone holding a camera, and you can be sure that there will be some safety risk assessment person making sure they don’t kill the expensive celebrity – even though you know that – you still have to lean over the cliff, trust in the rope and in the harness – you still need to have faith – as you begin a huge abseil.
You’re not alone. You are equipped. You still need to have faith. You still need to take those risks.
So WHEN the day of Pentecost came.
Pentecost is one of the major Jewish festivals not so unlike Passover at least in the sense that a lot of food is involved and a lot of people would have come to Jerusalem, the town would have been full to bursting, and it’s only been 50 days since Passover.
Add to that the buzz of rumours of a risen Jesus that must have been going about.
And then comes the wind.
What have the disciples been doing since Ascension? Jesus told them that the Advocate, the Counsellor, the Comforter would come in a few days’ time (Ac 1.5)
So I bet they were praying: Come Holy Spirit Come Holy Spirit
From the first chapter of the Bible, the Spirit of God, Ruach has been at work bringing order out of chaos, bringing creativity, wisdom to kings, insight to prophets.
The Risen Jesus breathed on those apostles – and in that breath came New Life, came Peace, and the strength to begin the work of forgiveness and joining with the Holy Spirit in reconciling the world to God.
Hear in this wind the gasp of a new creation. Oh yes, Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit.
And then the fire. In the second book of the bible, the book of Exodus. You can read about Moses and the people, having sacrificed the Passover lamb, now find that they can walk out of their slavery, through the Red Sea
And when they camp each night, they can see a pillar of fire coming down from heaven upon the tent of meeting, the tabernacle. This pillar of fire symbolised the presence of God in the midst of the people, it protected them, guided them. But it was just one fire – albeit a big fire, one fire
Now the Pentecost fire comes down from heaven and rests upon each and everyone there. So now this Pentecost moment shows that each of us with the Holy Spirit, we are that symbol of the presence of God in our community, we are to be that guiding light. So that we are each little temples carrying about within us the presence of God.
Its not such a surprise, Jesus did promise that the Father would send the Spirit and ‘we will come and make our home’ in you.
Note that no one is left out. Peter James and John, all filled with the Holy Spirit. You can bet that Mary from Magdala was there, we know that Mary Jesus’ mother was there. They too were receiving this Holy Spirit, and you can be sure that even Thomas was there being filled with the Holy Spirit. No body is left out.
And note that it is the people, not the building, that now become the carriers of God’s presence. The tongues of fire rest on each of them, as each is a personal tent for the Lord. We are the Church, we are the body of Christ.
We love this building. Its fabulous and we find it a good and simple place in which to draw close to the Lord here, and with each other here, but it is you and you and you and me – we are the body of Christ here.
And now the transformation begins to take place. These ordinary, not very well educated, people find themselves lost in wonder love and praise, and out loud sharing the wonders of God that they have known and witnessed to. And as that comes out the tourists hear this and they hear it in their own languages.
It’s a wonderful thing to go to a foreign country, especially where no one speaks English, and then suddenly you hear someone speaking your mother tongue. That’s special. For a moment its like a slice of home. You feel that someone here understands you.
In Genesis you can read about the Tower of Babel and the confusion that came from the arrogance and misunderstandings and many languages. And now here’s not so much a reversal of Babel – its not the creation of a new world where everyone speaks the same – but rather the redeeming of Babel – so that differences continue, and can be included and celebrated as part of the solution.
So you would have heard the Apostles declaring God’s Good News in a language that you can understand.
And that’s going to help you feel a little bit at home.
It’s going to make you feel perplexed what sort of miracle is happening here.
It’s going to make you amazed – what are you saying about God here – usually with gods its down to me to make the effort to come to your temple, but here we find the God of Jesus breaking out from a single temple to being in my community,
and usually its down to me to try to understand the gods but here is a God who is trying to connect to me, to speak my language.
I don’t find it easy to know how to speak the wonders of God to other people, to a generation or two below me, but God’s Holy Spirit promises to help us with this.
So we speak the wonders of God in the language of honesty – in the language of grief, in the dialect of doubt, with a tone of joy and hope.
Because what happened back then, 33AD was amazing, transformative, it was the birth of the Church, it exploded the goodnews of Jesus across the known world.
That rumour of resurrection had gone out as a first, shock wave if you like.
And now here comes another bigger shock wave.
St Paul often writes in his letters, greetings to this person and that household because the Gospel has gone ahead of Paul into these places. And it goes ahead of us too.
But This Pentecost moment wasn’t just a moment in time and space where God did something fabulous.
This is a moment where the wind started to blow – the wind to bring new life and peace,
to blow away the cobwebs, to blow away fear and doubt,
to blow in God’s peace and love.
So we keep praying Come Holy Spirit Come Holy Spirit
And this Fire wasn’t just a moment of symbolism, but the start of a fire that hasn’t stopped burning, that led to a transformation of the known world – it led, eventually, to an end to leaving unwanted babies out for the wolves, to the creation of hospices and hospitals, and schools for all. It led to an end to death by crucifixion. It took a while but it led to the end of slavery.
This is a fire that keeps burning, that burns away our apathy, our fear, our ego, and it lights a passion within us for all sorts of aspects of life that we are called to care for, and it ignites a hope to strive for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation.
By all means ask curious questions about What happened then?.
But please don’t fail to also ask What is God igniting here, now in me, in this Church?
Where in my life is God’s wind, God’s fire?
What sort of families, communities and circles do I revolve in – and help me God because I am a wandering tabernacle of your love – oh yes Come Holy Spirit! Come Holy Spirit!
Those disciples; ordinary, frightened, flawed, uncertain, hiding – became bold, still flawed, but now filled with joy and hope, kindness and gentleness.
So we keep praying Come Holy Spirit, Come Holy Spirit.
May we be a people who don’t just remember Pentecost but who live it, fuelled by that Same Holy Spirit, to go into our world,
as walking tabernacles filled with God’s love,
as a people of courage who have received God’s breath of peace and new life,
and so in our lives, in words, in our prayers,
we declare the wonders of God, and we keep praying: Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Amen.
(photo is one i reently took of the Cathedral in Washington DC)