Sermon: Pentecost Sunday

Date Preached: Sunday May 31st 2009

Bible Reference: John Chapter 15, Verses 26 - 27

You might have caught something of the BBC poetry season recently – ‘some cracking programmes about John Donne and Milton; programmes designed to ‘let poetry into your life’ as their marketing strap line goes. I was sent a beautifully scribed card by a friend from Taunton recently (Diana - who with her friend Jane visited our church a few weeks ago). She’d written some words originally penned by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a nineteenth century poetess (and an invalid for much of her life).

            Earth is crammed with heaven
            and every common bush
            on fire with God.
            But only he who sees
            takes off his shoes.
            The rest sit and pluck blackberries.

It seems a good beginning as we think about today – which is all about a gift needing a response; about a mystery that can’t be understood or fully explained, that can’t be nailed down, or captured. It – or rather HE can only be experienced and lived – because today we celebrate the Person and ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

This Day of Pentecost must have been a great day – we sometimes called it the birthday of the church (& join us for this afternoon’s Whitsun Tea when we’ll be cutting the cake!). The great wind of God’s Spirit swept through Jesus’ disciples and filled them with a new joy and a sense of God’s presence and power – new confidence to proclaim from the rooftops that Jesus was indeed the culmination of God’s rescue plan for the human race – and not just for the Jews, but for everybody. Luke (who wrote the Acts of the Apostles) wants us to understand that this very day, God was fulfilling what he’d said centuries earlier to Abraham (you can check it out in Genesis 12) In you and your family, all the families of the earth will be blessed

For us today is the joyous culmination of the great 50 or so days of the Easter Season. For the Jews the ceremony of Pentecost was when they completed their dedication of the harvest to God – so there’s huge significance on the choice of this Day for the Holy Spirit to come – but it’s so much more. Moses went up the mountain and came down again with the law carved on tablets of stone. Here Jesus has gone up into heaven and is now coming down again not with a written set of rules but with the dynamic energy of a law, a way of life designed to be written on human hearts.

Sadly (& it has to be acknowledged) in many churches, Pentecost Sunday is one of the most neglected events of the church calendar. Perhaps when we knew it as Whit Sunday – White Sunday – when the newly baptized would wear their white robes – it seemed to have more significance. Spring Bank Holiday didn’t have the same significance somehow.

But what are we in danger of missing? Well the very basis for living the Christian life. In his classic book ‘The Go-between God’: John Taylor quotes Charles Raven who wrote that today is all about the Spirit, whose indwelling (is) regarded as the essential and constitutive element in the life of the Church and the source of all value and virtue – and yet he has become restricted…to certain ecclesiastical rites, baptism, confirmation, ordination and the like, which it (is) the privilege of the hierarchy to bestow.

It shouldn’t be like this. Pentecost for Christians is symbolized by fire and wind because they say something about the ways he works (notice the wind is described as violent, not domesticated – or safe !!) The red liturgical colour you see today (& on the wonderful banner) is a symbol of the tongues of fire seen as resting on each disciple. It’s the fire of the Spirit who transformed these people from timid and fearful followers into bold and fearless apostles sent out with the good news of the gospel and who turned their world upside down.

Let’s savour the scene.

Imagine the disciples, all together again in that upper room; the same upper room where we’ve seen them before.  But something’s changed. They’d been told by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem for the gift that the Father would send them. And here they are… waiting as instructed. Suddenly the room is filled with the sound of a violent wind. Imagine what that would be like. No way of telling where it was coming from, they could only hear it. And as they’re sitting there wondering what’s going on, the Holy Spirit spreads through their ranks and they started speaking in different languages. They couldn’t understand each other but as this commotion continued we’re told that those who were staying in Jerusalem for the feast heard them speaking in their own native tongues and came running. What an amazing scene! Granted, all the people present were Jewish or at least proselytes (Gentiles who’d converted to Judaism) – but they were foreigners from all over the place – from countries covering tens of thousands of square miles, from Parthia and Mesapotamia in the north and east to Rome in the west and Egypt and Arabia in the south, together with the island of Crete. And here they were standing spellbound listening to unschooled, uneducated men – hardly linguists - speaking about the mighty works of God in their own languages. It’s hardly surprising that to some of the onlookers it sounded simply like the slurred and babbling speech of people who’d had a little too much to drink. Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham points out that again and again in Acts we find opposition, incredulity, scoffing and sneering at what the apostles say and do – at the same time as great success and conviction. And again and again in the work of the church to this day, there are always plenty of people declaring that we are wasting our time and talking incomprehensible nonsense. (But) equally, some Christians have been so concerned to keep up appearances and to make sure they are looking like ordinary, normal people that they would never, under any circumstances have been accused of being drunk.

Part of the challenge of Pentecost is the question: have our churches today got enough energy, enough Spirit-driven new life, to make onlookers pass any comment at all? Is anything happening that might make people think we were drunk?!

Anyway Peter quickly knocks that line of thinking on the head and begins to explain the Gospel to these people - boldly declaring the good news about Jesus Christ.. Peter – Peter for goodness-sake! – the very one who’d denied he’d ever known Jesus - was now preaching fearlessly to multitudes of people. You’ve got to ask what had happened? And (more importantly for us this morning) how can we experience that same kind of life-giving, life-inspiring change in our own lives?

I wonder (for a start) am I - are we - that available to God? Or is he still boxed into certain time and places. I’ve absolutely no doubt that God wants to continue to move in this community through this church – in unbelievable ways – we’ve seem a few glimpses of this - but it’s probably not going to happen in any power until we gear up for it to happen; until we’ve prepared our hearts and our lives to come under God’s strong and gentle Kingdom rule – until we’re waiting in anticipation for what God has always intended to do in and through us.

And notice that these early Christians were able to communicate in other languages. Well while we may not be talking literally about other languages here (although there are lots of amazing stories about that happening), for you and me, it means that we need to learn to speak the language of those around. Are we as a church capable of communicating to our contemporaries – or is our expectation that they get to learn our churchy language and get used to what we do? Sue’s carer went off to Palma Nova (Majorca) today. It’s a place near Magaluf famous in the past for that stereotype of the Brit visiting Spain who expects everyone to speak English and tend to gesticulate and shout when people don’t – as if foreigners were deaf or stupid. If we’re passionate to reach those on the edge with what is as familiar to us as it’s unfamiliar to them - then sometimes it’s going to have to be unlike church as we’ve known it. Sometimes (like this afternoon) it’s going to end up a bit messy. Sometimes even the music and dress code will need to be different as we learn to speak in another language.

Sue (Howells) was telling me that the kids are no longer being taught the Lord’s prayer in the local primary school – why? Because they keep getting the words wrong (and even some staff have difficulties!). After the publication of the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown a thousand adults who’d read the book were surveyed and 60% thought there was truth to his crazy claims about Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene – such gullibility – and such distance from Christian truth – and a wake-up call about where we have to start. Sometimes we’re not even aware that we have our own language - and until we learn to speak in ways that address the concerns and questions of those around us we’re not going to be able to reach anybody.

The message of Pentecost can be summed up in one word - change. And doesn’t our world today desperately need changing? There are so many people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God – yet they’re willing to believe he fathered a child with Mary Magdalene. We should be way more excited by the truth of the gospel. And there are so many of us Christians who are a bit like the disciples were before Pentecost – confused, weak, and timid. We need the Holy Spirit to come to us, to live in us, to fill us and change us; to encourage us to take the opportunities on offer here to grow, to deepen, to get to know God, to let him renew us as we worship.

I’ve been here over two and a half years now and I’m firmly besotted with the folks here – and when you hear the bell going in the mornings I’m here in church praying for you. And I can’t think of better prayers than the ones Paul prayed for the new Christians in his letters. Here’s one to the Ephesians that we had in our readings last week. He says it much better than I could – it’s my Pentecost prayer for you that you grow into mature, holistic, responsible faith and character:

I never stop being grateful for you, as I mention you in my prayers. I ask the glorious Father and God of our Lord Jesus Christ to give you his Spirit. The Spirit will make you wise and let you understand what it means to know God. My prayer is that light will flood your hearts and that you will understand the hope that was given to you when God chose you. Then you will discover the glorious blessings that will be yours together with all of God's people. I want you to know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might (because) it’s the same wonderful power he used when he raised Christ from death and let him sit at his right side in heaven.   

May you be filled with a new joy and a sense of God’s presence and power – today and always. Amen