You know how sometimes a word can be used in everyday parlance to effectively replace the word which actually describes an action or a thing? Let me explain…..So for example, when we clean our carpets we often say we are hoovering our carpets. We don’t say we are sharking our carpets, or ewbanking them or even dysoning them. I wonder how many of us actually do say that we are vacuuming them? The act of vacuuming has become so glibly known as the act of hoovering, when of course Hoover is a make of vacuum, not the act itself. Bear with me.So – Pentecost. The liturgical feast celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the disciples of Jesus after his Ascension, held on the seventh Sunday after Easter, and heralds the end of the liturgical season of Eastertide. But in fact, Pentecost is way older than this – it dates right back to the days of Moses. The Jewish festival of Pentecost, or Festival of Weeks, occurs 50 days after Passover, was originally a harvest celebration but later became a commemoration of God’s giving of the law and covenant on Mount Sinai. But now – the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfils this meaning of Pentecost – the celebration of the gift of the law now embraces the giving of the new law in the Spirit. Pentecost, at least in Christianity, has taken on an additional significance to its original meaning.And when we think of Pentecostalism, we may think of very active worship, singing, swaying, swooning perhaps, charismatic worship. Very different to our tradition here and one in which I, personally, feel unable to comfortably participate. But that is the beauty of our faith – we worship, we show our devotion to Christ in a way which feels right to us – individually. The Spirit comes to unite, not to divide. But looking at the experience of the disciples in our first reading today – the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost. From a strictly practical point of view during the festival of Weeks (Pentecost) was a very good time for the Holy Spirit to descend upon the disciples because Jerusalem will have been full of pilgrims from many countries and languages. And when it happens, when the coming of the Spirit happens, a sound like a rushing wind is heard and things resembling tongues of flame descend upon each person present in that upper room. They begin to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enables them. Speaking in tongues – this is one of the gifts of the Spirit mentioned by St Paul in 1 Corinthians and is something which I have never experienced. But lack of comprehension was not an issue for the people gathered at that inspiring Pentecost we heard about today. There was no need for behind-the-scenes translators, like you get at big international meetings. But wherever our hearers in the Acts reading come from, they understand what is being proclaimed by Peter and the disciples. This is a small-ish group of people who are inspired by the Holy Spirit and who become a force to be reckoned with. A forest fire begins with a small spark. A long, life affirming journey begins with one step. And this small group of people, upon whom the Spirit descends like tongues of flame, are beginning to fulfil God’s promise to Abraham – that the whole world will be blessed with the good news, language notwithstanding.Veni, Sancte Spiritus – come, Holy Spirit. I have many times been a tad disheartened that I haven’t experienced a sort of Damascene moment, a rush of fire through my soul. I cannot claim a major life changing experience due to the Holy Spirit. But you know what? I am now accepting that it doesn’t matter that I haven’t experienced this. There is no normal way for the Holy Spirit to affect us – we are all individual people and will each be infilled by the Spirit as He determines best. For me, it is a gentle, flurry-free infilling and I am learning to accept that that is how God is working with and through me. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the third person of the Trinity. Sometimes referred to as the forgotten or shy person of the Trinity. But in fact it is the Holy Spirit which is most at work within us, in our lives. Every moment of grace in our lives is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is a person – not it – and is to be worshipped and glorified equally with the Father and the Son. The Shield of the Trinity (which you will see on your pew sheets) is a 13th-century diagram illustrating the doctrine of the Trinity: one God in three distinct persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). It shows that each person is God, yet they are not identical to one another. And quite frankly that dissolved my brain when we covered the Doctrine of the Trinity in my course last year.There’s a lovely story about St Augustine pondering the Trinity. While walking on a North African beach, St. Augustine wrestled with trying to understand the Holy Trinity. He then saw a young boy pouring ocean water into a hole in the sand. When Augustine questioned him, the boy replied, “I’m emptying the ocean into this hole.” Augustine pointed out the impossibility of this, to which the boy responded, “Neither can your mind understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity.” The boy then vanished, leaving Augustine to reflect that some divine truths are beyond human comprehension and must be accepted with humility. This encounter inspired Augustine to approach the Holy Trinity with faith and reverence rather than seeking full understanding.The work of Jesus on the cross means that we can commune with God via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit already indwelt Jesus but until His resurrection, does not indwell us. The Disciples had the Spirit with them, but not IN them, until after the cross. Jesus breathes the Spirit over His disciples in the upper room on that first Easter morning. He fills them with the Spirit, but at Pentecost they receive an supreme infilling of the Spirit to empower them for what was to come. The Spirit speaks, guides, teaches, intercedes and grieves – God’s empowering presence within us. And even though we have the Spirit within us, it is not a one-time filling. We need to ask for infilling of the Spirit on a very regular basis. Veni Sancte Spiritus – Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with Your life. Help us not just to understand but to experience Your presence afresh. Amen.
It’s a part – an important part – of the practice of our faith to find peace and stillness. It’s hopefully easy to find, we are open all day just so that people can come in and find peace. As Christians, we associate peace with the presence of God. The still quiet places are where we expect to find God, and the Spirit in particular is associated with peace. We go on pilgrimage to find stillness and peace, and it’s very possible to find it with other people as well, as we share in the peace that is one of the marks of the presence of God. Sometimes it’s not so easy – we all know people who talk so much and appear before us with a head full of questions and comments and opinions and judgements about all kinds of things that we don’t care anything about. But it is peace that Christ gives to His Disciples and I would go so far as to say that we recognise each other not by words or actions, but by the sharing of hearts that know amid the turbulence and uncertainly of the world that God has won the battle, there is to be peace and we can relax into that knowledge. So used are we to associate the Holy Spirit with tranquillity, that it comes as a shock to see how often in the Old Testament the Spirit of God is much more seen as a wild presence, a turbulent whirlwind, rather than a gentle breeze. Samson is taken up by the Spirit of God to work slaughter among the enemies of Israel, Ezekiel is snatched up into the air by the Spirit, and the Psalms talk of the raging wind that God sends among us. Saul is beset by an evil spirit from God.If we understand this, the passage in the first chapter of Mark, where the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert, is not as surprising as many commentators have thought. This was a more normal view of the Spirit at the time, than the one which the New Testament has taught us, and the glory of Easter begins with the fury and power of God leading – maybe forcing – His Son I not the desert. The Spirit seemed like a wild powerful thing before the incarnation because it is seen as something outside of us. Just as the sins of the chosen people made God appear to be angry, so our own instability makes the Spirit seem more like a storm at sea than a haven of peace. When John the Baptist in the Gospel of John recognises Jesus as the Messiah, it’s not by the presence of the Spirit as such. That would be nothing new. It’s the way that the Spirit comes that is different. He on whom you see the Spirit descend and stay is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The crucial word is ‘stay’, which speaks of the new stillness and peace which the Messiah alone can reveal. It’s a favourite word of John, and it occurs again in today’s Gospel.…the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he stays with you, and will be in you.It is the Spirit of God, no longer seen as a thing outside us, but as he truly is, the person of God, not a thing at all, but the unchanging stillness of the divine Trinity.We cannot perceive the Spirit properly, unless we are thereby drawn into the heart of the Trinity. This is how the Spirit conveys something of its peace to the church.In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.As long as we stay back, the Spirit seems to be elusive and otherworldly, rather than the life force that moves our church and moves us to live in God. It’s as if we were born on a carousel, and never having left this, we think that the rest of the world is spinning while we remain perfectly still, as indeed it is. The cross forms the still centre of the world, the eye of the storm that so often threatens to overpower us. When instead we consider humanities personal dignity from the standpoint of divine revelation, inevitably our estimate of it is incomparably increased. We have been ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace has made them sons and friends of God, and heirs to eternal life. At the incarnation, Jesus jumped onto the spinning globe, and by his death and resurrection jumped back off, just to show us it could be done. The wild spirit beckons us to follow him. If we make that leap, against all expectations, we will find ourselves on the still rock of solid ground, in a place of stillness, in a place of peace. So may Christ inflame the desires of all to break through the barriers or self and perceived need which divide them, to strengthen the bonds of mutual love, to learn to understand one another, and to pardon those who have done them wrong. Through His power and inspiration may all peoples welcome each other to their hearts as brothers and sisters and may the peace they long for ever flower and ever reign among them, for He has overcome the world. Alleluia.
Christ tells us in today’s gospel, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house”. We often hear this reading at funerals – and rightly so, for it is comforting and true, and puts into context the promises made to us and for us at our Baptism, that there is a place for us in the world yet to come and that we belong in the heart of God, indeed that there is a place individually prepared by Christ for each one of us, which may seem to bear little relation to the place where we are now. But there are only two places in St John’s gospel where the expression “my father’s house” appears. One is in today’s gospel, from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples in the Upper Room. The other occurs much earlier, where Jesus has a rather different sort of “farewell discourse” as he throws the moneychangers and those selling animals and birds out of the temple. “Take these things away,” he says; “you shall not make my father’s house a house of trade.” So the Father’s House is – or was - both the Temple in Jerusalem, and the heavenly abode of those whom Christ calls to the place individually prepared for them. It is also worth meditating on the beautiful fact that He gives this promise in the very room He will come back to three days after His death. The Temple, the ‘other place’ which the Cenacle, the Upper Room, prefigures and eventually at Pentecost floods the world with, was failing to live up to its role as a sign of heaven, so it is abandoned and forsaken by God. Not as a punishment but because the new Temple to which we are called is what St Peter today calls a “spiritual house” built from “living stones”. That is, we are the Temple in Jerusalem, the ‘New Jerusalem’ as it is put, because we not only know there is a place made ready for us in Heaven, but that we are part of it now, and that we are building it here now, of living stones, meeting in but not contained by this building now. We don’t merely dwell in a room in the Church, but we become part of her dynamic fabric and structure. In our baptism and confirmation we are consecrated and anointed as individuals, but also to be part of the spiritual temple dedicated to Christ. So too in the Church we need to recognise our interdependence. We must provide for and support those in need, recognising that while we have different functions, we are equal in dignity and equally requiring physical and spiritual nourishment, whether we are Hebrew or Hellenist, Apostle, Deacon or Widow, Cradle-Christian or Convert. So today we hear this Gospel in faith and hope as we come to elect new PCC members and church officers, because all this is part of our equality, our interdependence and the building of the Kingdom. It would be a fanciful image if it were built on our human frailty, but as the living stones are built on Christ, we must strive to make sure that we are built not on His foundations, but that we are built into an image of Him, in whom all find a home and in whom all have a place prepared out of love. Building anew, as we are called to do, is hard. If you want an example, then travel back two thousand years and explain to the Temple authorities in Jerusalem that their building will be demolished and that our building here in Blackpool will be of equal value and filled equally with the presence of God. They would laugh at you, and probably kill you, as they killed Christ for saying, in another way, just that. So it will involve continual change, because God is alive and so are we. And that’s hard because we tend to think that the past was better than the present, and we can become fearful that the decline will continue in the future, and that what we perceive to be decline actually is decline.There’s a great danger of idealising the early Church. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the Christian community was of one mind and heart and held everything in common but in today’s first reading we learn of a failure in the life of the early Church in Jerusalem. A very vulnerable section of its community — poor Greek widows — was being neglected. Converts overlooked the widows in the daily distribution of food. That showed a serious lack of care and concern and undermined the unity of the community. Not surprisingly, there were complaints. But more importantly, when the Church recognised its failure, it immediately took steps to remedy the fault. And it used imagination in finding a solution.Seven deacons including Stephen were given the task of caring for the widows. By allotting different tasks to different people, the life of the Church developed. What had started as a failure became an opportunity for growth. And we must expect this process to continue in the future. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church should recognise new needs and may find unexpected solutions. That’s a sign of its vitality — not by trying to recapture an idealised past, which never existed. So today and every day, we commit ourselves to following the changing power of God in making Him known on earth, here, as He is in the place He has made ready for us.
The nonrecognition of Jesus by the Disciples can seem unusual, difficult to understand. Context is of course important to any recognition – if you’re in what is thought to be the ‘wrong’ place or in the ‘wrong’ clothes, it might be easier to be uncertain who you are. When I lived in London, this was telling – it’s a big place and you might catch a glimpse of someone and not be sure who it was, and if you are to be confused anywhere, a busy capital city with millions of people walking around continually seems a good enough place as any. But then you speak t someone you know, walk with them – well maybe one or two people might be uncertain, but a handful? Seems unlikely, especially when the person you’re talking to is the very person you are fleeing from being recognised as a disciple of! But they recognise him when they eat, sometime later. That’s quite beautiful and unites the Disciples with the feeding of the five thousand – in that people can ignore the teaching, the discipling, but hang around for the free buffet – so we are not alone in occasional despair – but it was precisely at the physical feeding that, after all those years, they were genuinely converted and literally and spiritually turned themselves around to face the work of discipleship. They recognised Him in this meal, and here we are, doing the same thing in this rather peculiar way now, some two thousand years later. As they drew near to Emmaus, Jesus “made as if to be going further”. The disciples got him to stay with them, but, like Mary Magdalene that morning, they could not keep him with them for long. For Jesus was then a pilgrim; he was on a journey, an urgent one; he had to go further and the disciples – that is, we ourselves – must follow him. But, so to speak, we can’t keep up with him.Jesus went further, went ahead, in two ways:That morning, he had told Mary Magdalene, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father”. Jesus had to take his glorified human Body out of this cosmos, which is subject to decay, into God’s own glory. This was to establish the state of glory that we hope to share when he comes again to take us to be with him where he is, when he comes to transfigure our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious Body. He has not come back for them, he has gone before them, to prepare a place for them and us in His Father’s house. As He promised. We are still on pilgrimage; we are like the disciples who cannot recognise Him, except through this meal – and I do not mean only in the bread and the wine, but in our sharing of it, in our fellowship. The Bible contains all that is essential for salvation – how could it not, as it is what He left us as our guide on this pilgrimage He has shared with us – and it also contains the establishment of the Church, and the gathering of her people in the Eucharist, so we are to recognise him here, in each other as well. We are the Body of Christ, and we are, as He was, on a pilgrimage that will end up united to the Father through the Son, guided by the Holy Ghost in the Church of God. Jesus went ahead of his disciples in another way. He went out from Jerusalem into the whole world. The power of his Cross and Resurrection has radiated from Jerusalem throughout all creation. Even those who lived as God’s friends before Jesus came, were drawn on their journey of faith and hope, drawn into God’s friendship, by the Sacrifice they glimpsed from afar, like Abraham and His sons forever. Jesus still goes ahead of his disciples into the whole world; the power of his Cross and Resurrection still resonates to draw all humanity to the true God, each person who has ever lived is drawn to the Cross, and here we make it visible in our lives so the world may believe – this is the first calling of the Holy Church of God, to be witnesses to the resurrection. The disciples at Emmaus would follow Jesus on that journey into the world. First they had to go back to Jerusalem to re-join Simon Peter and the other Apostles – to be one again, as we are called to be one. There the Holy Spirit, the great Gift won for us by Jesus’ Sacrifice, would form them into Christ’s own Body. Then they would be able to go out and preach the Good News, and from that beginning, here we are. In our mission, we are following Jesus, and he still goes ahead of us. We are, each of us, charged in some way to bring the Good News to those who need it, and this is because we are caught up in Christ’s own journey to each human being. When we reach anyone, however, we will find that Jesus has got there first. Jesus and the Spirit will be there already, awakening the thirst for truth and goodness, and it is therefore our calling to show how we live out our discipleship – and then the Kingdom grows, and we grow, and Christ lives in us and we in Him. And here He is, indisputably, in His body and blood and in His people, called and chosen to walk with Him on the road to salvation, and to turn back from seeking safety in Emmaus and seek people wherever He sends us.
