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Pentecost
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 Acts 2:1-21
Happy Birthday! I hope you’re having a nice day :-) At the moment we can’t celebrate birthdays with parties as we used to – whether they are personal birthdays or the birthday of the Church. But that doesn’t mean that we let it go by unnoticed, or that there is to be no visitor at all.
Pentecost is the celebration of the beginning or ‘birth’ of the Church, as described in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit came as the Helper, the Advocate, the Comforter, whom Jesus had promised. He would testify on Jesus’ behalf, as the Spirit of truth, and he would inform and inspire the Body of Christ in all her witnessing to Jesus. The book of the Acts of the Apostles records the arrival of the Holy Spirit as something very dramatic, as any birth or beginning of anything new of course is. We, as disciples of Christ in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, may think perhaps that everyday life in our part of the world is so sophisticated that we may not need the Holy Spirit to remind us of the truth. Or, in other words, many people believe they can know all they need to know without God. But that would be a mistake. And all we have to do to realise such error is look at the situation we are in, not just here, but everywhere in the world, at all kinds of different levels. I don’t only mention the pandemic, but other problems like the violence in the Middle East, the burning of the Rainforest, a tornado in India, plastic waste in the seas and rivers, the dying of the Great Barrier Reef, the plight of refugees… should I go on? It doesn’t make for cheerful reading or listening, I’m sure! Should I still wish you, my brothers and sisters in the Church, a Happy Birthday? Well, I think I should and I do! Because we are called to be people of joy. The prophet Habakkuk writes: ‘Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.’ (Habakkuk 3:16-19). I am not denying that life can be difficult. This time last year we thought that the pandemic should be over by now; we probably didn’t count on the way it has impacted our lives in very deep ways. Each time we thought things might get better, they took a turn for the worse. And yet we rejoice! How can that be? I think it’s got everything to do with our focus. Of course, if we focus on the bigness of the problem, we may feel overwhelmed, sinking into despair. But if we focus on the bigness and the greatness of our God, we find that sinking becomes singing; yes, even today, when congregation singing is still very limited.
It’s easy to be grateful in good times. It’s rather tough to be grateful when things are not going well. And with some problems piling up, we may be tempted to just give up. But that is also the moment when we need gratitude the most.
I am reminded here of the lady from Kenya who featured in the Christian Aid video for their appeal this year. She said, ‘When somebody is rude to me, or unhelpful, I turn away and sing.’ Her response to challenging circumstances is focussing on God and praising him and singing. We can learn a lot from such grace.
So, as we recall the coming of the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost, let us rejoice that God has organised this ‘visitor’ to take up residence among us, to comfort us, to cheer us on, to be our champion amidst the challenges we face. The Church celebrates, because God is good, all the time. Happy Birthday! Amen.