Pentecost

Talk 1 – Fire

 

Why fire?

 

When the Spirit falls at that first Pentecost, the disciples are crowned with tongues of fire. Burning flames that don’t burn. There’s no sizzling of hair here, no scorching of flesh, no howls of pain. Just an experience of wonder that’s at one and the same time profoundly individual and deeply communal.

 

But why fire?

 

Christians tend to forget that Jews were observing Pentecost long before the Spirit came. The Old Testament feast of Pentecost was observed 50 days after Passover as a harvest festival, but also as a celebration of the giving of the law to Moses on Sinai. A time when God descended on the whole mountain wrapped in smoke and – Fire.

 

Maybe the tongues of flame are a reminder of a Holy God who descends and draws near to bring us blessings.  Or maybe they’re meant to say something about the nature of that God.

 

What is God like? What is fire like? Frederick Buechner offers us this by way of reflection:

 

Fire has no shape or substance. You can't taste it or smell it or hear it. You can't touch it except at great risk. You can't weigh it or measure it or examine it with instruments. You can never grasp it in its fullness because it never stands still. Yet there is no mistaking its extraordinary power.

The fire that sweeps through miles of forest like a terrible wind and the flickering candle that lights the old woman's way to bed. The burning logs on the subzero night that save the pipes from freezing and give summer dreams to the tabby dozing on the hearth. Even from millions of miles away, the conflagration of the sun that can turn green earth into desert and strike blind any who fail to lower their gaze before it. The power of fire to devastate and consume utterly. The power of fire to purify by leaving nothing in its wake but a scattering of ash that the wind blows away like mist.

A pillar of fire was what led the children of Israel through the wilderness, and it was from a burning bush that God first spoke to Moses. There were tongues of fire leaping up from the disciples on the day of Pentecost. In John's apocalypse it is a lake of fire that the damned are cast into, and the one called Faithful and True, he says, has eyes of fire as he sits astride his white horse.

In the pages of Scripture, fire is holiness, and perhaps never more hauntingly than in the little charcoal fire that Jesus of Nazareth, newly risen from the dead, kindles for cooking his friends' breakfast on the beach at daybreak.

 

Fire – powerful, moving, homely, wonderful, terrible. This is our God. This is his Spirit.

 

 

Talk 2 – The Personal Spirit

 

Fire, wind, breath.  All these metaphors for the Spirit serve us well, but they’re all incomplete because they lack one key ingredient and that’s the element of personality.

 

Many people, especially in charismatic churches, speak of God's Spirit as a force, or a power – and understandably so. How can you ‘pour out’ a person or be filled with a person. That’s how Scripture speaks of the Spirit, yet it’s also equally clear that the Spirit is personal.

 

If you scan through the Bible you'll discover that God's Spirit can be grieved and resisted, and He can speak, think, teach, testify, forbid, search out secrets and intercede on our behalf. That doesn’t sound like an impersonal force to me.

 

When we dig a little deeper, discover that this Spirit’s involved in divine work, like creation, resurrection and sanctification.

 

He's described as all-powerful and eternal. And Paul, in the First letter to the Corinthians, tells us that the Spirit knows and understands the deep things of God:

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

 

So in the same way as you and I have a Spirit, it seems that God has a Spirit, and that Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is fully divine.

 

So with that kind of evidence, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Holy Spirit, rather than being an impersonal force, is a personal divine being, co-equal with the Father and the Son.

 

And that takes us into Trinitarian territory – but we’ll leave that mystery for another day.

 

So fire, breath, wind – all good metaphors. But never forget that the Spirit is a person, with will, intent and character of his own – not a force to be sent this way and that at either God’s or our bidding.

 

And one last thing on personhood.

 

All along I’ve spoken of the Spirit as ‘him’. But is the Spirit a ‘him’? If you look at the Greek, the word for Spirit – pneuma - is actually neuter, so by rights I should be calling the Spirit ‘it’, but when you do that in English you tend to turn the object into a thing rather than a person.

 

We need to remember that when we talk about God, all our gendered language is metaphorical. When we use male pronouns about God, we’re not saying that God is somehow male. That’s a category error like asking what colour accountancy is or how fast the letter ‘h’ can swim. It doesn’t make sense. Gender is a property of limited, embodied creatures not the infinite divine spirit. God is beyond gender. Genesis teaches that both male and female are made in God’s image, so by definition, both genders must reflect aspects of who God is. God isn’t bound to either maleness or femaleness. Those terms don’t really apply.

 

But given that the second person of the trinity was incarnate in a male form, as Jesus – and that we’ve been taught from the cradle to refer to God in male terms, as Father, theologians and hymn writers for many years, but especially more recently, have started speaking of the spirit in feminine terms to try and redress the balance a little.

 

In her hymn  “Enemy of Apathy” Kathy Galloway writes “For she is the Spirit, one with God in essence, gifted by the saviour in eternal love; and she is the key, opening the scriptures, enemy of apathy and heavenly dove.”

 

Despite the fact that the work of the Spirit is often nurture, guidance, counsel, birthing new things, some of you might find that feminine language strange. I want to reassure you that it’s not heretical! It’s fine. Don’t get hung up about gendered language. But never mistake the Spirit for a thing. He/she/it is personal.

 

  

Talk 3 - The Empowering Spirit

 

So with a fiery outpouring, God’s Spirit descends in person and comes to rest on the disciples.

 

But how do we know that it ever happened?

 

Because we tend to believe the Bible, I guess. But also because the evidence for the change in the disciples is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the Resurrection really happened and the Spirit really came.

 

These men go from cowering behind doors to preaching to thousands in a matter of days. From leaving Jesus in the lurch to going to their own crosses for the sake of his name. This is not normal. What we are seeing in the disciples is the transforming work of the Spirit at its most exceptional.

 

So what is this gift of the Spirit? What does the Spirit bring them?

 

Well, we part of it, I guess, is enthusiasm and energy. And Lord knows we need as much of that as we can get!

 

That very word, enthusiasm, comes from the Greek – en theos – in God. When people are genuinely in God there’s a lightness about their Spirits, a hope, a joy. There’s a movement to their living; there’s a sense of quiet purpose. An optimism that’s founded in who God is, not how things are.

Even as I wrote those words, I thought ‘Lord, I want to be more like that’! This is the kind of person I want to be.

 

Gloom, pessimism, weariness – they can become our norm, if we let them. It takes an encounter with an enthusiast to shake us out of them. Someone who doesn’t deny the challenges in life, or pretend them away, but has the vision to see through them and beyond them to where God is already working to bring life and hope.

 

What did the Spirit bring? Enthusiasm. Energy. And also Power. Wherever the disciples went after this, things happened. Provocative things, disturbing things, amazing things, good things. People noticed what they were doing. Some responded in faith, others threw rocks at them or clapped them in irons. But they were rarely if ever ignored.

 

The influential author and pastor AW Tozer once said:

 

“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”

 

That’s an observation worth pondering. If the Spirit upped and left our church today, would things just roll on as usual?

 

Are we working out of our own power to our own ends, or are we working out of God’s power to God’s ends

 

Let me say one more thing as I end this little chunk of the sermon.

 

There are churches around the world who read this story in Acts and come to the conclusion that if we’re filled with the Spirit, then speaking in tongues, miracles and healings and so on will follow – as they did for the apostles.

 

Now God must be God in the church, and it’s up to God how and when he blesses his people with supernatural gifts. But I think it’d be a mistake to assume that what we’re seeing here in Acts 2 is a norm that we should all be aspiring to.

 

The Spirit, it seems respects context. The Spirit gives us the gifts we need in the moment to be about the work God would have us do.

 

What’s happening in Jerusalem at Pentecost? Thousands of Jews from across the world have gathered for the celebration. Dozens of languages are spoken by the visitors to the city.

 

What does the Spirit do? The Spirit blesses the apostles with the gift of language. Not the babbling prayer language we call speaking in tongues – actual understandable languages. That was what was needed. That’s what the Spirit gave, so the word could go out to the assembled crowds in ways they would understand.

 

What do we need from the Spirit in our time, so the words we speak and the way we choose to live reach our generation with the good news?

 

Faith? Courage? Innovation? Generosity? Hospitality?

 

Let’s bring it even closer to home. What gift do you need from the Spirit to reach the people God’s placed you with?

 

 

Talk 4 - The Here and Now Spirit

 

Provocative words from Barbara Brown Taylor to end with, reflecting on today’s story from Acts.

 

The question for me is whether we still believe in a God who acts like that. Do we still believe in a God who blows through closed doors and sets our heads on fire? Do we still believe in a God with the power to transform us, both as individuals and as a people, or have we come to an unspoken agreement that our God is pretty old and tired by now; someone to whom we may address our prayer requests but not anyone we really expect to change our lives.

 

There’s a lot of fine teaching and writing out there on the Holy Spirit. And I hope that none of it satisfies you.

 

I hope that you’re not satisfied until you’ve felt the Holy Spirit blow through your own life, and maybe even set your own head on fire a little bit.

 

It still happens.

 

Moments of insight, strength, courage, prompting, conviction that can only come from God.

 

As I prepared for today I cast my mind back through my own back catalogue of those kinds of experiences. Things I’ve shared with you in sermons over these ten years – times when God’s spirit seemed to speak very clearly.

The evening in September ’86 when I gave my life to Christ. Praying, after nearly getting mugged on a train in Morocco. Sitting with my brother as he died of cancer. Walking the labyrinth at the Bield in Perthshire.

 

And even as I remembered those times, and others, the Spirit spoke wordlessly in my heart once again. She said: “Paul, why do so many of your stories of me come from the past? Are you missing me in the present? Has it all become routine? Are your eyes open to the opportunities I’m setting before you today? We need to make some new stories together, you and I.”

 

Indeed we do. We all do.

 

Let’s go, in the power of the Spirit, and make them.

As I prepared for today I cast my mind back through my own back catalogue of those kinds of experiences. Things I’ve shared with you in sermons over these ten years – times when God’s spirit seemed to speak very clearly.

The evening in September ’86 when I gave my life to Christ. Praying, after nearly getting mugged on a train in Morocco. Sitting with my brother as he died of cancer. Walking the labyrinth at the Bield in Perthshire.

 

And even as I remembered those times, and others, the Spirit spoke wordlessly in my heart once again. She said: “Paul, why do so many of your stories of me come from the past? Are you missing me in the present? Has it all become routine? Are your eyes open to the opportunities I’m setting before you today? We need to make some new stories together, you and I.”

 

Indeed we do. We all do.

 

Let’s go, in the power of the Spirit, and make them.

When I'm Gone

(This sermon was preached at our Memorial Service, where we're joined by the relatives of folk in the parish who have passed on in the previous calendar year. Their names are read out and family members can light a candle in their memory if they wish as part of the service.)

Two observations and a story to begin with this morning.

I wonder how many times those of you who drive have come to your senses after you’ve been thinking about something, or listening to the radio, and realised, to your horror, that you have no recollection of driving the last three or four miles you’ve just driven.

And I wonder how many of us have had the experience of chatting to someone on a Monday morning and when they ask you what you did at the weekend, your mind goes completely blank. What did I do?

There are enough smiles around to suggest this isn’t just me!

Hold on to those observations as I tell you the story, which comes from the Eastern tradition.

Tenno had completed his ten years apprenticeship in Zen Buddhism and had risen to the rank of teacher. One rainy day he went to visit his master and as was the custom, he took off his clogs and left his umbrella outside the front door before entering.


As he walked in, his master smiled and welcomed him. Then he said “Tenno, you left your clogs and umbrella outside, didn’t you? Tell me – did you place the umbrella to the right side of the clogs, or to the left?”


Tenno was embarrassed because he didn’t know the answer. He realised that he lacked awareness. So he apprenticed himself to the master for another ten years so he could learn the art of constant awareness.

Two observations and a story that help give some substance to a thought. How much in life passes us by.

We’re so busy getting from A to B that we overlook the journey.

We’re so preoccupied with getting things done that time and experience slip past almost unnoticed.

Without determined effort on our part, we don’t cultivate the discipline of awareness that adds depth and richness to our living.

To quote Pink Floyd – a phrase which gives you an insight into just how contemporary my CD collection is – “And then one day you find ten years have dropped behind you, no-one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun”.

Life runs away while we’re still tying our shoelaces. Life happens to us, whether we’re ready for it or not. We’re born into the world and before we know it we’re being swept along in a crowd that dwarfs the London Marathon, running hard, trying to keep up, focused on what’s round the next bend, keeping our heads down, puffing and panting our way to the end of the human race.

But every now and then something happens to us that makes us pull up and stop running. Something so significant that we have no choice but to pull up a chair and sit on the sidelines for a while, as the rest of humanity goes streaming by.

Sometimes it’s one of life’s great gifts that hauls us out of the fray for a while. An encounter with beauty, in music, or words; in art or in nature. The birth of a child. The blossoming of love.

Miracle as they are, these things can never be hurried along. They deserve to be savoured. And in those moments we come to our senses and realise again that the human race means very little if we don’t take time to enjoy the journey.

But, and this is why many of you are here today, there are times when what stops us in our tracks is not gift, but grief.

A phone rings, a conversation takes place, information is exchanged, and you put down the receiver a moment later in a world that is changed utterly. Someone is gravely ill. Someone has died.

You find yourself sitting at the side of the road with your head in your hands wondering how on earth all these other people can keep obliviously running, when the world – your world at least – has stopped turning.

I got a call like that in January of last year – many of you know the story.

My father was going into hospital for surgery and on the day he went in, my mother had a stomach aneurism and nearly died. I had to drop everything and go back home straight away. Poor Mary Reid stepped in to take the Sunday service, and little did we know what the rest of the year would hold in store for Mary and her family.

Mum had 3 months in intensive care, and another three recuperating in hospital before she finally got home. And within her limitations, she’s doing pretty well now, though her health is still very fragile.

But those were strange days. Normal life was on hold. In the beginning it was hard to focus on anything other than what had happened to her. The family closed ranks, pulled together and got through, but we lived in this heightened atmosphere where her illness, for a while at least, became paramount for us. We lived daily with the prospect of losing her.

Why, for so many of us, does it take a brush with death to make us really appreciate what we have in life?

It’s a year and a half on, now, and I’m back in the human race again, jogging along; but something changed for me in that time – something that’s hard to put into words.

I think it’s the realisation that time isn’t just short, it’s precious. And in the time we have left, I want to find ways to be with my folk in ways that are truly meaningful. I want to know them and be known by them.

One of the saddest things in my time as a minister in some of the tougher corners of Glasgow was the experience of going to visit families who’d lost their mother – and it always seemed to be a mother – and when I asked them to tell me about her, all they were able to say was that she liked the soaps and she loved the bingo. Seventy, eighty years of life, and that’s all they were able to say about her.

Thankfully, that was a rare occurrence and I’ve not found the same thing up here. More often than not, the problem I’ve had is trying to condense everything you’ve had to say about the person who’s passed on!

And that overflow of stories and memories and laughter and tears that pours out when I visit bereaved folk highlights the point that I’m trying to make: when death visits our families, and none of us would ever want that visit, it leaves us a strange and unexpected gift. A heightened appreciation of the richness of this thing called life. For a few days or weeks or months we get it. We understand just how precious the gift of life really is.

But that heightened appreciation doesn’t last forever. It gently fades away like the ring of a bell. In time, some of us return to a life that seems infinitely greyer because that dear person has passed on. Others tie up our laces and fall back in step with the rest of the human race. Either way, the danger is we forget what we learned in those fraught days and weeks and months: that life is precious. That our lives are precious: not to be wished away or frittered away on things that don’t really matter. We only get the one life – we need to make the most of it.

I’ve never heard that idea better expressed than in the words of a song called “When I’m Gone” by Phil Ochs.

There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
You won't find me singing on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here


My days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone
The sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone
Can't add my name into the fight when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here


I won't see the flowing of the time when I'm gone
The joys of love will not be mine when I'm gone
My pen won't pour a lyric rhyme when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

I won't breathe the bracing air when I'm gone
I won't be worried about my cares when I'm gone
Can't be asked to do my share when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here


I won't be running from the rain when I'm gone
Won't even suffer from the pain when I'm gone
Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here


And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
I won't question where or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

He puts it well, I think. We owe it to those we love to make the most of the time that we have been given. But where Phil Ochs and I part company is in his assumption that death is the final end.

Christianity dares to hope for more than that, and I want to finish this morning with these words from writer/minister Fred Buechner:

“Unlike the great oriental religions, Christianity takes death very seriously, which is of course why it takes life very seriously, why there is such urgency about living it right and living it now. In the New Testament there is no doctrine of endless rebirths on the great wheel of life, no doctrine of a soul which by its nature cannot die. On the contrary, by our nature we do die, as Christianity sees it, with our bodies and souls as inextricably one in death as they are in life.


But if death is the end in Christianity, it is not the final end; it is the end of an act only, not the end of the drama. Once before, out of the abyss of the unborn, the uncreated, the not-yet, you and I who from all eternity had been nothing, became something. Out of non-being we emerged into being. And what Jesus promises is resurrection, which means that once again this miracle will happen, and out of death will come another realm of life. Not because by our nature there is part of us that does not die, but because by God’s nature he will not let even death separate us from him finally.


In love he made us and in love he will mend us. In love, he will have us his true children before his work is done”.

Thanks be to God for life now, and the promise of life hereafter. Amen