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.

Pentecost, Frankly.

To be perfectly honest, getting a flatmate had never been on my agenda.

I was quite happy in my own space, king of my own domain. It was messy and chaotic, but it was my mess and my chaos and it was great having the freedom to leave the place as I wanted it. It was my stuff, my story, my home.

I’d known Frank from a distance for a good while, we moved in the same circles and had spoken together quite a few times, and though I liked what I’d seen there was something about him that left me a little uncomfortable. He seemed just a bit too perfect.

He had that easy way with people that I coveted; he seemed to be at home with everyone which meant he was either fake or too good to be true. I’d watched him at parties; seen him move between the different cliques with ease, and wondered where his allegiances really lay. Wondered where that self-confidence came from. He certainly didn’t give the appearance of being anything special.

The day he arrived, I almost didn’t hear the knocking – I had the telly up loud because I was working in the kitchen – but on the edge of my hearing I thought I picked up a rhythmic thumping and went into the hallway to explore. A fist was softly hammering on my door. It was Frank. I hid my surprise behind a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.

I’m not sure who told him there might be a vacancy. I’d flirted with the idea of sharing the flat for a while and maybe I’d said something in passing – these things have a way of getting around. But it’s a whole other thing having someone standing on your front doorstep with a rucksack on his back and asking, in a very matter-of-fact fashion, if he can move in.

What can you do?

The truth was, I had space aplenty. I just didn’t want anyone invading it.

But in that split second, confronted with the 6 cubic feet of another human being filling my doorway, my brain went absent without leave and I found myself saying – “sure, come on in; you can stay as long as you like”.

And so it began.

It’s strange how having another person living with you in your home can change the way you see things. It’s not that they start nit-picking or dropping those dreadfully obvious hints that they want something done instead of just coming right out and saying it. Frank had the good grace never to do that.

But with him around I started noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. The toilet door that didn’t shut properly; the piles of books in the hall I’d been stepping over and around for weeks; the habit I’d developed of always having the radio or the telly on for the sake of having a bit of noise about the place.

He never once said anything, but I began to see my place, and to a degree, myself, through different eyes. I began to notice things, and ever-so-slowly, began to change the way I behaved. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

Frank was around the place a lot – he worked from home – and we soon settled into a routine where at some point during the day we’d sit down for a coffee and a blether. I quickly realised that he was a good listener, and over time he became a good friend.

He’d listen to my tirades when things were getting me down in my work or my relationships. He had the good sense to allow me to let off some steam, and then when I’d calmed down, we’d pick our way through what had happened to try and get to the nub of it.

Sometimes, having listened to me rant, he’d call me an idiot; sometimes he’d assure me that I wasn’t an idiot, despite what everyone else was suggesting.

He was Frank by name and Frank by nature: he tended to speak the truth whether I wanted to hear it or not. Didn’t make him a comfortable person to be around at times; but even when we exchanged hard words I knew that deep down he was rooting for me and that I could trust him.

We talked a lot, especially in those early days, but I learned almost as much from just watching him going about his life. That ease I’d noticed at parties wasn’t fake. He was an enthusiast when it came to people.

I remember one night we were out for a meal with some friends and he got into conversation with one of the waitresses: he wasn’t chatting her up – he was just chatting. The rest of us had done what convention dictates and treated her as a waitress – Frank treated her as a person and in his company she opened up like a flower, laughing and joking with us, making recommendations, joining in the banter as she cleared the tables and brought more drinks. He did that kind of thing all the time.

It’s hard to define, but Frank was one of those rare people who bring a little more zest and colour into things. He didn’t take life at face value; he liked getting to depth. He loved to savour the richness of people and experiences. He noticed things, and in noticing them, he gave them worth.

At first our friendship was pretty one-sided, I guess. I did most of the talking and learning and changing, he did most of the listening. But after a while it felt like we were on a more even footing: never equals, but allies. I stopped offloading so much and began to listen more; trying to find out what motivated him, what is was that he really wanted in life. He seemed to value having someone to share his thoughts and his plans with.

And between you and me, I wonder if what brought Frank to my door that day wasn’t his own need, but a need he perceived in me. And I wonder if this whole thing wasn’t some kind of a ruse, cooked up so that Frank could get alongside me and teach me how to live. God knows, he has his work cut out. But I’m glad that he took on the challenge.

****************

True story. Or not!?
95% true, if you substitute the name ‘Holy Spirit’ for the name ‘Frank’.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day in the Church’s Year when we remember the remarkable events that we heard read to us from the book of Acts. The disciples, gathered together in Jerusalem, have a profound experience as the Spirit of God, who had been withheld from all but a few select individuals in Old Testament times, is poured out on the infant church in tongues of speech and tongues of fire, to their own amazement, and that of the thousands of Jewish men and women gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost.

In one sense, it was the birth of the church and it’s rightly celebrated as such.

But it’s very easy to get distracted by the fireworks of Pentecost Sunday, and the church often has. Parts of the worldwide church want every day to be Pentecost – they strain and strive after profound spiritual experiences; and there’s nothing wrong with that, I guess, as long as the spiritual experiences don’t become the focus.

When anything other than God becomes the focus of our worship, we risk making it into an idol, and we’re especially prone to idolise our feelings. We go looking for that experience, or that feeling in worship, and if we don’t find it we assume God’s not there, when he might very well be there, seeing how we cope without the experience we thought we needed.

So some in the church spend their days trying to re-create the feelings or the experience of Pentecost, But there are other parts of the church where folk look back to the first Pentecost like a history lesson. Wasn’t that marvellous what God did back then, the tongues of fire, and the strange languages and all that. Wasn’t it wonderful?!! And the silent majority in the pews think – well maybe it was wonderful, but I wasn’t there to experience it. What’s it got to do with me?

Well in our reading from John’s gospel, Jesus tells us what Pentecost is about for you and me, and it’s not really about the fireworks at all. It’s about Frank, or to give him his Sunday name, the Holy Spirit.

The Scriptures teach that we are all made in God’s image. All human beings are created in the image of God – we share that in common. And as part of that image, we all have spirit – the life force or essence within us that makes us more than bags of meat and bone.

But the Spirit we’re thinking about today is not the individual human spirit, or even the collective spirit we experience from time to time when people gather together in churches, football stadiums, theatres and concert halls.

The Spirit we speak of today is God’s Spirit, as much a part of the Triune God as the Father and the Son. As much a person as the Father and the Son. And the role of the Spirit is to open up to us, in a personal way, the truth about God and the truth about ourselves. And having done so, to help us to change.

There are many words used of the Spirit in the Scriptures – here Jesus uses ‘Helper’ but elsewhere he is spoken of as a Counsellor, or a Companion, or a Guide.

And though the Spirit is around us and at work in the world in countless ways, what Jesus is promising here as he leaves his disciples is something more that that. He’s promising that if we ask God, the Spirit himself will come to live, not near us or around us, but within us.

It’s a preposterous notion. But it’s exactly what Jesus says.

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you for ever. He is the Spirit who reveals the truth about God. The world cannot receive him, because it cannot see him or know him. But you know him because he remains with you and is in you”.

There are plenty of new-age spiritualities which – in spite of the evidence of several millennia – still like to think that buried deep in our souls or psyches there’s a god or a goddess just waiting to be unleashed. That’s just Narcissism by another name. It’s all about us.

Christianity makes a different kind of claim, though it’s no less outrageous. Our claim is that the Spirit, knowing full well that we are neither gods nor goddesses, still wants to come and live with us, and will put up with our mess, and get involved in the saga of our lives, so that through his patient persistence we can become the children of God that God always wanted us to be.

He’s a kind of midwife, I guess. Bringing to birth within us all the good things that make for a rich, deep, satisfying God-centred life.

And something you need to know about the Spirit is that he’s a persistent so and so. He’ll stand and knock at a door for ages. But he’ll never batter it down. He was brought up well, you see. He only enters when he’s been invited in.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock” says Jesus in the book of Revelation. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me”.

Jesus, Frank, the Spirit – it’s all the same, really. It’s God, softly hammering his fist against the door of your life and trying to get in.

Don’t be distracted by the Pentecost Fireworks. It’s really not about the tongues of fire and the funny languages. Marvellous though they were, they were never the focus. The miracle that Pentecost reveals is that the God who seemed so far beyond, is ready to make his home in you.

There’s plenty of space in there.

The question is, are you ready to share it?