Sermon for the 28th of May - The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2: 1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine.
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
 
John 20: 19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
 
Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Our lives are too fat, too sleek, too fast. Is it possible for the Holy Spirit to shake us up?
We are not here to re-enact that day of Pentecost, the way it was for the first disciples, but to try to understand what it was all about. What difference did it make, that it happened, at all?
Words fail us when we try to talk about something like the Holy Spirit of God.

What must it have been like? to be there with those first forlorn followers of Jesus at the Jewish festival of Pentecost (that means the fiftieth day after Passover)---these ones left behind, who experienced, together, something that could not really be described in words---only recorded as having happened.

Something out of the ordinary---dramatic, even violent---Acts says, took place. But this is the best that can be said of it:
...suddenly from Heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them

These are only approximations, these words. They are second-hand ways to try to convey the reality of some thing, some event, that we who are the readers and listeners can only feebly try to imagine.

How do you see wind and fire? Most often, you can't, really. You can only feel them, and see and feel their effects. Power is always known by its effects.

The El Greco painting on the cover of your order of service is a nice attempt to capture that Pentecost event. What a great painting! small, beautifully shaped ovals of flame decorate the air above each of the heads of the disciples, one to one, one for each, perfectly positioned, balancing in the air, almost dancing. But the important element of the painting is that the gaze of all the participants is drawn upward (there is one man on the right, looking out at us, thought to be a self-portrait of the artist, and one woman looking at the other woman, in tenderness and concern). The attention of the persons in the painting is drawn upward to the symbol of God above. But because you can't draw God in any way that I know of, the gaze of all is drawn upward to the white shining dove who is hovering over the scene. Purity, perfection, light---light sent down to dance over the heads of those who are in some way being blessed by the gift of something that cannot be described.
 
The power that was being sent upon them, to fill them and direct them, made them talk in languages that seemed to be understood by everyone who heard them, even those who didn't know those languages. As a symbol of unity---this first act of
power---what other act could have shown their unity more clearly? The reverse of the Tower of Babel, where the story relates that God deliberately confused the single language of the proud builders of the Tower, to confuse their pride, their hubris--- when God made them speak in all kinds of languages nobody but the speakers could understand. Fragmenting humankind, dividing human beings from one another.

But this event, this Pentecost event, is a demonstration of power from on high that unites all those who experience it in one awe-inspiring scene. What were they saying? Were they just babbling on? No, they were speaking, Luke says, about God's deeds of power.

And then, what? Peter realises that someone needs to explain to the gathering crowd what is happening. And he declares to them that God has raised up the Jesus whom they crucified, and that the promised Holy Spirit has now been poured out upon them.

What a lot to take in. What an experience!
And this was the effect of it all: awe came upon them, and they were cut to the heart, and asked what they should do. What did it all mean, for them?

Peter answered,

repent, and be baptised, and receive, in your turn, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And they did, about three thousand of those bystanders. And they then began to share in the life of the disciples of Jesus, devoting themselves to Jesus's teaching, to their fellowship, to worship together and to pray.

What they saw and what they heard and what they felt that day changed them. The Holy Spirit had irrupted into their lives, and they were shaken up by God's own hand.

The consequence is that God so takes hold of them, to so radically re-orient the life they lead from that point on, that John says Jesus says

When you forgive anyone's sins, at that moment God forgives those sins and they remain forgiven. (Raymond Brown's translation in his Anchor Bible Commentary)

This is an astonishing declaration! How can this be? But that is the power of God at work.

Francesco Borromini was a poor immigrant to Rome who is now recognised as one of the greatest architects of all times. He was not fat, or sleek, or fast. He seemed to be always alone. But all his works testify to a faith that was profound and
 
transforming. I wanted to name two of the churches he created in which I profoundly feel a sense of the Holy Spirit breaking through to those of us below.

The spire of Sant' Ivo alla Sapienza is an arresting, unmissable, extraordinary spiraling diagonally upward to the cross on an orb of the world. If you are walking on the ground in the centre of Rome your eye is drawn upward to this steadily ascending movement toward the heavens, the crowning element of a wondrously light-filled space of a church dedicated to the glory of God.

Even before this work was dedicated, the interior of Borromini's first work as an independent master, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane---Saint Charles of the Four Fountains---is a powerful light-flooded space of curved corners and directed upward movement to the oval opening of the dome. Light fills the space by windows hidden from the viewer below. The interlocking octagons, crosses and hexagons become smaller as the dome rises to the lantern. In this church, you have to look up to the highest point, to the beautiful blazing symbol of God the Holy Spirit, the white dove inside a triangle, the Trinity, on brilliant gold. It takes your breath away, to stand below and look up.

Wind and fire. The presence of the Spirit of God in the burning bush before Moses; the sense of the presence of the risen Christ to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, when all they could look back and see was how their hearts burned within them as he revealed himself to them, finally in the breaking of bread.

How can we experience the Holy Spirit of God? I most often feel so earth-bound....
I think we go back to the changed outcome of the Pentecost experience for those first disciples. They placed themselves in fellowship with one another, breaking bread together, devoting themselves to Jesus's teaching, praying, and sharing what they had in common. All these things. They had been knit together by the Holy Spirit, unified in their common life by the effect of the power of God's Spirit.

So for us, who are here together this morning, not individuals, but together, as we worship here, we open ourselves by coming here to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

It is a metaphor---to be always looking up    but one that helps us to remember that
the power to be changed comes from above.

As we seek to encounter the Holy Spirit in everyday life, I believe that by opening ourselves to its work in us the Spirit will come and will change us. We will be filled with light as we look around us; we will be able to share that light with others.
 
Let us pray on this Pentecost for the opening of our hearts to the Holy Spirit that comes---Amen!