Come Holy Spirit

Wide expanse of sea, Pembrokeshire coast.

Acts 2:1-4

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.

There have been many attempts to describe the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, and all are pretty much doomed to failure.

The Holy Spirit…

The power of God?

The presence of God?

The dove hovering over the waters of creation and settling on Jesus after his baptism?

How would you describe the Holy Spirit?

All attempts at describing the Holy Spirit are inadequate, because how on earth do you describe God?

But of course, it’s Pentecost Sunday, so that’s what we’re going to try and do.

So with the caveat that trying to describe the Holy Spirit is like a fish being asked to describe the sea it swims in, here are two insights that might help.

We’ll consider Being and Being Sent.

   1. Being

Describing the Holy Spirit is a bit like asking a fish to describe the sea it swims in.

Everything that makes that fish a fish is due to the sea.

The fish could not be a fish without the sea.

The sea surrounds, supports, feeds and carries the fish from life’s first gill movement, to the end.

The idea that God is all encompassing/all around us was something that even pre-dated Christ.

Ironically, it was one of the Greek poets, writing 100s of years before Christ, who wrote about God ‘in you we live and move and have our being’, a quotation which St Paul alluded to in his invitation to the Athenians to come and know the living God personally (Acts 17:28).

In God, we live, move and exist.

Three Greek words that imply different states of life, that is, everything that makes us human.

In God, we have our physical being, we have our emotional being (our passions and drivers) and we have our essential being.

We live, move and are, in God.

You could argue that when people find it hard to imagine God, or feel his presence, or even believe in his existence, it’s not because he’s too far away, but because he is too close, that we cannot focus properly.

Apparently cats cannot focus on things less than 25cm away from their faces, which could explain why my cat looks at me with slight incomprehension every time she comes up close for a cuddle.

She knows there’s something good there, but I’m so near, she can’t see me.

All week we’ve been focusing on the Lord’s Prayer in our daily prayer times in St Mary’s.

There’s a phrase in the Lord’s Prayer that takes on a different meaning if we think about the concept of God’s nearness.

Consider the phrase ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’

‘…who art in heaven’

Where do you think God is?

If we take the Lord’s Prayer at face value, God is in heaven.

‘Our Father, who art in heaven’.

But what does this suggest?

That can suggest that God is up there and we are down here, and that there’s a great divide in between.

A divide that’s both physical and spiritual.

He’s up there, we’re down here and ne’er the twain shall meet.

But there’s a helpful insight, which I recall was quite revolutionary for me (and I still remember where I was when I was pondering this after reading a book about the Lord’s Prayer, and suddenly felt my mind shifting gear on this).

‘Heaven’ and ‘sky’ are basically the same word in Greek.

The sky isn’t ‘up there’; it’s as much all around, because it’s the air that I breathe.

Because sky and atmosphere are the same word too.

Our Father in the atmosphere…

It doesn’t sound as poetic but it contains a mind-boggling thought – God is so near, he’s in the air I breathe…

‘In him we live, and move and have our being’.

We have to be careful not to reduce God to the sky, of course; that would be pantheism; but if we take the immediacy of God seriously, it might help us to imagine that we are living and moving and breathing in God.

2. Being Sent.

Our Father in the atmosphere...

Even though we might really like the idea that in God we live and move and have our being, Pentecost tells us that’s not enough.

I say this because although it’s a great spiritual insight, it doesn’t necessarily mark out Christianity as distinctive.

The Greek poets knew God was all around.

‘In God we live and move and have our being’ is a good starting point, but what comes next?

Christianity is not a ‘sit around and feel good’ religion.

It’s a sending out movement.

Pentecost is our template for Christianity today.

The disciples were told to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father.

Really and truly, the disciples had no idea what they were asking for when Philip said ‘Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied’.

You can never be satisfied with God.

You can be fed, and feel satisfied for a while, but being fed will make you more hungry.

The more you feed on God, the hungrier you get.

And the ones God uses are the hungry ones.

The ones who are not hungering for more, are static.

Christianity is distinctive because it is not a static religion.

Because the Trinity is dynamic.

Philip could have no idea that the Holy Spirit was coming, except that Jesus does try to tell them:

‘I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate’.

Now I’m trespassing on next week’s theme (Trinity Sunday) but it’s difficult not to, because our God is a dynamic God.

God is not a static being who sits in the sky and directs the church from miles away, like a celestial traffic warden.

He’s active in the world, and he’s stirring us up by his Spirit.

And he sends us out like the disciples were sent.

That’s why Jesus said that his followers would do even greater things than he did, because the scope of the Spirit is universal - to work through every believer, so if you like, every Christian is a sign of Christ, going around in their daily lives pointing people to God.

With the Spirit within us, we can accomplish more than even Jesus was able to, when there was just him.

When the Spirit fell at Pentecost, the first thing that happened was proclamation – Peter and the others had tongues of fire on their heads and tongues of fire in their mouths.

Because how else can others be saved, if they don’t hear the message in their own language?

Christianity is a particular religion with a universal scope.

So our final thought is about sending.

We have our being in God, yes: but we are sent.

Being sent will mean everything.

Being sent will take all your energies, all your focus, all your imagination.

Being sent will lead to the opening up of musty and un-renovated rooms in the house that is your life, that you might prefer to keep firmly shut.

Being sent will mean letting your own positions be challenged by some very unlikely ‘others’ who are coming into the kingdom without any of the finesse that us Anglicans like to see in church on Sundays.

Being sent might mean taking on a public role, where your faith will no longer be just local, but be scrutinised more thoroughly than feels comfortable.

Rapeseed, Berkshire downs, from the train.

Being sent will probably, for most of us, not mean going very far – certainly not to the ends of the earth - perhaps to the person next door, or the person on the bus, or the person you work with, or the person whom you know so well, you’ve forgotten they don’t yet know the way of salvation.

Being sent might mean facing up to something difficult you don’t want to face, or enduring long past the strength you think you have to endure.

Whatever being sent means for you, all you need to do today, on Pentecost Sunday, is to say yes.

Yes.

Come, Holy Spirit.

"E" is for Evangelism

This week brought news that Pentecost 2016 is to be set aside in the Church of England as a time of specific prayer for evangelism:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/archbishops.set.aside.pentecost.2016.in.bid.to.evangelise.england/78216.htm

Evangelism is one of those E words, like Evangelical, that can cause confusion, even inside the Church, as a previous post explored: http://parttimepriest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Evangelical 

From the Greek evangelion, it means gospel, or Good News, and suggests that if you're a Christian you'll want in some way to share the Christian message with others. To some people, both inside and outside the Church, this can come across as:

a) very scary
b) wholly inappropriate
c) thankfully only for super keen Christians

However, the reality is that with the decline of traditional ways of passing on the faith (you go to Sunday School because your parents did, and their parents did, and their parents did, etc.) it's going to become more and more the norm to find intentional ways of sharing the Christian message, because we in the church can't just assume that other people are somehow getting the message anyway.

The reaction of clerics on social media to the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury is writing to all 11,300 C of E clergy urging them to 'engage' with the 2016 evangelism project has been mixed, viz.

1. At last - what a great idea 
2. What does he think we've been doing for the last n years?
3. Cringe.....whatever happened to good old fashioned holiness/authenticity?

It's the same with all initiatives that come down from on high - they can either look like the Church behaving desperately, teaching us to suck eggs, or providing us with exactly what's been missing for years.

Reactions to the E word are all about Churchmanship. 

I went into the Church full of evangelistic/fresh expressions zeal and found that really what 'the Church' wanted was services taken, sermons given and pastoral work sensitively carried out. When you are channelled in this direction, it is hardly surprising that explicit evangelisation becomes less forthcoming. 

Then again, there is such a thing as pre-evangelism (a kind of preparing the ground), and weddings, funerals, baptism preparation and any community/school event is likely to have a large element of this anyway. So in this particular small, semi rural, multi parish setting I feel like we're doing evangelism and we're not doing evangelism...

If society is becoming less religious, less clued in about church, then pre-evangelism is going to be more and more needed. In the 80s we thought nothing of 'putting on an event' in a church hall, inviting 'non-Christians' (who were often loosely connected with the church anyway) to hear an evangelistic speaker, and expecting several to respond. I can't imagine that working today.

My first experience of evangelism up close and personal was at age 16. It was bracing, to say the least, but then thankfully you're often up for bracing new experiences when you're 16. I was a spiritually disengaged church-going teenager and had been invited, along with best friend, "E" (yes, weirdly, her name also began with E) to 'an evangelistic event' like the one detailed above, only on a larger scale - Wembley Arena, no less. 

The place was crawling with Christian youth and full of worship bands, missionary stalls and budding evangelists. "E" was my best friend at the time -17, bolshy, funny and sceptical, and had no church background. She and I were wandering around in the foyer looking at stalls when a young guy stopped us and started making conversation, based on the T shirt "E" was wearing; a T shirt featuring the London Marathon, which her uncle had just run in.

'Did you run the London Marathon?' asked our keen guy, eying the T shirt (he was older than us - maybe mid 20s). My friend replied no, it had been her uncle who ran it. 

'I ran the Marathon reciting bible verses all the way round', said our eager conversation partner, introducing himself as Kevin. I could see the word 'weirdo' passing across "E"'s face.
'Really?' she said sarcastically.

Undeterred, our young evangelist then launched into an unrelenting discussion with "E" about the bible, belief and Christianity, demolishing all her prejudices and engaging her in one topic after another till I felt really embarrassed, and she expressed herself to be very tired. A hint that a lesser, perhaps subtler Christian might have taken. But not our Kevin. 

'I'm tired too', he said, proceeding to inform us that he had been up till 3am that morning talking to a group of people in a night club about Jesus. He was nothing if not persistent. After eventually reducing "E" to tears; no mean feat, given her sparkiness and propensity for loud displays at parties, he then turned his attention to me and said, more or less, 'And what are we going to do about you?' Feeling reasonably smug, I cited my life-long church going habits, but this cut absolutely no ice with Kevin.

From goodness knows where, he started talking about romantic relationships and inner and outer congruence, honesty, holiness, sacrifice; the works. I was gobsmacked because he weirdly seemed to know exactly what made me tick and it was like nothing I'd ever come across before in my sheltered, middle class, polite, studious church-going existence. It would be an understatement to say I felt as though I had met the truth of myself face to face, and after some further soul searching, I came away with the deep and shocking realisation that becoming/being a Christian actually necessitated forgiveness, grace and beginning a completely new life. 

I'm sad to say that I lost touch with "E" so I don't know if she stuck with our new found faith. As for me, I was hooked, and never looked back. The messenger might have been a little crazy, but the message was dynamite, because it revealed an actual spiritual reality that I hadn't bargained on at all. Who knew church was actually about something (someone) REAL? 

In effect, I had been evangelised.

I wouldn't recommend the approach of Kevin. I later found out he was training for the Anglican priesthood and six years down the line spotted his name on a list of C of E Chaplains that attended the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Perhaps he'd mellowed by then. Perhaps his abrasive, no-holds-barred approach to evangelism was well suited to tough young athletes. I expect he'd be delighted at the Pentecost 2016 Evangelism project. In some ways I pray to have his boldness, but on reflection, if I should, in my enthusiasm for sharing the Good News, reduce an unwitting parishioner to tears, I might ironically discover that the C of E, whilst desiring the fire of Pentecost, does require from its priests a bit more pastoral sensitivity than Kevin the Evangelist was blessed with.

Does God speak Twitter?

Two themes which have preoccupied me recently fed rather neatly into thoughts on Pentecost.

1. Life is complicated.
2. Communication is complex.

And Where is the multi-lingual God in all this?

I've been learning Twitter. It's a strange language. I've learnt bits of many languages in my time- in this order: baby; English; French; Latin, German; Spanish; Mandarin; Phonetic alphabet; Teenage-speak; New Testament Greek; Facebook; Twitter. Not bad going for half way through my forties I suppose. Apart from Teenage-speak, Twitter is the oddest. Why do people learn Twitter? To communicate of course; mainly with strangers who share one's interests, but, boy it has to be brief; and this can make communication a little random...how about a tweet for Pentecost: in under 140 characters (does this include punctuation?)

@gentilesinners @randomerseverywhere
@Jewswhospectacularlymissedmessiah
Not drunk, only 9am, Joel right, last days, Spirit on ALL, be saved, portents, Day of the Lord, call out, God's plan, resurrection Messiah, repent believe be baptised. #peteratpentecost

(140, including punctuation).

I want to learn multiple languages so I can understand the culture in which I live, and be fluent in communicating the gospel within it. If this means learning Twitter or Facebook, bring it on. But what with email, land line, mobile, work mobile, smartphone, Facebook, Twitter and complicated work/life patterns, there are still numerous and ever complicating language barriers:

'Oh I didn't see your message on the answer phone till it was too late.'
'I  couldn't retrieve your message; the signal here is terrible.'
'I Facebook messaged you last night about the rehearsal...'
'My email to you keeps bouncing back.'
'Don't phone the land line; I'll be at work.'
'Don't phone work; leave a message on my mobile.'
'Just replying to the message you left re. my message last night...'
'I never got that text...'

Just some of the real life obstacles to communication one encounters when learning new languages in the atomising 21st Century (that sometimes bewildering and complex place where we conduct Christian ministry now).

By and large the message doesn't change ('Jesus is Lord' just about does it for me...) but the medium does; sometimes too rapidly and confusingly for us all.

Oh for that real, connecting communication which changed lives, as tongues of the Spirit lit up the first Pentecost, equipping the followers of Jesus to be multi-lingual for the sake of the gospel.