Pentecost 2023

 

I wonder what it must have been like.
It almost beggars imagination, doesn't it.
There they were, in that upper room.
One hundred and twenty of them, they say,
including Mary the mother of Jesus
and several other women.
Waiting.
Waiting for what must have felt like simply forever.

They'd been told, in Luke's version of the story, to wait in Jerusalem and they would receive power when the Spirit came upon them.
So they waited, and waited.
At least ten days,
we don't, I think, know exactly how long,
until the Day of Pentecost dawned.
I wonder how many of them had felt like giving up and going home,
and celebrating Pentecost,
which back then was a sort of Harvest Festival,
celebrating the first fruits of the harvest,
celebrating Pentecost with their neighbours?

But they didn't go home.
They stayed.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
the Spirit came on them.

It must have been a pretty dramatic visitation.
The tongues of flame,
the rushing mighty wind.
And the immediate explosion of praise,
and when they ran out of words those other words,
words of praise that, in this instance,
turned out to be words "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."

Thus the bystanders.
They might not have seen the tongues of flame,
or heard the rushing mighty wind,
but they certainly saw the results.

But some people were more cynical
And they said,
oh, these people have been on the booze;
they're bladdered;
they're lathered.....
And I can think of several rather ruder things they might have said,
and so, I expect, can you.

So Peter, glorious, wonderful Peter,
who never used to be able to open his mouth without putting his foot in it –they used to say he only opened his mouth to change feet –
Peter jumps up and lets out this terrific bellow which shuts everybody up, sharpish.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he goes,
"we're not on the sauce –
come off it, it's only nine am, what do you take us for?
We're not football fans!"
And he goes on to explain that this is what Joel was talking about,
this is what they'd all been expecting.
And, as you know, he preached so powerfully,
and God's presence was so overwhelming,
that three thousand people got converted that day alone!

Thus the story.
We know it so well, don’t we?
Every year, this passage from the book of Acts is read.
We could probably quote a great deal of it off by heart, and the bits we can’t quote –
all those nationalities, I can never remember them without looking –
we know what they say, even if we don’t know the words!

Obviously, then, it is an important story –
as important as those other stories we hear every year,
the stories of Jesus’ birth,
the coming of the magi,
the presentation in the Temple,
the visit to the Temple the year Jesus was 12,
and then the gap to the adult Jesus,
his arrest,
death,
resurrection,
and ascension into Heaven.
And then the coming of the Spirit.

One way of seeing it is that it’s the Church’s birthday.
The day we celebrate the anniversary of the explosive growth from a tiny handful of believers –
barely more than a hundred –
to several thousand,
and on down the millennia to the worldwide organisations and denominations that is the Church today.
But there again, that’s just history, rather like we celebrate our own birthdays.
Pentecost is more than that.
I think that much of it is one of those things that doesn’t go into words very well –
what is officially called a “mystery” -
the Church’s word for something that words can never fully explain.

After all –
a mighty wind, and what looked like tongues of fire?
We know the damage that both wind and fire can do –
hurricanes seem to be increasing in both frequency and strength, and have caused terrific damage over the years.
And we all know what terrible damage fire can do.

But the wind and flame from God were not sent to destroy,
but to cleanse, to heal, and to empower.
Some of the empowerment was pretty spectacular –
the speaking in other languages,
the healings,
the preaching that brought thousands to Christ in one go....
some of it, of course, would have been less so.

And then there were the other side-effects –
the changes in people’s character to become more the people God meant them to be.
The fruit of the Spirit –
Paul, in his various letters, reminds us both of the various gifts he saw in use (the tongues, the prophecies, the healings and so on) and the fruits he saw develop in people’s characters:
"love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
generosity,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control" .

The thing is, of course, that it wasn’t and isn’t just those few people in the Upper Room in Jerusalem who received the Holy Spirit.
Nor was it just the three thousand people who were added to the church that day!
Right down throughout history, and right down to today,
God has sent his Holy Spirit on to believers.
And that includes you and it includes me.

But some of us will say, oh, help, no, not me,
I'm not worthy.
I'm not clean.
Well, you're no more and no less worthy than anybody else.
But there are things that can stop you being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The first is if you are not walking God's way.
You do need to be God's person
and that is not something that happens automatically.
You have to consciously commit yourself to God.
We Methodists do this formally each year in the Covenant Service,
but you don't have to wait until then!

And you may say, well, yes, years ago –
but these days?
I’m all dried up and God doesn’t use me any more.

Well, look at my cup.
I get very thirsty when I preach, and like to have my water-bottle with me – we do try not to use single-use plastic bottles unless we know we have another use for them afterwards.

But supposing I wanted to put some coffee in a cup like this?
(waves reusable coffee cup with lid)
I can’t, can I, as it has the lid on!

Okay, let’s take the lid off.
Hmmm.... still can’t put any coffee in here, just look at it.
All sorts of bits and pieces in here......

think this mug must be rather elastic!

(removes bits and pieces from mug)

The point is, it doesn’t really matter what’s in there,
but they shouldn’t be there.
Perfectly good, valid and worthwhile things in themselves,
but they don’t live in a coffee cup.

And thank you, but I don’t fancy drinking my coffee out of a mug that has been filled with all these things.

So we need to wash the mug, and rinse it, and dry it....

and now, at last, we can put coffee in it!

(Mimes these actions).

That’s a very old illustration;
I first heard it about fifty years ago.
But it’s still valid today.
You see, we can thwart God completely by refusing, if you like,
to “take the lid off” yourself and allow God in there to work.
And yes, it’s scary doing that.
Horribly so.
We really do have to trust God and trust that He loves us.
And once we have “taken the lid off”,
we have to allow God to search for those things that are filling us up wrongly –
perfectly valuable, valid things in their own right,
but things that aren’t right for us.
John Wesley, for example, said that while there was absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with a career in mathematics, it wouldn’t have been right for him.


That, too, is hard.
We are so afraid that God will take all the things we love from us, and leave us with boring Church things....
I doubt it.
Most of us love what we do, or we wouldn’t do it!
God doesn’t call us to be bored and miserable, but to be fulfilled and happy.

And then finally we need to be washed –
cleansed, forgiven, made whole.
Again, sometimes it’s difficult to allow that to happen, which is largely because we often find it very hard to forgive ourselves when things go wrong.
And that makes it hard for us to believe that God has forgiven us.

But when all that has happened, then we become fit for purpose.
We can be filled with God’s Spirit....
not only filled up, as we would fill a coffee cup, but filled to overflowing,
pouring out everywhere, a sort of coffee-fountain, if you like....

And once we are filled, what then?
That, of course, is up to God, who knows us far better than we know ourselves.
He knows our characters, our desires, our needs, our failings....
It’s not our job to worry about the “what then”.
If there’s something specific God wants us to do,
you can be sure we will know it, one way or the other.
Otherwise, we go on with our lives, just being!
God does the rest –
we very often don’t know

So –
how?
That one’s easy –
just be willing!
That’s all we have to do –
be willing.
God does all the rest.

To help us find the words to be willing, let’s stand and sing hymn 385: “Holy Spirit, we welcome you”

Coronations and Vocations

 

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

This Eastertide, I have been thinking a lot about how Jesus deals with people as individuals. You can see it during his ministry, of course – far too many instances to go into here. But what I have been thinking of specially was how he came to people after his resurrection. I mean, you have Mary Magdalene crying in the garden, and how lovely he is with her; then there was the walk and chat with Cleopas and his wife on their way to Emmmaus, when he went through the Scriptures with them to show them how the Resurrection was foretold – and agreed to stay the night, but then vanished after he’d broken bread at the supper-table. Then he comes specially to Thomas when he had missed the original appearance to all the disciples, and had trouble believing it had really happened. And, perhaps finally, he speaks to Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, forgiving him for denying he knew him, and reinstating him.

All these people needed a different touch from Jesus, and they all got it. And that holds true for us, too. Jesus comes to us through the Holy Spirit, but our experiences of this will all be different. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Many rooms. They will all be of different shapes and sizes, according to our individual needs.

I wish, in a way, that the Epistle set for today was that lovely passage from 1 Corinthians about how we are all part of one body, but all different parts.

Today, you see, is Vocations Sunday, when I think I’m supposed to urge you all to offer for ordination, or something like that. Don’t worry, I’m not going to! Although I will just say that if you do think you are experiencing a call to offer for ordination, or indeed to become a local preacher, worship leader, or another role in the church, do go and talk to Rev R about it! She will be able to tell you what your first steps should be. And, by the way, if you think you might be feeling such a call, you haven’t gone mad! It’s always worth exploring, even if the call turns out to be for something quite else. I mean, look at me – I’ve been a local preacher for over 30 years now, if you count time spent on note and on trial. They still haven’t discovered they made a terrible mistake….

Seriously, though, our vocation need not necessarily be for a role within the church. Some people are called to be teachers, or medical professionals – and, goodness knows, given the way the Government sees fit to pay public sector workers, it would have need to be a vocation, as you certainly wouldn’t be in it for the money! And in other roles, that aren’t necessarily anything to do with the church, or a profession, for that matter. God needs Christians in any and every role, from doctor to decorator, judge to janitor, lawyer to labourer, professor to plumber, rat-catcher to retired, and so on. We need people to stand as local councillors, or maybe even get more involved in politics, if that is something that interests you. And our schoolchildren and students need to be focussing on their studies and their play, and on finding out who they are as beloved children of God.

From youngest to oldest, we all have our role to play in God’s plan for this world. We all fit in the community in our various roles. We all have different needs, different gifts, different preferences, different dreams.

It can be instructive, sometimes, to read how God dealt with his prophets and leaders who really didn’t want to answer God’s call. Moses said he was crap at public speaking, so God gave him Aaron to be his mouthpiece. Jeremiah also said he was hopeless at it, and anyway, he was far too young for anybody to take him seriously. He needed God’s reassurance that “I am with you, and I will protect you,” plus a special touch from God, a special gift of the Holy Spirit, if you like, for him to be able to speak.

Isaiah, too, was horrified when he saw God’s glory in the Temple and realised that God was calling him to be a prophet. “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure enough to speak to God, and I live among people who are not pure enough to speak to him. But I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.” And he needed a cleansing touch from an angel before he could say “Here I am, send me!” to God.

Three different men, with very similar concerns – they simply weren’t good enough for God to use them. And God basically said “Rubbish!” and gave them the reassurance they needed that they could, indeed, do the work to which they were being called.

And it’s the same for us. No matter what we are being called to do – and don’t forget that most of us, probably, indeed, all of us, are doing exactly what we are meant to be doing – no matter what it is, God will enable us.

Whether we are called to actively preach the Good News, or whether we are being asked to pray quietly at home, we will be given the gifts we need to do so. All our gifts are given to us as individuals, and, of course, God isn’t stingy! In fact, given half a chance, God would give us far more than we are able to cope with.

We are, after all, God’s children, not his servants! Jesus reminds us, also in our Gospel passage, that nobody can come to the Father except through him. There may be – there are – other paths to God, but only Christians can know God as Father. And Jesus reminds us that earthly fathers don’t – or most don’t, we see exceptions in our newspapers all the time – give bad things to their children; they don’t give a stone instead of bread, or scorpions instead of fish.  “If you, then,” Jesus concludes, “though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

How much more! More than we can ask, or even imagine.

God deals with us, then, as individuals – but, of course, we are part of a community, of a family, and our gifts and calling will reflect that. We are all one body, with many parts. We are, as our first reading reminded us, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Yesterday, of course, was a very special day in the life of our nation, as our King was anointed and crowned to his office. I know our late Queen felt that God had anointed her as Queen, and this meant being Queen was who she was, not what she did. I rather suspect our new King feels the same way. Certainly he, like his mother before him, believes that he has been appointed to serve the various countries of which he is King, and has sworn an oath to that effect. The crowning and anointing, so we were told in the service yesterday, set him apart and consecrated him for the service of his people.

There is, of course, only one King. But we are all consecrated by God for his service, as our reading from Peter’s letter reminded us: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” God does not call without enabling. Of course, that doesn’t mean our service – whatever it may be – will always be easy and trouble-free; you know as well as I do that it won’t be! There are always rocks along the way – as Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And, finally, many years ago now I knew someone who had served as a medical missionary in Burundi. She told me once that, when she had been getting ready to leave, she got worried, as she was so looking forward to going she started to wonder whether it was really God calling her to go there, or whether it was just what she herself wanted. And when she took this worry to her advisor, she was told, “Why on earth would God call you to do something you would hate? You wouldn’t do a great job if you were unhappy all the time, quite apart from anything else. And the God who loves you gives good gifts to all His children!”

It won’t always be easy. Often we will wonder whether we’re on the right track or not. Often we will wonder why so-and-so is called to be a worship leader and we aren’t, or vice versa. But “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” and each and every one of those rooms has been specially designed. There is one for you, and there is one for me! Amen.