Pentecost Sunday 23rd May 2010

Introduction

Welcome to the triumphant end of Easter season when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost also called Whitsunday.

We’ve just sung about becoming the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

How can we understand this?

I’ve got an illustration.

Each one of us human beings is like a coffee pot.

We’re filled with so much goodness, love and patience to give out to others.
We give out and out and out - until we get empty. Then we find the difference between Christians and others.

What do you think that difference is?

Believers have found there's a lid on our coffee pot and a God willing to refill us, through it, with love, power and praise exactly when we’re empty and needy.
The 'lid' is faith and what gets poured in by the Spirit's power is 'grace'.
Our sin is linked to our self sufficiency, to our attempts to live in our own strength without the help of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s read through the confession before we say it together and ask God’s forgiveness.

Homily

So what were the signs when the Holy Spirit first came down?

Rush of wind, tongues of fire, sense of filling, speaking in other languages.

Remember the coffee pot getting filled, opening up for a refill of love and empowerment when the going gets tough in life? It had been tough for the first disciples, but they prayed for the Spirit and the Spirit came.

We believe he comes in every act of Christian prayer but especially at the eucharist where he speaks through the bible and makes bread and wine our heavenly food.

The first Pentecost must have been quite a wild occasion, all that wind and fire and speaking in tongues. Elsewhere in the bible the Holy Spirit speaks more quietly. He is also a still, small voice.

In 1985 a Canon John Dorman I hardly knew wrote to me with to share how the Holy Spirit had laid on him to write from Guyana to ask me to consider running a theological college for Amerindian priests. It was a job for two single priests and married priests were not under consideration.

The problem was that though I was then in the Company of Mission Priests who take annual promises to stay single I had been praying about marriage! So it was with some reluctance that I came to see John Dorman’s letter as the voice of the Holy Spirit.

How could you see the hinterland of Guyana deprived of the sacraments because I wouldn’t leave my comfort zone! I needed to go. I went and as I went, in God’s loving kindness, I met Anne. She was at the USPG College of Ascension where Fr Allan Buik and I went to train before going to Guyana.

Though Anne was going to Argentina to serve in the diocesan office both the Bishop of Argentina and the then Bishop of Guyana agreed to our marriage which was celebrated on Pentecost Sunday 1988.

It was a great Pentecost Day. The whole village came to the celebration which began with the slaughter of a cow at dawn and cost me a bag of rice, sugar and flour! A Hindu business man I played squash with provided a plane to fly in our parents. The Holy Spirit was there working to smooth the logistics of marriage in the jungle!

I’m telling you all this because I know the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He is all powerful. He also writes straight through crooked lines as Anne and I have discovered.

You know that our charitable giving is for our new Guyana link this Sunday and next – we use the orange envelopes for this. This is why I want to underline Pentecost as a Sunday which sets our eyes on the mission field. The fact that the Bishop of Guyana is visiting us in six weeks time is also relevant. We want to give him our collection personally. You can read about the new bishop and the mission of the church in Guyana by taking away a free copy of El Dorado from the back of church

Meanwhile the Holy Spirit is also filling lives around us here in Horsted Keynes. I wish more of us could have been here last Sunday night with Fr Martin when two teams ministered prayer and anointing to a group of folk who seemed to gain a real lift!

God is at work here – here and now. Let’s stand to acclaim him as we welcome the holy gospel.