Pentecost 27th May 2012

On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the Holy Spirit’s vital and vitalising role.

He is God in the present moment bringing all that Jesus has done for us into play here and now. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability This was so that right there in Jerusalem and right now in Horsted Keynes the love of God might be communicated mind to mind and heart to heart.

Christianity is a seizing with exhilaration upon the wonder of God seen as never seen before in the coming, dying and rising of Jesus Christ.

It means if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If God had a wallet, your photo would be in it.

God loves us so much that though he can live anywhere in the universe he seeks to live in a place only you can allow him to live – in your open heart.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth Saint John writes. That truth is of our making by God, our redeeming by the Son of God and our being made holy by the Spirit of God.

As Pascal said, holiness is the church’s greatest influence. When God gets into people’s lives it makes them holy enlarging their hearts and it shows. It brings our humanity into its right mind as the Holy Spirit rights what’s wrong in us.

God, who gave us life, loves us so much, with all our shortcomings, he wants to give us his life, to dwell deep within us, for that is why we were made.

The truth of God and of ourselves is this – God loves us and loves us just as we are – but he loves us too much to leave us that way and so he offers us the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us.

Pentecost as Feast of the Spirit is a Feast of truth-telling as we heard in the reading from the Acts. The Holy Spirit brought the truth of God’s love into all those national groups, Parthians, Medes, Elamites and so on by his miraculous translation through the gift of tongues.

Holiness and truth communicated with love and power.

This truth of God’s desire to fill every human heart with holy love, according to St Paul, already infects the universe, as he writes in Romans 8 verse 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

I have seen and met on occasion people whose godliness contained a force it was hard to resist. There’s something of this around in St Giles – would there were more - since holiness is indeed the church’s greatest influence.

So today, and always, our prayer should be Come Holy Spirit and kindle in us the fire of your love! Or, as in the Psalm set for today, Psalm 104: Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and holiness. He’s also the power of God. At the eucharist we speak in the Creed of Christ’s incarnation being accomplished from the Holy Spirit. We pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit the gifts of bread and wine may be changed. Send the Holy Spirit on your people we pray. And lastly send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.

The Holy Spirit is into application – making God take flesh, making bread and wine God’s vehicles, taking us out into the world as those first disciples went so that in [their] own languages [they] hear [us] speaking about God’s deeds of power.

So how can we make Pentecost more applicable in our own lives this morning?

Each eucharist is meant to be a mini-Pentecost, each Holy Communion an individual Pentecost, set within the Spirit sealed communion of the Church whose birthday we mark today.

I end with a vivid illustration of the application of the Holy Spirit to life from a book entitled ‘Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia’ by Donald Nicholl. The tale, from the Second World War, is of how the Holy Spirit moved a group of women to show compassion towards German war prisoners. Here it is.

‘In ‘41 Mama took me back to Moscow. There I saw our enemies for the first time...nearly 20,000 German war prisoners were to be marched in a single column through the streets...The pavements swarmed with onlookers, cordoned off by soldiers and police. The crowd was mostly women - Russian women with hands roughened by hard work, lips untouched by lipstick, and thin hunched shoulders which had borne half the burden of the war. Every one of them must have a father or a husband, a brother or a son killed by the Germans. They gazed with hatred in the direction which the column was to appear. At last we saw it. The general marched at the head, massive chins stuck out, lips folded disdainfully, their whole demeanour meant to show superiority over their plebian victors.

‘They smell of eau de Cologne, the bastards’, someone in the crowd said with hatred. The women were clenching their fists. The soldiers and policemen had all they could do to hold them back. All at once something happened to them. They saw German soldiers, thin, unshaven, wearing dirty blood-stained bandages, hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulder of their comrades: the soldiers walked with their heads down. The street became dead silent - the only sound was the shuffling of boots and the thumping of crutches.

‘Then I saw an elderly woman in broken-down boots push herself forward and touch a policeman’s shoulder, saying, “Let me through”. There must have been something about her that made him step aside. She went up to the column, took from inside her coat something wrapped in a coloured handkerchief and unfolded it. It was a crust of black bread. She pushed it awkwardly into the pocket of the soldier, so exhausted that he was tottering on his feet. And then suddenly from every side women were running towards the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes, whatever they had. The soldiers were no longer enemies. They were people’.

‘Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia’ - that was the title of the book containing this impressive tale.

‘Triumphs of the Spirit in Horsted Keynes - this is what this Sermon is angling for as God’s People at St. Giles take Pentecost literally to heart.

The moral of the story we heard is, whatever grand spiritual aspirations we make the Holy Spirit is closest to us when we are about our neighbours, sorting out our destructive attitudes, putting love in where there is none, recognising the humanity of those who are somewhat blind to ours.

This is the humble work of Jesus’ redemption being applied to our lives and through our lives to others. It starts in us here as by the power of the Holy Spirit the gifts of bread and wine are taken and given so that sent out in the power of the Spirit we might live and work to God’s praise and glory.

Living in his holiness and truth communicating his love through his empowerment!

Come Holy Spirit and kindle in us the fire of your love! Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth – starting with me!