Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

admin | 31 May 2009

“There came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind … and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire”

These are wonderful words which capture the Pentecostal experience. More importantly, they are wonderful words which carry us into the mystery of Pentecost itself and into its meaning. They are about something more, though surely not less, than what the experience suggests. The language here is that of metaphor in the form of simile, a sound “as of a rushing mighty wind,” things that appear and are seen, “cloven tongues, like as of fire.” Pentecost, is seems, is all theatre, son et lumière, sound and light. But what a show, what a spectacle!

The language is powerful and instructive. The Holy Spirit, of course, is not wind and fire. Plenty of that about, of course; Synod is over but a provincial election is still underway! And, of course, you may say, there are the usual Rector’s ramblings! All wind, no doubt.

Yet, wind and fire are signs that point us to the presence and truth of the spiritual reality of God. The most elusive things of the natural world, wind and fire, tangible and yet not so tangible – after all, who can see the wind, who can touch the fire? – are used to signify to us the transcendent reality of God precisely in the moment of God’s intimate engagement with our humanity.

Christ ascends and the Holy Ghost descends. Christ ascends in the humanity which he bears for us. The Holy Ghost descends to inspire our humanity with God’s Spirit. As Lancelot Andrewes puts it, at the Ascension, “He clothed with our flesh,” ascends into heaven, but, at Pentecost, “we are invested with his Spirit,” here on earth. There is a wonderful complementariety about these comings and goings of God. They convey the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity in its totality.

What is Pentecost? It is the celebration of the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples fifty days after Easter to give birth and shape to the Church. What defines the Church? Some ecstatic experience privileged to a few? And, if to a few back then, why not to a few right now? Like us or some other group of the self-selected? Synod? But who decides which experience is and which is not of the Spirit? Therein lies the problem, the problem that compels us to a deeper consideration of what we are being allowed to see in the witness of the Scriptures.

This goes to the heart of Pentecost. Pentecost counters completely the assumptions of our world and day, whether within or without the contemporary institutional church, that would make God captive to the agendas of the culture.

It is always dangerous, at least for me, to preach on Pentecost just after Synod. Not because of any particular issue necessarily, but because of the forms of overreach, confusion and uncertainty that are so, well, underwhelming. As T.S. Eliot puts it, “between the idea and the reality/ falls the shadow.”

And yet, here is the thing. For all of our follies, individually and collectively, whether as a Synod or as a Parish, somehow the Holy Spirit is at work in and through the chaos of human lives, even in and through the fallibility of the visible Church. This is, it seems to me, a significant and salutary feature of our Anglican witness.

In the present distresses of the Anglican Communion and in the face of all of the various manoeverings and machinations of various individuals and groups, there is this one strong and convincing truth that Pentecost sets before us. The Church is not created by us and for ourselves or even for the world. It is created by God, specifically by the Descent of the Holy Ghost. What does that mean?

It means the most radical and wonderful of all things, something which counters all of the idolatries of our parochial, diocesan and institutional hearts. It is this: the Descent of the Holy Ghost gives birth to the Church which exists for God; we and the world exist for God through the grace of the Spirit. Our humanity and our world only find their truth and meaning in God. The Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples gathered together again in the Upper Room inaugurates the being and the life of the Church. Pentecost, in other words, recalls us to our founding birth and to the principles that define the being of the Church.

We cannot recreate the experience, it seems to me. That is the way of idolatry and folly, but we can enter into the meaning of Pentecost. All the images of the Descent of the Holy Spirit convey the clear and simple sense that the Pentecostal experience is about unity and order, divine unity and divine order; in other words, it is about the understanding that we are to live; in short, the doctrinal understanding that shapes devotion and action.

Nowhere is this more clearly signified than in the Gospel of John, our spiritual teacher and guide throughout Eastertide and Ascensiontide. The Holy Spirit inspires, to be sure, but what is that inspiratio hominis, that inspiration of our humanity? It is about recalling us to the presence of the Son with the Father; it is about recalling his presence with us; it is about recalling the whole of the teaching of the Gospel and the nature of its engagement with all of the forms of our brokenness and folly. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” That’s the point. For all of the follies and confusions of the Anglican witness, past and present, there lies this important Pentecostal moment; the classical Anglican insistence on not insisting on anything more or otherwise than what the Scriptures and the Creeds state and which have been passed on to us. This allows for the Church’s proper engagement with a hostile and indifferent world without being taken captive to the endless and indeterminate issues and agendas du jour that always crop up and scream for attention. And always at the expense of our paying attention to God and to God in one another.

We have no unity in ourselves but only in the Word and Spirit of God. “He is the very essential unity, love, and love-knot of … the Father and the Son … of God with God,” as Andrewes so concisely puts it, “And he is sent to be the union, love and love-knot of the two natures united in Christ; even of God with man.” Note the emphasis on the Trinity and the Incarnation and note the role of the Spirit for such teaching.

This is the wonder and the mystery of Pentecost. The human community has no unity in itself – remember the story of the Tower of Babel! The unity of the human community can only be found in God, in the unity of the Trinity, in the descent of the Spirit who makes there to be one understanding out of the conflict and confusion of many tongues; literally, out of the noise of the nations. What is heard is the praise of God, the God who has revealed himself to us and who has bestowed upon our humanity such dignity and grace. The Spirit of order moves over the chaos of human tongues and moves even in and through “the devices and desires” of human hearts. The Ascension of Christ raises our human nature in the Incarnate Son to the heights of heaven, to a place with God. The Descent of the Holy Ghost inspires us with the spirit of God who keeps us in the fellowship of God. It is all captured in the liturgy but so as to be realized in our lives.

So what does that mean, you may ask? Well, it means not demanding that our own experiences, our own agendas and fixations, our own compulsions and obsessions, be what defines the Church and God, or, for that matter, ourselves. The struggle is to place the concerns and issues of the day with God. We can only do that through the comforting and inspiring power of the Holy Spirit who recalls the words of Christ to us in the Scriptures and the liturgy and who challenges us to live out of what we have received. It is the struggle and the challenge which we all face. “Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire,” as the 17th century bishop of Durham, John Cosin memorably put it in a translation of the Latin hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. It has become part of the ordination service for priests in The Book of Common Prayer. It captures perfectly the meaning of Pentecost and, perhaps, just perhaps, it may be the vehicle through which the Holy Spirit will guide, govern, direct and rule our hearts, “teach[ing] us to know the Father, Son, and thee, of both, to be but One.”

May I ask you to turn to page 653 of the Prayer Book and to join with me as we pray this hymn together? In saying it, we pray that God the Holy Spirit may guide us into the mystery of Pentecost.

COME, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, / And lighten with celestial fire.
Thou the anointing Spirit art, / Who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.
Thy blessed Unction from above / Is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Enable with perpetual light / The dulness of our blinded sight.
Anoint and cheer our soiled face /With the abundance of thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home: / Where thou art guide, no ill can come.
Teach us to know the Father, Son, / And thee, of both, to be but One;
That, through the ages all along, / This may be our endless song:
Praise to thy eternal merit, / Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.