“His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”
Pentecost marks the birthday of the Christian Church. It inaugurates a new and ever-renewing spiritual community that is born out of the witness of the Scriptures in their fullness. There is the gathering up of the Old Israel into the meaning and reality of the New Israel, the Christian Church.
But what is the meaning of this new creation, this spiritual community? Formed by the coming down of the Holy Spirit, it is guided and directed by the Spirit of God and reminds us of the spiritual nature of all reality, and of ourselves as spiritual creatures who live in a spiritual community and, importantly, of the qualities of our participation in that spiritual community. But what does that mean? It means our active participation in the life of God in the power of God’s spirit.
Our second lesson [1] this evening was once very familiar to everyone because of its being read at times in the Burial Office. Our first lesson [2], however, may be a little less known and yet is quite profound about the meaning of our lives in the Spirit. Isaiah’s text is the source of the concept of the seven gifts of the Spirit, gifts which have a strong and close connection to the Incarnation, to “the shoot which comes forth from the stump of Jesse,” an image of Christ in the Christian understanding of things, since Jesse is the grand-father of King David, the human lineage from which Jesus’s humanity is understood to be derived. The Spirit of the Lord was anticipated as descending upon the Messiah, the promised one of God.
But what are those gifts of the spirit? Those who were listening carefully and are especially enumerate might have counted only six gifts, there being, it seems, a repetition of “the fear of the Lord.” The Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate traditions use “piety” along with “the fear of the Lord”. The seven gifts of the Spirit are wisdom and understanding, counsel and might (or fortitude), knowledge and piety, and the fear of the Lord.
What is remarkable and noteworthy of these spiritual gifts is that they speak to qualities of soul that are unambiguously intellectual. They speak to heart and mind as seen in harmony and not as opposed to each other. They speak to a fuller sense of our spiritual being. We are creatures who think and love. Against the mindless dogmatisms of a materialist culture, this is significant and important. It is all part of the strong teaching of Pentecost which is about the Church as a spiritual community, guided and directed by Word and Spirit. As such it teaches us about the principles of spiritual and intellectual life which govern our attitude and approach to the world and to one another.
Pentecost opens us out to the gifts of the spirit which are God-given. But why “fear of the Lord”? Because that is, quite simply, “the beginning of wisdom”. It has to do with holding God in awe and wonder precisely because we cannot take him captive to our minds and hearts. It is rather the other way around.
Pentecost marks the birth of the Church and reminds us, too, that the Church must be a teaching community as well as a place of loving care. We learn from God in his Word proclaimed and his Sacraments celebrated. We learn about the truth of the spiritual community which is our home, the place of our belonging.
Our challenge is to be alive in the Spirit and find our true joy and delight in God.
“His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost, Choral Evensong
May 2012