by CCW | 8 June 2014 14:56
The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in the upper room gives birth to the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life. Just consider the rich wisdom of the Scriptures about the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit moves over the waters and brings into life the creation which has been spoken into being. The Holy Spirit breathes “the breath of life” into “the adam” – our humanity formed from the dust – “and so man became a living creature.”
The Holy Spirit bestows the seven-fold gifts of spiritual understanding upon Israel and Israel becomes the prophetic mission signaling God’s will and purpose for the whole world. The Holy Spirit revives the calcified bones and atrophied limbs of a wilderness people who are dead to the Word of God and so Israel is recalled to her mission and life.
The Holy Spirit overshadows the womb of Mary “according to thy Word” and Christ the Eternal Son of the Father is made incarnate, quickened to life and brought to birth, “conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,” as professed in the Creeds. In all these things, the Holy Spirit descends, “comes down,” and there is life and order and truth. And nowhere more profoundly than on this day, Pentecost.
What is Pentecost? Nothing less than the celebration of the Descent of the Holy Spirit to become the Spirit of the Church, the Spirit of redeeming and sanctifying life, the Spirit of grace and renewal, the Spirit which gives life and meaning to the Sacraments. The Descent of the Holy Spirit in these tangible yet elusive images of wind and fire brings clarity to all the motions of God’s descending grace. It signals our life in the Spirit, our life with God in Word and Spirit.
And yet, perhaps, therein lies the problem. The coming down of the Holy Spirit conveys the conceit, on our part, of possession and control in the tyranny of experience and emotion. We so easily lose sight of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of order and truth without which life is barren and empty; a culture of nihilism that results in death and destruction as we saw this week in the sad events of the deaths of the RCMP officers in Moncton. The spirit of Pentecost is the counter to such destructive emptiness. That is why the lessons reveal at once the experience of Pentecost and its intellectual and spiritual truth and meaning.
The experience of Pentecost is not just the extraordinary scene of “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire.” Out of the confusion and babble of the nations there is the unity and order of a common understanding. This complements the strong message of the Gospel which would hold us to the word and commandments of God. The Spirit “shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” The Word has life and power in the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit “guide[s] [us] into all truth.” The Holy Spirit “teach[es] [us] all things and bring all things to [our] remembrance.” In a way, the whole life and history of the Church is captured in the interplay of those two phrases. There can and should be a deepening of our understanding but it cannot be at the expense of what has been revealed and shown in the words of Christ. The very meaning of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter – the strengthener – is that we are comforted and strengthened in the Revealed Word of God. We grow up into a way of understanding and life, not away from what we have received and heard.
Salvation is our being with Christ in his being with the Father in the Spirit. Yet we can only enter into that life by way of the same means as it has been given, namely, by grace. The Descent of the Holy Spirit teaches us this lesson by constantly recalling us to the words of Christ, even more, by recalling us to the Word who is Christ, the Eternal Word and Son of the Father. We have only to grow into the understanding of the mystery of our life in Christ. It is the task and the struggle of our lives.
But how can we do it? Only by the power of the Holy Spirit “teaching [us] all things and bringing all things to [our] remembrance.” And how shall that be accomplished? Only through our life in the body of Christ where we are taught and reminded of what belongs to our identity together and individually in the body of Christ. There is more to Pentecost than the experience of Pentecost, the ecstasy of wind and fire, as it were; there is as well the teaching and the apprehension of its meaning in heart and mind. We take hold of what has been received and heard, seen and shared. Only so are we alive, alive to God and to one another.
By the Descent of the Holy Spirit we are called out of ourselves and into the life of God.
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost 2014, 8:00am
Christ Church
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2014/06/08/sermon-for-pentecost-800am-holy-communion/
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