Sermon for Pentecost
“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”
What is that day? It is Pentecost, this day, the fiftieth day after Easter when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples to establish the Church as the spiritual community of our abiding in the Trinity. And what a day! Wind and fire, as it were, the most elusive and intangible of tangible things, signify the spiritual presence of God through the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father and the Son. Out of the chaos and confusion of tongues come order and praise, worship and life, light and love, and the peace of God. Pentecost recalls us to the spiritual mystery of God and to our being with God in the spiritual community shaped and informed by the Spirit, the Church. “Christ, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear”.
Things seen and heard betoken an understanding of things invisible and spiritual. “A sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues, like as of fire.” There is everything in those little words “as of” and “like as”. The Holy Spirit is not wind and fire. The winds and fires of our world are nothing in comparison to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son. We have seen the conflagration of wind and fire that has destroyed Fort McMurray, for instance, and there is the deep memory, too, of the Great Fire of Windsor in 1897 which destroyed nearly three-quarters of the town, a fire which this building somehow miraculously escaped. We know about the fire-storms and wind-storms, too, of human hearts in disarray. We know about the fire-storms and wind-storms of our contemporary social and political landscape, globally and locally. We know, too, about the fire-storms and wind-storms of the churches in their various confusions, sins and follies. Confusion and chaos seem at times almost rampant and overwhelming. Pentecost is really the wonderful counter to all of the forms of confusion and chaos of our world and day.
