by CCW | 15 May 2016 15:00
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.
Pentecost reminds us of the radical nature of God and of God’s engagement with our world and our humanity. There is the paradox that in God’s coming down we are lifted up into a deeper and profounder understanding of ourselves as spiritual creatures who live in a spiritual community, one that is shaped and moved by God’s Word and Spirit. Unlike the winds and fires of our disordered world, the wind and fire of the Spirit signal order and life, unity and love, and peace, peace “not as the world giveth” but the peace that “I give unto you”, Jesus says.
The lesson from Acts tells the story of the Pentecostal event. It is an obvious reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel, a story about the confusion and division of the peoples who, because of pride and presumption, are scattered into disunity throughout the world in different languages, unable to communicate. The disciples, gathered “with one accord” in Jerusalem, “were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” and yet, instead of confusion and chaos, there is unity and order. “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God”.
Pentecost redeems the babble of the world and gathers us into a community of praise. The strong lesson is that the human community has no order and truth in itself but only in God.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of unity and order. “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, And lighten with celestial fire;/Thou the anointing Spirit art,/ Who dost thy sev’nfold gifts impart” as the Veni Creator Spiritus in Bishop John Cosin’s lovely translation in the Prayer Book puts it (BCP, p. 653). And what are those seven-fold gifts? They are the gifts of the Spirit. They are the spiritual and intellectual qualities of the soul, not material and physical things. They are the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, as Isaiah teaches, and the spirit, too, of piety as the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, which was the Scripture of the early Church, adds; hence, the long standing idea and tradition of the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. They are the gifts that embrace and gather us to God in worship and in truth. They signal the highest potentialities of our humanity. Not only do we have an end with God in the everlasting reason of God signaled in the Ascension and Session of Christ, but we participate in the divine life now through the gifts of the spirit made manifest in the teaching life of the worshipping church.
The Gospel for Pentecost is, once again, taken from the so-called “farewell discourse” of John’s Gospel which has guided and taught us throughout the greater part of Eastertide and Ascensiontide, as well as in Holy Week. It has been the formative gospel of our instruction throughout these holy times and seasons. Jesus has been at pains to open us out to the larger meaning and reality of God, teaching us unequivocally that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching us that the Spirit of the Father and the Son will “lead [us] into all truth”, that the Spirit of the Father and the Son, “shall teach [us] all things and will bring all things to [our] remembrance.” The whole truth of the Church’s being and the dynamic of the Church’s life and story is captured in those two phrases. And what are all those things? “Whatsoever I have said unto you”. Word and Spirit go hand in hand.
The whole pageant of God’s Word in the witness of the Scriptures is comprehended in the creeds and in the pattern of holy doctrine and worship and life that arises from the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the ordered and disciplined life of the Church. When we forget that, then we are at the mercy of ourselves in the idolatry of our experiences, confused and in disarray, buffeted about by the wind-storms and fire-storms of the confusions of human experience. The paradox is that only in the Spirit of God revealed in the pattern of order and doctrine can there be the redemption and the sanctification of experience. Pentecost signals the redemption and the sanctification of human experience by gathering us into the life of God revealed. That life is the meaning of the Church as the spiritual community of the Trinity, the place of our abiding in the love of God.
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/05/15/sermon-for-pentecost-5/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.