Click here to listen to audio file of the Services of Mattins & Ante-Communion for Pentecost
“If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father,
and he shall give you another Comforter”
“Another Comforter”, Jesus says, and one that “may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of Truth”. It is a wonderful and profound statement about God and about our life with God. Jesus is the Comforter who has redeemed our humanity by gathering all things into his love for the Father. In his redeeming work, we are recalled to our end in God. Why then “another Comforter”? A substitute for Jesus? A consolation prize? No. It is all about our life in the Spirit of God. Such is the great wonder and mystery of Pentecost or Whitsunday. It is not just God for us but God in us.
“To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”, Paul wisely tells us, words which perhaps speak to the fears of death in our current Covid dilemmas. Pentecost looks back to the Jewish celebration of the giving of the Law on the fiftieth day after Passover; the Ten Commandments as the universal moral code of our humanity and our freedom, our freedom to and with God in his will for us. In the Christian understanding, Pentecost is the celebration of the descent of the Holy Ghost or Spirit upon the disciples gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, a celebration of grace which does not annihilate nature and law but perfects them both. The Holy Spirit is the love-knot of the Father and the Son. What joins them now joins us with them.
Wind and fire. These are the sensible and physical images that convey something invisible and spiritual. Such too is the logic of the sacraments; outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. It is not just Christ who is the Alpha and Omega of our lives. “The Holy Ghost”, as Lancelot Andrewes says (Andrewes, Whitsunday Sermon 1610), “is the Alpha and Omega of all our solemnities”, all our rituals of remembrance, all our life sacramentally in memoria. “In His coming down all the feasts begin”. He goes on to highlight the essential presence and work of the Spirit in the mysteries of the Faith. “At His annunciation, when He descended on the Blessed Virgin, whereby the Son of God did take our nature, the nature of man”, the beginning of the Incarnation. “And in the Holy Ghost’s coming they end, even in His descending this day upon the sons of men, whereby they actually become ‘partakers of the divine nature’, the nature of God”. Pentecost is the Spirit’s “last and greatest coming”, he suggests, for in this text by Jesus we have “the promise and the performance”, the accomplishment of what belongs to the truth of our humanity. In the coming down of the Holy Spirit we are made “partakers of the divine nature”, if we keep his commandments.
We are returned to our beginning and end in God but as abiding in his Word and Spirit. The two are distinct but inseparable. It is in and with the Spirit that we attend to the Word of the Father’s Son such that his Word lives in us. Word and Spirit, reason and love, are intimately connected, not opposed. “If ye love me, keep my commandments”, Jesus says. “And I will pray the Father. And the Father shall give you another Comforter that will abide with you for ever”. “The Comforter is the Spirit of truth”, he says, “sent in his name”. In Andrewes’ theological perspective, the descent of the Holy Ghost is the divinization of our humanity, a kind of theosis in the outpouring of the gifts of grace that properly perfect, dignity, and ennoble our humanity. This is the great comfort for our troubled souls and minds; it is life and peace if we set our minds on the Spirit by keeping the commandments of Christ. They are the commandments to love; to love God and to love one another.
The development of the lectionaries in the Common Prayer tradition is about keeping the commandments. The patterns of reading have entirely to do with our life in and with God the Trinity. An interesting feature of that development over the centuries and into modern times, was the provision, just over a hundred years ago, for two sets of readings for the Sunday Offices/ Services of Morning and Evening Prayer; readings for Year 1 and Year 2 based on whether the First Sunday in Advent fell in a year with an even number or an odd number. This allowed for a greater exposure to the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures in conjunction with the doctrinal or teaching aspects of the more ancient Eucharistic lectionary. The main point is that Scripture is a doctrinal instrument of salvation. It is read as belonging to our incorporation into the life of God in prayer and praise, in sacrament and sacrificial service.
But what is most interesting is that the readings for the major festivals, such as Christmas and the Sundays after Christmas, for Epiphany, for Palm Sunday and Easter, for Whitsunday or Pentecost, and for Trinity Sunday, provide only one set of lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer. What this means is a doctrinal sensibility that sees certain Scripture readings as essential to the doctrinal mysteries signalled in those feasts and solemnities. There is something significant about the readings appointed for Pentecost both at Communion and in the Offices.
What are they? First, the Old Testament lesson at Morning Prayer for Pentecost is from the prophet Joel about God “pouring out [his] spirit on all flesh”(Joel 2. 28) complemented by the Evening Prayer lesson from Isaiah (11.1-3) about the seven gifts of the Spirit (six in the Hebrew but seven in the Septuagint which influenced the Latin Vulgate and became part of a rich tradition of spirituality). Secondly, the second lessons at both Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are from chapter eight of the Epistle to the Romans which spells out in splendid fashion the nature of our life in the Spirit. In short, these lessons help us to understand in a very compelling way the nature of our incorporation into the life of God. It is altogether about our life in the Spirit.
It gives us a way to face “the certain [un]certainties” of our world day (T.S. Eliot, The Preludes IV). . Pentecost marks the new birth of the Spirit in our lives as a community, the Church. In and through the diversities of tongues and cultures, one thing is made known: the wonderful works of God. The mystery of Pentecost is about how we are held in the works of God, about how we are with God despite the trials and tribulations, the chaos and uncertainties of our times. It is about our attention to the Word of God, and finding in the Spirit the way to understand them. Such is the guidance and leadership of the Holy Spirit of truth and love. Such is the true meaning of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, “the blessed company of all faithful people”(BCP, p. 85). It requires nothing less than our faithful attention and commitment to the demands of love.
“If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father,
and he shall give you another Comforter”
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost, 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 outbreak.