by CCW | 23 May 2021 06:00
Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for the Day of Pentecost[1]
Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly unsettle us most of all. We live in rather unsettling times because of the Covid-19 pandemic and all of the disruptions that it has occasioned. This prompts the question as to whether we are simply and completely determined by things outside our control. To be blunt, you cannot blame Covid-19 on Christ Church or Windsor or Nova Scotia or Canada or China or Wuhan. It is not so simple. It is a modern pandemic which has to do with global mobility and the inequalities socially and economically among so many in our so-called global world. We are all, in that sense, completely implicated in our current unsettledness. Everything comes down to the spirit in us by which we confront our struggles and concerns; in short, about how we think about ourselves in relation to one another.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Pentecost might provide us with a way to think about things more universally and yet profoundly local. There are things which unsettle us, perhaps, never more so than in these unsettling times. But is it so with the Descent of the Holy Ghost? He came down suddenly upon the disciples, we are told, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read, his coming unexpectedly we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost. We are meant, it seems, to be settled upon what comes to us even in unsettling times.
Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realisation of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”
Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire,” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances an event most unsettling, at once exotic and ecstatic.
We all know about the winds that unsettle us – the rushing mighty winds of rumour and slander, of whisperings and murmurings, of allegations and accusations which seek to belittle and destroy. The winds of hatred and revenge, of judgement and accusation, are the winds of death. These are the winds that unsettle us as sure as the sea-storms which come up suddenly and trouble our ships upon the waters. But in our current situation, we live in the midst of other uncertainties, the uncertainties of those claiming to speak in the chimera of ‘science,’ those who rightly demand our acquiescence to this restriction and this but at the same time suggesting their own uncertainty, their own sense of the provisional and the uncertain which belongs, to be sure, to the truth of modern science. To be up-front about this is really about transparency and honesty, a check on our presumption and pride. To be patient about all of the forms of uncertainty that swirl around us is our current struggle and demand, a check upon our frustrations and judgements.
In the face of these unsettling circumstances, both now and past, Jesus would not have us unsettled and troubled. In the midst of the sea-storms of our hearts and our world, even in the midst of the sea-storms of our churches and our communities, he bids the seas be calm and our hearts be still; “it is I”, he says, “have no fear.” “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
The ‘wind’ of Pentecost is a rushing mighty wind but it is not given to unsettle us. The Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost in sound “as of a rushing mighty wind” and in sight as “cloven tongues like as of fire,” that through wind and fire, through sight and sound, something more that is something beyond, something holy and true, might be known and communicated, revealed and heard, seen and felt. Such are the motions of the Holy Spirit coming down, not to unsettle us, for such are the winds of the world, but to settle us upon the word and will of God.
The wonderful readings for Pentecost help to settle us upon the things of God. As with Christmas and Epiphany, Palm Sunday and Easter, so too with Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, there is a set pattern of readings for these feasts in the Sunday Offices instead of the alternating provisions for Year 1 and Year 2 for the other Sundays. This suggests the spiritual and doctrinal significance of certain readings for our understanding. Thus for Pentecost (or Whitsunday), at Matins the Old Testament reading is from The Book of Joel about God pouring out his spirit on all flesh, about sons and daughters prophesying, old men dreaming dreams and young men seeing visions on what is said to be “the terrible day of the Lord.” Terrible equally conveys the sense of wonder, an ambiguity which is captured in Sophocles’ play, Antigone, where the Chorus observes that “many are the wonderful things but the most wonderful thing of all is man.” Wonderful there is equally terrible in the sense of danger and destruction, the terror of our humanity. But here the sense of the terrible and the wonderful is about God and about God’s dealings with our humanity.
The Christian sense of this reading from Joel focuses on the wonder of God’s spirit poured out upon our humanity to be our life. This is further elaborated in the readings from Romans 8 at Matins and Evensong, a veritable treatise on the Holy Spirit who “helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words,” the Spirit who keeps us in the love of the Father and the Son. The evening Old Testament Lesson from Isaiah 11, as derived from the Septuagint and Vulgate translations, provides us with the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit, gifts which are intellectual and spiritual given to guide and govern our lives. This has shaped the lovely devotional hymn, the Veni Creator Spiritus which you can find in the 17th century translation by John Cosin in the Prayer Book in the service for the Ordination of Priests (p. 653). It serves as a powerful meditation for Pentecost and its meaning for us, a way of settling us upon the wonder of God’s engagement with our humanity even in difficult times.
All of this is crystallised and concentrated in the Gospel reading from John which proclaims the radical meaning of the coming of the Spirit of truth, the Comforter. Our Lord, who promises the Holy Ghost, says unto his disciples “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” And how shall that be except through the gift of the Holy Ghost? He who is the bond of the Father’s love for the Son and the principle of their abiding in love comes down that we may abide in their love. “If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” And how shall we keep his words but by the Holy Spirit who “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”? All things and all the things which Christ has said to us – his word written in the order of Redemption, the things revealed, and his word written in the order of Creation, the things that are made. For there is no truth, whether of nature or of grace, which does not belong to Christ, no truth that is known as truth which does not come from and return to Christ, except by way of the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would settle us upon the order of his love – God’s word and commandments – and would have us abide in his life – the love of the Father and the Son. Therein is peace, not as the world gives, but as found in God. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” These words speak to us in our current uncertainties and fears. They settle us upon the things of God.
The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of unity and order. And so, too, his coming down means order and unity, the order and unity of our lives together in the all-togetherness of God. Out of the confusion of the tongues of the world, out of the Babel of the nations, comes the one word of God’s praise. In the midst of the many of the world’s peoples, all are one “hearing them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”
This is the marvel and the truth of this day upon which we should be settled. This is a different wind from the unsettling, soul-destroying, troubling winds of this world. Here is God’s wind, even God the Holy Spirit, who would settle us upon his love and order, in short, our lives upon his truth.
Fr. David Curry
Pentecost, May 23rd, 2021
(under lockdown conditions)
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2021/05/23/sermon-for-pentecost-9/
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