Pentecost

We are accustomed to celebrating Pentecost as a “red day” wearing red clothes and sometimes having red balloons and banners and cardboard doves in the church building. This is not a “modern” development. In 13 century, Bishop Durandus wrote of Pentecost celebration with masses of red rose leaves, actual doves, and sparks of fire blown over the congregation. There was no risk assessment requirement back then.

Also, Pentecost has been celebrated as Whitsunday (white Sunday) with white robes acknowledging the Baptisms which took place that day and the connection of Pentecost with Easter. 

Often, at Pentecost, we have the reading from Acts Ch 2 which tells of the Holy Spirit coming to the Apostles in tongues of fire. There’s rushing wind and speaking in foreign languages. The crowd says these followers of the crucified Jesus are drunk with new wine.  They seem to be so affected by this Holy Spirit that they are babbling like drunks about having the resurrected Lord Jesus in their lives.

Today the lectionary gave us another well-known reading from Ezekiel Chapter 37. The prophet Ezekiel tells the story of the valley of dry bones. This gives us a clear example of why we need to keep Bible passages in context. Four chapters earlier in Ezekiel Ch 33v10, God’s disheartened people in exile in Babylon ask God “How then can we live?” The story of the dry bones is an important part of God’s answer to that question. The answer is that the exiles cannot live without God.

Life requires the Spirit of God. The Spirit of the Lord is a central motif in the dry bones story. Spirit or Breath occurs 10 times in the 14 verses. God makes it clear to the prophet that it is the Spirit that gives life. The Spirit of God can give people life even in the wilderness, even in exile. There is hope for people who say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely”. God is perfectly capable of reversing a situation of being dry and completely cut off.

So, with this sense that somehow God’s Spirit brings life even if we are disheartened and feel cut off, we celebrate Pentecost.  As God’s people, we try to understand what the Holy Spirit means to us.

There are some serious misconceptions of Pentecost. Sometimes there is the thought that Pentecost is the “birthday” of the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit was there at creation “sweeping over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2) 

Another misconception is the thought that Pentecost is the “birthday” of the Church. Yet God’s people have always been God’s people. Pentecost is a significant milestone or marker in the life of God’s people, but not the beginning of the Church.

All that can be a bit confusing. Yet thankfully we have the Bible to help explain Holy Spirit to us.

The Ezekiel reading helped and so does the passage from the Gospel according to John we have heard today. John reports Jesus’ farewell speech to his friends which begins with Jesus saying he will send the Advocate from the Father. This isn’t a consolation prize because we have suffered the loss of Jesus. This is simply Jesus promising to give us something really good; to send us the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, who will testify on Jesus’ behalf.

Our understanding is that an advocate is a supporter of people up on charges in a courtroom. An advocate is a mediator, counsellor, comforter; one who advises, assists, and makes representations on behalf of someone else.

The image of the Spirit as Comforter has been misunderstood throughout history. The comfort provided by an advocate is the comfort of sound advice and direction. Not mere condolence. Therefore, we are to see that this comfort provided by the Holy Spirit is not merely emotional; it’s actual, factual and practical support.

Jesus says he will send to us from the Father, the “Spirit of Truth”. This Spirit of Truth gives us confidence to share honestly with other people; to speak and hear and understand each other.

And the Spirit of Truth opens us up to the Bible’s story about who we are and what we are doing here.

We are God’s people. It is through the Holy Spirit that God reveals himself to us. It is through the Holy Spirit that we can hear God speak. And it’s also through the Holy Spirit that we are able to speak to God.

The Holy Spirit is that power, that gift of God, that enables us to see that God wants to have a relationship of close connection with us. There is something about our God that loves to talk to us. God yearns for us to speak up and answer.

This is an amazing reality. Our God communicates! Isn’t that what we expect when we come to worship? In the readings, the preaching, the silence, the prayers and the singing, aren’t we expecting to hear God and to have God listen to us? We have to be careful not to put God aside in our services; to shut God out.  Boldness and confidence to respond to God is needed. We are encouraged to be absolutely certain that God is listening to each of us as we struggle to express something to God.

So, Pentecost is the time that we celebrate the relationship with God made possible by the Holy Spirit. Time to give thanks to God for being so communicative, so talkative, so lovingly self-revealing. The Holy Spirit helps us to find the words to praise God as we should, to speak to God in words and music that are more beautiful that we ourselves could devise so that God might speak to us words more wonderful than we could ever anticipate by ourselves.

How does this work?   Paul says (in Rom 8:26), the Holy Spirit enables godly, truthful speech because the Holy Spirit is interceding and pleading with God for us. By ourselves, we are not very capable in our ability to speak to God. “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” Fortunately, the Spirit “intercedes with sighs too deep for words”. The Holy Spirit steps in for us, finding the words for us that we want to speak to God.  Isn’t that amazing? Wonderful? The Holy Spirit is not only the way that God speaks to us, reveals God to us, but is also the way that we are enabled to speak to God. The Holy Spirit is that power, that gift of God that enables us to be in loving conversational relationship with God. The great Wesley hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to sing, our loosened tongues employ” is answered. The Holy Spirit will make our tongues work brilliantly.

However, knowing all this doesn’t make it happen easily. There’s no doubt that often we find it really difficult to hear God and even more difficult to speak to God. This is the main reason people give for why they do not pray. They say, “I can’t really hear God and I didn’t know what to say, or which words to use”.

But the Holy Spirit does step in to make it happen! If I ever find the right words to say something that touches your heart in a sermon, it’s not because I am a brilliant preacher; it’s because God gave me the words. Likewise, if you ever consciously hear anything in a sermon, despite all of the perfectly good reasons why you might not, it’s because the Holy Spirit has enabled you to hear.

Have you ever had the experience when reading the Bible or listening to a Bible reading, when you come to a familiar passage and think “O really!  Here we go again. I know this passage so well” But then, some word or some phrase jumps out at you, really claims your attention and gives you an unexpected new insight.  That’s the Holy Spirit at work.

Christianity is a “revealed religion” which is a fancy way of saying that you don’t “get it,” it “gets you.” You can’t just think to make Jesus present, he has to be given to you. It must come from “on high.” The best Bible study, the best listening to sermons, is a form of prayer; that humble listening, that waiting on the gift of God.

We need this gift of the Holy Spirit, this Spirit of Jesus, this Spirit of Truth, to help us bring out the power we have within us; the power we have to make the world a better place. We need the Holy Spirit, and we have the Holy Spirit so that we too, connected to God, can become fearless witnesses of Jesus Christ. Each of us has been called by Christ and sent out in the Spirit to continue the message of Christ.

 Let us have the courage of our convictions to go out in faith and be Christ's presence in our hurting world.