Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

Also available to watch online.

As some of you know, I grew up in a Baptist church. It was a wonderful church and had, at least then, some defining characteristics. Unusually for a Baptist church, the minister regularly wore a dog collar, we offered up prayers of the people, and every week we would recite the traditional version of Our Father. It was also the kind of church where the only times you would raise your hands was if you were changing a lightbulb!

Down the road were the Anglicans, who had fully experienced the charismatic movement, regularly shared words of prophecy during the service, spoke in tongues, had healing services, clapped during songs and yes, raised their hands during services!

This was all a bit much too much like strong tea for us staid conservative Baptists with our green Baptist hymn books, occasional Scripture in Song, firm pews designed for utility rather than comfort, pipe organ and raised pulpit.  

And, certainly at the time, you could have looked down the road at the Anglicans and say they were filled with the Spirit and for us Baptists the Holy Spirit was the apparently silent member of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit that we read about in Pentecost, that we celebrate today, is not just about what we experience – though of course it is that; it’s also about how the Holy Spirit becomes the foundation for all else that follows, as it was the foundation stone for the building of the church, the moment from which all else followed, the missionary endeavours to all corners of the world, the proclamation and the preaching, the healing of the sick, the restoring of sight to the blind, the freeing of the captives. All this stems not from some innate set of personal qualities or charismatic personalities of its leaders, but by the work of the Spirit in, through and with the people of God.

In the gospel reading we have Jesus giving the Spirit by breathing on his disciples; Spirit and breath being synonymous in Hebrew. There aren’t the dramatics and ecstasy we read about in Acts, but nor is it pedestrian, mundane, or trivial. In the act of laying on of hands, an equivalent practice to Jesus’ breathing the Spirit on his disciples, we continue in various ways, acts, and traditions even now, the Spirit is given and received.

The Spirit is relevant, necessary even, for personal faith and witness, for equipping us for the tasks and places God calls us to, required for the renewal of life and faith. The Spirit also gives us courage in the face of doubt, strength in the presence of weakness and wisdom in moments of decision.

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, as rendered in Acts, is a study in contrasts. Here we have the “sound like the rush of a violent wind”; here we have all speaking in languages, a sound that caused bewilderment, amazement, and astonishment to the gathering crowd.  This was something new, novel, exciting, life-changing, transformative, to those experiencing it first-hand and to onlookers. It couldn’t be easily described but was easily dismissed as drunkenness.  And it has been ever thus. New movements of the Spirit, from the Welsh Revival of 1904-5 to the Asbury Revival in Kentucky earlier this year, from the Jesus Movement to the Charismatic Movement, have all confounded simple explanation, all drawn critics for its perceived excesses and all, sadly, used by people to advance their own personal causes and lust for glory and power.

What is striking about the receiving of the Spirit in John’s gospel and in Acts is that in both cases it was not by human agency, but by God’s gift. In other words, we do not have the Spirit – the Spirit has us! The Spirit came upon the disciples, came upon those gathered at Pentecost, in ways they did not design nor expect; gave them gifts they did not know they had or needed. It is a fool’s errand to try and manipulate the Spirit to our own purposes when God’s purposes are far greater and grander than our own. When we say, as we do this Pentecost Sunday, and as we may every day ‘Come Holy Spirit’ it is not for us to determine the manner and mode the Spirit comes; it is an invitation without condition; a submission without constraint; a welcome without prejudice.

And in so receiving the Spirit, we do so not just for what we may experience – though that may be a remarkable, liberating experience; it may bring us joy and peace that we have never experienced before and fill us in ways that sustain us and strengthen us. But those experiences will pass, and new ones will come. We may well have those moments of great joy, but we will also, of course, have moments of great sadness. Such is life. And the Spirit, the same Spirit, groans on our behalf, gives effect to words we cannot say and agonies we cannot express, carries these in our prayers and our cries to God, intercedes for us in our weakness.

And that is where the Spirit becomes both experiential and foundational. The experience is like the adrenalin that propels us forward and gives us a new and exciting chapter in our journey of faith. The foundation is what sustains us when the storms of life come, what keeps us going in the deep watches of the night, by which we endure the dark nights of the soul.  

The Spirit is also communal. The Spirit came on Pentecost where they were gathered together, in all their diversity, in all their many languages, nationalities, ethnicities, tongues. All of them speaking about the deeds of God in languages others could also understand.

The work of the Spirit is not just to fuel our personal piety, nor only for moments of private devotion. But the work of the Spirit, the coming of the Spirit, the receiving of the Spirit, is also about us as a community, drawing us into the life of God, calling us into the service of God, entering us into the mysteries of God, renewing us in the mission of God, opening us into the diversity of God’s people, locating us across time and space with “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” proclaiming God’s great and glorious name; and “with all the saints from whom their labours rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest, Alleluia, Alleluia.’

God’s Spirit is here: bidden and unbidden; visible and invisible; experienced and not; in joy and in sorrow; in loud speaking in tongues and in the still, small voice; in bold proclamation and in the gentle laying on of hands; in giving and in receiving; in wine and in wafer; in singing and in silence; in prayer and in listening; in Word proclaimed and Word preached; in the call to fill the hearts of God’s people and in the cry ‘Come Holy Spirit’.

Pentecost Sunday is the birth of the church. Jesus has ascended. The Spirit is descended. The Church is born.  And we, here, enter the currents of that moment.

And that church I grew up in? Well, we mightn’t have done quite so much clapping and raising of hands, but it didn’t mean the Holy Spirit was any less at work. Indeed, I am a product of the history of that church; I, too, have been part of the currents of its history.

As you can see in this photo, my grandfather Rev Frank Duncan laid the foundation stone of that church, Tawa-Linden Baptist Church, on 23 August 1964 and did a great deal more in building it up too, both literally, brick by brick, and spiritually, often through story and song, through listening to and being equipped by the Spirit for his ministry there.

And thus, the Spirit evermore, even still, draws us into the work and will of God: in my life and in yours; in the church I grew up in, and in this church; in your households, communities, and families, and in mine. And through the Spirit’s work we will grow, and we will groan; we will change, and we will find comfort; and we may even raise our hands, even if only a little, and say, pray, cry out ‘Come Holy Spirit’. To which we can all say, Amen!