27th May 2007
John 14.23-29
Pentecost

There is a story that may even originally have been true.  I’ve come across it in a number of places.  It is said that a Japanese convert from Shintoism to Christianity, who was struggling hard to understand Christian concepts, went to his missionary very puzzled and said he wanted to ask a question.  'Most high person of honourable father I understand', he said.  'Honourable Son I understand too, but please who is this holy bird?'
That I think underlines the difficulty we can sometimes have in trying to explain the Holy Spirit.  God the Father, God the Son are images we can take on board with comparative ease but who, or what, is the Holy Spirit?  He --- or It --- or She has been described in the Bible as a bird, a dove, a rushing wind, a gentle breeze, tongues of fire, a breath of life, a welling spring of water, a helper, an advocate, counsellor, comforter, paraclete.  These are all words that have been used and they all describe facets of the Spirit.
Is any of this imagery helpful?  Well presumably it was to all the various people who thought of those descriptions and each of us might find any one of those possibly helpful or possibly not.  They may or may not work for us.  An image I have found personally helpful is a phrase I once read.
'The Holy Spirit is the window to everything that God in Christ means'.
For me this underlines something about the Holy Spirit.  Like a window you look through it but not at it and yet it is vitally important because if it did not exist you would not be able to look at all.  It is invisible but essential.
But, in describing the Holy Spirit as being like a window, I have already fallen into the trap that all those other people fell into when they described it as a bird, wind, fire etc.  One of our human limitations seems to be that we can only ever describe things in terms of something else and we almost invariably choose to describe something as a person or an object.
But the Holy Spirit is a great deal more than a person or an object and it can’t really be pinned down which is why we can tie ourselves in knots trying to explain it.  The Holy Spirit IS all the things we have said it is but it is more.  You could say it isn’t a Think, it’s a Feel.  It is a force.  It is God in action.  It is the outgoing power of God at work – in creation – in history – in the present – and in us.  We live in the age of the Spirit.  It is something that can come to us and fill us and stir us and move us and change us.
When the Old Testament prophets spoke for God they received gifts that did not originate in them.  They were filled with God’s spirit and were empowered to speak his word.  A different kind of example is this.  One of my friends once met Dame Sibyl Thorndyke when she was over 90.  During their conversation she spoke one of the most famous speeches from Shaw’s St Joan and my friend was astonished at the change which came over her.  The frail, little, old lady, crippled with arthritis, suddenly stood up, straight and transformed.  My friend said 'She was no longer herself.  The spirit of St Joan glowed in her and the years dropped away from her as she declaimed the lines that Shaw wrote and taught her'.
That must have been something like the old prophets.  They ceased to be themselves for a while.  It must also have been like that at Pentecost when the Apostles received the Holy Spirit.  Something happened to them.  They were changed.  And something changed for all of us at Pentecost.  The distinctive thing about Pentecost is that it was the moment when the Holy Spirit became a corporate reality, a shared possession of the whole people of God.  In the Old Testament the Spirit of God came only upon certain outstanding individuals, prophets, kings etc.  In the New Testament all the Lord’s people are prophets.
That occasion which we read about in Acts Chapter Two and which we celebrate today must have been mind-blowingly astounding and dramatic and must have come as a total shock to the worried, frightened little group sheltering behind locked doors.  Nothing like that has probably ever happened to any of us and, whether we would like it to happen or whether we would rather it didn’t happen, it probably won’t.  Someone once suggested that we might think of that first Pentecost as rather like an oil company discovering a rich source of oil.  There is a violent eruption which bursts into flame and burns for many days before it is brought under control and pumped through the pipes to do its job.
We may not be able to go back to those early fireworks but the power of the spirit in human life, even if it began with such dramatic excitement, is shown in its fruits and above all in that love, in that passionate concern for others without which all the rest is futile.
Sometimes today with all our good ideas for trying to do things better, we can forget Paul’s warning that we can give our bodies to be burned and dole out all our goods to the poor but without love at the heart of it all it is worth nothing – nothing.  In the end it is love which endures and love is the greatest gift of the Spirit.  So how do we receive the spirit?  We need to look for the occasions on which our actions have been better than they might have been.  There is no difficulty in knowing what better means.  St Paul gives us a check list.  We need to think of times when we have shown love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control.  Times when we think we have been our best selves are times when we have been open enough to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us.
But just because we may never know the fireworks of that first Pentecost, even if we never have a dramatic experience in the spirit as some of our evangelical brothers and sisters do, we need not feel that we have lost out because our spiritual path may have been different, quieter, slower.  In some parts of the world the dawning of the day is sudden.  One moment it is darkness and the next moment there is the light of the new day.  Further away from the Equator the dawning of light is far more gradual, it goes through a long, pale beginning of light before day finally dawns.  It doesn’t matter how the light dawns for us, the important thing is that it does dawn.  It doesn’t matter by what path we come into the light of Christ, we can simply come and rejoice in it.
It doesn’t matter which of the many names or descriptions of the Holy Spirit is most relevant to each of us.  Its nature is manifold, it can come like a mighty wind or the gentlest of breezes and often when we don’t expect it at all.  At one moment it needs to shake us out of our complacency, at another it seeks to settle and comfort us.  Sometimes it reveals new truths to us which we could never have guessed; sometimes it reminds us sharply that we are wrong and out of order.  It is symbolised as the fire that refines us and the comforter who upholds us and the dove which soothes us.  By its inspiration we are given those words for which we would otherwise be at a loss.  Or it can prompt us to stay silent.
And it is equal to the needs of each of us.  Perhaps there are some of us here today who may not be sure how they are going to cope with the next bit of their lives.  Perhaps it is the demands of our work or the fact that we have don’t have any.  Perhaps it is our own loneliness or fear or the pressures put on us by others.  For all this God promises what we need.  If we turn to him we will always find reserves of patience, strength, wisdom or endurance.  They may not come dramatically but we will find that they have come.  Christ has promised his Spirit to all who follow him and he will fulfil that promise.
Without that gift of the Spirit Jesus would simply be for us some great person from the past, an inspiring teacher and model.  Through the Spirit however Jesus lives in us and by sharing in the love that is the Spirit we are united both to God and to one another.
May our celebration of Pentecost renew the presence of the Holy Spirit within us today.

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