Acts 2, 1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
If you weren’t able to join us at church yesterday. This is a summary of the talk I gave about Pentecost… The full readings were Acts 2.1-21 and John 20.19-23
Do you ever try and do a crossword? It’s something that my husband has started doing since he retired and he’s really good at it now, if I am lucky I get to help with the odd one or two clues that he’s stuck with. Sometimes the answer comes quickly and sometimes we have to cheat, but often it just arrives and I don’t know why I know the answer.
This is often for me how I also experience the Holy Spirit. I am striving to understand something, or know what to say in a given situation, and somehow the Spirit guides me to the right words. It’s not necessarily that I didn’t know what to say but the Spirit somehow unveils something I hadn’t thought of before.
I wonder how you have experienced the holy spirit in your lives? In our two passages today we hear of two different ways in which the spirit moves. In the first one, its almost a private experience between the apostles and the risen lord. He breathes on them, and says receive the holy spirit, and suggests that the first thing they should do is to consider if they can forgive people’s sins, because with this new ‘god breath’ they now have this power, to forgive or not to forgive. If you feel like it, try taking a deep breath now! 1,2,3 in…. 1,2,3 out…!
If I could have any superpower I’m not sure forgiveness is the one I’d choose! Its much easier to hold on to our opinions of each other and our experience from the past, than to see what is happening under our noses. Without god’s help we are not likely to be able to do it very well, but with his breath in our lungs, we have the power. From forgiveness it seems that other things come too, such as healing and wholeness.
Why is forgiveness important? Well if you have really messed up your life, you will understand this concept better than others. If you have come to faith, after losing your home or your family, you will see forgiveness when you encounter it, as a green light to follow, when people are open to receive you. However if you have always relied on your own gifts and talents then you might find it harder to understand other people’s frailties. Even the most forgiving of us, might find it hard to do this with serial offenders, or people who have committed terrible offences against children. But Jesus says, with the power of the Spirit, if we choose to, we can release them from this bondage and they are free.. and of course so are we! Free from holding on to pain too.
The other thing that the Holy Spirit does in both our passages is that it arrives to a group of people. A shared understanding of what God’s message is for us all, really helps us, if we are taking uncomfortable and difficult decisions. It never imposes its will but gently connects us around the same purpose.
Often here in church we worship together, with the Holy Spirit, sharing our liturgy, our singing and our holy communion. Through these common words we might see the threads that link us gently together. As children of God we can expect those threads to be there all the time too.
We might think that we’d love to receive the spirit but maybe not really know what to expect. Well, the spirit I think is like the yeast in the bread or the baking powder in a cake, it changes the environment it is part or, its never a neutral thing, but it can soften our hearts and help us see what we have in common rather than our differences.
The second passage highlights this in particular, as everyone there who gathers for Pentecost, hears and sees the same thing, regardless of their language, the colour of their skin or the social background they come from. Today is known as the birthday of the church because from this day on, the secret is out, and everyone who attends this special moment, goes back to where they came from and shares the word of God with their communities. It becomes a global church from day one of proceedings.
In the excitement of Pentecost Peter cites scripture that we can all hear from God now, we can all prophesy, and dream dreams, and see signs in the world today.
So why wouldn’t we want this? How do we have more of this excitement in our lives today?
Well I think it’s really about letting ourselves get a bit windswept, allowing our hair to become a mess, because the breath of God is moving. It’s not about things being perfect, but allowing the spirit to guide us. Maybe there are things that we need to let go of, hard edges that need to soften or previous mistakes we need to say sorry for making.
We often don’t know where to start, so close our hearts and minds to the possibility of change. But what if we don’t need to know how it happens, just to trust that it will? The spirit doesn’t just move in church. If we have breathed in God’s blessings then they stay with us in the normal day to day events of our lives. For example this week I watched Ted Lasso, and found myself afterwards really moved to ask for God’s forgiveness for a relationship that had broken down that I hadn’t acknowledged to myself recently. It was something that I’d packed away and forgotten about. Often the spirit moves me to forgive myself too, if I’m beating myself up about something that’s happened.
Are you ready to receive the Holy Spirit? Are you ready to stand in the wind and let the sound whistle past your ears? Or to feel it’s heat in your heart as you open up to something new? Well all we need to do is simply say yes, and not worry about how, when or why it happens, simply trust that God will guide us in the days ahead.
Like the tricky crossword clue that I’m missing or a piece of the jigsaw that won’t fit, rather than agonizing over it, we simply need to let the Spirit do it’s work, and make space for it to happen. When we least it expect it we will receive the answer. And at the same time realize we knew this all along but hadn’t managed to make the link!
Lord we pray for your holy spirit to touch and heal us, to revive our faith and give us the confidence to share our experiences of you with others, so they in turn can help spread the good news of Jesus all around the world today. Help us understand your purpose through scripture, and our every day lives together, to support each other and to love one another despite our differences. Amen
inspiredinyork 