sermon for pentecost day B

Acts 2: 1-21
Romans 8: 22-27
John 15: 26-27;16:4b-15

Pentecost – the feast of liberation!

I don’t know if any of you can remember it, but in the early 90’s there was a commercial that depicted a people in bondage, pushing a huge weight up a steep hill, and it ended with the weight being pushed off and the people breaking loose in anarchic liberty.  The caption was ‘Free the Spirit’!  Although in this particular advert the pinnacle of human aspiration was a pint of lager it can still be relevant for us today!

Especially this day, the day of Pentecost, when we remember and celebrate with the Church throughout the world the coming of the Holy Spirit amongst the believers of the early Church.  We remember the events of the day as we heard them described for us in the reading from Acts, and we celebrate the fact that in the power of that Spirit, so many people have lived extraordinary lives, so many have lived lives of wholeness, and so many have been freed from lives of bondage.  And we give thanks for people in whom we have seen and experienced the presence of the Spirit and remind ourselves that the Spirit is there waiting to be freed in our lives, too!  But Pentecost is also a time for question and reflection and like other events in the Christian calendar, it only has any real meaning if we allow it to challenge our own lives, to say to us

‘What does this mean for me, for my world, and not just for the world of the 1^st century or the faith of other people in other kinds of churches.’

The HS didn’t really ever figure in my early journey of faith…not that I can remember, anyway.  Mine was much more the ‘Jesus is my friend’ sort of Christianity.  I can remember asking Jesus into my heart; for him to be my personal saviour.  Being a Christian was all about developing that very personal, intimate almost, relationship with Jesus who I knew, in the deepest core of my being loved me and died for me.  I suppose it was about being like the disciples.  If only I could know Jesus like they did, then I would be one too.  For John tells us very clearly Jesus loved his disciples.  In the readings over the last few weeks we have heard how Jesus has emphasised his love for them.

‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you’
and
‘No-one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’

But he also made it clear that whilst this special relationship was hugely important, it wasn’t the end of the story.  Jesus was going to leave them, but in his stead he would send the Spirit to enable them for the very thing he had prepared them for: to go out into the world and tell everyone the good news about what he had done for them.  They were to carry on what Jesus had begun with them…. growing out from their personal and very special relationship with him was their mission to the whole world.  So let’s look at the effects the Spirit did have as they began their task……

First of all the barriers of language were broken down.  Strangers, foreigners, outsiders, a crowd of many different races and nationalities heard the disciples talking to them in their own language.  And such was the conviction with which they spoke that many people trusted their good news and were baptized.

Secondly, their lives were changed.  We read in Acts that the believers continued to live in close fellowship with each other.  They shared their belongings and made sure distribution was equal according to need.  They met regularly to worship and eat.  Every day, more people joined them and barriers of class and nationality were broken down.

And thirdly, as a result of the Pentecost experience they were filled with a new power and confidence.  Suddenly, ordinary people found they could do things they had never dreamed of.  Miracles and wonders.

But Pentecost is a never-ending story.  It didn’t happen just once.  It happens whenever and wherever people live empowered by the Spirit of Jesus.  But if it’s not rooted in our own experience, then it is a flame that will soon die.  We may speak in tongues, we may wish to live guided by the Spirit, we may seek community, but if the Spirit of the living God has not burned a path down into the depth of our experience, then Pentecost still awaits us.

If Christmas is the festival of the Incarnation, and Easter is the festival of Resurrection, then Pentecost is the festival of liberation.  Because Pentecost is about freedom.  It is about the Holy Spirit setting people free.  Not the kind of freedom that means no more responsibility or suffering,  nor freedom from having to make decisions, but a freedom to live in the truth of the promise that we are loved and we have been saved and we can live changed lives.  It gives us a freedom to live the personal relationship with God that I was so proud of as a young Christian.  But the Spirit too, is free.  It cannot be contained or possessed or locked up and it is free to move in the lives of those from whom we are divided or alienated, or those we have hurt or been unjust towards and those who have hurt or been unjust to us.  We need Pentecost in our own lives and in the life of the world.  The freedom of my own personal relationship has to overflow into a passion for the world.  Jesus is my saviour because he is the saviour of the whole world and the Spirit has set me free, set us free to be part of God’s mission in that world: to spread the news, to teach others about God’s saving power, to tend the earth and treasure it, transforming it into God’s kingdom

And there is much to be done.  As Paul says: the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains… straining to give birth to the world as God wants it to be.  As we embrace Pentecost for ourselves, the Spirit sweeps us into a re-connection with the life of the world.  Everywhere people are in bondage to racism and greed and injustice. …  To war and oppression. n verywhere people are crying out for release from prisons of fear and bitterness.  We know the part we have to play in order to help set them free.  Our cosy, personal relationships with Jesus are meaninglessnwhen others of his friends are held in a bondage that we can do something to alleviate by becoming more involved in acts of justice……however small: buying fair-trade, signing action cards or petitions, using our political vote thoughtfully.

As we embrace Pentecost, the Spirit sweeps us into a reconnection with the earth.  I wonder if any of you watched the David Attenborough series about climate change and how the way we live our lives is seriously affecting the planet? Or  Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? In many ways they are very depressing to watch: for they show how each household contributes to the destruction of our beautiful earth each time we waste electricity, fail to recycle rubbish and over use our cars.  How can we exclude responsible stewardship of the creation from our work of mission when it is so clearly in bondage and the scope of God’s plan is for the whole world to be saved?  This is the very world the Word spoke into being, so what point is my relationship with him if I am part of its destruction?  It is through our care, which is part of our mission, that the Spirit can breathe life again into creation and nourish its potential.

And as we embrace Pentecost, the Spirit sweeps us into a reconnection with life today.  As a church we are no longer part of the modern world.  We are irrelevant and shrinking.  We have been likened to the Israelites in exile, who were experiencing a living death, but God’s promise was that it would come to an end.  Remember Ezekiel’s vision about the valley of dry bones?  You know: dem bones, dem bones, dem, dry bones..!  (If you don’t, its Ezekiel 37 and its listed under the lectionary readings in the Calendar!)  God told Ezekiel that those bones were the house of Israel in exile, and before his very eyes, the bones were reconnected and the breath of God filled their lungs and they lived again.  The Spirit of God set them free to live again, and as the present-day dry bones, that is God’s promise to us.  It is time for us to allow God’s Spirit to breathe new life in us, to fill us and free us to find new ways to be effective missionaries… telling everyone what God has done and is doing in and through Jesus. The exile forced the Israelites to rework their faith, and so our exile needs our ever decreasing community to come up with creative and imaginative ways to reconnect us with others.

And so we have to free the Spirit.  Allow it to work in and through us.  We have to let go of our timidity, our inhibitions, our wish for things to be as they have always been.  We are dry bones, and the church is dying because we are.  Let us risk calling on the Spirit of Jesus to breathe life into each of us.  But be warned:  the Holy Spirit is no sweet little dove that just nestles on our church roof spreading its wings in protection over its brood of Christian followers.  The Holy Spirit is an enemy of apathy.  It calls us into action.

Let today and every day be our Pentecost, when we free the spirit and begin to live as we are called to do.

Amen.

Tagged as: acts 2: 1-21, al gore, an incovenient truth, caring for the earth, carver united reformed church, enemy of apathy, feast of liberation, john 15: 26-27, john 16: 4b-15, Lawrence Moore, pentecost day b, revd lis mullen, romans 8: 22-27, the bondage of creation, the holy spirit and the five marks of mission, the holy spirit as a present reality, the united reformed church, The Windermere Centre, whitsun b