The Spirit in a growing church...

“Who is this Holy Spirit? Sounds a bit spooky to me! Weren’t those weird old prophets meant to be Spirit-filled? – and a lot of strange things they did!

And what about King David dancing before the Lord and all that? – his wife was appalled.

Then at Pentecost some odd things happened:

“Speaking in tongues” and everyone hearing in their own language – little wonder people thought the disciples were drunk.

No, you’ll not catch me having anything to do with the Holy Spirit. I mean, Christianity is meant to be safe and sensible isn’t it? Who needs the Holy Spirit?”

Well, those words caught my attention this week as I was thinking about my service for tomorrow. Are we safe and sensible in our churches? Pentecost is the day when we remember the Church being empowered, brought alive, commissioned, enlivened. Tomorrow is a day in my smallest chapel in Pett that will be part of that place's story, a day we celebrate God’s Spirit is rocking and rolling in our midst – in the last year or so, our numbers of little people have grown, and we’ve seen some new friends join us, so tomorrow we celebrate with Lucy as she will be baptised, and will be confirmed ,  with Alison as she comes for confirmation, with Laura, who we will receive Laura as a member from another place. We will also celebrate with David. We will commission David as a worship leader , that means we now have four worship leaders in a chapel of 21 members! 

It is only by the Holy Spirit that our church here is able to stay alive and give itself in love for the world. We need to ask God to help us every day to be his people and look to him for power and companionship. God gives us by his Spirit help, direction and we need to be connected to him.

The World Cup begins on Thursday. The way we shall remember this England team will be decided in a few, short weeks. I listened on the radio to a pointless debate on “should we leave Wayne Rooney out or not” – that’s an hour of my life I won’t get back! I love watching Roy Hodgson’s facial expressions more than the match itself really!  I always worry about football managers hearts during matches. There they are on the touchline, urging the team on. Throughout their training, the players have been guided by the manager in the right moves, formations, skills to try and win the match. When the match comes, they could go their own way, but hopefully the manager’s presence will still be there, encouraging, suggesting, cajoling, to get things right.  If they ignore the direction, the consequences will be severe. Not out of the group stage and back home to those nasty tabloid headlines.

It’s rather like a church I was once the minister who liked to fight, especially two elderly men, who I once caught brawling in the car park and I hauled them in for questioning!  I used to preach to them about working together. After one service, elderly man one came up to me and said, “thank you very much, excellent, needed saying, he needed to hear that” and then elderly man two came up to me and said, “thank you very much, needed saying that, he needed to hear that!” Ignore the guidance, take the consequences.

I think there are three little lessons from the Pentecost event I will share tomorrow with my lovely chapel people:

First, that God believes in us and loves us enough never to leave us alone, no matter who we are. Remember that in Jerusalem that day, all nations under heaven were represented, and they all heard good news in their own tongue. Everyone can find God for themselves, he is universal and yet also personal, aware of you today and your needs. No matter what happens – we have enough to cope and to overcome. I’ve had some fun in recent days going through some archives we have found after a spring clean in the vestry at Rye. 

I’ve been reading a minute book that begins in 1932 and looked with interest for any minutes about the bomb that fell on the old church in 1942.

The trust meeting in early 1943 recorded: “during the year both chapel and school had suffered rather badly from H E blast, the services of a caretaker were thus not necessary, and the consumption of coal and coke was nil. Expenditure should therefore be less during 1943 than before.”!! Isn’t that great? Saying no matter what, we will get on with it. I like to think that the Methodist folk in 1942 and 1943 turned to God and believed he was more than sufficient, rather than it being just British stiff upper lip! I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.     

And second, we are trusted enough to have a task. Go and be my church says Jesus. You have the gifts, you have the resources, get on with it! 

Then finally, we need to take risks. Those disciples knew that they had Jesus with them in a new way, but that day they did not know where they would be led. Nor do we in today's church. 

Perhaps we need to be like that D Day veteran who put his medals on, left his care home, went missing, determined to go and be part of something important. We need to place ourselves into God’s hands and we will, as we should be this morning, we will be amazed what might be possible. Some churches are too scared to be open, and so they retreat back into what they know.

Dare we keep being open to the Spirit of God as Christians here? Let us never, I will say to Pett tomorrow, as the poem I found said be safe and sensible!