Pentecost 2021

Passage for reflection: Acts 2: 1 - 21 

There’s a prayer from the Iona Community that always challenges me on the day of Pentecost. 

“Take us shake us remake us no longer is what we have been important it is what with you we can be...”

God is always calling us to a new place. 

The Church is called to live a new reality: the reign of God. Sometimes we begin an act of worship with these words: The Lord is here, his Spirit is with us. If his Spirit is with us,well, that’s a bit exciting, a bit scary,  a bit dangerous, because you never know where we might be led next. 

Imagine the disciples writing their autobiography. They might have called it “just when we thought we were comfortable...” 

By a lakeside some of them were content to catch fish. Another had a good job collecting taxes. Their life changed when Jesus walked by and said “Follow me!” 

They went with this Jesus. As they watched him minister, they believed they were caught up in something amazing as people were healed, changed and religious and political big wigs were cut down to size. It was exciting. So they said to Jesus “we will follow you wherever you go.” 

But then it got really serious. And when the one they had followed was condemned to die, and left to rot on a cross, they thought that was the end. Most of them abandoned him. And after hiding away they went back to where they began, fishing. I’m not sure if Matthew went back to tax collecting but how foolish they’d all been to act on what they thought was the best offer they’d ever had. 

But of course it wasn’t the end. Resurrection, ascension and the promise of his presence for ever showed them God is never ever finished with us. We are a people for who the story is never finished. There is always more. Even on days when death seems to win, there is always more, and on days when we think how it is is it, there is always more. An empty tomb, a call to look to Jesus, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit enabling us and compelling us to be a Church that believes God has so much more to say, and which lives knowing his presence is all sufficient. John Wesley, whose conversion we remember on Monday, called this the “optimism of grace.” 

“Just when we think we are comfortable, there is God.”

How would the second part of the disciple’s autobiography go? Surely it would have some words to describe the change in them once the Spirit Jesus promised them came. Remember they had been a shambles, afraid, not prepared to stand up for what they said they believed. They’d been frightened in case anyone from the world found them. They’d locked the door. Now God was leading them to share with those they had tried to avoid. A new courage and a conviction they could do no other than share the good news of Jesus. In my letter I write for the two churches in Ripon each week, I suggested this week people might read the Acts of the Apostles in one go. The early Church grew really fast, people through this small group of people, heard of God’s love in a new and fresh way, and they wanted more of it. This small group also rocked the world. There’s a verse somewhere in Acts where the authorities want to stop what is basically a spiritual revolution. “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here! Help!” 

And so we celebrate Pentecost 2021. For some of our churches it’s the day we’ve chosen to reopen our doors and have worship in our building together again. It’s the beginning of us sighing with relief that we might be able soon to get back to normal. 

But here’s the thing. Do we really want normal? What if God has been using these past fourteen months to prepare us for a new chapter in our story? What if he is wanting to pour out his Spirit in us, no matter how many of us there are, and say to us, “come on, this isn’t over yet.” A man called Conzelmann calls where we are in the Christian story “the era of the Church” and he says we are meant to be here until Jesus returns again. Well, he’s not coming yet is he? Perhaps he’ll surprise us but until that day we keep working, we keep faith alive, we keep believing, we keep challenging injustice, we keep caring for people. 

I suggest to us that Pentecost 2021 might challenge us to remember two things.

One, that we hold on to hope. The world has changed even since last we were in our church buildings. We will have to face hard questions about what we can do and what we can no longer do or need not do, but let’s remember when those disciples thought it was all over, God acted. The Bible tells us hope does not disappoint us. We are not numerically the number we were, we are all a bit older and a bit wearier, but hey, let’s ask God to breathe on us and show us what we are called to be again. Remember the promise given to Ezekiel in the Old Testament: “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.”

Then, let’s not beat ourselves up. Let’s not have Church make us stressed and ill. Let’s ask what we are good at it, and do more of it, let’s spend time together working out what being Church in the places God has placed us means today. Let’s try as those disciples did to be brave enough to look outwards and be in the middle of the people who live beside us. Let’s get talked about again! Let’s make ourselves relevant again. It can be through a cup of coffee, being there for people in need, having the church open for people to find peace, and talking about things people are actually talking about. I write sermons on a Saturday so they are fresh. A lady in the Fens Circuit when I led worship in her church for the first time said to me afterwards “well, that weren’t boring!” 

I began with a prayer about allowing God to take us and shake us. Here’s another one which sums up I think our task as Pentecost people. We rely on the Spirit, we look out to the world and we are certain God is still at work. It’s written by Rachel Poolman, the URC minister on Holy Island: Lift your hearts to heaven and receive the eternal gift of peace. Keep your feet on the ground and walk with those who need God's love.This day you are loved by God. You are held by God. You are blessed by God now and for evermore.

May the Spirit who hovered over the waters when the world was created, breathe into us the life He gives.

May the Spirit, who overshadowed the Virgin when the eternal Son came among us, make us joyful in the service of the Lord.

May the Spirit, who set the Church on fire upon the Day of Pentecost, bring the world alive with the love of the risen Christ. Amen.