Pentecost 2025 and three services…

It’s been a long but good Pentecost day in these parts. 

This morning I was with Boroughbridge folk. There were 18 of us there. There was a positive spirit about. I dedicated new toilets, ignoring the thought in my head to use “mighty rushing wind” in the prayer! 

This afternoon it was Chapel Anniversary at Dallowgill. As usual the place was full of our supporters who enjoy coming - I just wish they’d come more often! Our lovely local preacher Steve Laugher led us. It was his last service in the Circuit before he and his wife move to Orkney. A tea followed as ever! 

Then tonight I was privileged to share in the induction of our new vicar in Boroughbridge and the rest of the benefice, Rev Sue Simpson. I got to process with a load of Anglicans in and out and I got to welcome her as her ecumenical partner. Bishop Anna preached on hot coals moments. It was good afterwards to big up ecumenism locally with the new Archdeacon and to share frustration over rules stopping full interchangeability of ministry with the Bishop! She seemed to agree with me. 

It was lovely to be at a town event and be known by so many. The Dean of the cathedral was there. He’s only seen me in Ripon and seemed bemused why I was there! The choir vestry and clergy banter was fun!!!!! 

Here are my ramblings for Pentecost. I’m pleased the church isn’t done with yet. But we need to be open and adaptable to change…

One commentator I read this week suggested Pentecost is the most important festival of the Church, as the Church was born today but we don’t make much of it. 

And unless you live in a bit of Lancashire where they still do whit walks and have new clothes for the day the world is oblivious to it. 

We do Christmas, Easter but not Pentecost, and yet today should be a huge party because it’s the day God believes in us and gives us power to be his people, beginning in Jerusalem, to all Judaea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth! 

So this article I read says “It is one thing to adore the infant Jesus, another to mourn the death of Jesus in our insular communities. 

It is something else, and to many, VERY scary, to proclaim the gospel in every action we take, and to publicly proclaim ourselves to be THOSE people, Pentecost gives us marching orders. Christmas is so much easier…’

In Acts 2, we see the Christian Pentecost, at which, “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” fills the entire house where the apostles had gathered, and, “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” God the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples, fills the disciples, transforms the disciples, and they go from being a group hiding out in an upper room to being Christians on fire with the love of God.

Suddenly, there is no more fumbling, no more confusion. They are aflame with God the Holy Spirit; it is not until this moment, in which they are filled with the presence of God, that they are transformed into the living temple of the Spirit: the church. Suddenly, they are unstoppable. Each goes out into a different, far-flung corner of the world to share the Good News of the love of God the Father, the incarnation, teaching, death, and resurrection of God the Son, and the life-giving inspiration of God the Holy Spirit.

Doubting Thomas sets out to preach the Gospel in India and founds the Church of St. Thomas, which exists to this day. St. Peter goes to Antioch and Rome, spreading Christianity throughout Europe. St. Matthew goes to Syria, St. John to Turkey and Greece, and in a short matter of years,the church is born. The apostles are not forming insular little churches; this was the age of the martyrs, in which being a Christian meant being willing to die for the sake of the Gospel. And still, ancient people gave themselves in droves to this new faith in Christ.

St. Basil of Caesarea, in his book “On the Holy Spirit,” says that, even though God is surrounding us, filling all things, we cannot see him; even though we have his perfect image in Jesus, walking with us, teaching us, leading us through the darkness, we cannot comprehend him; and so, it takes God the Holy Spirit, filling us with light, surrounding us with the fire of his love, to know God.

Are we inspired and excited by the movement of God?

God is calling us to bigger things, new perspectives, new possibilities. 

Pentecost is too big to be contained in an upper room, inside the Church building or within the cosy fellowship of those who believe. We were designed by God to be his messengers, his witnesses, his people in the world.

It is too big in 2025 just as it was in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago.

The late John Stott, an Anglican priest and theologian, wrote: ‘As a body without breath is a corpse, the Church without the Spirit is dead.'

“Come Holy Spirit.”

Our prayer on this day is a dangerous prayer because it means that we must be open and vulnerable, willing to be challenged and changed so that we can seek and find Jesus in the ones we serve. “Come Holy Spirit” means that we must become open to the transforming power of God in our lives. It means that we will find ourselves standing with those on the margins, on the edges, on the outside.

Our simple prayer, “Come Holy Spirit,” is the first step towards saying “yes” to God’s desire in our life of faith. We are called, with the Spirit’s help, to say yes to God!

Edwina Gateley sums up our longing to say yes to God in her poem Called to say yes.

We are called to say yes

So that rich and poor embrace

And become equal in their poverty

Through the silent tears that fall.

We are called to say yes

That the whisper of our God

Might be heard through our sirens

And the screams of our bombs.

We are called to say yes

To a God who still holds fast

To the vision of the Kingdom

For a trembling world of pain.

We are called to say yes

To this God who reaches out

And asks us to share

His crazy dream of love.

God’s crazy dream of love is our crazy dream of love. We are called to say “yes” to allow the Spirit of the Living God to fall afresh on us, and that is scary but inspiring and exciting too. The day of Pentecost this huge mind blowing event tells us we are given enough to be the Church and we are called to be the Church, still. 

I want to end with some words of Walter Bruggemann. Walter Bruggemannpassed away this week, aged 92. He was one of my spiritual heroes. He describes Pentecost like this: 

We name you wind, power, force, and then, imaginatively, "Third Person." We name you and you blow... blow hard, blow cold, blow hot, blow strong, blow gentle, blow new...

Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance, blowing the church out of despair to new life, blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah, blowing to make things new that never were.

So blow this day, wind, blow here and there, power, blow even us, force,  Rush us beyond ourselves, Rush us beyond our hopes, 

Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world. Come holy Spirit, come. Amen. 

May that be our prayer and may we be energised and renewed to be where God wants us to be.

The Day of Pentecost calls us to keep watch – to imagine what a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit might look like in our own lives. 

Of course, if we sit and wait for the same old thing to happen, we’ll always get what we ask for. 

But if we allow ourselves to imagine something new, something fresh, something holy, then anything is possible.