Acts 2: 1-12; John 13: 12-31, 27th May 2012,
St Matthew’s, Oxford
The celebration of Pentecost – provides us with an
opportunity of thinking about the Holy Spirit.
And the best book on that subject is for me John V. Taylor’s ‘The
Go-Between God’. Even the title says
such a lot. By the ‘Go-Between God’ Taylor means and I
quote from the Introduction ‘The Holy Spirit is he who makes one aware of the
other, who gives one to the other’. By
this he means, for example, that the Holy Spirit is he who makes God the Son
aware of God the Father and vice versa but also that the Holy Spirit is he who
makes human beings aware of God and it is this essential feature of the Holy
Spirit that I want to talk about today.
Pentecost is the time in the church year when we celebrate
the coming of the Holy Spirit – so a bit like Christmas – when we celebrate the
coming of the coming of Jesus – God the Son – into the world. Of course we now understand that just as God
the Son pre-existed before his incarnation so we believe that God the Holy
Spirit was always present even at the Creation. Still it is at Pentecost that we remember
the gift of the Holy Spirit to the first disciples, and in particular the way that
Luke describes the first manifestation of this gift on a specific occasion 50 - pente - days after the resurrection.
Some things to note about Luke’s account: Firstly that it seems to differ from John’s
account. In John’s gospel Jesus
certainly promises that the Holy Spirit will come to the disciples after he has
left them. He tells them many things
about this Comforter - as the Spirit is described in the translation of that
bit of John’s gospel we heard just now – a section of Jesus’ farewell speech to
his disciples. In John’s gospel Jesus breaths the Holy Spirit
on them on Easter Sunday night. In
Luke’s account the risen Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to them but the
Holy Spirit arrives only after Jesus has ascended into Heaven.
However it is notable that in both accounts the Spirit is
given to the disciples when they are all together in one room and this seems to
me important. The Sprit is not given to
individuals individually but to the group collectively. It/he/she is given when people gather
together for some special purpose in one place not when they are going about
their every-day business on their own.
These two accounts of the disciples’ first experience of the
Holy Spirit underline for me the fact that our experience of God is always
collective. If I had been born in a
Moslem country I would now be a Moslem and my experience of God would be as a
Moslem – there seems no getting away from this. My experience of God is not an act of will
on my part. It is a gift.
Note , too, that in both Luke’s and John’s accounts of ‘Pentecost’
the Spirit is given to the disciples to empower them to do things they would
not otherwise be able to do. In John’s
account – when Jesus breaths the Holy Spirit into the disciples he says to them
that ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, if you retain the sins
of any they are retained’ In Luke’s
account, when the Holy Spirit the disciples are empowered to speak in other
languages and to preach the gospel.
But surely the most striking thing about Luke’s account of
the advent of the Holy Spirit, and indeed Luke’s description of the actions of
the Holy Spirit later in Acts, is I think that the disciples experience its
presence in a way most of us Christians – at least in this county - do not do
so today. The Spirit enables them to do
things like preach the gospel in foreign tongues, to prophecy, to heal people,
etc. But the spirit is also
‘experienced’, felt as a living presence.
Luke underlines this point in the reading we heard just now by talking
about a sound like a rushing wind and the appearance of ‘tongues as of fire’. Note that Luke doesn’t say that the Sprit was
actually wind or fire but that this is what it/he/she felt like to the
disciples.
Now I confess I have never experienced the Holy Spirit in
that way. My experience of God and his Holy Spirit seems
to me much less dramatic, more muted. I
have on occasion felt the presence of God while I have been praying: but this
has been more of a warm feeling than a burning fire. I have heard God at times but more in a
voice which sounded suspiciously like my own rather than a rushing wind.
I have experienced that gift of the Holy Spirit – healing – on
at least two occasions that I can think of in a way that made me, still makes
me feel profoundly grateful. But I have
never spoken in tongues – that form of ecstatic speech which some people – even
some people amongst the congregation of St Matthew’s– are able to express their
praise of God.
Now – when I said that Luke’s account of the advent and
subsequent action of the Holy Spirit, is somewhat alien to my experience, it seems
impossible to deny that in some churches – particularly those that describe
themselves as Pentecostal, after the day we are celebrating today, the
experience of the Holy Spirit is much more akin to that of the first disciples,
according to Luke’s account, than to mine.
My temptation in the face of the ‘Pentecostals’ experience is
either to deny its authenticity or to feel jealous. But it is
surely wrong to question its validity.
As Taylor says, ‘The whole weight of New Testament evidence endorses the
central affirmation of the Pentecostalists that the gift of the Holy Spirit
transforms and intensifies the quality of human life and that this is a fact of
experience in the lives of [some] Christians.
The longing of thousands of Christians to recover what they feel
instinctively their faith promises them is what underlies the whole movement.’
I am convinced of this longing that Taylor talks of. I think many people long to experience God
in their lives in the way that seems to have been the experience of the early
Christians. And indeed we can see that this experience –
or something like it – seems given to some Christians today.
But it’s not given to all of us. Taylor points out that while Luke may place a
lot of emphasis upon the direct communications which the apostles received from
the Holy Spirit and on the gifts of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues,
in the Epistles as a whole this emphasis is not so pronounced, and although
there are plenty of references to gifts of healing, prophecy and so on, life in
the Holy Spirit is associated mainly with a new relation to God expressed in
the words ‘sonship’ and ’liberty’ and in a new degree of love, of life-for
others.
So perhaps those of us who do not experience the Holy Spirit
as a rushing wind or as tongues of fire, or who do not have gifts of the Spirit
such as the gift of speaking in ‘tongues’ or of prophecy or who have never
experienced healing can feel reassured by, for example, Paul’s admonishment to
the Corinthians that they should view the possession of gifts of tongues, of
healing, etc as less important than a life in the Spirit where faith, hope and in
particular love abound. However that’s
as maybe, it doesn’t lessen my longing, at least, for a more intense experience
of God that does not seem given to me. In other words I am jealous of the Pentecostalists.
What is going on here?
It is somehow our fault when we do not experience the Holy Spirit as
others have or do. No, I do not think
it is a matter of fault as we might be tempted to think. The
Holy Spirit is not something we can command.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, ‘The Sprit blows where it wills, and you hear the
sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes.’
And if Taylor is right and ‘The Holy Spirit is he who makes
us aware of God’ then we are surely made aware of God to different degrees and
in different ways depending on our character but also our circumstances. As I said
at the beginning of this sermon, the Holy Spirit comes to groups not to individuals.
‘Where two or three are gathered together
in my name there am I in the midst of them.’ Perhaps then it is the character and circumstances of the group to which we belong (our church) that determines how we experience God. I was not brought up in a Pentecostal church I cannot now
experience God as the Pentecostalists do.
For me, and perhaps for you, I must discover and then experience God in
other ways.
We need to remind ourselves that God has primarily made his
presence known in the person of Jesus and that it is he who comes to us not we to him. It is in the end up to God how he makes us
aware of himself. But he promises – as
Jesus did – to his disciples as recorded in John’s gospel ‘I will not leave you
desolate, I will come to you.’ And as
the risen Jesus tells his disciples in the last words of Matthew’s gospel. "I will be with you always, even till
the end of time....."
