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The Lord is here
His Spirit is with us!
You've got it, by George! His Spirit is with us. No need for a sermon
…
Pentecost, or Whitsunday to give it the traditional English name for today,
is the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles
fifty days - that's what Pentecost means - fifty days after Easter.
His Spirit is with us!
John, 14: 17: This is the Spirit of truth … you know him, because
he abides with you, and he will be in you. The spirit will be in you.
Do we know this instinctively I wonder? A sense of God's spirit? What
Gerard Manley Hopkins talked of as the deep down things … have a
look at the poem, God's Grandeur at the back of the booklet …
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
The dearest freshness deep down things.
When I don't know if something is
the case, I often try to imagine what the opposite would be. What would
it be like-what is it like-were the Spirit not to be with us?
Let's imagine.
I'm reading at the moment a book about the life and writings of Catherine
of Siena. With Theresa of Avila she was one of the first women to be declared
in 1970 a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church-the ultimate recognition
of her contribution to thinking and teaching. She lived in the mid 14th
Century, and died when she was 33, having dedicated her life to God. She
was a nun, but that did not mean she was cut off from the world-not at
all. She wrote to popes and political leaders, Princes and Kings, as well
as her friends, and she told it how she saw it. A time of political turmoil,
a time when the papacy was split and in schism; a time of the Black Death,
and here was this extraordinary woman writing of her vision of God. She
asked that key question that people ask through the ages: Who am I? Catherine
discovered that God was present in the very centre of our being and our
identity. God is not like other things-like football, or chocolate cake-that
you might have a passion for; God is there at the very centre of our being,
at the very core of us.
So when we look deeply inside ourselves seeking to answer the question
'who am I?' we don't find a little nugget of me-ness, of lonely selfhood,
but we find God's goodness, God's love, God's creative spirit at work.
At the heart of us is God, a God who sustains us in being, who meets us
and loves us.
Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested
on each of them. All were filled with the Holy Spirit. Each of us has
God at our core. Deep down in us.
So what might it look like not to have the Holy Spirit with us? In Catherine's
way of seeing, we become more and more self-absorbed, chasing a sense
of me-ness that becomes ever more solipsistic, more wrapped up in itself,
a tighter and tighter little package that becomes a hard little kernel
of self. Without the transforming power of God's Holy Spirit within us,
our hearts are hard stones instead of hearts of flesh.
Who here listens to the Archers? Even if you don't, I suspect you've caught
the story line about Brian and Siobhan and little Rory. Brian and Siobhan
had an affair a few years ago now, and Rory was born. Siobhan is now dying,
and Brian wants to bring Rory up. All very well, you might say, but Brian
is still married to Jennifer who has put up with him, stayed with him
through the terrible news of the affair, is deeply angry with him for
being such a - well, I don't have to say the word.
And now he wants her to take on Rory. You can imagine Jennifer's reaction
a number of weeks ago when the subject was first broached. Adamant is
not too strong a word. But then on Friday night anyone tuned in would
have heard Jennifer say yes with such generosity of heart, such openness,
such incredible acceptance that it was really moving. And Brian knew just
what he was being given; just how much it took. Jennifer-for all her faults,
reached heights of generous self-giving, you could say her soul expanded
in a moment to encompass the whole universe. That might be a bit over
the top-but you can hear what I mean. She might have remained with a heart
of stone-and who could have blamed her? But no, Jennifer's 'yes' revealed
a spirit of love and goodness within that meant she became part of something
infinite. God's spirit is with us.
But of course God's Spirit within us is not just about the transformation
of you and me as individuals. What happens when our hearts become flesh
is we become increasingly made in the image of God-a God who is love;
a God who seeks to relate in love with others. John V Taylor wrote of
the Holy Spirit as the Go-between God: of the Spirit as always urging
us to engage with the other. He writes:
Christians find it quite natural to give a personal name to this current
of communication, this invisible go-between. They call him the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of God. They say that this was the Spirit which possessed and
dominated the man Jesus Christ, making him the most aware and sensitive
and open human being who has ever lived-ceaselessly aware of God so that
he called him, almost casually, Father, and fantastically aware of every
person who crossed his path, especially the ones no one else noticed'
(1972: 17).
The Holy Spirit draws us out of ourselves, stretches us as we encounter
others; The Holy Spirit goes between us, between you and me, between each
of us, creating community, creating a new Body of Christ. A body fed and
nourished as we eat and drink the spiritual food of the Eucharist.
Individuals, Community and Communion-but the Spirit is not limited only
to these spheres of activity. The gospel reading uses the term 'the world'
in a particular way in our gospel this morning: "The Spirit of Truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him".
We need to remember that St John was writing at a time when Christians
were struggling in a hostile world, where people were not receptive to
this new religion, where 'the world' represents all who had not responded
to Christ, but were, indeed, persecuting those who had. Putting aside
this narrow understanding of 'the world', we can discern, as Hopkins did,
the Holy Spirit present and permeating all of creation. The world is charged
with the grandeur of God: The Spirit seeking to bring to the good the
profound impulses that are at work in the world. God's grandeur is there.
Hopkins wrote during the industrial revolution and perceived the Spirit
at work beneath the oil and grime, the searing of trade; man's smudge.
We too need to hold onto the knowledge of the Holy Spirit at work in and
through the ravages that humanity is causing today, offering new life
and re-creation in a world. And for all this, nature is never spent. The
Spirit makes good and restores the beauty of creation. We need to ensure
that we work with that Spirit, not against it, caring for the environment,
seeing in the world around us the Holy Spirit of God whose impulse is
one of love and creativity, permeating all aspects of life.
His Spirit is with us. With us, As
individuals; with us, creating community; with us as the impulse that
sustains creation, the world. An impulse that is one of love-love seeking
to relate, to comfort, to inspire. A spirit of love who expands our horizons
until we mirror the Realm of God. it doesn't bear thinking, does it? What
our existence would be like without the Holy Spirit.
The Lord is here.
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