A Sermon preached on Sunday, June 8 (The Day of Pentecost) at St. Augustine's, Wiesbaden
Acts
2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39, Psalm 104:25-35, 37
How can I not
preach about the Holy Spirit today? The Spirit is the theme of all three
readings. First in Acts we heard how the Spirit appeared as a rush of violent
wind and as tongues of fire, then in the letter to the Corinthians we were
confronted with Paul’s list of a variety of gifts of the Spirit, and finally in
the extract from John’s Gospel we heard how Jesus described himself as the
source of the Spirit, which is like a river of living water.
Yet the Holy Spirit is often
seen as the most abstract manifestation of God, the person of the Trinity who
is most difficult to describe or explain. A well-known theologian,
Alister McGrath, once called the Holy Spirit the Cinderella of the Trinity. The
other two sisters”, he said, “may have gone to the theological ball; the Holy
Spirit got left behind every time.”[1]
And the original 325 AD version of the Nicene Creed, the one that was actually written
in Nicaea, as opposed to the version we recite every week, which was finalized 56
years later in Constantinople, just finishes with the sentence: “We
believe in the Holy Spirit.” No more. If you look
at our version on page 359 of the prayer book – yes you have my permission to
look at a book during my sermon – you will see that the sentence is now a
paragraph and has a lot more to say about the Spirit!
Why did the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit take so much time to develop?
Although there is, as we heard this
morning, a lot about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, many of the concepts
and ideas are attempts to describe how the Spirit worked in the lives of the
early Christians and of the early Church. It is, they came to believe, through
the Spirit that we experience God’s presence and support. The Spirit is the
source of the inner strength and courage they needed and called upon, and it is
in the Spirit that they felt connected to one another as Christ’s body. But
these experiences were as varied and different and diverse as the people who
had them. No single list of the workings of the Holy Spirit can be exhaustive,
not even Paul’s long and detailed list in 1 Corinthians. You know, I am
convinced that St. Paul, who was a big fan of lists, would have loved
Powerpoint: I can just see his list on a slide as bullet points!
But even if these lists
are not exhaustive or exclusive I think it’s still worth looking at what our
readings and the Creed have to tell us about the Holy Spirit, in particular
about what the Spirit does in our lives today.
One thing the images of
the Spirit, wind, fire, and water, tell us is that just as air, water, warmth
and light are essential to life, so too is the Spirit. Our Creed talks about the
Holy Spirit as the Lord, the giver of life. It was the Spirit of God that moved
over the waters of chaos in the first creation story in Genesis. The Spirit is
the divine spark within us that makes us more than just creatures. When we talk
about being made in the image of God, I think it’s that Spirit shining through.
No one can say “Jesus
is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit, Paul says, identifying the Spirit as that which
enables and sustains our faith and helps us communicate our faith to others. In
the Acts reading the Spirit very literally made this possible by giving the
disciples the ability to speak in other languages so that all present could
hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. It is the same Spirit that moves
some people to ecstatic speech. This is a gift that our Pentecostal and
Charismatic brothers and sisters value and make a central part of their
worship. But being able to explain God’s deeds of power to children or young
people in their language, making the Good News meaningful and relevant for
their lives, is also a gift of the Spirit, one that our Sunday school teachers
and youth leaders clearly have.
Prophecy is another
gift of the Spirit. Our Creed says that it was the Spirit who spoke through the
Prophets, in Acts Peter quotes the prophet Joel’s saying about how God pours
out the Spirit and as a result the sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and Paul too lists prophecy as one of the gifts. Prophecy in the biblical sense
is not about foretelling the future, but about speaking the truth about the
present, however unpleasant and dangerous that might be! So the gift of the
Spirit is the ability to recognize that truth, that injustice or other wrong
behavior that needs to be named and changed as well as the courage to do so
regardless of who we are calling out. I think we all need a large share of that
gift!
As Christians we should
always pray for God’s guidance when we have big and important decisions to
take, whether they are personal decisions or ones we take for the Church. We
believe that the Holy Spirit guided the men and women who wrote down Scripture
and that the same Spirit guides us when we read and interpret Scripture as a
source for guidance. The Spirit can also work through visions and dreams, as we
heard in Acts, or in the wisdom and knowledge we use to help choose the right
path. How do we know that it is the Holy Spirit working in us? The test, as
Paul says, is that the decision must be for the common good. Only a decision that
is good for us all, not for personal gain, that does not result in winners and
losers, and that furthers the kingdom of God is a manifestation of the Spirit.
Paul mentions other
gifts – healing, discernment of spirits, or the working of miracles – which I’m
not going to talk about in any detail. Anyway, his list is by no means
exclusive: there are many other gifts that serve the common good and are just as
valuable as those he mentions. There is, as Paul makes clear, no hierarchy of
gifts. For example, the ability to listen to someone else, to just be a
comforting listening presence to someone in need can be as valuable as the gift
of the utterance of wisdom – even the ‘wisdom’ uttered from the pulpit.
The Spirit works in us both
as individuals, as well as in the Church, which is why she gets a mention in
this section of the Creed. The Church was formed by the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost, in fact Pentecost is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the
Church. We become members of the Church, the one body, through our Baptism by
water and the Spirit. As Paul makes clear, the gifts of the Spirit are
allocated to each person individually, but only so these persons work together
as the different, diverse, but also complementary members of the one body.
Paul equates the
varieties of gifts of the Spirit, with the varieties of services
of the Lord, and with the varieties of activities of God. The gifts of
the Spirit are simply not meant just to be enjoyed personally, nor are they
primarily a means of individual growth and experience. The gifts of the Spirit
are meant to be used for the common good and to glorify God. Jesus cries out
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me
drink.” The Holy Spirit is essential and life-giving. And it will not run out,
the more we use our gifts in God’s service, letting living water flow out of
our hearts, the more we will have.
I will invoke, or
call down the Holy Spirit later in the service: this is of course purely symbolic
as the Spirit of God already dwells within you. But I hope it will serve to renew
that Spirit within you so that it has the same effect as the Holy Spirit on that
first Pentecost. As we celebrate Pentecost today I want us to be a Pentecostal
church, by which I mean as filled with the Holy Spirit and as willing to be sent
into the world to preach the Gospel until the ends of the earth as the
disciples were on that first Pentecost. And I want us to be a charismatic
church, not because you have to wave your hands in the air, though you may if you feel so
moved, but because we both recognize and use the Holy Spirit’s gifts, in
Greek charism. And I want us to be a
serving church, using those gifts of the Spirit to serve God, God’s kingdom and
all of God’s people in loving, humble service following the example of God’s
Son.
Amen.
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