A sermon for Pentecost

This is my sermon for Pentecost, at St Bene’t’s Church in Cambridge, where I’ve had the privilege of being on attachment for the past two years of my training. My main readings were Acts 2:1-21 and John 20:19-23 (and the other readings for the week were Psalm 104:26-37 and 1 Corinthians 12:3b-12).

(1)

It is the fiftieth day after the Passover, and it is festival season again in Jerusalem. Pilgrims have arrived from far and wide—a diaspora returning to their holy place, to worship their God. You can imagine the busyness, the crowds, the noise—multiply Kings Parade on a summer Saturday by several thousand!

There is a special dynamic to places where a lot of people are speaking multiple languages, especially when they’re all trying to participate in the same event, a slightly frazzled-and-yet-joyful chaos. People apologise for bumping into each other in one language and are excused in another. People shift between the different languages that they know, whether fluently or not, trying to get or give directions, order food, find their friends. Some things are understood, some lost, as people try and connect with each other. Perhaps this is what Jerusalem felt like. And into this the Spirit comes, transforming the situation:

“How is it we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphilia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power… What does this mean?”

To learn a language takes effort: you learn the rules, and then you discover all the ways that its native speakers bend the rules and have to start all over again! Becoming fluent requires practice, you risk failure and confusion. You have to really listen to people to grasp what they’re saying—and you have to hope they’re willing to listen to you in turn. It stretches you, taking you beyond yourself.

I’ll confess that I’m sometimes jealous of the disciples at Pentecost: miraculous fluency without the work sounds great. But then, that’s not really the point of Pentecost. The Spirit doesn’t come to make it easier for us to talk more; something that might lead to us talking over each other. Rather it helps us to hear each other—by first making it possible to hear God—and to grow together as a community.

(2)

In John’s gospel, Jesus makes a promise to his disciples before his death: that the Spirit will come to ‘testify’ to him so that Jesus can continue to be known in the world—so that we can continue to know God through him.  

And when the Spirit comes she gives many gifts: faith, wisdom, prophecy, healing… She enables us to grow as disciples, in love, joy and peace… gives and shapes visions and dreams. She reveals what God is about and invites us into it—starting with the vision that Peter shares on Pentecost, of Christ’s triumph over death and the “coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”  For first and foremost the Spirit comes to reveal to that Jesus is Lord and to draw us to him, into the body of Christ. And on Pentecost this happens in this gift that enables all these visitors to Jerusalem to hear about Jesus in their own languages.

In this Pentecost redeems the events of the story of Babel. There, the consequence of humanity’s hubris and desire to be like God is the confusion of languages. It becomes impossible for people to understand each other. At Pentecost, this ability to hear and understand each other is restored and with it the ability to live together and form a community across boundaries—and yet languages remain.

“To learn a language is to open oneself to another,”[1] says Willie James Jennings.

You might start learning a language because you must, but you don’t put in the work to become fluent without loving it and the people and places that it belongs to or letting them teach you things. And this opening up changes you as you’re enfolded into a new relationship, learning new ways of describing and seeing the world. This is the work that the Spirit starts at Pentecost: God’s people are turned outwards through this gift of language. And those who hear it and its message are enfolded into this community.

But this enfolding is a two-way process: those who are drawn in aren’t the only ones who change as a result of this opening up—and it can be challenging. We see this throughout the New Testament: how do the Jewish and Greek disciples live together; how do Peter and Paul work together; how does the Jewish law apply, and to who; how do Gentile converts navigate their local religious rituals?

The history of this process is long and sadly often painful—too often enfolding has failed, change has been rejected, divisions have occurred, and persecution and violence has happened. While there is excitement and joy of Pentecost there is also confusion and fear. The writer of Acts describes the sound of the Spirit’s arrival as being like the “rush of a violent wind.” Even though Peter describes the arrival of the Spirit in the language of the prophet Joel, it seems fair to say that none of this is what the coming of the Messiah was expected to be like.  Visions and dreams sound exciting, but the work of revealing the kingdom of God in the world, and the growing and nurturing of God’s people is often hard.

And yet, the call of Pentecost and the work of the Spirit continues to be that people love each other, desire to know each other in better, deeper ways, and to be enfolded into each other as we are enfolded into the body of Christ, stretching and changing as we do so. The Spirit and its gifts are here to guide us in this, helping us to listen and to hear to each other and our concerns, and to hear God.

(3)

Many of us will know this from our own experiences in various communities: churches, universities, perhaps even workplaces. It is, to a large extent, the point of being an ordinand on attachment in a church, as I have been with you here for the past eighteen months. These placements are intended to put us in new places, to stretch us and challenge us, to teach us to listen to and learn the languages of parts of the church with which we’re less familiar. We hope to become more fluent in them—to love them, even as some of our differences and distinctiveness remain. Being here has changed me, and as I go on to a new place, those changes will be a part of the me that is enfolded into that place, as we change each other in turn. The same will be true of many of you, as you have come to belong here, and may be again if and when you may move on. The same will be true of new people who arrive here and who are enfolded into you and you into them. They will change and you will change—though not beyond recognition.

Everyone changes—except the always-broken, always-risen Christ into whom we are enfolded first, and who holds us all together.

This is not to say that the pain of change is not painful, that the effort is not tiring, that not knowing who or how we will become next isn’t scary—and we are all facing various different changes, individually and as a church at present, including changes unasked for and unwanted. In our reading from John, Jesus comes and stands before the disciples. He shows them his hands and his sides. For the resurrection does not undo the crucifixion, even though it defeats it. The grief and fear do not magically disappear, even though this is the start of their beginning to be healed. We do not lose who we were, even as we stretch and change to meet the future.

Rather it is to say that the Spirit has come and is working in us and with us as we stretch and grow, and enfold ourselves into new people and new people into us.  Sometimes it may feel painful, as if the Spirit is stretching us in ways in which we wish we didn’t need to grow, for reasons we wish were not necessary.  

Perhaps it feels like we have been swept up in a violent wind—one that did not come from God. But the Spirit whose arrival we celebrate today is always the Spirit of the Lord who came and stood among his tired and scared and hurting disciples in that locked room. Who showed them his hands and his side, recognising their pain and their hurt and their fear, and said, “Peace be with you.” This Spirit is always this breath, so gently and lovingly given. A soft exhale into a broken world, preparing the way for the challenging changes and the joyful community that Pentecost begins. 

“Peace be with you.”

May His Spirit be with us.

[1] Jennings, Willie James. Acts. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. First edition. ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.