Tagged: Pentecost
Keep burning!
Many churches these days, like our own, use – instead of ordinary candles – oil-filled ones. The advantages are that they are cheaper, cleaner, they’re not carcinogenic, and they never burn down. However long they burn for, they always look just like new.
There is a downside though. You buy your oil-filled candle, put it in the candlestick, fill it with oil and light it. It looks wonderful. It burns away and never drips or gets any shorter. But that presents a problem – because you can’t see when it needs refilling from the outside. And unless you regularly top it up with more oil, although it always looks alright it is getting emptier and emptier. And in the end it will just go out. Unexpectedly.
Christians are like oil-filled candles. They look fine on the outside. But they need regularly filling up on the inside – and you can’t tell from just looking at the outside when they’re getting empty. And just as oil-filled candle needs regular refilling, a Christian needs a regular filling of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, although outwardly we may look fine, we just get emptier and emptier – and in the end we stop burning. And simply not notice that we’ve gone out!
Pentecost Sunday – the day the Spirit came. Luke has told us in chapter one of Acts how the apostles have been gathering together to pray, along with Mary the mother of Jesus, the other women and the brothers of Jesus. They weren’t just sitting around waiting for something to happen! They were praying for something to happen!
Continue readingBasking in the sunshine of God
This is the day – Pentecost – when the Holy Spirit takes centre stage. This great feast in the Christian Year, when we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples on the Jewish Festival of Pentecost, which came seven weeks after Passover and celebrated both the wheat harvest and the giving of the Torah, the Law, on Mount Sinai. It was one of three pilgrimage festivals when Jews came to the Temple in Jerusalem – Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles – in Hebrew Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot. Pentecost is the Greek word for this feast and is derived from the Greek word for 50 – the feast of 50 days – seven weeks after Passover, and for us 50 days after Easter. For me using my seven times table it comes to 49, but if we count Easter Sunday as Day 1 then you will find that this is Day 50 after Easter! I know some of you like to know this sort of thing.
Continue readingPut Jesus at the centre
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com
Acts 2.1-21; John 15.26-27, 16.4b-15
Anyone who uses computers knows the feeling.
You press the on button and wait – and nothing happens. Or it starts up but never finishes – it just switches on and never quite finishes loading everything.
And you start to get that awful sinking feeling deep down inside. Everything is on the computer – all your email, thousands of family photos, the book you’ve been writing, twenty years’ worth of sermons! Particularly the one you need to print because you’re preaching it in half-an-hour. And you start to say to yourself:
- I knew I should have paid for another year of that anti-virus software!
- Why on earth didn’t I install the firewall?
- I know I said that backing everything up could wait until tomorrow – what on earth was I thinking?
The computer is dead. And everything on it is gone. And because you didn’t look after it properly there’s no recovery, or if you’re lucky and can afford it an expert might – just might – be able to dismantle it and get your stuff off the hard disk. But there’s that lingering feeling – if only I’d done what I knew I should, everything would all be safe. If only … Continue reading
Get off the mobile and enjoy the view!
There are apparently, and according to the UN, more mobile phones in the world than there are people! If you want a symbol of the modern world and what is at the centre of people’s lives, look no further than the mobile phone! For so many, daily life is ruled by their mobile.
One of the most popular programmes on the TV at the moment is Channel 4’s Gogglebox. Just to explain, for those of you who don’t watch it, the idea behind the programme is that families and friends are filmed watching television, and we see their reactions. Each week a variety of different programmes are watched, and cameras inside people’s houses record their reactions to what they watch.
On Friday, just back from holiday, we sat down and watched the previous week’s episode, and one of the programmes people sat back to enjoy was a programme about railway journeys made by Paul Merton. As we were treated to an aerial view of a train travelling through some of Britain’s wonderful countryside, we then saw the reaction of two of Gogglebox’s regular participants – two sisters from Leeds.
One said: I like train journeys like that where you go on really beautiful, scenic routes.
To which the other replied: Continue reading
Wave of Prayer
Wave of prayer for Evangelism 8th to 15th May
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have asked for a great wave of prayer in the lead up to Pentecost. We have been asked to pray that the life transforming love of Jesus Christ will overflow from our churches into our communities so that more people will be drawn to faith in him.
Prayer booklets are available in church to guide you for nine days of prayer (a Novena). These are free but you can give an offering towards their cost for yourself and someone else if you wish. They cost £1 each, part of which goes to the Archbishops’ Refugee fund.
On Saturday 14th May after Mass at 9.30, there will be silent prayer in our church before the blessed sacrament from 10-11 a.m. Come and go as you please. You do not have to stay for the whole hour.
Additionally if you want somewhere different to pray, St Peter and St Paul Chaldon will be open daily from 10-4 as usual or you could go and walk the prayer labyrinth in the grounds of St Lawrence Church.
And finally a lot more information and ideas for prayer can be found on the website http://www.thykingdom.co.uk, and do catch up with Archbishop Justin’s message about the wave of prayer on his FaceBook page or YouTube.
Pentecost Sunday – The promised Holy Spirit
Acts 2.1-21; John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15
Anyone who uses computers knows the feeling.
You press the on button and wait – and nothing happens. Or it starts up but never finishes – it just switches on and never quite finishes loading everything. And you start to get that awful sinking feeling deep down inside. Everything is on the computer – all your email, thousands of family photos, the book you’ve been writing, twenty years’ worth of sermons! And you start to say to yourself:
- I knew I should have paid for another year of that anti-virus software
- Why on earth didn’t I install the firewall
- I know I said that backing everything up could wait until tomorrow – what on earth was I thinking
The computer is dead. And everything on it is gone. And because you didn’t look after it properly there’s no recovery, or if you’re lucky and can afford it an expert might – just might – be able to dismantle it and get your stuff off the hard disk. But there’s that lingering feeling – if only I’d done what I knew I should, everything would all be safe. If only … Continue reading
In the world but not of the world
Mother Anne-Marie was preaching this week on Acts 1.15-17, 21-end and John 17.6-19.
A week last Thursday we had a general election and through the night a surprise result emerged. A result none of the polls, until the exit poll at 10 p.m., had come near to predicting. The next day leaders toppled as those parties who had had disastrous, or just not too good results, expected their leaders to fall on their swords and take full responsibility for the failure. We are now into a period of uncertainty in most of the opposition parties as Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP struggle to rebuild and find new leadership. And we have a government with an overall majority they didn’t expect, so there is perhaps more change ahead than was anticipated. We are in a time of uncertainty and change. Continue reading
What I said last Sunday for the Feast of Pentecost
Last Sunday was, of course, the Feast of Pentecost. Here’s what I said in my sermon.
There’s not much that’s more annoying than a flat car battery.
You know what it’s like! The last time you used the car there was nothing wrong. Then you go out to go somewhere – and it’s always when you’re going somewhere important and are in a hurry – and the car won’t start. These days, with electronic central locking, you are forewarned because the remote control key won’t unlock the car. And you get that sinking feeling. And yet, having had to use the key the old-fashioned way and actually put it in the lock, you get in and even though you now know you have a flat battery you still try and start the car. You know it’s not going to work but you try anyway. No power! And you’re not going anywhere. And the worst thing is you know that it’s almost certainly your fault. Either you’ve left headlights on though that’s increasingly difficult these days. Or you’ve left the interior light on. Or – as I managed to do recently – you’ve left the boot slightly ajar so that the boot light had not gone out! Continue reading
Pentecost – my sermon for this week
Back from two weeks in Crete, where the priest I live with and I went to get some sunshine – a much needed respite from the unseasonable cold and wet of our English spring this year – but also to coincide with Orthodox Easter. Back in time to preach for the feast of Pentecost.
There’s not much that’s more annoying than returning from holiday to find a note on the table from the person who’s been feeding the cats while you’re away saying: Welcome home, the cats are fine … and by the way you’ve got a flat tyre. We went out to have a look. Yes – there it was. It was fine when we went away – and now it wasn’t. So on Wednesday morning, as the car belongs to the priest I live with, she phoned the RAC (Note: the royal Automobile Club, a vehicle breakdown service in the UK) to come and change the wheel so that she could drive to the garage to get a new tyre. The man from the RAC was there in seconds – literally! Turned out he lives in Caterham and this was his first call, and the priest I live with had hardly put the phone down when he arrived! He quickly put on the temporary wheel, and then before he went said: All I need to do now is check your oil level. They never used to do that – but in these recessionary days people are not having their cars serviced so frequently, so now the RAC check on every call. Just as well – the oil level was very low as the car is somewhat overdue for a service. Continue reading
What I said this Sunday – Pentecost
Here’s my sermon for Pentecost Sunday.
Many churches these days, like our own, use – instead of ordinary candles – oil-filled ones. The advantages are that they are cheaper, cleaner, and never appear to burn down. However long they burn for, they always look just like new. There is a downside though. You buy your oil-filled candle, put it in the candlestick, fill it with oil and light it. It looks wonderful. It burns away and never drips or gets any shorter. The problem is, though, that unless you regularly top it up with more oil, although it always looks alright it is getting emptier and emptier. And in the end it will just go out.
Christians are like oil-filled candles. They look fine on the outside. But they need regularly filling up on the inside – and you can’t tell from just looking at the outside when they’re getting empty. Like an oil-filled candle, a Christian needs a regular filling of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, although outwardly we may look fine, we just get emptier and emptier – and in the end we stop burning. And simply not notice that we’ve gone out!
Pentecost Sunday – the day the Spirit came, and thousands heard Peter speaking in their own tongues of what God had done. The day that Jesus did as he had promised, and sent the Holy Spirit from the Father to fill up the disciples. But why did the disciples have to wait after the Ascension for Jesus to send the Spirit? And why don’t we, today, seem to experience the Holy Spirit in the way that the disciples did then?
Who is the Holy Spirit? I expect many people in the Church would be hard pressed to answer that question with any clarity if it were put to them. We are clear about God the Father. We know who Jesus is. But not many know who the Holy Spirit is. We talk about one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – but there is a tendency to have rather vague ideas about him. The New Testament tells us that the Holy Spirit is the person of the Godhead who dwells in us day by day. He gives gifts to his Church. There are several lists in the New Testament of gifts given by the Holy Spirit. They include such gifts as prophecy, miraculous powers, speaking in tongues as well as more down to earth gifts such as teaching, administration (yes, administration!) and helping others.
This is a Spirit who is at work in the Church – not just then, but now as well. A Spirit who comes to stir up the people of God – the apostles discovered that on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came not like a gentle breeze, but a violent – think about that word – a violent wind. But if this is what the Holy Spirit is like, what does it mean for us as a group of Christians?
Canon John Gunstone describes in his book LIVE BY THE SPIRIT what preaching at Pentecost used to be like for him before he discovered the reality of the Holy Spirit: Trying to preach on Whit Sunday each year was an embarrassment. I just couldn’t think of anything to say. I rationalised the events narrated in Acts 2 as a dramatic mystical experience that was unique in the life of the apostolic Church, and I warned confirmation candidates not to expect anything like it today… If anyone had asked me (which they never did) how to receive more of the Holy Spirit into their lives, I would probably have mumbled something about saying prayers and receiving Communion.
Peter and the others experienced something dramatic – and Peter, as he preached to the crowds in response to those accusations of drunkenness, told them that God has poured out his Spirit as foretold by the prophetJoel.
That experience gave Peter a vision for the Church, a vision inspired by the Holy Spirit. What is our vision for the Church today? Do we have a vision at all? His vision of the new Church, the new community formed in the power of the Holy Spirit as a direct response to the death and resurrection ofJesusis, perhaps, different from our vision of what the Church should be. We have a tendency to limit our vision – if we have a small vision its easier to believe that it might come about. We lack faith in the power of God.
A report of the General Synod of the Church of England published in 1981 had the following to say about the difference between the Early Church and the Church of today and the way in which we attempt to devalue the message of Acts that the Church should be alive in the power of the Spirit: No amount of sterilisation of the Biblical message, and no amount of critical scholarship, have ever managed wholly to conceal the flow of the Acts narrative, and its message of a Spirit filled community facing persecution, working miracles, rejoicing in the power of God, and generally living a corporate “Pentecostal” life.
No matter how hard we might try, we cannot explain away the fact that the Early Church had something that we haven’t got. It had a freedom, a joyfulness, a carefreeness, a dimension of living in the Spirit, a willing self-surrender, an overflowing love, that does not seem to be evident in our Church today. The difference is highlighted by the fact that following Peter’s sermon more than three thousand people became Christians, yet today Churches inWestern Europe are shrinking. We are so accustomed to small churches that we accept them as normal. Church going in Western Europe is the lowest in the Christian world. Everywhere but in the West the Church is growing – in some places at a phenomenal rate. We need to discard the idea that the behaviour of the apostles at Pentecost and the gifts that they used in their ministry were unique to the Early Church. We need to allow the Holy Spirit of God to guide us and strengthen us and give us the gifts we need so that God’s kingdom might be glorified.
So let us allow the Holy Spirit to direct our lives as individuals and as a community. Because if we allow the Spirit to take control then the Church, in the words of Canon John Gunstone, will: be pulsating with the life of God, subject to his Word, anointed with his Spirit, constrained by his love, preaching his Good News, and ministering with his power.
Let each one of us, on this day of Pentecost, rededicate ourselves to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; pray that he will fill us anew with his Holy Spirit as he did the apostles, and that we may be open to the work that he wants to do among us, so that this Church may pulsate with the life of God. And then perhaps we can begin to live out our mission statement which appears at the top of your service sheet every week:
St John’s Church is called by God to be his people through faith in Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit: worshipping him, growing in holiness, making disciples and serving others.
View from the Valley 