4th June 2006Pentecost Sunday

Fr Julian Browning

Acts  2:1–21;  Romans 8: 22–27;  John 15: 26–27 & 16: 4b–15

“Every man heard them speak in his own language.”  Acts 2:6

The Holy Spirit makes all languages, all viewpoints, all lives, understood; that's the gift.

Today we celebrate the birthday of the whole Church, so there's a great deal going on in today's service. We have a procession, a baptism, and a lot of words, some of which we won't have time to understand. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. One other person going with the flow is little Luke Alexander, blissfully unaware that he has a starring role in this liturgy, where he is to be born into a new life on the day the Church is born.

New life for the Church, how often in the past have we heard rather panicky prayers for new life for the church, sometimes in very dull parsonical voices which do make one wonder about the likelihood of any renewal at all. But there is always new life, because that is what Christianity is about.  The epistle is in birth pang mode, the earth groaning in travail.

At Pentecost God shows yet again that he constantly returns, to inspire, protect and guide those whom he loves, from the beginning to the end, alpha to omega, from our baptism to our death and beyond to the filfilment of God's purpose. Pentecost is about God's new creation, the Church, but it's also quite personal, just as a baptism is personal when a name is given. Those tongues of fire rest on each of the disciples, not on them as a crowd. Painters have had difficulty representing that scene, with the wind and the tongues of fire, sometimes showing everyone under an eye level grill, but wind and fire, in the symbolic language which we're going to have to start to learn again, are always signs that God is showing us who He is. God shows each of us who He is.

What are tongues of fire anyway? I dont know, it's something to do with the shape of the flame being associated with the gift of tongues, but you would know if you had one on your shoulder. It's as if God grabs each of us by the scruff of the neck. Ye also shall bear witness because ye have been with me from the beginning. And it's no good saying he can't mean me, because he does mean me. On other big days, it was just the inner circle. Pentecost is different. It's not a mystical moment for the lucky ones. It's about the Holy Spirit, the energy of God, a sort of electrical storm, on the move, throughout the world, whether we like it or not, and Luke gives us a travelogue of wonderful names like Phrygia and Pamphylia to show us what we're getting ourselves into, a world that's moved into a new dimension of time and space which is to be called the Church. Definitely time to go with the flow. Wonders in heaven, and signs in the earth beneath.

Were they drunk, those apostles? On a temporary high, bouncing back from grief and disappointment about Jesus? Certainly the Christian Church seems to have begun, not with a carefully worded manifesto, but with an unruly scene, like a bit of street theatre we might cross the street to avoid, and at nine in the morning too. But that's nothing to what we are like before the Holy Spirit invades our lives. We face another sort of intoxication – the intoxication with self, with getting our own way, believing in our own powers. The Tower of Babel fell because of man's pride, it was our attempt to build a bridge to heaven without God. Like so many  international projects built on mutual understanding, The Tower of Babel, having probably overrun the budget, collapsed. When it collapsed in confusion it revealed a truth about human beings, that we do not understand each other. We are interested only our own intelligence, our own will, our own feelings. Pentecost gives us the chance, and it is a gift from God, to break free from that babble, that confusion in which we live today.

The gift of tongues is not a new language, and is certainly not an incoherent babbling which passes for the speech of the Spirit in some churches. In fact it is the direct opposite. The Holy Spirit makes all languages, all viewpoints, all lives, understood; that's the gift. Divine love alone creates a unity out of the diversity of our world. So the Church is catholic right from the start, embracing all tongues, all people, that's the whole point of it. There weren't lots of little churches which went through mergers and acquisitions to create a colossal church in the Middle Ages. Rather the Church starts out as catholic at Pentecost, worldwide in conception; the gift of tongues embraces all continents, all cultures, all languages. We have the gift of tongues, as those apostles did, but this is no party trick and is certainly not a private line of communication with God. It is the gift of being able to hear everyone speaking in their own language, as St.Luke says in Acts, to hear what they are really saying, to see them as children of God, to understand them and get though to them and love them and forgive them as Jesus would do.

There's a catch, as there usually is. Actually it's not a catch, it's what we're set on earth to do. We have to accept this gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes in the wind and the fire, God's Spirit poured out on his servants. That unruly scene of the apostles filled with the Holy Ghost reminds us each year that we can always be renewed in heart and mind, that it's not all over, indeed the work has only just begun and the best is yet to come. So much trust placed in us. So much work to do. So many gifts of the Spirit to help us in that work. Pentecost, that great street event of tongues and wind and fire, should actually leave us happily lost for words, knowing that we have the Holy Spirit now to guide us in the way of truth.