Sermon 15th May 2016

This Pentecost sermon, based on John 14: verses 8-27, was written by our Archdeacon, Dr Jane Steen, and was read out, in her absence due to illness, by one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts to hear your word that by your word, our hearts may be turned ever closer to you in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Some parishioners decided to give their vicar a Pentecost gift.  But, he was told by someone else, they  would like him to mention it in church.  This did not seem unduly problematic until, on opening the present left on his doorstep, the Vicar found himself looking at a bottle of cherry brandy. 

The next Sunday he began his sermon by saying that he wished to thank some kind parishioners for a gift – a gift of early summer cherries – and for the spirit in which they had been given.

How different, we might say, is the spirit of Pentecost as we receive it, the Holy Spirit who comes to us today, who calls God’s church into existence and about whom Jesus tells us in this morning’s gospel.    So in this time we have together, I’d like to look with you at the gospel and see what it is that we can learn about the Holy Spirit today and therefore what we can discover about our Christian faith.  When I was preparing to be with you this morning, it seemed to me that there were five things on which to focus in our gospel. So let me reflect on them all with you now.

The first comes in verse 16 in which Jesus says that he will ask the Father who will give …who?  That rather depends on your translation!  Some Bibles say ‘another Advocate’. Some say, ‘another Comforter.’  Some of you might have other translations.  The Greek in which the Bible was originally written uses the word, paraklhton here – which in rather less fancy language means a sort of com-er-along-side:  para, as in parallel lines, and kleton, which means, called.   So, regardless of the translation you have in your Bibles – although if you have the rather strange word, Paraklete, you now know why - let’s forget the notion of an advocate – which can sound a bit law courtish – and stay with this idea of the Holy Spirit as one called alongside.

Called alongside whom, is a good question here.  And I think there are two answers:  called alongside God and called alongside us.  You might think that called alongside God isn’t a very good way of putting it – and you would be absolutely right – because the Holy Spirit IS God, not some sort of sidealong addition.  But…but one way to think about the holy spirit is, exactly like Jesus, is to think of the Spirit as God coming to us – and in that sense, the Spirit is not God at rest, God dwelling in majesty, as much as God who, in Jesus and in the Spirit, pours himself out for his people.  And, of course, the Spirit is alongside us as Jesus is.  The Spirit is, if you like, another Jesus, sent to us after the earthly life of Jesus is over but assuring us that God is always alongside us, always with us, always present in our midst.

So that is the first thing which I found myself powerfully reminded of about the Christian faith: if you like, that it is a matter of relationship with God in Jesus more than anything else and that God sends his Spirit to enable that relationship.  We do not have to go hunting for the Lord; he sends himself to find us.

And that leads me on to the second point which comes from the very beginning of our reading with Philip’s words to Jesus.  He asks Jesus to show them the Father and then they will be satisfied – or, if you like, Jesus, if you show us the Father, that’ll be enough.  Philip is quite good at this business of showing in John’s gospel.  If you remember, it is he who to whom some Greeks come and say, Sir, we wish to see Jesus – or, if you like, Sir, can you show us Jesus?  Both passages make it abundantly clear that this really is the wrong way to go about things.  Christianity, whatever else it is, is not a spectator sport.  We don’t go along simply to behold some sort of spectacle.  When the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples on the first Day of Pentecost, with all the tongues of fire, the wind and the ability to speak in other languages, they don’t just sit there and look at each other.  No, they get up and out and get on with it.  We are not Christians simply to come to church on Sunday and then never do anything else about it.  We are brought into relationship by the coming-along-side-us Spirit and out of that relationship, comes a way of living.  That, I think, is why Jesus goes on to say to Philip, that if he has really SEEN Jesus – not watched him like the TV but seen him in the way that you see your new born baby or the person you love most in the world – then there is no need to want to look at the Father.

So, then, a coming-along-side-Spirit who draws us into relationship which is living, in which we can behold God and in which we participate.  That seems dangerously close to three of my first two points but never mind.  Let’s carry on and look now at verse 16 in which Jesus spells out some more of both the necessary consequences of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the necessary preconditions of receiving the Spirit.

If you love me, Jesus says, you will keep my commandments – or perhaps, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.  Now, the order of that is REALLY important.  This is not Jesus manipulating us.  This isn’t Jesus saying, ‘if you love me, you’ll do such and such’ in the way that we might in anger when a relationship hits a rocky moment.  No.  This is Jesus putting commandment and obedience after love.  Why do we do as Jesus commands?  Why do we listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives – or at least, try to?  Because we know that we are beloved of God and we in turn love our Lord.  No one was ever a Christian because they kept all the rules, or because they obeyed Jesus’ commands out of fear.  And it seems to me that this is one of the most important things to remember at Pentecost.  Today, when the church is born, today, when so many people do not know the love of the Lord, today, when religion is blamed for so many of the world’s ills and, let us be honest, when we admit that the behaviour of Christians has sometimes contributed to those ills, today above all days let us remember that the motivating force which brings Jesus to us and because of which he sends us the Holy Spirit, is love.   I don’t know of any Bible version which does translate this verse as ‘You keep my commandments because you love me’.  But it might not be a bad way to go. 

Our coming-along-side-Spirit draws us into relationship.  The Spirit enables us to know God.  Because the Spirit comes to us, we participate in the life of God and therefore the life of the Church.  And we do all this, because we are beloved of our Lord and we love him as a result.

I fear now this is going to be six points but now more, I promise – and there are just two left.  First, or let’s call it fifth, Jesus speaks of the Spirit as the Spirit of Truth.  A very wise clergyman who used to minister in this diocese, was often asked by people about prayer. Prayer, he would say, is the attending to things as they are.  Prayer is attending to things as they are.  Now, you might say, surely prayer is about bringing things to God – and in a way, it is.  But what is there of which God is not already aware?  God sees all things – and perhaps, if we attend to things as they really are, we will see them as God does and will also learn more of God.  There is no point, really, in a human relationship, in trying to hide things or pretend that they are other than they are.  It’s always better to be honest.  And if that is so between us, it is most certainly so wit h God.  Receiving, accepting, the Spirit of truth demands that we don’t try to lie in our relationship with God.  And this comes down to what I will call sincerity or, to put it slightly differently, do we have honesty of intention in our relationship with God? The holy spirit will lead us into all truth. Do we want that? To be honest, I rather suspect that most of us don’t.  Not yet, anyway, or not all the time.  But if we receive the Spirit, we must understand that the love, the along-sideness and the being part of the life of God, is not a sort of spiritual mini break.  It is demanding, it asks us to stand up and be counted and it asks us to be prepared for the continued and ever fuller revelation of God.

And finally – honestly, finally – the result of this, as Jesus says, is his peace.  Just as he gives us his spirit, so he will give us his peace.  Sometimes, we are so full of our own worries that we do not have time to let the spirit of peace fill us.  If we go from this service with one thing with which we wish to ask God to help us, let me suggest to you that it might be this:  let us ask that on this day when the spirit comes on the church, we might have the grace to be emptied of so much that distracts us and prevents us from living the life of God to which we are called.  Alongsideness, truth and peace are all offered to us. It might take us a lifetime of maturing in the Christian faith to realise this, to understand it and to embrace is.  But today, when we receive communion and remember that Jesus sends the spirit because he himself has died for us, let us really ask for his grace to cast away the clutter which keeps us from him, the sin which clings so close, in order that we may be filled with the peace and comfort of the loving, truth telling spirit.