troublesome third person

 

SERMON PREACHED at St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN 

& St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN,

PENTECOST

(May 19^th) 2024

 

READINGS

 

Ezekiel 37: 1-14

Psalm 104: 25-32

John 15: 26-27, 16: 4b-15

There was, some years ago, decades perhaps, a period in which people saw the experience of the Spirit to be an excuse to do incredibly silly, incredibly meaningless things. I will cut a little slack perhaps but I remember the horror with which I encountered a group whose shared joy was based on, perhaps proved by, manifested in, crawling around on their knees barking. Perhaps this was a liberating experience, but was it a gift of the god of the Cross? a manifestation of the Spirit?

Like many of us I also witnessed from time to time, particularly in the early years of my faith, that manifestation that scholars call glossolalia, speaking in tongues. Sometimes even that quite beautiful sound of singing in tongues. As time went on, impressed though I was in the early months and perhaps years of my faith by these manifestations, I came to see them as less and less important, and in some cases as a form of charlatanism.

Such manifestations can be a beautiful expression of psychological and spiritual liberation. As such they are not necessarily a bad thing. I am however not convinced that they were what Paul was talking about when he wrote about speaking in tongues, and I’m not altogether convinced that this manifestation was the hub of the scene that Luke describes in that first upper room of Pentecost.

I’m sure to be corrected by some, perhaps some of you, who I have experienced great joy and liberation in the form of glossolalia, speaking in tongues. I certainly do not think it is anything like that be all and end all of the Pentecost experience. The scriptures lead us to seek a deeper sign. That deeper sign may be strictly personal: perhaps speaking in tongues falls into that category. When I was subjected to an ear bashing by two Pentecostal pastors in Palmerston North years ago exhibiting patterns of tongue speaking that they assured me were for what the military might call demonstration purposes only I began to question their integrity. Who what why is this Spirit who has little show times?

I’m being harsh but the Spirit that Jesus speaks of as the Paraclete in John’s gospel, and which Luke depicts in terms of a reversal of the tower of Babel in his Book of Acts, is little interested in barking for Jesus, and I suggest only a touch more interested in our ability to slip into sub linguistic modes of ecstasy (though we will indeed sing of tongues of ecstasy later in the service).

If I am hinting at things that the Spiritual experience of Pentecost is not what do I suggest it is? The litmus test is what to do the Scriptures say? When Paul talks about tongues he certainly appears to be discussing something supernatural, but he places very little importance on it, and far more importance on love. Are we a people or individuals of love? Therein lies one key basis on which to evaluate our experience of the Spirit.

There are others too, secondary perhaps to that one. This Spirit who comes to us in different ways at different times has what I once years ago spoke of as a “job description.” Does the experience of the Spirit that we are having or claiming to have point to all that Jesus was and is? Is this experience consistent with the behaviour and teaching of the Jesus revealed to us by the four great gospel writers (themselves I suggest deeply inspired by the Spirit, though far from being subjected to some form of  automatic writing as if they were mediums of a less inspired ghost in a séance).

The Spirit’s task is to make known and available to us all that we need in this moment, in any given moment, of the person and the work of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Second Person of the Trinity. The task of the Spirit is to release the Man of Nazareth through space and time so that we are equally empowered by him as were his followers in the flesh.

The task of the Spirit is to empower us for the work of justice, for the work of evangelism or proclamation of the gospel, for the works that we speak of as marks of mission. The task of the Spirit is setting us aside as a contrast Society of Jesus whose citizenship, as the author of Hebrews puts it, is not of this world. This of course does not give us carte blanche to be of no earthly use to anyone in this world: quite the opposite. The task of the Spirit may be to be a people of deep Christ-centred ecstasy, knowing as we pray together, knowing sometimes on our own in the privacy of our room or a walk in God’s creation, knowing and being inspired by, breathed into by the immeasurable presence and empowerment of God.

Sometimes that empowerment will be as gentle as the dove with whom the Spirit is often associated. Sometimes as simple as holding and comforting a friend or relative in a time of great sorrow, or even for that matter a child in a time of pain or frustration. Sometimes as inspirational and world changing as proclaiming justice in the face of injustice at great risk, the work of an Oscar Romero, a Desmond Tutu or a Martin Luther King. Even the work, as I’ve often said of a Rachel Carson or Greta Thunberg, as far as I know far outside the Christian community, because the Spirit of God is not restricted by human fences.

So if you expected to come this day and learn all there is to know about the Third Person of the Trinity then I’m very sorry! These are the moments in which we stand in awe and wonder, knowing that the mysteries of our triune God are simply way beyond and above us. Yet give thanks for the remarkable drawing near of God not only in Jesus but in all that Jesus asks us to do, even in setting bread and wine aside and knowing it to be embodiment of the presence of God.