she who comes

 

SERMON PREACHED AT ST PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN
PENTECOST

(June 8) 2025

  

READINGS

 

Acts 2: 1-21

John 14: 8-17

 

 

Acts 2 is surely one of the best known and most influential passages across the whole of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. It gave its name to an influential Christian praise band in the 1970s and ’80s, gave shape to the liturgical year which was forming by the 3rd century of Christianity, and gave shape to the experience of many, particularly in the Jesus and Charismatic movements, of the phenomenon that is known as Baptism in the Spirit.

I do not denigrate the many believers for whom Baptism in the Spirit has been a powerful faith experience. During the decades in which Second Chapter of Acts were active, alongside singer-evangelists such as Pat Boone, and Christian musicians like Barry McGuire, the experience of Baptism in the Spirit liberated many individuals and indeed the institutional church from various forms of spiritual incarceration. The winds of the Pentecostal Spirit undoubtedly blew through the Anglican church in those years, and indeed there was considerable impact on the lives of some of those who worshipped in this parish and church.

Like many such movements it came to be abused in some quarters, but I am sure there are many who thank God for those heady days of free-form worship, glossolalia (better known as speaking and singing in tongues) and a general sense of liberated spirits, set free from the stern frowns of stuffy clergymen and strict liturgical rules.

It was however only one of the biblical models of the encounter with the Third Person of the Trinity, the mysterious presence that we call “Spirit,” or indeed until the 1960s, Holy Ghost. She is referred to by various names in the fourth gospel, including in our gospel passage today where she is identified as Advocate, the “paracletos” and “Spirit of Truth.”

Again I should mention that if the feminine pronoun “she” is a little startling, it has long been recognised, though far longer ignored, that the words in both Hebrew and Greek for spirit are feminine, and there is little reason to adopt the masculine for this being, this person of the Trinity. That is so despite her role of making known the entirety of the presence of Jesus throughout space and time.

For Luke, as he wrote Acts, the birth of the church was that dramatic and powerful moment in the upper room. It incorporated vivid experiences that are described as  rushing wind and tongues of fire. For those who were gathered in the room that day it was a transformative and empowering moment never to be forgotten.

The speaking in tongues that caused onlookers to declare that those gathered were drunk is probably not the same as the phenomenon often experienced in Pentecostal churches. Those in the upper room appear to have experienced recognisable languages communicating gospel truth to them, to each their own language. Paul when he writes about glossolalia also indicates a process by which an unrecognised language is translated for the benefit of those gathered.

It is very different to that phenomenon, which may or may not be a gift of the Spirit, which tends to be encountered in Pentecostal circles. I remember well one parishioner in a parish in which I served at some stage in my career, which I will not identify, whose alleged tongue was a constant staccato repetition of a tongue click, the letter “t” repeated ad nauseam, extremely distracting for anyone attempting to communicate with God in their presence.

I decry charlatanism but I treasure the sense of the Spirit who makes known the presence of Jesus throughout space and time. Next week we will touch on the mystery, the inexplicable, unfathomable mystery of the Trinity. But for now, we focus on this bewildering, beautiful, empowering presence of the Third Person of the Trinity.

And mystery she must remain, for the godhead is mystery far beyond human understanding, mystery that, in Bianco da Siena’s 14^th century words, “shall far out pass the power of human telling.” In John Bell’s hymn “Enemy of Apathy,” which I normally inflict on congregations at Pentecost, she “wings over earth, resting where she wishes”: congregations are reminded of her irrepressible presence, moving constantly beyond human expectations, shattering conventions, and drawing her people ever closer to the heart of God.

So perhaps I can conclude simply with two illustrations from my own experience?

Once, as I sat with my German shepherd on the Awhitu Peninsula, south of Auckland, I felt simply and unforgettably the overpowering presence of God in nature. I did not burst forth in tongues, though I undoubtedly murmured under my breath some simple words of thanksgiving to the God who made that remarkable slice of planet earth possible. Then my dog and I went on our way. Nothing had changed I suspect for either of us, and I can certainly assure you that I had no sudden new insights into life the universe or everything. Yet the fact that I have never forgotten the dynamic nature of that moment suggests it was a wonderful and holy moment, a thin moment in a thin place in which the presence of God broke through unforgettably.

There have been many such moments, but I feel I should mention a moment of liturgical worship. For I have had countless overwhelming experiences in that realm too, . Indeed anytime I reach out my hands to receive communion I guess a micro taste of that mystery. But of that another time.

A funeral is not necessarily a context in which we are grasped by an overwhelming sense of the Spirit of God. Many of you will know that my first marriage was to the daughter of a bishop. He died at the ridiculously young age of 53, leaving his diocese and family not necessarily in that order, shocked to the core.

I don’t think I was emotionally close to David. I’m not sure anyone was. But I was gutted for his family of which I was a part by marriage, and his diocese, of which I was a part by geography and employment. I guess I was feeling fairly numb, but as the organ in a large cathedral struck up the opening chords of the famous hymn “Be Still My Soul,” to the tune of Sibelius’ Finlandia, and as over 1000 voices sang through their shock and countless other emotions, the sense of the presence of the God of hope was inescapable.

Again, there were no neon lights as I went on with my life after that. It’s no secret that my marriage subsequently came to an end, so that only one of my six children by that marriage has even the faintest memories of her grandfather or his faith. But as those verses swelled through the cathedral I knew  for one of the most powerful times in my life the meaning of those words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

Few messages, few sentences can so vividly express the gospel that Jesus came to embody in human history, and which has been without interruption carried out through space and time by the Spirit of Jesus ever since.

Be our experience similar to that of the upper room in Jerusalem in the 2nd chapter of Acts, or more akin to the gentle breathing into the soul of the resurrected Lord on the lakeside in the fourth gospel, the coming of the Spirit is the embodiment of that same message. “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Or as Jesus put it, centuries before Julian of Norwich, “Lo I am with you always, even to the ends of ages.”