I preached this sermon at Mass on the Eve of Pentecost, as part of ‘ABLAZE!’, an On Fire Mission event (onfiremission.org) hosted by St Matthew’s, Perry Beeches as part of the church’s 60th anniversary celebrations. The readings were: Proverbs 8.22-31, Acts 2.37-47 and John 17.17-23.
This week I, like many clergy I suspect, have been doing a round of Pentecost assemblies in my local schools. It’s such a wonderful dramatic story to work with – rushing wind, and tongues of flame, and multiplicity of languages. Just – learn from my experience! – never, ever ask a hall full of children to ‘make a wind noise’! Yes, the coming of the Holy Spirit is full of drama: wind and flame and miraculous speech.
But we’ll get to that tomorrow. For today I have chosen a passage from a little later in Acts chapter 2. This is the ‘so what next?’ of Pentecost. Here we get a snapshot of the life of the very earliest church: they “held all things in common” “day by day… they broke bread”, praised God, prayed and ate “with glad and generous hearts”, shared their possessions “as any had need” and had “the goodwill of all the people”. This is the ‘day to day’ of being the church, of being the people upon whom the Holy Spirit has been poured out. “And day by day the Lord added to their number.”
As I looked at this passage afresh in preparation for today, my attention was drawn to the phrase “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles”. It would be easy to assume that these ‘wonders and signs’ must be of the dramatic sort encountered in the Pentecost narrative and in many other places in the Acts of the Apostles. But I wonder…
Notice where this phrase comes in the text: immediately before the description of that ‘day to day’ of the early church, and immediately after the description of how the newly baptised “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” I wonder if perhaps those things – the breaking of bread, the prayers, holding all things in common, fellowship and goodwill – are themselves among the ‘signs and wonders’ of the early church. There is awe to be found in the day-to-day of God’s beloved, Spirit-filled community.
That is not to say, of course, that the Spirit does not move in amazing, awesome, sometimes surprising, sometimes dramatic ways. She surely does. Scripture and the life of the church both attest to that. There are people in this room who can attest to that. Indeed we may very well encounter that today, as we come expectantly before God, open to the life and movement of the Holy Spirit among and within us.
But I do want to say that the Spirit who works in obviously miraculous signs and wonders, the Spirit who may bring laughter or tears, who may give us words and pictures, who may cause us to rest in the presence of God’s love, is the same Spirit who is manifest too in quieter, less spectacular ways in the life of the church, and in our lives.
The Spirit who, as we see in Proverbs, is with God and in God, one with the Father and the Son “from the beginning” is steadfast in her presence, whether we experience that in dramatic ways or quiet ways, like a rushing wind or a gentle breeze.
We may – indeed we should – pray “Come, Holy Spirit…” not because the Holy Spirit needs our invitation, but because we are opening ourselves to a renewed and renewing awareness of the Spirit’s presence with and within us. Our prayer is an orientation of ourselves, our hearts, minds, spirits, bodies, all that we are, towards the transformative power of God’s grace.
And when we do that, when in prayer we open ourselves to the renewing presence of the Holy Spirit, we should expect something to happen, however quiet or spectacular, sudden or gradual. Just as we expect something to happen when we pray over the elements in communion: “send your Holy Spirit that broken bread and wine outpoured may be for us the body and blood of Christ”.
We come, expecting that by God’s Holy Spirit this bread and wine will be transformed as the body and blood of Christ. We come, expecting too that by God’s Holy Spirit we will be transformed as the body of Christ, because that is who we are.
That, for me, is why the Catholic and Charismatic dimensions of the spirituality expressed in the life of On Fire Mission are such natural companions. They are both about the expectation that God does something.
So we come to this day together, to worship, to the altar ,to the our times of sharing stories and fellowship and food, to the presence of Christ in the blessed sacrament, to the offering and receiving of prayer ministry, to all of it, expecting that God will do something. And, if we are expecting God to do something, then we should expect too to be surprised. Perhaps we are expecting that nothing much will happen to us, and we might be surprised by a word or a picture, or a particular gift or manifestation of the Spirit. Or perhaps we have come expecting something amazing to happen, and will be amazed instead by the realisation of the presence of the Spirit in the day-to-day of our lives.
This is what God does, and who God is. The same God who reveals God’s glory in the person of Jesus Christ, continues by the Holy Spirit to pour upon us, upon the church in every time and place, upon the whole creation, the riches of God’s grace.
In our gospel reading, Jesus gives us a glimpse of God’s purposes as he prays to the Father for his friends, for us: “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
We live in a divided church, and for many of us those divisions are deeply personal and deeply painful and sometimes deeply damaging, and we shouldn’t downplay that. But we are one in this: that we are called to live as those transformed by God’s Holy Spirit and set free to live in the world in ways which speak in word and action of God’s abiding and transforming love.
This is the ‘day to day’ of life as the church: as God’s beloved people, filled, equipped, and inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, we are sent to be mirrors and conduits of the light of God’s liberating, live-giving, peace-making, justice-seeking, world-changing love, which we have received and continue to receive by God’s mercy and grace.
It is all too easy for that reality to be obscured by other day-to-day realities in the life of the church and in our own lives. But even when we can catch only glimpses of it, the life of God’s Holy Spirit remains within us and within God’s church, poured out in abundance.
Today, may we be open to God’s Holy Spirit working among and within us beyond what we can imagine.
Tomorrow, may we be ready to proclaim afresh the mystery and gift of the Holy Spirit to all people.
And in all the days to come, may we live as Spirit-filled, transformed and transforming disciples of Jesus, participating with joy in God’s renewal of the church and of the whole creation.
Amen.
... because God is love 
Thank you for these inspiring words. Blessings ❤️