Gift of the Holy Spirit-- Pentecost 2003
<a href=www.vheadline.com>venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 08, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson
sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas
Today it is Pentecost when we thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When I was a boy, we called today Whitsun and Monday was a Bank Holiday when everyone crowded the roads with cars and buses in a frantic attempt to have a day on the beach somewhere. It was called Whitsun because the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost were called White Sundays after the girls who were baptized and confirmed on Easter Day and who wore their white dresses to church on these Sundays.
The tradition largely died out except for them coming to church on Pentecost in these dresses, the last of the White Sundays and it got shortened first to White Sunday and then to Whitsun. It has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, which is why the Church has pushed us back into thinking of this day as Pentecost Sunday and the events recorded in Acts when the disciples were sitting in the upper room waiting for something big to happen.
Paul, who did not experience this upper room phenomenon, wrote to the Romans, "And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom 8:27) In the First letter to Timothy (2:5) Paul says (if it was Paul who was the author), "There is one God, and also one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus."
If we put these two together it suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are either the same or interchangeable." If we cannot have Jesus any more in the flesh then we have the Holy Spirit, which is his replacement in the world as our guide and comforter. The holy being by which we are kept in touch with God the father and the one who will guide us into all truth.
Certainly the world could do with such a figure. Watching the news reports from all over the world gives one the impression that everyone is losing touch with God. We need desperately to be in closer contact with God to learn what is his purpose. As transport between places gets faster our whole lives become more frenetic.
When we had to walk from one place to another, or ride in a cart pulled by a slow moving mule or horse there was time for us to consider what we were doing, why we were doing it and what the consequences would be. In today's world we are pushed into snap decisions. We can be transported to any part of the world by satellite communication and computer conferencing and instant answers and solutions are demanded by problems that may have taken years to develop.
Disease of all kinds in Africa has become so rife, not just AIDS, that a solution was seen in providing cheap drugs to African nations by giving them a seventy-five per cent discount. Then the drug producers noticed a reduction in the demand coming from the developed world for the drugs they were supplying to Africa on this cheap deal.
The reason? "African dealers were selling the drugs at discounted prices back into the producing countries and pocketing the profit. The moral obligation to help their own people was ignored it seems.
When food aid was first taken into Iraq the lorries were looted so that instead of everyone getting a little, some got a lot and others got nothing. Survival of the fittest, or a prime example of selfishness and inconsideration for others?
It is easy, of course, to point the finger at others especially the glaring faults such as the two I have outlined. Closer to home we find black market racketeers making big profits on money exchange and the supply of scarce basic foods.
What about our own lives and the decisions we take?
Can we say that they are in line with the work of the Holy Spirit who is trying, as always, to line us up with God?
In an imperfect world we too are imperfect, making hasty decisions and instant judgments and flawed reactions to information that may also be lacking true objectivity.
In Birmingham, Alabama, a large explosion alerted a policeman, he saw a black African American sprinting down the road and immediately came to the conclusion that he had caused the explosion. He took out his gun and aimed for the man but missed. He called for back-up and set off in pursuit. The black man stopped and looked up but the policeman was concentrating on aiming his gun. As he fired the black man caught a child who had jumped from a window of an apartment from which a gas oven had exploded setting the apartment alight. The policeman's bullet hit the child and killed it.
Our gut instincts and training and prejudices often get in the way of good decisions. We all make errors of judgement though hopefully they don't result in the death of others but do we give time each day in training ourselves to work with the Holy Spirit so that our decisions are more likely to be good ones?
Working with the Holy Spirit is the same as working with Christ himself. He is both an intermediary and an intercessor with God on our behalf but we can't just leave everything to him alone. It is not a question of saying "oops! Sorry" and then thinking that Christ will put all things right for us. We have to work through our life's decisions using him as a confidant and counselor. The result may not always turn out as we would like and it could well be that our preferences and prejudices turn result in great hindrances preventing us from making decisions that are in line with God's thinking.
You know, the story of Pentecost is such a strange one and so unlike all the other stories, there must be, I think, some special message in it. Many feel it is yet another description of a resurrection appearance and they may well be right but I believe its special significance for us is that the disciples allowed themselves to be taken over by the Spirit just as they submitted themselves to Jesus and his teaching when he was alive.
That was their commitment and all this time later I believe God is looking for the same commitment in us so that we can be bathed in the Spirit also ... dare we commit ourselves this far to become active agents of God's love?
It is not too difficult to become passive recipients of grace.
We do that by joining a church and attending the Services but to become active is to stop being disciples and with the power of the Spirit becoming apostles. "And there," said William Shakespeare, "ah! There's the rub."