Tag: Pentecost

The Meanings Of Pentecost, Acts 2:1-21

Acts 2:1-21

The vicar was paying a visit to his local Church of England primary school. To impress him, the children had memorised the Creed. They stood before the vicar, each one reciting a line in turn. ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth’; ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, his Son, our Saviour’; and so on. 

But when it came to when one child should have said, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ there was nothing. Eventually, one child broke the embarrassed silence and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit isn’t here today.’

Are we sometimes embarrassed by believing in the Holy Spirit in the church, too? We do our business without reference to him. We complacently assume his presence. We find the name ‘Spirit’ rather spooky and unsettling, like the old name ‘Holy Ghost.’ And as for all those strange things attributed to his work in the New Testament like speaking in tongues and having direct words from God for people, well no thank you very much, that’s all too awkward and un-British. 

I want to take the familiar story of Pentecost from Acts chapter 2 and show you how the deep meaning of Pentecost shows us how vital it is to welcome the Holy Spirit and his work. I’m confining myself to the first thirteen verses: that is, I’m stopping before Peter gets to speak. There is just so much here I have to put a limit somewhere. 

Firstly, Pentecost is about obeying God’s Law:

As you will realise, Pentecost was an existing Jewish festival. It celebrated the time when God gave his Law (the ‘Torah’) to Israel at Mount Sinai. He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Then, on their way to freedom in the Promised Land, he gave them his Law to obey in response to him having delivered them. Keeping God’s Law always was a response to having first been saved by God. It never was the case that we kept God’s Law in order to be saved in the first place. 

But even so, there was a problem. Israel repeatedly failed to keep God’s Law. Ultimately, they were so thoroughly disobedient that in reality they preferred the ways of other gods, the false and imaginary gods of other nations and cultures. It didn’t end well. It ended with them being exiled from the Promised Land, as God had warned them when he first gave them his Law. 

I expect we know similar struggles. We know that God has commanded certain standards of behaviour from his people in response to the fact that he has delivered us not from Egypt but from sin. But we fail. Daily! It’s why we have the confession of sin and the assurance of forgiveness in our worship every week. 

The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the festival of God’s Law, shows us that God has not left us relying on our own feeble resources to obey his will. He pours out his Spirit upon us so that we can do the will of God. So often we are like cars drained of fuel (or electric charge today) and we cannot move. But with the Holy Spirit, we are filled with the power to do God’s will and obey his Law. 

So today, if there is an area of life where we know we want to obey God but are struggling to do so, let us seek again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Secondly, Pentecost is about God’s harvest:

We are used to having one harvest festival a year in late summer or early autumn to mark the full ingathering of the crops from the fields. Ancient Israel, however, had two harvest festivals a year. One of them was just like ours. It was celebrated at the Feast of Tabernacles (which also remembered other aspects of their history). 

But their first harvest festival was at Pentecost. It was the festival of the first fruits of the harvest. The early crops were a sign that promised the full harvest would come later. 

This too is what the Holy Spirit does. God promises a full harvest of salvation at the end of time, when his people will be completely saved – not only from the penalty of sin in forgiveness, but also from the practice of sin, because we shall be made completely holy, and further from the very presence of sin, which will be eradicated. 

But there are victories on the way to that destination, and the Holy Spirit brings those first fruits in this life. Do we want to see people come to Jesus and find both the forgiveness of their sins and true purpose for life? If so, then we pray for the Holy Spirit to be poured out. We pray that the Spirit will energise our lives and witness. We also pray that the Spirit will be at work ahead of us in the lives of those we are longing to see discover Jesus. 

So never mind all the talk of learning techniques for evangelism. Pray instead for the Holy Spirit to be at work powerfully. Our job is simply to be witnesses. That is, we give an account of what has happened in our lives. No-one comes to the Father unless they are first drawn to him, so we ask the Spirit of God to do that. 

How many of you have a list of people dear to you whom you are longing to find faith? When you pray for them, pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus to them. 

Thirdly, Pentecost is about God’s new creation:

The coming of the Spirit is mysterious. Notice how Luke struggles to describe it:

2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 

‘A sound like the blowing of a violent wind.’ ‘What seemed to be tongues of fire.’ It’s not literal, but it does convey the idea that the Spirit is hovering over the disciples. Does that remind you of anything? 

How about Genesis 1 verse 2?

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

As the Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, so at Pentecost the Spirit hovers over the disciples because this is the making of the new creation. 

God has come to make all things new. We’re on that journey to the new creation at the end of all things, when there will be new heavens and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem, God’s people. The renewal starts now. 

And so when we see things in the world that do not display the newness of God’s redeeming love, the Holy Spirit empowers God’s people to act for healing, renewal, and justice. 

Did the Holy Spirit empower Martin Luther King in the 1960s to stand up against institutional racist policies in the United States? I believe so. Did you know that when the Solidarity movement arose in Poland in the early 1980s against the terrors of Russian communism much of it came out of a renewal movement in the Roman Catholic Church in that nation? 

What, then, of the evils we see today? Be it Trump or Putin, God is raising up his people by his Spirit, though it will be costly. Where is the fastest growing church in the world today? It is exploding even under the persecution of the mullahs in Iran. 

Is God calling any of us to be equipped by the Spirit to pay the price of advocating for his new creation?

Fourthly and finally, Pentecost is about God’s community:

I want to bring a couple of things together here. One is that the episode begins with the disciples ‘all together in one place’ (verse 1), which followed on from their meeting for prayer in chapter 1. 

Then we get the crowd who gather, coming from different places and speaking different languages, yet they all ‘hear [the disciples] declaring the wonders of God in [their] own tongues’ (verse 11). It’s not the reversal of Babel, where proud humankind was scattered from one language into many, because there are still many languages. But it is about diverse humanity being united under ‘the wonders of God.’

In other words, the work of the Spirit brings unity in Christ across the biggest of divisions. Church is not about going to a place where I mingle with people who are just like me. Instead, it is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ uniting people who otherwise would not hold together. European, Asian, and African; highly educated and barely literate; poor and wealthy; even both Spurs and Arsenal fans! 

We live in a world riven by division. People feel its pain. We look for ways to cross the divide. The tragically murdered MP Jo Cox said before her untimely death, ‘There is more that unites us than divides us,’ but sadly she underestimated the fact that it is sin which causes the division and Jesus is the cure. 

And so the Holy Spirit takes the work of Jesus on the Cross to reconcile us to God and to reconcile us to one another. He applies that to our hearts and minds. In Ephesians Paul talks about God bringing Jew and Gentile together at the Cross. The Holy Spirit makes that real. 

It’s what we are marking when we share The Peace at Holy Communion. Some older Christians will remember communion services where the minister said that those who loved the Lord and who were in love and charity with their neighbour were invited to take the holy sacrament to their comfort. It’s the same idea, it’s just that The Peace is actually a much older tradition of the Church to express this. 

But while expressing this unity in a traditional, liturgical way is important for what it symbolises, it is also something that needs to be lived out. It involves us building our friendships. It means apologising and seeking forgiveness when we have hurt someone else in the church. It means refusing to hold onto bitterness. And it means the world seeing that our relationships are different. 

Conclusion

So who’s up for the challenge, then? These works of the Holy Spirit are all connected. The first about obeying God’s Law and the fourth about unity are two sides of the holiness coin, one personal, the other social. The second about the harvest and the third about the new creation are both about God’s mission on which all Christians are sent. 

All of this comes under that description of the crowd: ‘we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues’. Is that worship, or mission, or both? 

Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to empower us to declare the wonders of God in our words and in our lives, in the church and in the world. 

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Mission in the Bible 9: Fellowship as Lifestyle Evangelism (Acts 2:42-47)

Acts 2:42-47

In recent years, one criticism older generations have had of the young is the way they devalue the currency of words. ‘Awesome’ is used when they simply mean ‘Good.’ Sometimes our daughter says to me, ‘Dad, can’t you ever get excited about anything?’ and I reply, ‘I’ll call something awesome when it really is. Until that time, this is just good.’

However, if we older generations look down our noses at younger people over this, we should realise that in the church we are also guilty of devaluing the currency of words.

And one word we frequently devalue in the church is ‘fellowship.’ ‘We invite you to stay after the service for a time of fellowship over tea and coffee.’ ‘Working together on the Christmas Bazaar is an experience of fellowship.’

Fellowship is so much more than a warm fuzzy feeling.

We see the biblical word for fellowship, ‘koinonia’, deployed in our reading from Acts chapter 2. It has a cluster of meanings: ‘fellowship’, ‘sharing’, ‘in common.’

It’s used elsewhere in the New Testament of things like the Lord’s Supper, when Paul tells us that the bread we break is a ‘sharing’ in the Body of Christ. We have the Body of Christ in common. We have fellowship in the Body of Christ.

Ultimately, our fellowship is everything we have in common in Christ. And the three thousand converts at Pentecost find that such deep fellowship is the first fruit of their faith in Christ. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit leads them in putting into practice the teaching of Jesus.

Much of our fellowship is little more than a religious game of snooker where we bump into each other, and then bounce off. Not them. The first fruit of mission was a shared life. This really was the church as a sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom.

And the preached evangelism from Peter which led to their conversions (verse 41) led to the lifestyle evangelism at the end of our passage where ‘the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved’ (verse 47). So this is important! What did this fellowship look like?

Firstly, it was shared worship:

In verse 42, they share in prayer. In verse 46, they meet together every day in the Temple courts.

This continues what was already happening. The one hundred and twenty disciples upon whom the Spirit fell at Pentecost had been gathering together for prayer. And it continues afterwards. So some years later, when the Corinthian Christians are meeting for worship probably in a large house owned by one of the few wealthy members of the church, they are not simply in the same room together, they are using their differing gifts of the Spirit in the service of worship. Or at least that’s what Paul wants them to do.

The best and most true Christian worship is shared worship. Yes, it’s possible to worship alone and we should, but it’s not the sum total of worship. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian, as John Wesley said.

It isn’t always possible to have mass participation in a typical Sunday service and not everybody likes speaking in front of everyone else, although there might still be things we could do to involve more people and their gifts. But often the place for truly shared worship is the small group such as the house group. In these contexts, it’s often easier to have a time of worship where more people can make contributions based on their gifts.

And so that’s another reason why we need to revisit the idea of small groups in many churches. We need to share in our worship, having the opportunity to use our gifts in that cause.

Perhaps we worry that our gifts aren’t all that good. A small group is a good place to try them out among supportive friends. If we play a musical instrument, we don’t have to be Royal Albert Hall performance standard. Our friends will cheer us on and encourage us.

And I have certainly known examples in the past where the first steps a budding preacher made were in a small group where they led a Bible study. Sharing together in worship has great potential for taking nascent gifts and growing them.

Plus, we don’t have to do this from scratch. There are various resources around to help small groups share in worship. I don’t recall whether I still have it after the big reduction in books I had to do to come here, but I used to have a book entitled, ‘50 Worship Ideas For Small Groups.’ It was co-written by the hymn writer Stuart Townend.

So let me encourage people to be brave in our churches, and truly share in worship.

Secondly, it was shared meals:

Again, we find this in verses 42 and 46. In verse 42 ‘They devoted themselves to … the breaking of bread’ and in verse 46 ‘They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.’

‘Breaking bread’ here is not code for an early form of Holy Communion. It is an everyday expression for eating together. Simple meals earlier in the day often were just bread. But more ample meals later on ‘would start with breaking and blessing bread and wine.’[1]

Later, these practices would help form the framework for celebrating the Lord’s Supper, but what we have here is sharing in that most basic way of meeting human need and sustaining life: everyday eating. It might even be that the common meals in the Christian community were ‘sometimes at the expense of those who could afford the food.’[2]

In this, the early church was following the example of Jesus, who conducted much of his ministry over food. Some of his most dramatic teaching was over a meal. He provided for people’s needs in the feedings of the five thousand and the four thousand. I believe Jesus knew that there is something about a meal where, especially if it is not rushed, people begin to open up some of the deepest things in their lives. So what an opportunity it becomes to share together, support each other, and deepen faith.

And this is something the church can build upon. There are churches that run men’s breakfasts with a guest speaker. I can think of a church I know that has a monthly women’s pub meal. The opportunities are there to make this into something significant for the kingdom of God. Yes, of course we can unwind and let our hair down – if we have enough – but we can also take the moment to build our relationships and our trust so that we can support each other and help one another’s faith grow in the face of life’s challenges. There is a chance here to take something good and make even more of it.

Furthermore, we can develop the biblical gift of hospitality. Remember that one definition of hospitality is to make someone feel at home even when you wish they were at home! So yes, it can include a meal, but it can be so much more.

I often appreciated that when I was single – apart from the times when I arrived to find they had also invited a young lady with whom they were trying to set me up! It was well-meaning but misguided.

Let’s see what we can do under the Holy Spirit’s guidance to make the most of sharing food together.

Thirdly and finally, it was shared possessions:

If the worship and the meals are the bread in the sandwich on the outside in verses 42 and 46, then the filling is in the middle in verses 44 and 45:

44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

So – I guess this one is the biggest challenge of all, especially in a consumerist, materialist society like ours. And even two thousand years ago, what the early church practised was different from other groups. Professional guilds and associations required the payment of entry dues (perhaps not dissimilar from today), and radical religious groups like the Essenes enforced the complete surrender of goods to the community. But what the Christians practised according to Acts was voluntary.[3]

Luke does not describe abolition of private property. Rather, members sold property to help other members as any had need (Acts 2:45). Their resources do not become community property, but are designated for the poor; they were not against property, but valued people altogether more.[4]

I have seen and experienced this for myself. I cannot tell you the whole story now, but when I wanted to go to theological college, I was turned down for a grant (as it was in those days). A number of people gave sacrificially to make it possible for me to go. One was a student who had taken a gap year to earn some money for her own needs, but who gave it to me. Another was an elderly lady at my church, who gave me a large cheque with a letter in which she said, ‘It seems God is calling you to trust him for your provision. We will trust him, too.’ With those words, I read between the lines that this was a significant sacrifice for her.

I saw it at college when a Singaporean student heard that her mother had died back home but she didn’t have the money to pay for a flight to get back for the funeral. The student community, filled with people on limited incomes, rallied round, and raised the money for her to board a plane.

I saw it in the last circuit when due to a technicality a Nepalese church member lost his Nepalese citizenship but could not afford to apply for British citizenship. We set up a fundraising campaign on the website gofundme.com. When we got within an ace of the amount we needed, who gave a donation to carry us across the line? A student.

This is what it means to value people more than property. This again is the church putting into practice the teaching of Jesus about treasures in heaven.

Conclusion

How did the early church devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching (verse 42)? These examples of real fellowship were certainly part of it.

And are we surprised that the apostles performed ‘many wonders and signs’ ( verse 43)? Not really, if the Holy Spirit was already at work so powerfully among the community.

And as I said at the beginning, the evangelistic preaching of the apostles is matched by the evangelistic lifestyle of the church, showing what the kingdom of God is like. No wonder ‘the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved’ (verse 47).

But it takes more than just being nice. I think I have had enough of Christians just trying to be nice. If I want nice, I can go to my camera club and meet plenty of nice people.

Being the sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom calls for more than niceness. It calls for a deep openness to the power of the Holy Spirit, who will mould us into what one author called ‘The Community of the King.’

Are we up for the challenge? Come, Holy Spirit.

[1] Craig Keener, Acts (New Cambridge Bible Commentary). p171.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Op. cit., p174.

[4] Op. cit.. p175.

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Pentecost: The Spirit Brings Life, Purpose, And Hope (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I don’t know what associations go through your mind when you hear the reading from Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones. Perhaps you hear the words of the old spiritual, ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem – dry bones.’

I always remember hearing an Anglican bishop read the passage and then ask the question of his congregation, ‘Can these dead Anglicans live?’

It goes without saying that ‘Can these dead Methodists live?’ is an equally valid paraphrase!

Well, maybe ‘dead Methodists’ is a bit harsh (although not in some places!) but perhaps we ask, ‘Can these struggling Methodists live?’ You don’t need me to rehearse the issues of smaller congregations with older members.

And to that issue, God’s promise to send the Holy Spirit speaks powerfully. In Ezekiel, the people of God are struggling in exile in the alien culture of Babylon. And we struggle as now a minority in a culture which no longer uses Christian values as a foundation for life.

So let’s go digging for hope in Ezekiel 37, and the way I propose to do it is this. Three times in the passage God tells the prophet to prophesy the coming of the Spirit on the dry bones, and each time the promised result gets bigger and better. Come with me and catch a vision of hope in these verses.

Firstly, life:

4 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”’

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

There is no cure for the state of God’s people other than a spiritual one. At the risk of stating something that is a hobbyhorse of mine, no amount of new programmes will change the fortunes of the church. No new creative techniques will bring life to dry bones. It is our foolishness that we fall for these parodies of the spiritual life so often. It is to the shame of our denominations that national leaders so often propagate them.

The only cure is for the Sovereign Lord to breathe his breath, the Holy Spirit, into us. If the flowers and plants in the garden are withering, we water them. It is the same with us. We need to be watered with the living water that Jesus promised, namely the Holy Spirit.

I want to tell you one of my favourite sermon stories. It concerns the nineteenth century American evangelist, D L Moody. On one occasion, he was visiting the United Kingdom and spoke to a group of church leaders. For his text he chose Ephesians 5:18, where Paul urges the recipients of his letter to ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ Moody pointed out that this is legitimately translated into English as ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’

At the mention of this, a vicar objected. ‘Why do I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit? I was filled with the Spirit at conversion.’

‘I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit,’ replied Moody, ‘because I leak.’

And we all leak. We may well be able to point back to glowing times in our lives when we were particularly conscious of the Holy Spirit’s power at work in us, and nothing I say is intended to diminish those experiences. But we cannot live on past glories. As our cars need refilling with petrol or recharging with electricity, so we need refilling with the Spirit.

Perhaps life or our Christian duties have drained us. Think of the time in the Gospels when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and we read that he knew that virtue had gone out of him. It happened to Jesus. We know he recharged in times with his Father. Why not us, too?

Surely, Pentecost is the best day of all to make this our prayer. ‘Lord, we leak. Fill us again with your Spirit.’

Secondly, an army:

9 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”’ 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army.

Now if we get nervous at the mention of an army, let me just say that this is a vision, not something literal. There is nothing that follows this which is military. Nor are we meant to conjure up images of extreme militant believers, like the Christian Nationalists in the USA or anything else of that ilk.

I think the force of the image that the coming of the Spirit creates ‘a vast army’ is about the way the Holy Spirit equips all God’s people to be a missionary people, to be a movement that is a force for good rather than evil in the world.

To hear some Christians talk about their experience of the Holy Spirit, you would think that the function of the Spirit was little more than the supplying of a personal bless-up. And while I have no doubt that on occasions the Spirit provides comfort and encouragement for us, and enables us to experience God’s love, I am also certain that the Holy Spirit is not here for our self-indulgence.

On the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit sent one hundred and twenty disciples of Jesus onto the streets of Jerusalem among a multinational crowd with the good news of Jesus.

If you want a contemporary example of this, then the 24-7 Prayer Movement re-formed an ancient lay Christian order called the Order of the Mustard Seed. Its participants take three vows, which are worked out in six practices, that are seen as flowing from the Holy Spirit. Together, they form a corporate body that takes God’s love to the world. These are the vows the associated practices:

What does it mean to be true to Christ?
We live prayerfully
We celebrate creativity to His glory

What does it mean to be kind to people?
We practice hospitality.
We express God’s mercy and justice.

What does it mean to take the gospel to the nations?
We commit ourselves to lifelong learning that we might shape culture and make disciples by being discipled.
We engage in mission and evangelism.

Were we to pray, as Moody recommended, to be refilled with the Spirit because we leak, then I suggest this is the sort of body we would look like, too.

Thirdly and finally, restoration:

11 Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”’

Now, just as with the word ‘army’, we have to be careful here. The promise of the land was central to Judaism, and certain interpretations of that are central to the current war between the Israeli government and Hamas in Gaza. But the promise of hope for Christians has never been about a geographical nation.

We also have to be careful not to see the idea of returning to the land as meaning for us a thought that things will be restored to the way they were in the supposed ‘good old days.’

Restoration for us is the recovery of our hope. After generations of decline, where in the next couple of decades some long-established Christian denominations may no longer exist in this country, where respect has turned to grudging toleration and then to the attempted silencing of Christians in areas of public life including politics, it’s not surprising that we have become disheartened.

There may or may not be some green shoots of recovery in our society. Justin Brierley, the Christian broadcaster, podcaster, and thinker, has written and spoken about what he calls ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God’. The professed conversions of the former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the media personality Russell Brand, along with the interest in Christianity shown by public intellectuals such as the historian Tom Holland after an answered prayer may start to shift the atmosphere in the public arena.

But whether that happens or not, the Spirit restores our hope not on the basis of whether Christianity’s popularity is waxing or waning, but on the promise of Jesus that he will build his church and the gates of Hades (that is, death) will not prevail against it. It is the hope that even death cannot destroy God’s People, because of the Resurrection and the promise of the new heavens and new earth. The Holy Spirit settles us in that hope, whatever is happening in the wider world.

This becomes yet another reason to pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ It may not be one of the ministries of the Spirit that most readily occur to us, but it is an important one nevertheless.

In conclusion, when we may be troubled about the future of the church, we pray again, Come, Holy Spirit.’ For the Spirit will give life to the tired and discouraged in the People of God. And the Spirit will make us a corporate body of God’s redeeming love in Christ for the world. And the Spirit will give us rock-solid hope, whatever fluctuations there are in the culture around us.

Can these dry bones live? Let us not simply say, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Let us instead say, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’

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Sermon: If You’re Down In The Valley, Then Pentecost And The Gift Of The SPirit Is For you

Ezekiel 37:1-14

A film I enjoyed back in the 1980s was a comedy called Clockwise, starring John Cleese. He plays Brian Stimpson, the headmaster of an independent school. Stimpson is known for his strict punctuality, something he enforces in the culture of the school.

Stimpson is invited to be the guest speaker at an educational conference. However, one obstacle after another puts him more and more behind time to get there – the very worst thing for such a punctual man.

As the stress on him heightens with hopes regularly raised and then dashed, Stimpson says this:

I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.

Ezekiel knows something of the oscillation between despair and hope, and what that can do to someone. In the previous chapter, he has had a wonderful message from the Lord about how he will give Israel a new heart and a new spirit. It’s a wonderful message, where God’s people are back in their own land, and no longer in exile in Babylon, as is the case at the time of Ezekiel’s ministry. Imagine how that lifts him up.

Then in here in chapter 37 it begins with ‘The hand of the LORD’ being on him (verse 1), and so surely this exhilarating sense of hope is going to continue. But no. He is taken to a valley – rarely, if ever, a good place in Scripture – and that valley is filled with the dry bones of the dead. Israel isn’t alive. She is dead.

And you realise just how down in the dumps Ezekiel has become when the Lord asks him,

‘Son of man, can these bones live?’

I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ (Verse 3)

Not much hope there. The vision of the new heart with God’s Spirit inside and God’s people living back in the Promised Land has been sunk by seeing the valley of dry bones. I don’t know, Lord, says Ezekiel, only you know.

I labour the point because something similar can be our experience. We have in a sense gone into exile too in that Christians are now not only a minority in our culture but also increasingly a group that is thought of as evil. Every now and again, though, we see some signs of hope. But then along comes a pandemic, our churches lose a lot of money, decisions and crises that were still potentially five or ten years away suddenly confront us, and even when in-person worship resumes not everybody feels happy to come back. Some of those who don’t return make that decision for obvious medical reasons, but others who don’t show up again are a big surprise.

Are we walking among a valley of dry bones? Sometimes we are.

Is there any solution? Yes there is, but what Ezekiel 37 and the Feast of Pentecost make clear is that it doesn’t lie with us. None of our programmes, none of our wheezes will make a scrap of difference. We are dry bones.

No, the solution comes from God and it is in the shape of his Spirit. There are three prophecies about the Holy Spirit that Ezekiel receives, and each shows what God can do for us when we are open to being filled with the Holy Spirit.

The first prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of promise:

4 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”’

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

It all begins here. The job isn’t finished – those last words were ‘there was no breath in them’ – but here the sending of the Spirit (or breath, it’s the same Hebrew word) is the sign that God will keep his promise to give life to his people.

But the question is, will we seek and pray for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Yes, it’s a work of divine grace, we are dependent on God for the gift of the Spirit, but that happens after Ezekiel prophesies the word of the Lord. So will we seek the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

I know some Christians get nervous about the Holy Spirit. There is something about that word ‘Spirit’ and sometimes the Holy Spirit does strange things. However, we shouldn’t expect the Spirit of God to do things exactly our way! The good news is that the Holy Spirit is also called in the Book of Acts ‘The Spirit of Jesus’, so what if the question instead were this: how much do we want the Spirit of Jesus to be at work in our lives?

Or put it this way: if I’m conscious that I’m not as much like Jesus as I might be, then what I need is more of the Spirit of Jesus.

And frankly, which one of us is as much like Jesus as we might be? So don’t we all need more of the Spirit of Jesus?

It’s time to put our fears about the Holy Spirit aside and recognise that we need to be filled and filled again with the Spirit.

The second prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of power:

9 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”’ 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army.

Now there is life and breath in the bones, and they become not an enormous mausoleum but ‘a vast army’. That is God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit, at work.

Doesn’t this speak to another way in which we sense our inadequacy from operating on our own without the Spirit of God? Isn’t it true that so often we look at ourselves in the church and feel powerless to do anything effective in society? Do we feel that our best efforts are feeble in the face of overwhelming social forces that aggressively promote values that are contrary to what we hold dear as Christians? Do we look like a vast army? Probably not, much of the time.

Then think of how it was said of the early church that they had turned the world upside-down. Oh sure, they hadn’t got rid of some vicious Roman emperors, but they had started a subversive revolution at ground level. For all the good the church does today, I have to be honest and say I don’t think we’re leading a Jesus revolution in our day.

Of course, we don’t want to be a vast army in a literal sense. That’s not how God’s kingdom works, as Jesus showed, and as the early church lived. But the battle for what is good, pure, true, and beautiful is one in which we need to be engaged, and we need to fight in a manner like Jesus and the apostles.

So once more, there is really only one solution: to cry out in persistent prayer for more of the Holy Spirit.

The third prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prophecy itself:

11 Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”’

It is prophesied that Israel will be back in her land of promise. And a few decades later, it happened.

Not for Christians, of course, is there to be a physical land with its borders somewhere on this planet. Instead, we seek the kingdom of God, where not only God reigns but people walk in his ways and no longer rebel against him. And even inanimate creation is affected, no longer damaged but flourishing. Under God’s reign we have a community of disciples, a community of beauty, of peace, of love, of justice.

We’re a long way short, aren’t we? Not just in society, but in the church. Whatever good things we find in the church, it would take someone with the most rose-tinted spectacles ever made to argue that we were close to the kingdom in all its fulness in the way we live.

Certainly, I believe we’re a long way short. Not only do I as a minister often see the dark side of the church, the longer I live as a Christian the more conscious I am of the ways I fall short.

Either way, there is only one answer, and it’s the one we keep coming back to this week: we need to be more full of the Holy Spirit than we are right now. That is how God changes things for ancient Israel: ‘I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.’

In conclusion, everything points to us needing more of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit isn’t absent from us as with ancient Israel, when the Spirit only came upon selected individuals. In our era, the Holy Spirit comes upon all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

But just as some people have a vitamin deficiency where they need to take more vitamins, so I think the signs I’ve described show that we have a Spirit deficiency.

If there is one thing we could all do that would lead to a major difference in the life of the church of Jesus Christ, it would be that we set ourselves persistently, regularly, and urgently to pray that God would fill us with his Holy Spirit.

Because when he does we shall be more like Jesus. When he does, we shall be more equipped to be Christ’s subversive army of love in he world. And when he does, we shall see more of his beautiful kingdom.

And if the church changes like that, then we shan’t be weighed down with despair, but surrounded by the growing seeds of hope.

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Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday After Ascension): Waiting Well

For the foreseeable future, the videos are only going to be the Bible reading and the talk. My workload at present makes it difficult to find time for sourcing and editing the music and prayers that I have been including. (On top of a full appointment, I am temporarily the Acting Superintendent of my circuit while my boss is on sabbatical.)

Luke 24:44-53

Since this video goes beyond my usual congregations via YouTube, I hope my churches will forgive me if I begin this Ascension reflection with some material they may have heard before.

At this time I always remember the story told by one famous Anglican bishop about how he was invited to perform the reopening of a local Post Office. It happened to be on Ascension Day.

When he arrived, he found a hot air balloon tethered in the field. There was also a brass band. He learned that the Post Office had planned to combine his reopening with Ascension Day. So they expected him to soar up into the sky in the balloon while the band played the hymn ‘Nearer My God To Thee’!

The idea of Jesus ascending into the sky is an intimidating story for us today. I was also intimidated one year when as a theological student the local Methodist minister invited me to fill his pulpit on the Sunday after Ascension. There in the congregation was the local university Professor of New Testament, following the Bible reading in his Greek New Testament. If ever I had to get a difficult reading right it was that morning!

I have found most help from a source not commonly quoted in my own theological tradition, indeed someone who is often reviled among Methodists. And that is John Calvin. He wasn’t all double predestination and executing his enemies, he had some good points!

One of them was his doctrine of ‘accommodation’. He said that in revealing himself and his truth to people, God often had to ‘accommodate’ the way he did that to the limited understanding of human beings.

The Ascension would be a good example of this. Jesus ‘lifting off’ like a rocket from Cape Canaveral seems strange to us, but how else was he going to show his followers that he was returning to heaven? So the Ascension story isn’t designed to tell us that heaven is literally above us, the miracle is there to communicate a theological truth about where Jesus is in terms that would have been understood two thousand years ago. How Jesus would do it today I’m not at all sure, but this is how he needed to communicate it at the time.

Now when Jesus ascends, his disciples are left waiting for Pentecost and the arrival of the Holy Spirit. He expressly tells them to wait in Jerusalem for that event:

49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

Waiting can be an exciting time, as we anticipate something we’re looking forward to. But it can also be a difficult time spiritually. ‘Lord, when are you going to fulfil your promises? When are you going to do what we need you to do?’ Does that sound familiar to you?

I recall a time as a child of primary school age when in the school holidays I went over the park that was opposite our house to play with my schoolfriend Tony. We were set upon by bullies, and Tony ran away. I was terrified.

But a few minutes later I discovered why Tony had run away. He had gone back to our house and returned with my father. The bullies then ran away!

It was awful waiting for those few minutes and not even knowing why Tony had gone, but the wait brought a good outcome.

Unlike those first disciples, we don’t have to wait for the Holy Spirit. But those other times of waiting for the promise of God that I alluded to a moment ago are common to our spiritual experience.

And therefore a question that the Ascension helps us with is this: how do we wait well as Christians?

I see two elements in the story about how we can wait well for what God wants to do.

The first is that the disciples are blessed people.

50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

That’s how Jesus leaves them – with a blessing upon them. But what does it mean to be blessed by Almighty God?

Essentially, if God blesses you, then you receive his favour. Perhaps the most dramatic example is when the Archangel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce her pregnancy. He says she is ‘highly favoured’ and that ‘the Lord is with [her]’[1]. That’s a blessing – well, that particular one may be a blessing and a half!

When I as a minister pronounce a blessing at the end of a service, what I am praying for is that everyone in that congregation leaves knowing that they are favoured by God. This is the good news: sinners receive the favour of God.

And it forms our core identity as Christians. It’s the most important thing about us, that through no merit of our own we are blessed, we are favoured by God.

If we don’t make it our core identity, then things go awry. I had an elderly lady in one previous appointment who made the fact that she was a Local Preacher central to her sense of worthy. But the time came when her mind and body began to fail. The most telling occasion was a service where she introduced the Lord’s Prayer three times. We asked her if she would step down gracefully and we would hold an event to celebrate all her years of preaching, but she refused. I know it would have been hard for anyone in her position, but she carried that bitterness with her as her health declined, instead of recognising the unchanging fact that she was a beloved child of God.

But more positively, if we do accept that we are favoured by God as his dearly loved children, then this holds us through the waiting times. On a small scale it happened to me earlier this week when I was preparing this talk. That morning I received an email that caused me some stress. I was rather anxious as I waited some hours for the outcome of it, and in the meantime had to go off and do other things.

But then the very teaching I’m giving you here hit me. What doesn’t change is that I am a beloved child of God. I am blessed by him. Therefore I can trust God to work this thing out. And he did.

So can I encourage you, then, to live out your identity as a son or daughter of the living God? That he has adopted you into his family is a sign of the most monumental blessing you can possibly imagine. Let that truth hold you up in the times of waiting.

The second element is that the disciples are worshipping people.

52 Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Why do they worship Jesus? For sure, one reason is the blessing they’ve just received, but there has to be more. As good Jews, they would only worship Jesus if they thought he had divine status. They know now that he is more than a prophet. At the beginning of our reading, he has taken them through the Scriptures and shown how necessary his suffering, death, and resurrection were, and how that good news must now go out to the nations. Instead of the nations coming to Jerusalem, now God’s people will go from Jerusalem to the nations. All these things are wonderful signs that God’s purposes are being fulfilled, and that God has kept his promise to Israel – just not in the way they were expecting.

And when they appreciate all that they are filled with wonder. And that wonder comes out in praise and worship.

It’s interesting to compare this with the description the crowd at Pentecost gives the disciples when they hear them speaking in tongues: they say they hear them ‘declaring the wonders of God’[2], which could be a pretty good description of worship.

Yes, they are full of wonder at what God has done. They were slow to get it during the three years that they followed Jesus around, but now the shekel has dropped and it makes sense.

How does this help us when we are waiting? It would be good for us to be reminded of the amazing ways in which God has fulfilled his purposes over the centuries, supremely in his Son Jesus. It would be good for us to recount the promises God has made to his people and kept.

Sometimes we recount them in broad brushstrokes during the great prayer of thanksgiving at a communion service. We go back to the marvels of creation. We move on to God making a people for himself and continually calling people back when they stray through patriarchs, judges, and prophets. Ultimately, we celebrate the coming of Jesus, with his birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and – yes – ascension. The next time you’re at a communion service, listen for the minister covering those great topics in the thanksgiving prayer.

These things fortify us because they remind us of the great truths relating to our God. Our faith and confidence increase. We sing his praise. And we become more certain that he will see us through the difficulties of the waiting time, because he is a purpose-fulfilling, promise-keeping God. His ascended Son is at his right hand praying for us, and his Holy Spirit is within us and praying through us.

Don’t neglect worship. We engage in it because God is worthy of our praise. But as we worship, it builds up our own faith and trust.

So there you have it – two elements from the period between the Ascension and Pentecost that strengthen us in those periods when we have to wait to see God at work. One is done to us – we are blessed, we are favoured as adopted children of God by grace. The other we ourselves do in response – we worship, because God keeps his promises and fulfils his plans, and he will do the same for us.

I hope and pray that as a result, each of us will be able to bear the waiting times with greater faith.

[1] Luke 1:28

[2] Acts 2:11

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Don’t Be Weirded Out By Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21)

This week’s devotions are for Pentecost Sunday. Many Christians get spooked by the narrative of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit generally. In this talk I want to encourage you to embrace the meaning of Pentecost and all it stands for.

Apologies for the over-exposure of the video – not sure what went wrong. Everything looked right before we started recording!

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Sermon: The Purposes Of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Perhaps you know the old story of the vicar who visited a primary school where they were learning the Creed. The children lined up for the vicar and one by one recited a section. However, an embarrassing silence enveloped proceedings part-way through.

Eventually, one child blurted out an explanation. “I’m sorry, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit isn’t here today.”

Is there sometimes an embarrassing silence about the Holy Spirit in our churches? That can be true in some traditional churches. Well has it been said that Catholics believe in Father, Son and Holy Mother, whereas Protestants believe in Father, Son and Holy Bible.

The reasons for embarrassed silence aren’t hard to find. Often, they can be put down to one word. Fear. The Holy Spirit? Or worse, the old name ‘the Holy Ghost’. It sounds spooky, if not frightening. On top of that, you get stories like this one in Acts 2 with the account of people speaking in tongues. In some circles, I have only to mention that and people get upset with me!

As a result, we either ignore or domesticate the Holy Spirit. When we domesticate the Spirit, we reduce his work to a bland coating of the mundane. It’s like cooking without spices or herbs.

What a tragedy. For Pentecost is one of the key events in God’s story of salvation, along with creation, the Incarnation and Easter. And while today I don’t have time to explore the particular anxieties many have around the specific issue of speaking in tongues, what I want to do in this sermon is explore the purposes of Pentecost.

Here’s the first purpose: Pentecost makes us more like Jesus. Let me give you some background in order to explain that. If you know your Bibles, you will know that Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles are both written by the same author (whom I take to be Luke himself) to the same recipient (a character otherwise unknown to us called Theophilus). Luke’s Gospel describes what Jesus began to do and teach; by implication, Acts is then Part Two of his story. In Acts, Jesus is still at work, but by the Holy Spirit through the Church.

In particular, there are parallels between some of the early episodes in Luke’s Gospel and those near the beginning of Acts. Both contain a promise that disciples will be ‘baptised with the Holy Spirit’. Then the Spirit comes down – upon Jesus at his baptism and upon the disciples at Pentecost. After that, there is a key sermon that explains what God is fulfilling – Jesus preaches at Nazareth, Peter preaches in Jerusalem after the Pentecostal outpouring. Then there is witness to people nearby.[1]

Put that together, and what is Luke telling us? He’s showing the early disciples going through the same process as Jesus. Pentecost begins their empowered public ministry just as the baptism did for Jesus. By drawing these parallels, Luke is telling Theophilus – and us – that the Holy Spirit has come in order to make us ‘little Jesuses’. The Spirit has come to make our lives and ministries much more like that of Jesus.

How often is it we lament that our lives are nothing like Jesus at all? Quite frequently, I’d guess. As Christians, we want to be more like him, but much of the time we know how vast the distance is between the way we live and how he did on earth.

What failing or weakness do we lament in our Christian lives? Is it that, unlike Jesus, we struggle to display selfless, sacrificial love? The Holy Spirit is here to move us closer to the example of our Saviour. Is it that we have no assurance that our prayers are heard and answered? The Holy Spirit comes to move us in the right direction. Do we lack courage to share the love of God with others through our words and deeds? Again, the Holy Spirit comes upon us to remake us more in the image of Christ.

Let me put it another way, in order to underline this point. Many Jewish people celebrated Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, as a commemoration of when God gave his people the Law at Mount Sinai.[2] God gave the Law after he had delivered his people from Egypt. It set out the ways they were to please him in gratitude for that deliverance. We too seek to please God out of gratitude for our deliverance (not from Egypt but from our sins). The Pentecostal gift of the Spirit is what enables us to please God. God has shown us the ways we might please him, but he has also given us his Spirit so we may have the power to do what delights him.

The second purpose is this: Pentecost is a taste of God’s kingdom. Let me introduce this thought with an illustration. Every now and again, we go into Chelmsford town centre on a Saturday as a family for various reasons. There is one stall among all the market stalls where we are almost guaranteed to stop every time. That is the fruit and vegetable stall. Apart from the fact that we enjoy buying some of their delicious fruit, they have samples available on a table by the stall. Usually they have cut up oranges and pineapples in the hope that passers-by will try some and then say, “Wow! I must buy some!” Regardless of whether we are going to buy any, our seven-year-old daughter Rebekah stops off for a little feast. In her eyes, the fruit samples are there purely as a public service.

Pentecost is like the opportunity to sample a taste of some fruit, too. The Jewish Feast of Weeks was a harvest festival. Not a full harvest festival like that celebrated at the end of the summer when all the crops have been brought in, but a festival of first fruits. When the first crops came in during late Spring, the people got a taste of what was to come three months or so later.

Pentecost, then, becomes the taste of what the fullness of God’s kingdom will be like, when God sends his angels to bring in the great harvest of the ages. Just as the Resurrection of Jesus is also described as the first fruits (of the great resurrection of all) and anticipates the day when God will make all things new, so too the gift of the Holy Spirit brings a foretaste of the new creation, when God will renew the heavens and the earth. Every sign of the Spirit’s work now, whether large or small, quiet or loud, private or public, is a taste of God’s fruit stall.

So when the Holy Spirit inspires us to care for the stranger, we taste God’s future. When the Spirit calls someone from the darkness of sin to the light of Jesus Christ, our taste buds anticipate the flavours of the kingdom. When the same Spirit does a work of healing in a life (be that physical, emotional, social or any other kind of healing), we glimpse the glorious future where there will be no more pain. When the Spirit leads God’s people to confront evil powers with a prophetic word of truth and justice, we taste the new society to come. When the Holy Spirit does his supreme work of revealing Jesus to people, we get a flavour of that time when we shall no longer know in part, but see him face to face.

Yes, it is frustrating and painful that not everyone is healed, not everyone responds to the call to follow Christ, and that powerful forces dish out injustice. We long for the great harvest of love, healing, righteousness and justice. But right now we are in the era of the first fruits. God calls us to welcome his Holy Spirit and co-operate with him, so that there may in the meantime be many more foretastes of his kingdom when he will rule unchallenged.

The third purpose I want to highlight is that Pentecost is about mission. Even though I take it not that the disciples spoke to the crowd in ‘other tongues’ but rather that the crowd overheard, what is clear is that the Holy Spirit crosses national and cultural boundaries so that people hear the praises of God in their own languages.

Now on one level, there is something almost unnecessary about this miracle. Although the Jews who heard were from different lands, these are almost certainly

‘not in the main … pilgrims [who had] come to Jerusalem from the Diaspora for the feast, but rather Diaspora Jews who had come to live or retire in Jerusalem, and no doubt would have attended some of the synagogues founded in Jerusalem by Diaspora Jews’[3]

In other words, this is a group of people who could speak a common language together anyway, despite their different nationalities. They could understand Hebrew, the language of their faith. Why not just address them in Hebrew?

But the Holy Spirit takes the Gospel to them in the language of each of their cultures. They do not have to work within the language and culture of the established religion in order to hear the Good News.

For me, this is a vital approach in mission. One of the problems we have in church life is that we want to draw people into the community of faith, but we expect them to adapt to our ways of doing things and learn our jargon. We add unnecessary barriers to the acceptance of the Gospel.

This is not what the Holy Spirit does. Think about the ministry of Jesus himself in the Incarnation. He did not stand at a distance and expect people to come to him. Rather , he took on human flesh and dwelt in the midst of the people to whom he was sent. The Holy Spirit mirrors Jesus. He desires to take the Gospel to people where they are in a form they can understand.

That becomes the challenge for us. When we are filled with the Spirit, we shall not simply want to make more people who are Methodist or United Reformed like us. We shall want to establish new communities within the many cultures of our world, our nation, and even of our locality. That’s why ‘Fresh Expressions’ and all sorts of experiments in sharing the Gospel in culturally appropriate ways are at heart Spirit-led approaches to mission.

We should expect this. When Jesus told his followers they would be baptised with the Holy Spirit, he said the consequence would be that they would be his witnesses. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of mission. The disciples were to be witnesses ‘in Jerusalem, in Judea and all Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’. Again, the work of the Spirit is not in creating a church that waits for people to come to her on her terms. The Spirit makes us missional people who move out of our comfort zones into the places where those who need the love of God are comfortable. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we share the love of God in Christ in other people’s comfort zones, not our own. This is what Spirit-led people do.

In conclusion, then, we have every reason to welcome the Holy Spirit rather than fear him. Who wants to be more like Jesus? Let us welcome the Holy Spirit. Who is hungry for a taste of God’s coming kingdom? Let us invite the Holy Spirit to come. And who wants to share the love of Christ in word and deed in a needy world? The Holy Spirit is already at work, within us and going ahead of us. Let us seek more of his power.

Yes, come Holy Spirit.

[1] See Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, p128f.

[2] Although we’re not absolutely certain this was the case at this time – see Witherington, p131.

[3] Witherington, p135.

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Sermon For Advent 4: Mary The First Christian?

Luke 1:26-38

Wandering around St Augustine’s last Sunday morning before the service, I noticed the place where the Catholic community leave their votive candles burning after their 9 am Mass. I’m sure there is a special Catholic word for it, but I’m afraid I’m ignorant of these technicalities.

In front of the candles is a kneeler and small rail. On the rail are some cards containing the texts of prayers. Prominent among them was a prayer to Mary written by the current Pope.  Of course as I read it I realised it was not addressing Mary in prayer in the way you would God. It was asking Mary’s help in approaching God, and in the ways of discipleship. 

Nevertheless, my Protestant bones got nervous! And maybe a number of us still do at the mention of Mary, despite warmer relations with Christians of other traditions.

Yet whatever reservations I want to enter about traditional Catholic attitudes to Mary, it’s entirely wrong just to be negative about her, which is the Protestant error regarding her. Mary is a great example of Christian discipleship herself. Remember she was at the Cross and among the disciples praying in the lead-up to Pentecost.

And she is an example of Christian discipleship here, too, in the famous story of the Annunciation. How so? In ways that are fundamental to all followers of Jesus. Her life – even here, at the tender age of about thirteen – is a testimony to Christian basics.

Favour 
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessèd art thou among women,’ say our Catholic friends. They are quoting this very passage. To quote it from the reading, Gabriel says:

‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ (‘Blessèd are you among women’ is not in the best manuscripts.) (Verse 28)

The difference I have with Catholics is that Mary is not the giver of grace but the recipient of grace. ‘Full of grace’ means she is the ‘favoured one’. God has favoured her. There is no indication of any reason why she has deserved this. Rather, this is the sovereign choice of God in deciding to favour one of his children. There is no requirement that Mary is sinless, it is about the sovereign grace of God.

But what kind of favour is it? God has chosen her to bring his Son into the world. In one respect, that is the most enormous honour. It is an incredible decision of favour towards Mary. What could be more wonderful than to carry the presence of God in her womb for nine months? What could be more incredible than to be the one who brings God in the flesh into the midst of humanity?

So you could say that we have a similar privilege. God’s favour towards us is that – while we do not carry Jesus physically as Mary did – we carry his presence with us by the Holy Spirit, and we have the missionary privilege of bearing his love into a broken world. God honours us, too, then: he makes us what Paul calls ‘ambassadors’, but not only in representing Christ to the world. We take Christ to the world. God chooses every follower of his Son do this. It shows his favour towards us.

But it is a favour in the form of a double-edged sword. For Mary to accept the call was to risk scandal or even worse. In a society that held strongly to its morals, pregnancy outside marriage would bring shame. Adultery, of course, was punishable by stoning. It was potentially costly in the extreme for Mary to embrace the favour of God. She did so, taking a huge risk. Certainly there is ancient evidence of stories being put around that Jesus was the bastard son of Mary and a Roman soldier. Receiving and accepting the favour of God meant she could be reviled and despised.

And the favour of God is a challenge for us, too.  Yes, it is a privilege to bear witness to Christ in the world, but we know that sometimes comes at a price. Snide comments, ridicule and on other occasions worse things than that. Yet the early church considered such opposition their badge of honour. Mary’s willingness to take on all that the favour of God would mean for her is an Advent reminder to us that the favour of God in Christ carries a price that is worth paying.

Power 
One of the things I most like about Mary is that she asks questions. ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ she asks (verse 34). I’ll say something more about her questions in the final point, but for now let’s notice the angel’s reply:

‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ (Verses 35-37)

Mary, you don’t have to abandon your morals to accomplish this. You don’t have to worry about doing the impossible. The impossible is God’s department, says Gabriel. Mary, you cannot fulfil your calling under God except by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And this too becomes an important reminder for us about the nature of Christian discipleship. There is so much we do and maintain in the church and in the world purely on the basis of our own strength. Our criteria are whether we think we can do something, rather than asking what God has called us to do, and then depending on the Holy Spirit.

It’s the latter which is true discipleship, not the former. We are the agents of God’s impossible ministry, and it is accomplished not on the basis of our abilities (however important it is to dedicate them to God). Nor is it achieved by force of strong personalities. God’s work is achieved by our co-operation with the Holy Spirit.

So when Gabriel tells Mary, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’, he doesn’t just tell her the mechanics of what is to happen in the near future: he foreshadows the way in which God will send the Holy Spirit on all the followers of Christ. 

A wag once said that if the Holy Spirit were withdrawn from the church, then ninety five per cent of all church activity would continue just the same. That may be a trifle unfair, but the point is probably a sound one. We have got so used to running the institution of the church that somewhere along the line many of us have just assumed the presence of the Holy Spirit, rather than lived in active dependence upon him [her?].

So let’s not confine the Holy Spirit to an annual remembrance on the Day of Pentecost. Advent is a time for remembering that the work of the Holy Spirit is three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four hours a day. As we celebrate the Annunciation to Mary today, will we recommit ourselves to seeking the power of the Holy Spirit to do the will of God, rather than confining God to the limits of our abilities?

Yes, today is a day to say, ‘God, we give you permission to stretch us. Challenge us to something beyond our capabilities, and we shall rely on your Spirit to accomplish your work.’

Faith 
Now here’s the point where I want to bring back the fact that Mary asks questions. That might not be what you expected me to highlight when talking about her faith. You might have thought I would have gravitated to those wonderful words of hers, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word’ (verse 38). Certainly those are words of faith. Taken on their own, they might depict a serenity of faith to which many of us aspire.

And in contrast to that, some might think that when she questions the angel, saying, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ (verse 34), that those words reflect doubt, lack of faith, or even unbelief.

But I submit to you that Mary’s question is not an act of doubt or unbelief. If you had read Luke’s Gospel from the beginning, you would have come across an example of that, where Zechariah hears the angelic announcement that his wife Elizabeth is to bear a son, John the Baptist. Zechariah’s unbelief leads to his being struck dumb until the child is born.

Gabriel doesn’t react that way here. He gives an explanation in response to Mary’s question. I suggest the difference is because Mary feels secure enough to ask questions from within the framework of faith. Having faith need not mean we don’t have questions. The Old Testament is full of such faith. Read the Psalms, where so many of the Psalmists complain to God from a standpoint of faith. Mary isn’t even complaining, she’s just asking ‘how?’.

What’s the difference between faith with questions and unbelief? That’s in Mary’s willingness to obey. You can question but still obey, and that’s what Mary does.

One hymn I hate and will not choose (not that it’s in any Methodist books any more) is ‘I vow to thee my country‘. I take particular exception to the line, ‘The love that asks no question.’ Not only does the hymn require a devotion to country that outstrips our loyalty to God (whatever the final verse says), I’m not sure I even offer God a ‘love that asks no question’. Certainly Mary didn’t. And there’s no reason why we should, either, just so long as we are willing to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

When I began my career in the Civil Service, I had to spend four weeks away on a training course. I shared accommodation with someone who had a Philosophy degree, and whose dissertation had been written on the subject, ‘Logical disproofs of the existence of God’. Knowing I was a Christian, he asked why I believed in God. But at the end, he made it clear he had no intention of taking it seriously and only did it for a joke. His questions were those of unbelief, not of faith.

Similarly, there are some within the church whose questions can be little more than scorn, rather than honest exploration in the service of Christ. That is hardly a questioning faith.

The key point is that faith has legs. Questions and concerns are fine, just so long as we retain a basic commitment to say ‘yes’ to Christ. Because that’s what a disciple is. Someone who imitates him. That’s going to require a faith that isn’t merely theoretical, but shows itself to be real in obedience. Provided that is at the heart of our faith, we can ask all the questions we need. God is not threatened by them.

Conclusion 
Mary, then, is not some unattainable, semi-divine figure. She is a human, vulnerable follower of her Lord. As such, she can be an inspiration to us as we seek to walk in the way of faith.

Like her, let us accept the gracious favour of God to share Christ with the world, and accept the cost we may have to pay.

Like her, let us depend on the Holy Spirit for the accomplishment of all that God wants to do in and through us, rather than continuing to go through the motions.

And like her, let us bring our questions to God and yet press on in the obedience of faith.

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Verse 38)

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