Sermon preached by Stephen Fielding at St Mary’s Welwyn and at Ayot St Peter on the Feast of Pentecost May 2008

‘By the same spirit’

The dramatic reading from the Acts of the Apostles [which we have just heard and seen wonderfully and memorably re-enacted by our Liturgical Drama Group] vividly brings to life the coming of the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost. There is a tremendous sense of energy and power at Pentecost – the mighty rushing wind as the creative, elemental energy of God himself.

The life of Jesus was lived in this spirit from first to last. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. At his baptism, the spirit descended on him in the form of a dove, and equipped him for his ministry. By the power of the spirit he wrestled in the wilderness to overcome temptation. It was at the heart of his prayer life. He was raised from the dead by a mighty act of God’s same spirit. All his life was penetrated by the creator spirit and identified with it.

Pentecost is the gift of that same spirit to the apostles – the apostles sharing that aspect of his life with him. They can breathe the same air that he breathed, live in the same climate.

What was the nature of that spirit that so possessed the life of Jesus from first to last? Let me draw out a few of the characteristics here.

It is a spirit of insight and awareness, the ability to see straight. The ability to see deeply into people and situations. The ability to see what is going on in the hearts of others. That spirit of vision and imagination that marked Jesus as a prophet, and opened eyes to see God at work.

It is a spirit of unity - that spirit by which Jesus can say ‘I will draw everyone to myself’. That spirit that moved, and still moves, to reconcile all who are estranged. That spirit which at Pentecost mysteriously transcended different tongues and languages to reveal an unexpected and deep unity of understanding.

It is the spirit that lives for others. The spirit that spells death to self and brings fullness of life.

It is in short the spirit of heaven itself. St Paul has a wonderful phrase to describe the Holy Spirit. He says it is a first instalment of heaven, God’s down payment of life lived with him forever. The life of the spirit is the life of the end of the age, and Christians who have been sealed with the spirit have had and enjoy a foretaste of heaven now.

So the spirit that Jesus lived in throughout his whole life was, and is, a spirit of insight, unity, and living for others – the life of heaven itself.

Last week a ‘mighty rushing wind’ of another kind struck Burma and its people with terrible forca and ferocity. Most of the world has looked on with distress and disbelief as aid to that country has been refused by the military junta, and many will be asking themselves how we are to make sense of the goodness of God in the face of this suffering and appalling natural disaster. If that agonising question is the subject for another sermon and another day – and it is – we will today at the start of Christian Aid week focus on the wonderful work of Christian Aid who, if they are permitted to do so, will be doing all they can to relieve suffering and hardship there.

Pentecost made the disciples Christians and gave birth to the Church. It came about, said St Peter, when we ‘put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ’. To be a Christian is to breathe the air that links earth to heaven. It is to trust in the same spirit that Jesus trusted in. It is to enter into the life of Jesus himself. For he places us where he is, a Son in relation to the Father, making available to us the limitless, unending source of grace, which is the Holy Spirit himself.

AMEN