Pentecost (Magazine Article)

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”

Pentecost is a reminder that we can’t tell God what he’s going to do.

I love the thought of how the disciples were getting on, up to the day of Pentecost.  They were a busy little bunch – worshipping in the temple, appointing a new apostle to replace Judas – for all the world as if they had a vacancy on the PCC they needed to fill.

The irony being that “apostles” are people who are sent out.  And although Jesus had sent them out, they hadn’t actually gone anywhere.

Maybe left to themselves they would have gradually merged into the Jewish community again, an odd little bunch with their stories of a living Messiah, but with nothing particularly different to show for their stories.

But God wasn’t going to leave them there, was he?

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit takes that group of 120 people, and shakes them up.  From that small devout group, within one generation, the story of Jesus was going to reach from India to Rome.  The Acts of the Apostles is the book of the work of the Holy Spirit, and how he made a new Kingdom of God that undercut and ran through the kingdoms of the earth before those earthly kingdoms had really even noticed..

There’s a lot of human frailty in the Acts of the Apostles.  There’s Mark nipping off when the going gets too tough – and the argument between Paul and Barnabas about whether to have him back.  There’s the argument between Peter and Paul over how the Church should welcome Gentile believers.  There’s the argument in Ephesus; there’s the argument between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  In fact, all round, there’s a lot of arguing goes on.  But by the end, Paul has taken the Gospel to Rome – in human weakness, as a prisoner, but in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Since then the Church has got powerful from time to time.  It has run countries.  It has made the rules.  It has demanded respect rather than shared the Gospel.  That time has run out in our country.  Although sometimes we look back wistfully to the days when people automatically respected the Church – it’s not the normal way of things.

Maybe now, when the Church is in human terms weak, when we can’t trust in our own strength – maybe now is the time to start listening to the Holy Spirit again.  We tried to trap him in the structures of the Church; we tried to tie him up in the Bible.  We’ve tried to encase him in the words and reasoning of clever men and women.  But when all’s said and done, he’s still the Spirit of God.  And the wind blows where it will.

Pray for the fullness of the Spirit.  Look out for the blessings of the Spirit.  Seek for the gifts of the Spirit.  And when you’ve received them – look out!  Because it means God has something for you to do as well.