Pentecost Sunday, 11 June 2000

Canterbury Cathedral

Very recently I was in the beautiful town of Rocamadour in southern France. It was there, in 1166, that the mummified body of a first-century hermit was found and pilgrims very quickly began to worship at the shrine of the little-known St Amadour. Among those pilgrims was the English King Henry II, known so well in this Cathedral for his longstanding rivalry with his Archbishop of Canterbury, the martyred Thomas Becket.

And as this modern-day pilgrim (and successor of Thomas Becket, might I add) prayed at Rocamadour, my eyes lighted on a faded fresco over the place where the saint's body was found - a fresco which Henry II and other early pilgrims probably saw too. Entitled, 'The Annunciation', it depicts in a very original fashion the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary. Instead of the conventional dove brooding over the head of the Virgin, I noted that she had a trap door built into her head - where, the 12th-century artist believed, the Spirit made his entrance!

And that artist was not alone in being mystified by the Holy Spirit. On the first Pentecost, such was the overwhelming presence of the Spirit that some bystanders thought the believers had hit the bottle too hard and too early in the day. "What does this mean?" some wondered. "They are filled with new wine," others speculated. Not a complaint that many English Churches get! And St Peter, with a lovely touch of humour, responded that it was only nine o'clock in the morning. In other words, the pubs were not open yet!

Today, two thousand years on, we too are often mystified by the Holy Spirit. We, too, ask, "What does this mean?" What does the Holy Spirit do? How does he empower us? And what lessons does he wish to teach us?

At first sight, Pentecost may seem strictly a 'church-y' festival, with its strange emphasis on unusual happenings such as speaking with tongues, fire and wind. And, after all, we do meet here today to celebrate the birthday of the Christian Church. And it is right for the Church to sing and dance and celebrate its ongoing work and growth in the year 2000! Yesterday afternoon, for example, I was privileged to participate in the 'Global March for Jesus', during which we celebrated - and bore witness to - a Church united together in mission. And later this afternoon, I will travel up to Gateshead to speak about the Christian's hope in the New Millennium. I can tell you that this is an exciting, hopeful time to be a Christian, as we continue to take the message of Christ out into the secular world. We have much to be proud of on this birthday!

But Pentecost is much more than simply an 'insiders' festival, about the Church, for the Church. The Church is not a club for religious people but a dynamic, living body brought into being and sustained by our commitment to the Lord. The Church is, in the language of Augustine of Hippo, a "mixed body" of saints and sinners, all struggling together to live out the call of faithfulness to the Gospel of Christ. And as the Pentecost event teaches us, the Church is a body of diverse individuals who are at once 'gathered together' and 'sent out'.

First, the Church is 'gathered'. That is what happened on that first Pentecost when the Spirit descended; He made one community of very diverse and different people. The account in the Acts of the Apostles goes to great lengths to emphasise the different national groupings represented: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia - the list goes on and on. For the very first time, dispersed Jews "from every nation under heaven" belonged to one family and were held together with one common allegiance. On that memorable day, each baptised believer was called together into the community - into the family - of Jesus Christ.

But notice that the peoples gathered together on the Day of Pentecost did so with a specific purpose: to "speak about God's deeds of power" (Acts 2.11). They came together first and foremost to praise and worship the God who created them and drew them to himself. And that is what we are about here this morning: like pilgrims drawn to the shrine at Rocamadour, we are gathered together to worship around one table, one altar - to remember, to give thanks, and to be strengthened on life's journey. We are called to be a Church united in worship - reflecting the unity and holiness of God.

Yet to be the Church gathered is also to be the Church challenged. We are challenged to grow, to change, to respond to the world around us. Pentecost, with its laughter, its celebration and its nonconformity, asks us to look at ourselves and ask: "Are we sure we have nothing further to receive of God's life and love?" In Harvey Cox's interesting book, Fire from Heaven, the story is recounted of a young man who, on going to Church one Sunday morning, was deeply challenged by the stirring worship. He returned home and told his mother: "We really had Church this morning!"

"We really had Church" speaks of that surprise, that encounter with God that challenges, disturbs and leaves one shaken, inspired and never the same again. It is the Pentecost experience, and it is an experience that is far from unusual. It is the experience which lies behind sacred sites like Rocamadour, Canterbury Cathedral and many, many places where the power of God has descended and where lives continue to be changed.

We humans tend to seek as much conformity as possible - which is just another way of saying that we want security and that, perhaps, too much of the unusual would only terrify us to death. But does not this kind of Pentecost experience of God challenge us to break out of the tidiness of Church life? Those of us who are theologians, teachers of the faith, and ministers of the sacraments must constantly remember that in the beginning was the experience - and that theology is merely scrambling to keep up with the activity of God, who is constantly creating and making new. We do well to remember the words of Donald Coggan, the former Archbishop of Canterbury who died so recently: "When the Holy Spirit comes on men and women there is new life, but there is often disorder too. But give me this every time if, otherwise, I have to put up with cold, lifeless orthodoxy."

Orthodoxy, of course, is not bad - how can an Archbishop of Canterbury of all people suggest such a thing! But orthodoxy needs the life of the Spirit to ensure that it does not become lifeless, fossilised by custom and out of touch with the experience of a faith lived in the world. Just a few weeks ago we were in Sudan for the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Sudan. In spite of the poverty, sometimes persecution and the attrition of war, nothing can staunch the enthusiasm of Sudanese Christians and their love for Christ. But it is not only in the third world such stories emerge. In this country too in so many ways the immediacy of God is known and experienced.

I have spoken about the Church 'gathered' and the challenges it presents to us Christians. Now let me speak about the Church 'sent', because Pentecost will not allow us to look within for too long. As you may know, the Pentecost story does not end with the reading we heard a few minutes ago. On the contrary: the account in Acts goes on to tell us that, following Peter's great address to the crowd, "about three thousand persons" were baptised, and "all who believed had all things in common: they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need" (Acts 2.41,43). The converts were gathered together, yes, but not for long - they were soon sent out into the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who were far off and to those who were near. And so are we. Some of you may have heard me quote the theologian Emil Brunner before, but his words bear repeating here today: "As a fire exists by burning, so the Church exists by mission." That is what we are here for. Like the pilgrims at Rocamadour, we leave the altar, the shrine, strengthened for service. And like the earliest believers, our mission is to bear witness, to be a celebratory sign of God's love in the midst of a questioning and confused world.

Yet to be the Church 'sent' is, likewise, to be the Church challenged. How are we to be a true sign of a community of Jesus Christ to the world? This is the challenge before us. We must not be embarrassed if the values we stand for are in sharp contradiction to the world around us. If the character of the Spirit is indeed 'holy', then the sacramental nature of the Church - and each of us as members of it - demands that we are called to be holy, set apart, markedly different. That was the character of the early Church. It is meant to be our character, too.

And that is why the Church is often out-of-step with the world. This should not surprise or embarrass us. One of my major worries about Western, and indeed about British culture, is the serious erosion of the concept of community. We have elevated the cult of the individual - and the priority of his of her desires and wishes - to such a level that we are in danger of emptying the words 'right' and 'wrong' of any meaning. If anything goes, how do we differentiate what is best from what that which may, in actual fact, prove to be harmful? Communities are held together by many different things and great communities are great because moral values anchor them. Such communities are anchored in the strong traditions, which St Paul defined so splendidly as the fruits of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, fidelity, gentleness, and self control." Far from leading to soft and weak Christians, these are qualities that lead people to endure hardship for the sake of the King.

And that, in short, is what the Church stands for: to live out the life given to all who seek to follow Christ the Lord - of whom Dr Matthews, the former Dean of St Paul's wrote: "People knew where he had been because of the trail of gladness that he left behind him." I like to think that at best we, the Church, are part of that trail of gladness. That is what Pentecost is all about, and that is what we celebrate today.

Item from: Lambeth Palace