Pentecost - making sense

Have you had a time in your life when you had a moment of revelation; a time when something that was confusing you suddenly became clear or when something that you didn’t understand suddenly made sense or when things that had seemed disconnected suddenly came together or, more mystical still, when you had a sense of the interconnectedness of the world around you and you within it?

The disciples spent three years not understanding what Jesus was saying and doing before running away, deserting and denying him at the crucifixion. Then the Day of Pentecost happened and the coming of the Holy Spirit was the moment when it all came together for them, when they finally understood and both knew their part in God’s plan and could begin to play it.

When the Spirit came they could speak in languages they had never learned and were understood, they could explain the scriptures although they were uneducated and their explanations made sense, they could proclaim Jesus as Lord and Christ and people responded to their challenge, and they knew how to structure and organise the new community that grew around them in response to their message.

All that Jesus had said to them and done with them suddenly made sense and useful to them because the Spirit had come and brought clarity and revelation. That is what Jesus had promised them would happen. That is the work which the Holy Spirit comes to do in our lives. Jesus told the disciples that when the Spirit came he would lead them into all truth. In other they would have that experience of revelation, of clarity, of things making sense, coming together and connecting.

It is an experience that is common to artists. Some years ago I read a book called Written In My Soul, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others - felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and “came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.”

To my mind, this is an experience of the Spirit coming although it is often not recognised as such. Certainly that has been my experience both in creating and preaching. I will often reflect on or meditate on an experience, a song, an image, a Bible passage, by putting it in my mind, carrying it around in my mind over several days or weeks, reminding myself of it from time to time and just generally living with it for a period of time and when I do that then I find that at some unexpected moment a new thought or idea or image will come to me that makes sense or takes foward the experience or song or image or passage that I had been reflecting on.

To my mind that is the Spirit coming and making connections, bringing clarity, making sense. But it is not just something for artists or even for preachers, it is something that can happen for us all and not just in major life-changing moments of revelation but also in a series of minor everyday epiphanies.

Think about your own experience of coming to faith and growing in faith for a moment. What have been the moments when you remember growing into a deeper understanding of God and of your faith? Have there been moments when something from the Bible stood out as being a word specifically for you? Or something that was said in a sermon or by a friend or colleague? Have there been moments when you have had, like Mother Julian of Norwich, the sense that everything will be alright or that you will get through the difficulties or complications you were facing? Again, that was the Spirit coming and bringing revelation.

On Ascension Day, I posted that the disciples had to let go of Jesus in order that the Spirit was able to come. It is in letting go and letting God that the Spirit comes with revelation and clarity and truth. Through the Ascension Jesus seems to be saying to the disciples, “Don’t cling on to me. Let go of me as you know me because, when you do, you will gain a greater experience, less limited experience of me. Don’t cling on to me. Let me go, because then the Spirit will come.”
To let go of what is safe and familiar and secure in order to be open to encounter what is beyond is both scary and exhilarating. But it is what Jesus calls us to and it is the way in which we encounter the Spirit in our lives.

The title of a Madness song, ‘One Step Beyond,’ has been a catchphrase that has developed real spiritual meaning for some of us at St John's Seven Kings over the last few months by challenging us to go further in living out our Christian faith, to go one step beyond where we are now in the way that we live as Christians. The Ascension seems to challenge us to go at least one step beyond where we are now in our understanding of God. We must always move beyond the place, space, people and understanding that we have now because that is how the Spirit comes!

And when the Spirit comes then we experience that sense of clarity, of understanding, of coming together, of rightness, and things making sense that we have been speaking of this morning. That doesn’t mean that everything works out and life becomes easy – the disciples were equipped by the Spirit to take the message of Jesus to the whole world and as a result they faced riots, shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, and martyrdom. A Spirit-filled Christian life is always a challenge but when the Spirit comes that’s when we experience a sense of meaning and purpose that transforms the difficulties of the present because we know that God is with us in it all.

While the disciples waited between Ascension and Pentecost they gathered frequently to pray together and, if we wish to experience the Spirit in a new measure, then that is also what we must be about. In Ephesians Paul writes go on being filled with the Holy Spirit and that should be our prayer. Whatever measure of the Spirit we think we have received so far, we can pray to go one step beyond and pray to experience more of the Holy Spirit’s power, presence, filling and equipping.

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The Arcade Fire - Wake Up.

Apophatic Ascension

Imagine how the disciples must first have felt when they heard that Jesus was planning to leave them in order to return to his Father. They had had an incredible roller-coaster three years of ministry together with him which had culminated in the agony of watching him die. They thought that they had lost him and that all their hopes and dreams had been dashed. Then there was the joy of the resurrection; the dawning realisation that Jesus was alive, was still with them and was not lost to them after all.

And then the Ascension. The Jesus that they thought they had regained leaves them. What was that all about? There was so much that they still had to learn? There was so much that they could have done together? Why? What happens at the Ascension is also similar to the words that Jesus spoke to Mary Magdelene when she became the first to recognise him after his resurrection. As she did so, she naturally reached out to embrace him but his words to her were, “Touch me not.” Why?

There is a strand of theology which is called ‘the Negative Way.’ Within this way of thinking about God all images and understandings of God are consistently given up and let go because they are human constructions that can only show part of what God is.

So, all talk of Jesus as shepherd, lamb, son, brother, friend, master, servant, king, lord, saviour, redeemer and so on goes out of the window because God is always more than the images that we construct to understand him. In saying that I was speaking of God as being masculine something which is, again, only a limited human understanding of God. Ultimately, God is neither male nor female but is Spirit and the Negative Way says that in order to encounter God as being beyond our limited imaginations and understandings we need to give up and let go of all our human ways of describing him.

The Ascension and Jesus’ words to Mary seem to say something similar. Jesus seems to be saying to the disciples, “Don’t cling on to me. Let go of me as you know me because, when you do, you will gain a greater experience, less limited experience of me. Don’t cling on to me. Let me go, because then the Spirit will come.”

To let go of what is safe and familiar and secure in order to be open to encounter what is beyond is both scary and exhilarating. But it is what Jesus calls us to and it is the way in which we encounter the Spirit in our lives.

The title of a Madness song, ‘One Step Beyond,’ has been a catchphrase that has developed real spiritual meaning for some of us at St John's Seven Kings over the last few months by challenging us to go further in living out our Christian faith, to go one step beyond where we are now in the way that we live as Christians. The Ascension seems to challenge us to go at least one step beyond where we are now in our understanding of God.

We need to leave the safety, security and familiarity of the past in order to encounter the new thing that God is doing in the present. When our aim is to hold on to and preserve what we had in the past, we put it in mothballs and it becomes a museum piece; something that is looked at but not used. The best way to preserve what was good about the past is to use it as the foundation and basis for going one step beyond. It is only when something is alive, growing, developing and changing that its past can feed its present.

So, the Ascension seems to teach us that nothing is sacred: not buildings, not books, not actions, not people, not even Jesus! We must always move beyond the place, space, people and understanding that we have now because that is how is how the Spirit comes!

Where is Jesus now?
Not here!
Jesus has left the building,
left the earth.
The last we saw of him
was the soles of his feet
as he ascended to heaven.

Where is Jesus now?
No longer God with us,
now God in heaven.
Distant,
removed,
out of our league.

What is he like?
We do not know –
we cannot see him!
What does he say?
We do not know –
we cannot hear him.
What is he to us?
We do not know –
he is not with us.

Where is Jesus now?
Here in body.
Here in what body?
The body of his people.
In the diverse,
differing,
fallible,
forgiven folk
who follow him
forming
his body on earth,
becoming his hands and feet,
his eyes, ears, mouth
on earth.

Where is Jesus now?
Here in Spirit.
Here in what Spirit?
The Spirit of love,
joy, peace
and hope.
The Spirit that
animates his body
into acts of service
and words of love.

Who are we
to be where
Jesus is now?
Only the struggling,
the failing,
the falling.
Only those calling out
for the Spirit’s
empowering.

Where are we
who are where
Jesus is now?
Only a fragment –
the minutest part -
of the glorious whole
that is his body
on earth.

How do we feel
to be where
Jesus is now?
Affirmed and humbled,
gifted and graced,
on top of the world
and
put in our place.

What does it mean
to be where
Jesus is now?
Like children
becoming adult
to grow up into him,
together
becoming him.
Each playing
our part
in the whole
that is Jesus,
Emmanuel,
God with us.

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16 Horsepower - Cinder Alley.