Wednesday 25 July 2018

Richard's Sermon on Pentecost Sunday 2018


Pentecost 2018: Holy Trinity and Christchurch

My father was once pursued out of church by the ‘rudest man in the Church of England’. Douglas Feaver, a former bishop of Peterborough rather rejoiced in that sobriquet. Some of his bon mots were: -
“to bury a few I haven’t managed yet.”
“Where did you find him, in a blackout?”

Bishop Douglas had retired to Bruton and used to attend my home church in Evercreech. One Sunday, as he was leaving church my father asked the bishop what was the Old Testament reading for the following Sunday (as Dad was due to read). Ezekiel 37 he was told. Then, as Dad walked down the path towards the gate, Bishop Douglas rushed after him shouting ‘The dry bones, the dry bones; tell them about the dry bones.’
I thought he was somewhat mad and was rather in awe of him.
The prophet Ezekiel someone else classified as somewhat mad. ‘Exhibits all the symptoms of acute mental illness.”
 Series of fantastic and sometimes lurid visions suggestive of a man who had consumed industrial quantities of cheese before bed time.
Weird symbolic actions – lying for months on one side and then on another to symbolise the years of Israel’s exile; cooking using an oven fired by human dung.
And yet  it is Ezekiel who gives us two of the most powerful, beautiful and thought provoking visions in the Old Testament.
Taken by spirit to the temple and sees a great river with its source in the very sanctuary, the home of God’s presence that flows out and waters the desert that turns the Dead Sea into a water that is teeming with life that brings fertility and life in its wake.
Chapter 37 and detailed vision of valley of dry bones – crying out for some good CGI and the bones that are clothed with sinews and flesh and muscle but still have no life until the breath of God’s spirit fills them. ‘Can these dry bones live’
Water bringing life
and breath bringing animation.

To these we can add wind and fire – Story of day of Pentecost; our birthday.

Wind, fire, breath, water – all of them active, all of them bearing the potential for huge power, all of them not in our control; all of them symbols for life. All of them symbols for the Holy Spirit.

This is what God’s Holy Spirit does. – sometimes gradually (dry bones) sometimes naturally (river), sometimes suddenly and without being called (day of Pentecost).

All of us have been touched by that same Spirit (baptism). Sometimes dormant (dry bones), sometimes flooding us, sometimes galvanising us for action.

Unexpected star of Royal Wedding – Michael Curry; St George’s probably never seen like of it. Quote from Dr Martin Luther King:
“We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world a new world, for love is the only way.”

Substitute ‘spirit’ for ‘love’
"There's power in love. There's power in love to help and heal when nothing else can.
"There's power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will.
"There's power in love to show us the way to live”
So on this Pentecost Sunday let us give thanks for the breath of the Spirit; fire of the Spirit; wind of the Spirit; stream of living water of Spirit.

And let us pray that through the Spirit all that is dead in our own lives and in life of Church may be blown away, burned away, washed away so that new life can flourish.

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