Sunday 9 June 2019 – Pentecost

Acts 2: 1 – 21; Romans 8: 14 – 17; John 14: 8 – 17 Year C

Experiencing the Holy Spirit
Today is Pentecost when we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy
Spirit to the Church. It happened on the Jewish festival of Pentecost
when many people came into Jerusalem for the festival. We’ve just
heard the dramatic account of what happened that day – a rushing wind,
tongues of fire and a great deal of communication about God. People
could hear and understand what the apostles were saying in their own
languages. Up to this point the Holy Spirit had been given to only a few
leaders and prophets, but now, as Peter explains, it has been poured out
in a new way on all humanity.
People have been grappling with the Holy Spirit in different ways ever
since. Trying to understand this mysterious and unseen power. It took
the church nearly 400 years to formulate a statement about Him as “the
Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With
the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.” We shall be
saying those words when we say the Creed later in the service this
morning. The Holy Spirit is both the third person of the Trinity, and an
unseen force – known only by what He does.
I’m going to talk today about some of the ways in which we experience
the Holy Spirit in our lives.
I love my satnav! It’s a bit like having a companion in the car who knows
the way to wherever I’m going. On Thursday I had to drive across to
Maulden, to a meeting with the Rural Dean. I’m still not entirely
confident about finding my way around Bedfordshire, so I plugged myself
into google, confident that it would get me there. Unfortunately, google
didn’t seem to know that there was a road closed in the middle of
Maulden. But what I love about satnavs is that if you go a different way
they cope with this and find another way round. And they’re never
grumpy about it. I got there, although I was a bit late for the meeting.
If we think of the life of faith as a journey, where we are trying to follow
Jesus and to grow more like Him, then I think it’s possible to make an
analogy between the Holy Spirit and a satnav. In our Gospel reading
Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17). A few
verses before our Gospel, He has referred to Himself as “ the way, the
truth and the life” (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit is given to us, as
1
believers, to be with us for ever. He lives deep within us. One aspect of
His work is that He leads us towards Jesus, into the truth, and He keeps
us going in the right direction on our journey of faith. Just as we have to
plug in our satnav and keep the maps updated, we need to tune in to the
Spirit who lives within us if we are to keep going in the right direction.
We do this by prayer, by study and by our fellowship with other
Christians.
The Holy Spirit is of course much more than a kind of spiritual satnav.
The Greek word ‘parakletos’ is translated ‘Advocate’ in our Gospel
reading. The image comes from the law court and suggests someone
who is on our side. The word can also mean ‘helper,’ ‘comforter’,
‘teacher’ (John 14: 16, 26). One who is alongside to encourage us, to
remind us of what we have learned about God. To remind us of Jesus’
words. To give us peace when we are feeling troubled. To bring a
sudden insight, or an answer to prayer. Perhaps you have had the
experience of a quiet thought or idea that seems to come from outside of
you. It persists, and it leads you to something new. Listen to these
words from John V Taylor
“My own attempt to understand the Holy Spirit has convinced me He is
active in precisely those experiences that are very common –
experiences of recognition, sudden insight, an influx of awareness when
you wake up and become alive to something. It may be another person,
or a scientific problem, and suddenly the penny drops. Every time a
human being cries ‘Ah! I see it now!’ that’s what I mean by the Holy
Spirit.”1
The Holy Spirit is also, in the most profound sense, the spirit of
revelation. He helps us in many ways by communicating God’s
presence and message to us. Most fundamentally, it’s only through the
work of the Holy Spirit in us that we are able to recognise Jesus for who
He is. We don’t arrive at faith in our own strength, but because God,
through the Holy Spirit, reveals Himself to us. The apostle Paul says
that we are only able to say ‘Jesus is Lord’, and mean it, because the
Holy Spirit has made this possible. (1 Corinthians 12: 3). It’s the Holy
Spirit who makes our faith real. And it’s the Holy Spirit who makes
prayer possible, sometimes praying in us and for us, as Paul puts it,
“with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8: 26) when we don’t know
what to pray ourselves.

1
John V Taylor, from the Canterbury Book of Spiritual Quotations, p 175

2
As we heard in our second reading, Paul uses a vivid picture for all of
this when He calls the Holy Spirit the ‘Spirit of adoption’ (Romans 8:15).
Through the Holy Spirit, we’re able to call God ‘Father’ – or ‘Daddy’ – as
Jesus did. We know deep down, at a level that is deeper than emotion,
that we are children of God. As Frances van Alstyne wrote in her hymn:
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine:
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God;
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.”

We can never understand the Holy Spirit, any more than we can
understand God, but we can perhaps notice and be thankful for the ways
in which the Holy Spirit guides us, helps us, comforts us and makes us
aware of God’s presence in our lives.

Amen

Diana Young