St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford
Pentecost (Year B)
Acts
2.1-21
Psalm
104
Romans
8.22-27
John
15.26-27, 16.4b-15
Last
week Fr Brian told of his first visit to the Holy Land. Now, it
wouldn't do if – ever – a clergy team exhibited internal
competitiveness. No, that would be wrong. Nevertheless, I feel myself
strangely drawn to say... 'When I visited
the Holy Land, on each of my three visits there,
I too came back laden with anecdote and insight, which I might just
share with you, from time to time!
Brothers
and sisters, I am joking of course. Really, I want to complement,
build on what Fr Brian said last. I want to do that by returning to
one place he mentioned, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the
middle of the Old City of Jerusalem as it is now. 'Sepulchre' just
means 'tomb'. So it is the Church of the Holy Tomb, the tomb of
Jesus. This also explains its other name, the Church of the
Resurrection.
I might give it another name: it is, perhaps supremely in the Christian world, the Marmite Church. You understand? I am saying: you either love it or you hate it. It so happens I love it (but to go into why would be a distraction). I do get why others hate it. You see, all the main indigenous Christian Churches have a presence there, and some others. And... they do not get on. That is putting it mildly. I might say they live in a state of constant mutual antagonism. This means that when huge numbers of Christians want to gather in the Church at the festivals, typically the Israeli police (overwhelmingly Jews of course) have to be present – police, in the Church itself. What is more, none of these Christian groups will trust any other with the key to the door of the Church. Instead, that trust is placed in Muslim families (who consider it a great honour, by the way).
What
this also means is that the Church is run wholly by policing and
preserving the status quo. At least it seems to me that nothing
can be moved; nothing can be repaired; no times or customs of
services can be changed. The Copts, for example, everywhere else in
the world, have an Easter procession, with the great icon of the
Resurrection when you would expect - during Eastertide. But... in the
Holy Sepulchre they have that same Easter procession every Sunday
of the year, including throughout Lent. The reason? Nothing
remotely theological (at least as it's been explained to me). It's
rather that if they once gave up their right to that bit of space, at
that time, they'd lose it altogether, lose it to the other Christian
groups who are always competing for space and time.
So
if I love it, I love it in spite of this weirdness. It is worse than
weirdness; it is wrong. It compromises our Christian witness. More:
it is a good example of what tradition in Christianity is
not.
*
The
danger is that we may be so used to thinking that all these words
mean the same thing: old-fashioned, ancient, unchanged and
unchanging, small-c-conservative, and traditional.
In some contexts, that might be fair. If we are thinking about, say,
architecture, or cuisine, or musical preference, there may well be a
large overlap in meaning between old-fashioned, ancient, unchanged
and unchanging, small-c-conservative, and traditional. But not
so in the Church.
And
the reason why it is not so in the Church can be summed up in ten
words:
because
of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
What
the gift of the Holy Spirit, as a constant presence over and among
the Church, means is that within Christianity, tradition means rather
the right kind of renewal of the Church,
tradition isn't things staying stuck and changeless, it's
faithfulness to the pattern of renewal we inherit from the
saints.
If
that sounds wrong and/or bizarre, consider our first reading. After
receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, the disciples move from
speaking Aramaic, to speaking any number of languages. They move from
being scared and timid, to being bold and public. (Not necessarily in
your face, but certainly in your ear.) They speak of the fulfilment
of prophecy. So we are in New Times, if not in the End Times.
We
see the idea also in the psalm: 'Send forth your spirit, O Lord, and
renew the face of the earth'. The Spirit is the spirit of renewal.
We
see it also in Paul's Letter to the Romans. True, you wouldn't know
it from today's extract alone, but today's passage is part of a wider
reflection by Paul on the new thing that Gd has done, in bringing
gentiles, non-Jews, in great number into the Christian
community.
We
see it supremely in the gospel, when Jesus says: 'When the Spirit of
truth comes, he will guide you into all truth'. We are to expect new
truths.
And
one more: we see it also in the creed we will pray together in a few
moments. The language we will use, that the Son of God is 'of one
Being with the Father [or of the same substance], God from God' and
so on, was criticised at the time it was proposed in the fourth
century, as being novel, innovative language – as such
un-biblical. But those who defended it said the language is
innovative, true, but we need this innovation to convey the truth of
the Son of God. And these people – not the biblicist conservatives
– are those we now call the 'orthodox' and indeed the
'traditionalists'.
In
the Church, and so for us, tradition is the right kind of change,
change as prompted by the Holy Spirit, who leads us into new truths.
Now,
if this alarms you, please don't panic. It doesn't mean throwing
babies out with bathwater. It doesn't mean (change of image)
re-inventing the wheel Sunday by Sunday. It doesn't mean tying
ourselves up with the latest fad or fashion. It has to be the
right kind of change, change after the pattern of renewal we
inherit. That means it typically can be discerned only over time,
after prayer, deliberation, disagreement, and more time.
*
How,
then might we change? We will need, over time, to reflect on where
the Spirit is leading the Church and the Churches into new truths. We
will need, over time, to reflect on the Spirit of the prophecy, which
is the Spirit of Pentecost, and the prophetic challenge the Church is
duty bound to address to governments and other instruments of power.
But for now let us return to the second reading. Paul writes:
'we
groan inwardly... [and] the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we
do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes
with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows
what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes...'.
Here,
in the first place, we can find renewal of hope for ourselves. If we
find ourselves this Sunday morning feeling we do not know how to pray
- if we, indeed, find ourselves, if truth be told, resigned to the
fact that, while we shall say some prayers, we have long since given
up on prayer being important in how we actually live our lives –
then we are not in a bad place. Because we will still groan and sigh,
in our own ways. And the revelation of God is that, in the Spirit,
our sighs and groans are already prayers. Renewal of hope for us, I
say, here and now.
But
not only for us. I am wondering if one possible form of renewal for
the Church is the way we speak with people who are not Christian and
who have no religious or spiritual allegiance. Such people often seem
to say, 'I wish I had your faith' (or words to that effect). And
perhaps we don't know what to say. They seem to think that faith is,
well, there are many variations, but among them, they may assume that
faith is:
a)
a way of seeing another dimension in life which is simply natural for
some, but simply impossible for others;
b)
rock-solid certainty which never doubts and has an answer for
everything;
c)
a spiritual entity which God as-it-were injects into some but leaves
a long way from others.
We
know that faith is none of these things. And it is good that we know
this. We know that, even if we are or get called 'people of faith',
it may mean nothing more than that we trust that our groans and sighs
by the Spirit do find their way to God. And maybe the renewal of the
Church will come when we find new ways to say this.
In
the Church, then, tradition has nothing to do with preserving the
status quo out of fear or enmity. Tradition, rather is the right kind
of change. And... who knows? Who knows what change might just come
about if we find ways of being alongside our friends and neighbours,
to hear their sighs and groans, and finding the right ways to say to
them that these are already prayers? Prayer and faith are already not
totally alien to them, far from it. So they would at least have
nothing to lose in simply seeing what happened if they joined with
others who pray, say, in Church.
Amen.
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