Pentecost: stop trying to be Christian
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:26-end, 1Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39
Jesus did not write a book. It’s a striking fact. I think a lot of people want to write a book in order to leave a mark. To feel there is something permanent left behind when they’re gone. Material things get lost easily, everything is subject to decay; But a book can convey a lot – personality, ideas, humour; It can be reprinted. Downloaded onto a kindle, or from the cloud onto a tablet like the ten commandments A book represents a certain sort of immortality.
Perhaps you’ve taken this lockdown as the opportunity to complete your memoirs, the Great British novel, your guide to raising children, or the complete recipes of St Margaret’s, Putney; a book is your legacy for the future. But Jesus did not write a book.
Take even the Gospels. Not written by Jesus. Not authorised. Certified. The official Jesus Christ Sticker album of ’33. They are personal impressions. They’re written from the experience of men and women who felt the impact that one man had on a generation. Jesus wrote no book. He left as his witness a body of men and women who would change the world. A body of men and women on whom he breathed Spirit.
This matters. We don’t meet the Jesus of history. It is always the Christ of faith.
And we meet Christ through his Church. As Jesus passed the Spirit on to the apostles, so they reached a new generation. Then with Paul and the evangelists, spirit pushed the church further. And generation has passed the Gospel to generation, now for a hundred generations, Spirit breathing on each generation, with no regard to social distancing. And each of us encountered the Gospel through a person, through a church, A human connection. It would make a pleasing, if large, work of art to see stretching out of hands showing through whom the faith has passed. Jesus at the top, with the disciples, St Paul, the Maries and many others – With hands touching Christ and stretched down through the evangelists and early church, down and out through time, across continents, 100 generations to today and each of us in our homes. Hands reaching up to our parents, pastors, friends, down to our children and those we have met along the way. A great chain of faith.
‘It is by the faith of others that our faith is kindled’ That is Spirit. And that is how the Spirit of the Church remains free, discovered afresh in each generation. Christian faith is not limited by hard and fast rules. It is first and foremost about personal encounter and the telling of the story, between friends, within a family.
When you look at a religion from outside it looks like a lot of things. There’s a series of propositions you have to sign up to – They’re called doctrine – which makes belief sound like it’s chiselled in stone. There are the very large buildings that need visiting weekly. There’s all the accessories people get so hung up on – The clothes, the gold and silver. Heaven forbid you build a new cupboard in a church. You would of course need a faculty, another thing, And, of course, it requires the approval of the hierarchy and the committees, the synods. All the stuff of religion is so very cumbersome, the church is very heavily weighed down with it, trapped beneath pews, and legislation and an entire house of bishops. Goodness.
Even the Spirit. The Church always talks about the Holy Spirit. One part of the Trinity. Calling it the Spirit makes it a thing. It’s specific, definite with the definite article: we know what it is. But actually Jesus doesn’t say: “Receive the Holy Spirit” in today’s Gospel. There’s no definite article. He simply says “Receive Holy Spirit” Not something definite but limitless and free.
Jesus didn’t write a book. He wasn’t concerned with what is fixed and definite, with things or all those things that give us certainty, and tell us we’ve got it right: The right church, the right liturgy, the right doctrine. He found people, whom he loved, and breathed on them Spirit; commanding them to do as he had done.
So three things about the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. Firstly, it’s passed between people. Faith, vision, is always passed between people. Spirit is interpersonal, it’s caught: Keep alert – the Spirit spreads and everyone shows symptoms.
The second thing is that we can do nothing without the Spirit. This I think is a step people find difficult. Humans tend to be active, they like doing, achieving. We love to think we are the masters of our fate, the captain of our soul. But it’s a trap.
It might seem grands, independent, strong, free to be the captain of our soul. In truth, it is just a whole lot of pressure we don’t need. In truth, it isolates us, makes us think we have to do all the work, have to ourselves make the world, forge our destiny. In truth, it’s a lie – spirit is passed between people. We are born, live and die in an interconnected web. Those connections make us, shape us, and have the gravity to tack us to port and starboard. At the beginning and end we will know our dependence. But most importantly, spirit does not belong to us – it belongs to God. And we can find immeasurable freedom if hand back this responsibility to God. There’s a reason the 12-step programme begins by acknowledging our dependence, our weakness, and our need for a higher power. It can be a profound liberation to stop the Herculean task, and let God be God. We can do nothing without the Spirit. So stop trying to be a Christian. Stop trying to be good. And let God be God.
So the Spirit moves between people. There is no faith and no response to God without the Spirit.
The final thing I want to say today, is that the Spirit is there strengthen us. St John calls the Spirit the Paraclete, which is tricky to translate. It means something like the advocate, the advisor. It is the Dominic Cummings to your Boris Johnson. John 3:8: ‘The [spirit] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’ Wycliffe, one of the first translators of Scripture into English, translated Paraclete ‘comforter’. But his understanding of this came from the Latin ‘confortator’, which we understand better as ‘strengthener’, rather than ‘consoler’.
It’s very difficult to live a Christian life on your own. If our faith is not wholly ours but God’s, and if the Spirit moves between people, this shouldn’t surprise us. But we have the church to strengthen us. We’re here to encourage one another and to be encouraged.
The things we’re doing at the moment can feel like a poor imitation of our actual coming together. Worshipping on screens, Zoom coffee from kitchen tables, playgroup song time in your own homes; telephone calls and meeting in parks; sending out cake to houses; but it is a point of connection. God’s work of keeping spirit in circulation. There’s a psychological toll to isolation that some feel more than others, but it affects everyone. So there’s a part for everyone in this work, as frustrating as it is.
In the last week there’s been a real shift. We’re receiving fewer requests for help, but also less response from volunteers, less donations to the vicarage food bank – which for space in our hall is a bit of a relief. Now is a crucial time though in not overlooking those for whom nothing is changing. And as things begin again, as our buildings are re-opened and people find ways of coming together, We must not leave behind those who need this connection the most. Hopefully we are moving now into a new phase where parts of the church’s life may be restored. But as the body is one and has many members (and all the members of the body, though many, are one body), so we cannot move forward without retaining this connection to those members who are not yet out of quarantine, and find themselves still excluded from our buildings.
Jesus did not write a book. He didn’t raise a building. But he did gather people together. A body of men and women. He did love them. And he breathed on them Spirit. Let us pray to keep that Spirit in circulation, and to comfort, encourage and strengthen one another in the days to come. Amen.