Greeting:
Faithful God, who fulfilled the promises of Easter by sending us your Holy Spirit
and opening to every race and nation the way of eternal life.
Open our lips by your Spirit, that every tongue may tell of your glory.

May the Spirit, who hovered over the waters when the world was created, breathe into us the life he gives.

May the Spirit, who set the Church on fire upon the day of Pentecost,
bring the world alive with the love of the risen Christ.
Amen

The Lord be with you

A Prayer for forgiveness:
We offer you, O Lord, the troubles of this day.
We lay down our burdens at your feet.
Forgive us our sins.
By the power of your Holy Spirit give us your peace and your healing,
and help us to receive your Word.In the name of Christ
Amen

Reading:             Acts 2 : 1 – 13

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from heaven. … “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:2, 12)

This weekend we are celebrating the Christian Festival of Pentecost which takes its origin from these events described by Luke in our reading from Acts (chapter 2: 1-13). ‘Pentecost’ (a Greek word meaning ‘50’) was the name given to the third most important festival in the Jewish year—the festival 50 days after Passover which celebrated God’s giving of the Law at Mount Sinai and which coincided with the gathering-in of the first harvest of the year (the barley crop). Being in summer-time, it was also the most international of the three festivals, when Jews came from all over the known world—sailing across the Mediterranean if need be—just so that they could all be together in Jerusalem. It was a time for ‘gathering’—both gathering harvest and gathering together in community and celebration.

This makes it all the more painful for us this year to be celebrating Pentecost on our own and in our own homes. Jesus’ disciples, we read in verse 1, were ‘all together in one place’. That’s what we would like to be doing! And after Peter’s powerful sermon, we read how new believers in Jesus kept wanting keep together: ‘All the believers were together. … Everyday day they continued to meet together…’ (vv. 44, 46). That’s what believers in Jesus want to do! That first day of Pentecost was a day when the disciples were gathered together and God began a mighty work of gathering-in a harvest of people from all over the world into the kingdom of Jesus. So, it’s hard to celebrate ‘festival of gathering’ when we’re not together. Just as in the Psalms the exiles in Babylon said, “how can we sing the Lord’s songs while in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4), we might say this weekend: “how can we celebrate this festival, which all about community, whilst all stuck at home?

Well, they say that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. And it may be that this time of being apart from each other, and not able to gather, will help us to value and appreciate all the more that which we have perhaps too easily taken from granted. When you’re in a desert (as in a sense, during the Corina Virus season, we indeed are) you value the ‘old normal’—our times together as believers for worship together and mutual support and fellowship.

So perhaps this desert-season can also help us to appreciate more of the greatness of God’s gift to us of his Holy Spirit. If in January someone had said, “imagine being a church without being able to meet”, we would have found it difficult. We are being forced to experience the previously unimaginable. But let me now ask a similar question: imagine a Christian Church without the Holy Spirit. Imagine your own Christian life if there were no such person as the Holy Spirit. What would it feel like if (as David feared in Psalm 51:11) God were to “take his Holy Spirit from me”? Now that would be a real desert!

I’d like to press into that ‘desert’-question for a bit longer, because it may help us to begin to treasure and value God’s Holy Spirit all the more—preventing us from taking his reality for granted. So, let’s ask ourselves: “what would my Christian life be like if Jesus had not sent his followers the Holy Spirit?” 

We’re so used to the story of Jesus promising the coming gift of the Spirit, but it could have been different. After all, the risen Jesus, gloriously back from the dead, could have met the small group of disciples for forty days (as it says in Acts 1:1-3: giving ‘many convincing proofs’ that he was alive and laying down ‘instructions’ for the future), but then he could have simply returned to heaven. He could have left them as ‘orphans’ (John 14:18), stranded and helpless. He could have told them: “It’s all up to you; now just get on with it!”

What would this mean for believers living the Christian life today? At least, three things, so I suggest:

No Means of Relationship:

  • The Christian life would be all about trying to obey the teaching of this now-absent Jesus, with no sense of his presence with us or in us; prayer would be, as it were, a long-distance telephone-call every single time.
  • There would be no sense of our spirits being touched by his Spirit, no sense of Jesus’ presence with us.
  • Just as during this lock-down we find ourselves having to relate to people at a distance and ‘remotely’ (painfully, so near and yet so far!), so it would be with Jesus: there would be no sense of personal connection, no close ‘touching’ relationship, no sense of intimate communion. Jesus would be forever ‘absent’.
  • Imagine a Christian life where none of what Jesus offers in John 14-16 was available: no friendship with Jesus, no abiding in him and being connected to him, no guiding by his Spirit, none of his presence. It’s almost too painful even to contemplate!

No Power for Obedience:

  • With no capacity for relationship with Jesus, the Christian life would indeed now be reduced to trying to obey the teaching of this now-absent Jesus; and it would all have to be done entirely in our own strength. No resources available, whatsoever!
  • There’d be no grace given to help in difficult situations, no help offered in the face of temptation, no wisdom offered in a time of crisis.
  • We’d hear Jesus’ command to “love one another”, but not be given any love with which to love other believers; his command to be joyful, but not any joy to enjoy! We’d hear the command not to let our “hearts be troubled” but not be given any peace in our own hearts.
  • When St Paul encourages the Philippians (in Phil. 2:1) to live like Jesus he works on the agreed presumption that these resources are indeed available: ‘if there is any encouragement from being united with Christ, any comfort from his love, any common sharing in his Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion …’ But what if none of these gifts from above existed? We would abandon the path of obedience within a fortnight!

No Energy for Love and Mission

  • And our relationships with others would become so burdensome and problematic. The local Christian church would be a place where we all related to each other purely on the basis of human love.
  • All the things Paul mentions that can motivate us to overcome our natural human selfishness would be entirely absent. Without the love of Jesus in our midst and without the sense of God’s Spirit between us, the local congregation would soon become a veritable jungle of selfishness fuelled by grievances, hurts, pride and personal agendas.
  • And without the evident gifts of the Spirit, all contributions to the worship or daily life of the congregation would be the display of merely human effort. We would all be doing our various congregational tasks—be it teaching, playing music, or serving the coffee—in our own strength and based purely on our own human effort. We would not be operating in response to the received love of Jesus or compelled by his Spirit, but instead be putting ourselves forward and seeking to impress each other with our own abilities.

The picture painted by focusing on these three areas is indeed a bleak landscape. [Lowry] It’s like a black and white photo of a bombed city but I hope this painful view of this desert landscape begins to awaken in you a real appreciation of the wonderful gift we have indeed received from Jesus—his precious Holy Spirit.

I had a sense of this when leading a tour to Turkey a few years ago. It was a Sunday and about the 5th day of the tour. Our Turkish guide (a nice woman in her 40’s who had been my guide several times before and whom I knew to be a secular non-believing Muslim) suddenly decided to take the microphone on the bus and to give us all a 20-minute lecture on Islam. Gradually I could feel the atmosphere on the bus began to darken and became palpably heavy. I knew I would have to say ‘thank you’ to her and then try to change the atmosphere, but what could I do?

And then, in my spirit, I felt God say, “Just sing that good old hymn, ‘Come down, O love Divine’!” Which is what we did, and I’ve never heard 20 Christians give a hymn so much welly and enthusiasm! For we all began to see what as believers in Jesus we truly possess by comparison with the desert that had just been described—a desert in which there is only obedient submission to an absent, hard-to-know God who is not your ‘Father’ and not full of compassion and kindness and love and who has not redeemed you; a desert in which there is no Holy Spirit, no flame of passionate love, no indwelling or a sense of his presence.

So, on this Pentecost Sunday, let’s have a new gratitude for the wonderful gift of God’s Spirit. During this national lock-down we may feel like we are in a bleak desert, but that desert would be far, far bleaker, if we lived in a world where God had not given us his Holy Spirit.  The Christian life without the Holy Spirit would indeed be a barren existence, and the Christian church a jungle of competing interests and endless conflict. But, praise God, we are NOT in that desert. And our God is precisely the one who, because of the waters of his Spirit, can make the ‘desert to be glad’ and the wilderness to ‘rejoice and blossom’ (Isa. 35:1).

A Prayer:

Heavenly Father we thank you for sending us the promised Holy Spirit who empowers us in so many ways in love, gifts and works. My we be open to the guiding of your Spirit and obedient to your Word in all our ways, in the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. Amen

A Poem:
Spirit divine, come as of old with healing in thy train;
Come as thou didst, to sanctify; let naught of sin remain.

Come, great Spirit come, make each heart thy home;
Enter every longing soul; come great Spirit, come.

Spirit divine, purge thou our hearts, make us to understand
Thy blessed will concerning us, and teach us love’s command.

Spirit divine, cleanse thou our souls with Pentecostal flood;
Breathe into us the life that shows the Father-love of God.

Brindley Boon

The Blessing:
God has made us one in Christ.
He has set his seal upon us and,
as a pledge of what is to come,
has given the Spirit to dwell in our hearts.  
Alleluia.

And the blessing of God Almighty,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be amongst and remain with us always.
Amen

Let us go in the peace and power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve the Lord.   In the name of Christ. Amen

Prayers for Pentecost Sunday

Just over 2000 years ago, the Holy Spirit came like a rushing wind into the room where the disciples were meeting.  A week or so before they had witnessed Jesus ascending into Heaven to be with his beloved Father. They saw tongues of fire on each other’s heads and they had the ability to speak in other languages so they could spread the Good News of Jesus. Hallelujah!

Now just over 2000 years later, we can celebrate Pentecost knowing that if we have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour, we too have The Holy Spirit with us. Hallelujah!

Today Lord we come before you again, not together in the church building, but together in our faith in you.

We are your church wherever we may be. We know that you walk with us and beside us and behind us in the form of your Holy Spirit.  If we stumble you will catch us, if we are depressed, we can talk to you and wait for that small still voice to answer us.  We can pray for each other and situations in the world and we know that you will hear us and you will answer, it may not be the answer we want and it may not be in the time frame we want but you will answer.  A prayer costs us nothing but the results are amazing and free. Like a smile to a stranger can give the receiver a lift, a prayer can do immeasurable good. Please pray as often and as long as you want every day.

We pray Lord God in these strange and worrying times that we remember to talk to you and listen. The world is suffering in this pandemic, thousands have lost their lives in our country and we mourn and pray for every family affected.  We pray that those souls are with you. We pray for all those working in the NHS trying their very best to save lives , putting themselves in harm’s way to do the best they can, from the doctors to the cleaners and the porters, from the nurses to the paramedics, we thank you mightily Lord as they fight the unseen enemy.  We pray for those doing home visits in small flats who cannot distance themselves. We pray for supermarket workers who go to work every day not knowing if one of their customers has the virus and we thank you for all the acts of kindness we have seen.  Neighbours helping neighbours when they never spoke before.  We pray Lord that this will continue after this is all over.   We pray for all those who are sick those on our notices and those we know, be with them Lord please.

Lord God, we pray for the teachers, the parents, and the children that are returning back to school on Monday. Keep them safe and well.   Please Lord protect them all and give the schools the wisdom and fortitude they will need to open up their schools. Help parents to decide whether to send them and protect the children still at home.  Dear Lord, be with all children living in abusive homes keep them safe, and we pray for those struggling with mental health issues.

Dear Lord, please help us to take good care of the world around us.  Help us to support each other and to support our farmers in buying British produce wherever we can.   Help the farmers to get the labour they need to harvest their crops, and our fishermen and all those in the food production.

We also pray for all university students who are taking their final exams virtually.   Give them peace Lord to do their best and to get the results they deserve. Be with them as they take these important life changing exams. 

We pray for Simon and Becky and their family in London doing the work of OM. 

We pray and thank you Lord for all those keeping this church connected with the newsletter, and the Bridge, with Facebook and prayers. Thank you, Lord, that the band record a song for us on Sundays which brings us closer to each other and to you.

This world will not be the same for a while yet and I have a hymn that to me feels right to finish with on this Pentecost Sunday.  I believe that this is a reminder of how we should be thinking so that we can always remember that the Holy Spirit walks with us on our new journey wherever it may take us.  So, two verses of the hymn, One more step along the world I go.

One more step along the world I go;
From the old things to the new
Keep me travelling along with you
And it’s from the old I travel to the new;
Keep me travelling along with you.

As I travel through the bad and good,
Keep me travelling the way I should;
Where I see no way to go
You’ll be telling me the way, I know
And it’s from the old I travel to the new;
Keep me travelling along with you.

Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen.


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