Sunday Worship for Pentecost

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
and lighten with celestial fire;
thou the anointing Spirit art,
who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart.
 
2 Thy blessed unction from above
is comfort, life, and fire of love;
enable with perpetual light
the dullness of our mortal sight.

3 Teach us to know the Father, Son,
and thee, of both, to be but one;
that through the ages all along
this may be our endless song:
 
4 Praise to thine eternal merit,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer of Illumination
 
Send forth your Spirit, O Lord,
that we may hear your word coming to us
in Scripture, song and sermon,
that we might hear, understand and obey. 
Amen. 
 
Acts 2: 1-8, 14-21 (NRSV)
 
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
 
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’  But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘People of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.  Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

verses from Psalm 104
 
(join in with the words in bold if you can pick up the tune)
 
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth! (repeat)
 
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth! (repeat)
 
Bless the Lord O my soul,  Lord God how great you are.  
Wrapped in a garment of glory and might.  Clothed in light as in a robe.
 
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth! (repeat)
 
Lord my God great are your works in wisdom you made them all.
Rich is the earth and filled with your life. Bless the Lord, O bless my soul.
 
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth! (repeat)
 
All of your creatures look up to you to give them their food in time.
You give with abundance they gather it up. By your hands they have their fill.
 
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth! (repeat)
 
Sermon
 
We live in strange times; we’re getting used to a new way of living, working and being the Church.  We may not like it very much but it’s time to think what the Holy Spirit might be teaching us through all this.
 
Today as we celebrate Pentecost we do it in ways which are unusual in the West.  Instead of meeting in church for grand services we’re gathered at home around a computer, laptop, CD player, phone or tablet to listen.  Some of you are simply reading the transcript which someone has printed off and posted to you.  Instead of being in larger groups we’re either by ourselves or with one or two others.  The birthday party of the Church today is rather fragmented.  In worshipping like this we’re transported to both the earliest days of the Church, to some recent history and to the situation of many of our sisters and brothers around the world now. 
 
Not so long after Peter’s speech on the Day of Pentecost the Church had to go underground.  Seen as an illicit religion in the Roman Empire Christianity had to learn to adapt to a situation of persecution – sometimes severe, sometimes merely inconvenient.  The earliest Christians met in people’s homes and had to take care with coming and going so as not to disturb the neighbours and attract unwelcome attention.  They met early in the day, before the hours of work.  Heaven only knows how they managed to sing and not attract attention. 
 

At different points in history the Church has faced persecution and has had to go back underground and find ways to cope.  Ludmilla Javarová had a vocation to be a nun but this was not possible in Communist Czechoslovakia and so she worked for the Church in a variety of ways until her friend Felix Davidék, an underground bishop, ordained her a priest.  He ordained at least four other women as they could travel around freely to celebrate Mass and hear confessions; the authorities, after all,  knew the Catholics didn’t ordain women.  The women could also minister to other women in prison where male priests couldn’t.  Most priests had to get secular jobs and appear as every day workers.  Of course, after the fall of the regime the Vatican repudiated any such ordinations.  A lesson learned in persecution wasn’t welcomed afterwards. 
 

Today persecution is the normal situation for many of our sisters and brothers around the world.  My friend Ali fled Iran after his house church was discovered.  Christians in Pakistan live with the fear of being denounced as blasphemers and stuck for years in a court system unable, and perhaps unwilling, to uphold human rights.  Most Christians in the Gulf have to worship in secret.  In these places, despite severe persecution, the Church is growing.  The old adage of martyrs’ blood being the seed of the Church seems true. 
 
So today, as we’re still living in various forms of social isolation we can join in spirit with those who have to worship in stealth all the time and we can start to think about what we can learn from this for the next steps in our journey together or we can decide we’ve nothing to learn from this pandemic.
 
Our nations need to think about how to live in the future.  If we can fully fund the NHS and social care, if we can house the homeless and direct the economy to social utility in an emergency, we might want to think about doing this as a matter of course.  If we can value the underpaid nurses, junior doctors, NHS ancillary staff, supermarket workers, pharmacists and delivery drivers during a national crisis, why not all the time?
 
Of course it’s easier to think about what the government could do (especially if we think our lot could do better than the other lot) but it’s much harder to think about what the Holy Spirit might be saying to the Church on our birthday.
 
Of course, the restrictions will be lifted, we will go back to a form of normality, we can gather again week by week in our churches.  We CAN let the life and work of our Synods and national church can find their former patterns, or…
 
We might want to reflect on how we managed without all our Committees and structures instead of simply going back to normal; 
 
We might want to think about the ways we’ve been one church over the last few months instead of going back to the happy division between of being one church in 13 different silos. 
 
We might want to continue locally to call each other regularly, to find innovative ways to support the housebound instead of going back to normal and resuming the grumbling that the minister or Elders don’t call by enough. 
 
We can embrace the opportunities that are being shown us, or we can ignore them.
 
Our second reading, from Psalm 104, sung in that striking way by the Folk Choir of the University of Notre Dame in America, has the powerful refrain “send forth your Spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth.”  A striking prayer for us today.
 
Over the last few months we’ve seen tantalising signs of renewal.  Pollution in our cities has dropped as most vehicles have been off the road.  Wild life has ventured onto our streets no longer deterred by traffic and people; even in cities we’re hearing birdsong  – this all might make people listening on the islands or in the countryside smile as this is, after all, more normal for them.  It’s been acceptable to pump money into the NHS and other public services, to see the government start to direct our economy and we’ve learnt to rely on friends and neighbours, proving the Prime Minister’s adage that there is, after all, such a thing as society.  As much of our world has been forced to live differently, the planet has had a brief respite from the harm we do it every day, the Holy Spirit is given a chance to bring about some renewal. It remains to be seen if we listen to the Spirit’s voice in the weeks ahead or go back to normal.
 
We’ve seen new ways of being the Church – services have been live streamed from manses, recorded on phones, mixed together at computers, emailed, burnt to CDs and printed on paper and then posted out.  We’ve been caught up with calling each other, checking that we’re ok, ensuring that the most vulnerable in our communities are cared for and we’ve done all this with very little travel and minimal financial cost.  We’ve grieved those who have died and supported those who have been ill.  We’ve grown closer to each other through our isolation and our pain. 
 
The Holy Spirit continues to renew both the Church and the Earth. 

In the stillness occasioned by the lockdown nature has reasserted itself, our Earth has had a welcome respite from damaging human activity. 

In the stillness occasioned by the lockdown we’ve learnt to be Church in a different way – the challenge for us is to work out if we keep these changes as a viable way to live, worship and serve or go back to normal.
 
Will you pray with me?
 
God our deliverer,
whose presence still shakes the foundations of our world:
may we so wait for your coming with eagerness and hope
that we embrace without terror,
the labour pangs of the new age,
through Jesus Christ, Amen.
 
Spirit of God Unseen as the Wind
Margaret V Old (1932-2001) © Scripture Union
 

She sits like a bird,
brooding on the waters,
hovering on the chaos
of the world’s first day;
She sighs and she sings,
mothering creation,
waiting to give birth
to all the Word will say.
 
2: She wings over earth,
resting where she wishes,
lighting close at hand
or soaring through the skies;
She nests in the womb,
welcoming each wonder,
nourishing potential
hidden to our eyes.

3: She dances in fire,
startling her spectators,
waking tongues of ecstasy
where dumbness reigned;
She weans and inspires
all whose hearts are open,
nor can she be captured,
silenced or restrained.
 
4: For she is the Spirit,
one with God in essence,
gifted by the Saviour
in eternal love;
She is the key
opening the Scriptures,
enemy of apathy
and heavenly dove.

3: “This is my body, slain for sin;
receive and eat the living food.”
Then took the cup and blessed the wine:
“’Tis the new cov’nant in my blood.”

4: “Do this,” he said, “till time shall end,
in memory of your dying friend;
meet at my table and record
the love of your departed Lord.”
 
5: Jesus, your feast we celebrate;
we show your death; we sing your name
till you return and we shall eat
the marriage supper of the Lamb.
 
We give Thanks
 
We have shared bread and wine many times in our lives, in many places, for many different reasons.  The bread that we now break and the wine that we now share, are a sharing in the life of Christ. May our acceptance of it today be a sign of our faith:
 
•       in the ongoing goodness of a God who journeys with us
•       in the power of love to remove any barrier within or between us
•       in the mystery of the call given to each of us to make bread and life and beauty available to all
 
For it is the bread of heaven, the bread of the poor and the bread of our own lives. We pray, O God, that we may recognise You:
 
•       every time we join someone on a journey
•       every time we share a meal
•       every time we take bread in our hands
 
And may this recognition of You call forth such joy in us  that we might never lose sight of Your goodness.
 
We pray, Loving One, that Your Holy Spirit  will come upon these gifts of bread and wine which Mother Earth has given  and human hands have made,  so that they might be, for us,  the Body and Blood of Jesus,  our saviour and brother: who, before dying, took some bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to the others and said,
 
“Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be broken for you, do this and make me real in your lives.”
 
Later on he took a cup filled with wine, said the blessing, gave it to the others and said:
 
“Take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting promise of God  which shall be shed for you and for all, do this and make me real in your lives.”
 
Loving One, we pray that this bread and wine  will inspire such love in our hearts  that we may continually keep alive Your memory and promise. May this meal provoke such a longing for truth in us that we may never be satisfied until the whole Earth experiences Your justice and Your peace.  Amen
 
So let us eat and drink as Jesus taught, longing to invite the stranger to our table, and yearning to welcome the poor.  May their absence here serve to remind us of the divisions this meal seeks to heal. May their presence here truly transform us into being the Body of Christ which we share. Let us share this bread and wine as Jesus taught, knowing that our lives are forever changed by this and every  breaking of bread  and sharing of wine.
 
Music as we take Communion – Sanctus from Missa Luba
 
Post Communion Prayer
 
O God for whom we wait,
you have fed us with the bread of eternal life:
keep us ever watchful
that we may be ready to stand before the Son of Man,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
 
O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing
Charles Wesley 1707 – 1788

the lines in italic are repeated