Pentecost

Sermon

Pentecost

19 May 2024

The Reverend Dr James Gardom

Acts 2.1–21

'in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’

Welcome to Pentecost – the third great feast day of the Church, after Christmas and Easter, in which we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.

In today’s reading from Acts we hear about the Gospel proclaimed in many languages. Congratulations to David – this is one of the more difficult days to be reading. I myself am a poor linguist. The French and the German I learnt at school, and the Shone I learnt in Zimbabwe have largely evaporated. When I travel abroad, I am reduced to the linguistic skillset of a toddler. I am just about able to communicate my need for food and for the toilet, and not much more.

For me at least that adds something to the extraordinary excitement of this moment in Acts, when the Gospel is proclaimed in all the languages of the Jewish Diaspora, comprehensible to Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 1Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.

Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the Church – that is not the birthday of this congregation, but of the worldwide Jesus Movement, the global Christian community, through time and space. It makes sense to think of Pentecost as the beginning of the Church for many reasons, but partly because the Jesus movement is one massive translation exercise. The purpose of the existence of the Christian community on Earth is to take the reality of Jesus Christ and translate it into new forms. We do this all the time. Daily, in this church, by the miracle of the Eucharist, we translate the reality of Christ into Sacrament, so we eat His body, drink His blood.

This building is full of symbols. For 2000 years Christians have sought to translate the reality of Christ over and over again, to make it known in symbols. There so many in this church – the windows, the crosses, the stations of the Cross, the images on the vestments are all translations for their time and ours. Christian music is a glorious, sustained attempt to make the reality of Christ something we can experience – I sense it in that Chapels of this city and the cathedrals of this country. It is powerful stuff!

We have these beautiful buildings. This church, those chapels and cathedrals, are all an attempt to translate the reality of Christ. The beauty is an expression of the beauty of God. People come here and sense the presence of God. They sit and pray. Every part of the building is telling of the glory of God.

Sometimes, for our translation, we even use words. When all is well with a sermon or with the intercessions, or with the celebration of the Eucharist, the words convey something to us which we know to be beyond words. They too are powerful translation, telling the good news. And I think, more important, and powerful perhaps than any of these – we translate the reality of Christ into our fellowship with each other – and in our action in the world. In fact, if these things do not flourish and are not real, then all our other translations fall flat, ring hollow, convey nothing. They are empty sounds and clanging symbols, vanity and chasing of the wind. No fellowship, no service to the world means no reality, no credibility in our translation of Christ. Translation by sacrament, symbol, music, buildings, words, fellowship, action – straining every nerve to make Christ known in ways that people can understand. It takes a lot of thought and time to translate Christ in these ways, but at Pentecost we understand that translation brings for us a special connection to Christ, our translator. At root, the incarnation of Christ is the translation of God into human. That is the first and great translation. But the second is like it – namely this…

So, in today’s Gospel Jesus notices the sorrow of the disciples at his departure. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. The consolation Jesus offers is the presence of the spirit, which is even better, he tells them. it is to your advantage that I go away. How can it be to their advantage, to our advantage? What could be better than the presence of Christ beside us? What is better than the presence of Christ beside us, is the presence of Christ within us. The process of making a translation requires you to enter into the original. You inhabit it and it inhabits you.

We are called to make our lives a translation, in our own time, of Christ. The process of making our lives a translation of Christ precisely is the presence of the Spirit of Christ within us. Not beside us – but as close to us as our own breath. The indwelling Spirit is God and Christ in us, abiding in God, and God abiding in us, as we translate God and Christ for the world. In our lives and in our words.

That is what the church is for, and that is why Pentecost is the Birthday of the Church. I mentioned this to Philippa and she kindly agreed to get in some cake. (We don’t have special candles and I can manage without singing Happy Birthday). I don’t think, however, that we can manage without the excitement of knowing the indwelling Christ through the spirit. See God and Christ in yourself – see God and Christ in each other. One of the things we traditionally say on birthdays is “Many happy returns of the day!” It took me a little while as a child to work out what this meant.

The Christian Church, the Jesus Movement, famously, is always one generation from oblivion. There are two things that ensure its survival.

The unending and always repeated translation work of Christians to find patterns of words and worship and life which make God’s revelation in Christ into something comprehensible for the day. The power of the Holy Spirit in that work of translation, which ensures that what we say and do and believe comes not in the end from us, but from God – that it is an expression of the love of God that passes between the Father and the Son, was made flesh in Jesus Christ, and is made real today in us.

Many happy returns of the day!