Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
We have got our flag flying for the Jubilee celebrations this coming weekend. The Palace gardens are open on the afternoon of Saturday, June 4th where we will be hosting a display of classic cars and Harley Davidson motorbikes (any excuse!). You’d all be most welcome and refreshments are available.
This is an extraordinary event in our nation’s history. As I record this, Her Majesty is the third longest serving monarch in history. On June 19th she will become the second longest serving monarch ever. Such an extraordinary reign seems almost superhuman. To be such a symbol and guarantor of continuity in the face of dramatic change and personal trial is remarkable. At her coronation, one of the parts of the service that was concealed from the watching crowds was the anointing. The role of our Monarch as Head of the Church of England is unique, and the coronation in that sense feels like a sort of ordination. Deacons, Priests and Bishops are anointed at their respective ordinations as a sign of the gift of the Holy Spirit. A line from the services sums the point of this well, “You cannot bear the weight of this calling in your own strength, but only by the grace and power of God.”
Christian ministry is always an empowered calling. I’m sure Her Majesty would have been overawed by the responsibility of monarchy in her own coronation. I hope that the anointing was a sign to her of God’s empowering presence, enabling her to perform this service. There is ample evidence over the last seventy years that this has been the case.
The scriptures are full of stories of God’s people achieving remarkable things in the face of insurmountable opposition: acts only explicable by divine intervention. The events of Pentecost are such a story. This was truly the birth of the church as a worldwide missionary movement. Sadly, for much of the churches’ history, the Holy Spirit has been the forgotten person of the Trinity. The Book of Common Prayer hasn’t exactly helped us in this; referring as it does to the Holy Ghost. A ghost is not a person, but a disembodied phantom. The Holy Spirit, as understood in the Bible and Christian theology is a person: a living active power in our lives and in the sustaining of the created order.
The landscape of the Christian Church was changed irrevocably by what came to be known as the Azusa Street revival of 1906. A small church in a run-down part of San Francisco experienced extraordinary phenomena, largely unknown in Christian practice, although described in great detail in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, healing, and prophesy were manifested in the congregation. The movement spread, eventually giving rise to Pentecostalism – now the third largest stream of Christianity. In the seventies and eighties, it spread to mainstream denominations in the charismatic renewal. Its manifestation was truly ecumenical bringing significant healing across denominational divides, catholic and protestant. In part it was a reaction against the spiritual bankruptcy of the theological liberalism of the 19th century. That may have created the openness to a new reality of the experience of God that such theology had denied. But ultimately it was a sovereign move of God’s spirit that despite some excesses, has immeasurably enriched the Church ever since. If we believe God really is three persons, why would you not wish to experience all three. The disciples slowly concluded the Father was God, Jesus was God and the Spirit was God through a meditation on their own experience not hifalutin philosophical reasoning.
So, on this Pentecost, Jubilee weekend, I ask the question, “what has been your experience of the Holy Spirit?” Do you know him as a life transforming, gift giving, empowering presence or as an abstract philosophical idea, part of the doctrine of the Trinity that you sort of knew you had to hold to be orthodox, but hoped you never had to explain!
In Luke 11, in his teaching on prayer, Jesus concludes some parables about fish, eggs and scorpions with this rather stark promise. “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
If you seek a deeper, more vibrant experience of God this Pentecost it would be good to take Jesus up on this invitation. It’s a prayer the church has offered up to God throughout our history, “Come, Holy Spirit and kindle in our hearts the fire of your love.” Lord may it be so for us this year.
We have got our flag flying for the Jubilee celebrations this coming weekend. The Palace gardens are open on the afternoon of Saturday, June 4th where we will be hosting a display of classic cars and Harley Davidson motorbikes (any excuse!). You’d all be most welcome and refreshments are available.
This is an extraordinary event in our nation’s history. As I record this, Her Majesty is the third longest serving monarch in history. On June 19th she will become the second longest serving monarch ever. Such an extraordinary reign seems almost superhuman. To be such a symbol and guarantor of continuity in the face of dramatic change and personal trial is remarkable. At her coronation, one of the parts of the service that was concealed from the watching crowds was the anointing. The role of our Monarch as Head of the Church of England is unique, and the coronation in that sense feels like a sort of ordination. Deacons, Priests and Bishops are anointed at their respective ordinations as a sign of the gift of the Holy Spirit. A line from the services sums the point of this well, “You cannot bear the weight of this calling in your own strength, but only by the grace and power of God.”
Christian ministry is always an empowered calling. I’m sure Her Majesty would have been overawed by the responsibility of monarchy in her own coronation. I hope that the anointing was a sign to her of God’s empowering presence, enabling her to perform this service. There is ample evidence over the last seventy years that this has been the case.
The scriptures are full of stories of God’s people achieving remarkable things in the face of insurmountable opposition: acts only explicable by divine intervention. The events of Pentecost are such a story. This was truly the birth of the church as a worldwide missionary movement. Sadly, for much of the churches’ history, the Holy Spirit has been the forgotten person of the Trinity. The Book of Common Prayer hasn’t exactly helped us in this; referring as it does to the Holy Ghost. A ghost is not a person, but a disembodied phantom. The Holy Spirit, as understood in the Bible and Christian theology is a person: a living active power in our lives and in the sustaining of the created order.
The landscape of the Christian Church was changed irrevocably by what came to be known as the Azusa Street revival of 1906. A small church in a run-down part of San Francisco experienced extraordinary phenomena, largely unknown in Christian practice, although described in great detail in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, healing, and prophesy were manifested in the congregation. The movement spread, eventually giving rise to Pentecostalism – now the third largest stream of Christianity. In the seventies and eighties, it spread to mainstream denominations in the charismatic renewal. Its manifestation was truly ecumenical bringing significant healing across denominational divides, catholic and protestant. In part it was a reaction against the spiritual bankruptcy of the theological liberalism of the 19th century. That may have created the openness to a new reality of the experience of God that such theology had denied. But ultimately it was a sovereign move of God’s spirit that despite some excesses, has immeasurably enriched the Church ever since. If we believe God really is three persons, why would you not wish to experience all three. The disciples slowly concluded the Father was God, Jesus was God and the Spirit was God through a meditation on their own experience not hifalutin philosophical reasoning.
So, on this Pentecost, Jubilee weekend, I ask the question, “what has been your experience of the Holy Spirit?” Do you know him as a life transforming, gift giving, empowering presence or as an abstract philosophical idea, part of the doctrine of the Trinity that you sort of knew you had to hold to be orthodox, but hoped you never had to explain!
In Luke 11, in his teaching on prayer, Jesus concludes some parables about fish, eggs and scorpions with this rather stark promise. “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
If you seek a deeper, more vibrant experience of God this Pentecost it would be good to take Jesus up on this invitation. It’s a prayer the church has offered up to God throughout our history, “Come, Holy Spirit and kindle in our hearts the fire of your love.” Lord may it be so for us this year.
+Richard