“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
*****
“When the day of Pentecost had come …”: – it’s a completion.
We’ve ceased singing the psalms at a sprint. We’re about to put away our special booklets. We won’t be sprinkling our praise and conversation so liberally with Alleluias.
As the name implies, it’s been 50 days since Easter, 50 days of seeing all in the light of the Resurrection, of re-reading this life through the lens of God’s overturning of human judgement.
And to say this is the fiftieth day means it comes after seven weeks of seven days. This completion is one not of ending, of privation, but of fullness – of harvest and its first fruits, of the law complete and given through Moses. The fulfilment of God’s promise. It is not surprising that when Paul writes of the Spirit, he writes not only of gift but of fruit. Fruit we are to offer.
As today coincides with the last Sunday of the College’s year, we can ask, are we at an ending or somewhere else?
Today’s Whitsunday gospel comes from John, from the discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper. When Fr John preached here 3 weeks ago he said these words cannot have sounded reassuring in the ears of Jesus’ disciples that fateful night. Talk of going away and of another one coming, a shadowy figure, whom they did not know, would not have been welcome at the feast.
Going away – finally going away – may be much on our minds.
But when Jesus says, “It is to your advantage that I go away,” can this be true?
Well, we’ve had several more weeks, the Ascension, days of prayer and pondering of scripture and the fathers to get to know the Spirit better and, today, the recollection of the gift given – we’ve had time to reflect.
The Spirit of God, of course, is never absent from anything God sustains in being. The Spirit imbues continuously all physical energies with their force.
The Spirit imbues continuously all matter with its form. This uninterrupted cosmic interplay of being and becoming is a dance that God forever choreographs. God allows no coming or going to end that, until time itself runs out.
The going away of Christ, then, and the coming of the Spirit which we contemplate today, are of a different order – not a stop, a cessation, but a transformation, a new significance. The disciples, from being servants surrounding a master, become, yes friends but even closer – those who know instinctively what Jesus is about.
Ezekiel has reminded us twice this past week that God puts a new spirit within us. Or, as Jeremiah explains, no longer shall they teach one another saying know me, for they shall all know me.
On the day of Pentecost Jesus’ own Spirit finds home in human hearts, in our hearts.
Can this really be right? If there is no need to teach one another, why have you been studying at the College these past 2 or 3 years?
Well, the transformation that God effects in us is a little more subtle, a little more human, a little more loving than that.
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
“All the truth” – there’s fullness! 7 by 7.
It is an utterly unstinting promise from the One who is the Word, the One through whom all things came into being, and without whom not one thing exists.
For myself, I am one thing. And all the truth? – that’s beyond me; it’s meant to be beyond me. For my understanding to be illuminated so comprehensively, I need others’ eyes with which to see, others’ minds with which to think.
The Spirit, who gave the diversity of languages at Babel, also gives the ability to hear and understand within such diversity.
And it takes time – the time of the Church’s existence – we can’t bear it all at once. And it takes a fellowship, a new fellowship ever more diverse, ever increasing across the regions of the earth and across time. Each has our glint of the fullness of truth; the same Spirit illuminates each of our minds.
And so God chooses to bring forth his assembly, his church, at Pentecost, an assembly animated by the one Spirit.
This is good news.
Not least for those due to be ordained.
When the Bishop calls down the gift of the Spirit on you at your ordination, like an epiclesis on the host, this is not so that you can go into the parish filled with all knowledge, all truth, a fail-safe vision and plan-of-action.
No.
But you can go with a fresh heart, a new spirit, an expectant listening to hear of God’s deeds, renewed day by day, believing that the Spirit sets the pace, goes before,
and encompasses you in one universal fellowship, a fellowship that has power from on high to discern truth well.
You don’t have to do it.
You don’t have to achieve the parish Mission Action Plan.
You just have to welcome the Spirit, day by day, breath by breath.
Perhaps the Retreat Association’s icon in this church today, of the Woman of Samaria with Jesus at the well, can offer a picture of this welcome.
She comes with a pitcher on a long rope.
Jesus asks her for water.
But the hospitality is mutual.
For already that well is full to the brim with water and his hand is dipped in it for blessing.
The same blessing which we meet in other Christians imbued with the Spirit.
As St Paul puts it in Romans, just after writing of the Eucharist: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
Our lives, our understanding of truth, our voices of praise blend in our common welcome of the coming of the Spirit.
To finish: if I were not afraid you would think it an advertisement, I would say:
the Spirit is poured out on all flesh that all may sing Songs of Praise.
Amen.