2011-06-12 Sermon for Pentecost

110612am Acts 2:1-21 John 20:19-23 Pentecost

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a great turning point for the world. Phil spoke last week about turning points – fall of Berlin Wall, release of Nelson Mandela. It's hard to imagine what life was like before the great turning points of history – imagine life before the discovery of oil, electricity, penicillin; or not just technological turning points, but social ones: imagine life before votes for women, or before abolition of slavery. Pentecost was a great turning point, and the world changed. Pentecost is often morphed into something purely biographical – the difference in my life, before I received the Spirit and after, and that's well and good, but Pentecost was a first public event for the world, the life of God now opened for all, the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ now active in the world.

This is the great change that Peter says has happened, quoting the prophet Joel: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. So everybody can be included in proclaiming God's word. Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants both men and women I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. Peter had just seen it happen among people from every nation under heaven (v.5) and he invites them to become part of it: repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (v.38). So the Church becomes universal, people from every race and tribe and language summoned and welcomed into the life of God, no one excluded because of their race or age or gender, their social status, their intellectual achievement, their cultural or religious background, for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

This tells us a lot about the kind of society God calls us to have. Because the Spirit of God is poured out for all, God may use any individual to speak prophetically to the Church, and may use the Church to speak prophetically to the world. Therefore the Church is not ruled over by its pastors like kings, but they lead by serving, by listening to the voice of all God's people. And in the same way, secular rulers can't claim absolute power, because ordinary members of society, even slaves (v.18) can hear the voice of God and speak it in public; so rulers must listen to the voices of the people and of the Church. So we have Archbishops and Bishops meeting in Synod with their clergy and with the laity. And we have the Crown ruling only with Parliament. And we require a society in which there is real freedom of speech. (And that's why we have Cells.)

Three things occurred to me this week that I think are relevant. On Wednesday I went to a lecture in Bradford by Yasmin Alibhai Brown. She is a journalist, has a weekly column in the Independent and is often on TV (Question Time etc.); she is left wing, feminist, liberal and Muslim. Her theme was that we must rescue faith from religion and politics. Every time that organised religions seek political power, or political powers co-opt religions, bad things happen. So for instance, Islamic fundamentalism in many places, Hindu nationalism growing in India, or the religious aspects of the Balkans wars. Faith is not the same as religion, 'more indoors than outdoors, your personal relationship with your god, which can and should make you a better person. So what is needed is a secular state: that doesn't mean secularism in the sense of excluding religion from public life, but a neutral state that doesn't give power to any one religion but allows them all to flourish so long as common values of freedom, democracy and equality are maintained. Examples would be India, the USA and Canada.

Now I don't necessarily agree with all she said – the big question is where you get those common values from and how you enforce them; and I think she is much happier with religious bodies speaking out when their conclusions agree with what she already thinks! - but it was more interesting and less annoying that I expected.

Then the news media picked up on the Archbishop of Canterbury's editorial in the New Statesman, of which he was guest editor last week, calling on the government to give much more attention to the fear and anger that are around because of the speed and scale of reforms that they are driving through which have not had enough public discussion. Whatever you think about the content of what he said (and I suggest you read it rather than relying on the media!) this is a good example of the Church doing what it should do, speaking in public about the kind of society God wants. The Archbishop of Canterbury represents the place of the Church of England in society. He is one of the highest ranking people in the land, but has very little actual power. He has spiritual authority rather than secular authority. And Pentecost tells us that the Church must try to speak to the secular authorities with the voice of the Ascended Christ who is Lord over all rulers and authorities. Again, what sort of society do we, does God, want? It's not the for the Church as such to make decisions, how to spend public money, how to deliver public services etc.. It's not the Church's job to give the right answers, but to ask the right questions.

The third thing was a film I watched, The Army of Crime, about a group of foreign immigrants, Jews, Armenians and others, in German occupied Paris during WWII, and their resistance and sabotage. It portrayed vividly the Nazi and Fascist atrocities, rounding up of Jews to be sent to death camps; collaboration by many in the French authorities; brutal torture; smiling, cultured officers enjoying string quartets while overseeing mass repression and murder. It was the very opposite of Pentecost: the brutalising of people because of their race, religion, culture or politics, and the suppression of free speech in the name of national security. It's not very long since this was happening across Europe, and it's not very far to places where it's happening today. What sort of society do we want? In my early days as a Christian, something that people almost always included in public prayer was thanksgiving that we live in freedom, freedom to gather for worship and to preach the gospel. I guess the unspoken prayer was thank God we are not living under Nazism, which we remember, or Communism, which is not far away.

Because the Spirit of God has been poured out at Pentecost, we require a society where people are free to hear the gospel and come to believe, and where the believing community is free to speak out for God's love and truth and justice. The Church doesn't aim to take over secular authority, rather the secular authorities are called to provide the space for Christ's mission to go forward, by maintaining the social order in peace and freedom. I don't think any of us wants a society in which Christianity or any one version of it or any other religion is enforced by law. [[If you look outside the church door you will the gravestone of Anna Wales, wife of Elkanah Wales. He was born in Pudsey in 1588, went to Trinity College, Cambridge, then came back here as resident minister, and served for over 50 years. But when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662 requiring clergy to sign up to the Book of Common Prayer, he like many others refused and was expelled from his living at the age of 74. Shortly afterwards the Five Mile Act was passed, forbidding ejected ministers to go within five miles of their former parishes, and he was driven out of his home and had to be taken in by friends in Leeds. Is that what we want?]]

What about other religions or faiths? If we want that freedom for the Church, we can't very well complain if other religions want it too. In fact part of our message to some Muslim majority countries is, give the same religious freedom to Christians as you expect in the West. But more than that: Pentecost tells us that the Spirit is poured out for people of all kinds, and we can confidently expect that the Spirit is at work somehow in every person's life: whether on the outside trying to get in, or on the inside (I nearly said trying to get out - but that's also true, he wants to flow out from us in love). The Spirit can be at work in judgement with the worldly person, the hardened reviler who hates God and everything Jesus stands for; and in the seeker, who knows there is something wrong, something missing, and is being prompted to search for what is right and true.

Someone described all this as like the Queensberry Rules in boxing: it's not 'no holds barred', it's got to be in the ring, wearing gloves, you can't hit a man when he's down, no foul play etc. and may the best man win. Christ requires that his gospel have freedom in public life, and that the secular authorities maintain the rules so that men and women of all kinds may hear the voice of God and speak it in public. Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants both men and women I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.