Pentecost 2018 (St. Thomas, Crete)

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

 

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the likelihood is that it is a duck. We know things by their identity and associated features.

If it is an oval bag shape, and has many tentacles hanging from it, we might think it is a chtapodi an octopus. However it is not an octopus I have in mind but bapgpipes; that very ancient instrument that comes from the Mediterranean area, but is largely associated with Scotland.

You may as well put an octopus under your arm because when it is in a deflated state the bagpipe is as useless as an octopus as a musical instrument. However when you blow into it and fill it with air then it is transformed from being an octopus looking object to an instrument that can make a fair old noise.

I look out in front of me. I see a group of people. They gather together, they have a set of procedures by which they live, they have a social life, and common practices. But what I describe can be any club.

It is only when that club is filled by the breath of God, by his Holy Spirit, that the club finds itself transformed into the church of Jesus Christ. It is not the adherence to rules and regulations that makes us the church, but how open we are to being filled by God’s Holy Spirit.

The followers of Jesus were gathered together in one place. They were what we might call a holy huddle. They were perhaps demoralized, certainly disappointed, and definitely scared. They were scared because the vast number of people didn’t think the way they were thinking; they were scared because they seemed to want things to be different to how it had been; they were scared because they lacked any confidence in speaking out, in acting, publicly according to what they had experienced Jesus doing.

They were about to change. They were transformed by God. They were blessed and anointed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are called in Greek in the New Testament charismata. We might be afraid of what we think charismatic Christians are, or we might think that work cannot be used of you and me, of us; but in the language of the New Testament you and I are born again Christians, because we are baptized, and we are Charismatic Christians, because here in our midst in various ways among you, you have the gifts, the charismata, that are needed to transform a club of like minded people into the dynamic gospel- centred Church of Christ here in this place.

It is all possible because of the Holy Spirit. God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. God is Creator, Redeemer, Inspirer.

‘Teach us to know the Father, Son,

And thee, of Both, to be but one:

That through the ages all long

This may be our endless song,

Praise to thy eternal merit,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’

This glorious Pentecost hymn is addressed to the Holy Spirit; ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire’ and it is the invocation to the Holy Spirit to teach us how to understand fully the divine life of the Trinity.

It is the Holy Spirit that, forms us, informs us, transforms us in the way of understanding God with our minds, feeling God in the compassion of our hearts, and doing the things of God as we share his love with the poor, the marginalized, the impoverished in spirit, the sick, the lonely, the destitute and the bereaved.

Any congregation meeting together without the intention of being filled with the Holy Spirit in worship, in love, and in service to the world, is just a club. It takes the spark of the Holy Spirit to ignite the zeal of the Lord in each of us; it takes the breeze of the Holy Spirit to inhabit our lungs as the oxygen of our faith and conviction.

Every congregation has a choice. It is the choices that are made that will determine its identity. Jesus says to us, ‘by your fruits you will be known’.

Here at St. Thomas’s Kefalas, you have been going through a rough patch. It may seem that things are just slipping away, that nothing much works, that nobody really cares, that some people can’t get on with other people, there’s no direction, no inspired leadership, and so on. Well I have good news for you. It is to be found in Acts 2.

There was a small group of scared people taking their security from keeping the doors locked. There was no apparent way to move forward – Jesus had not written an instruction book – and the odds seemed stacked against them. Vision for the future was non-existent, and they couldn’t any longer gather behind their leader.

Then as he promised, when Jesus ascended to be again with the one who had sent him, God filled his little timid group of people with the breath of life, and with the fire of passion. It is because of that you and I are here today. And today we invite again God’s Holy Spirit  our lives to refresh us, sustain us, and ignite in our bellies a passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Remember, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a duck. How do you think people will recognize the church of Christ in you and me?