PENTECOST (Between May 11- June 11)

John 15:26-27, & 16:4b-15... (Sermon 2: “In Our Experience”)

Romans 8:22-27...

Acts 2:1-21. (Sermon 1: “Our Polycarpic God”)

or Ezekiel 37:1-14.

Psalm 104:24-34,35b

PREPARATION

Pentecost comes when the Spirit chooses;

then like a mighty rushing of wind,

like tongues of fire,

the Spirit whom Jesus sends will lead us into all truth.

May the glory of God endure forever!

May God find joy in all creation!

I will sing to God as long as I live!

I will sing praises as long as I have being!

The Holy Spirit is our Friend,

our counsellor and guide.

May the glory of God last forever

and take delight in all created things.

I will sing to God as long as I live,

give praise as long as I have being.

The Holy Spirit is our Renewer,

giving new birth even to old souls.

I hope God gets some pleasure from me,

as I get my joy from thinking about God.

O my human spirit, exalt in your God!

O my inspired soul, praise your Creator!

PRAYER OF APPROACH

Wonderful are you God, your Spirits broods over all creation!

Wonderful are you God, your Spirit filled Jesus our Christ.

Wonderful are you God, your Spirit inspires and counsels your church.

Come upon us, move among and within us, that our minds may discern you more surely, our hearts love you more dearly, and our worship and work glorify you more purely. For your name’s sake.

Amen!

CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE

Let us open our hearts to the merciful examination, forgiveness and repair of God.

Let us pray.

Holy Friend, come with your energy, blow through us like a wind, and cleanse our hearts of all staleness and pollution.

Lord have mercy.

Lord have mercy,

Holy Friend, come like tongues of fire upon our heads, and cleanse our minds of all distortion, subterfuge and, error.

Christ have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Holy Friend come with your truth, and lead us beyond the false values and arrogance of this world, into the only authentic enlightenment.

Lord have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

Holy Friend, come with the free grace of Christ Jesus,

forgiving, redeeming, healing and resourcing the things that are good and true.

Holy Friend, come with your many gifts

and replace our ineptitude with a better use of our abilities and an increased fruitfulness.

Come with your supreme gift of love, and with Christ as our tutor,

make us humble but adept practitioners in the art of loving one another.

Through Christ Jesus our Redeemer.

Amen!

FORGIVENESS

Sisters and brothers, perpetual failure and regret is not our destiny. The Spirit we have received is not one of fear, keeping us in a religious slavery. The Spirit adopts us into God’s own family, enabling us to call on God, crying “Abba! Our Father!”

Thanks be to God!

PRAYER FOR CHILDREN

Holy Spirit, our God-Friend,

thanks for always being with us.

You are like the wind

that blows away the smog

from our mind and soul.

You are like the fire

that makes us enthusiastic

for Jesus and his way of loving.

You are like the breath of Jesus

that helps us to forgive

those who do wrong to us.

Holy Spirit, our God-Friend,

Fill us to day.

Amen!

PSALM 104: 24-31, 33-34,35b.

God-Friend, your creativity is prodigal,

each creature has a part to play in your wisdom,

all living things fit your purposes on earth.

Around us rolls the sea, mighty and wide,

teeming with life in many forms,

from tiny shrimps to great white sharks.

On it sail ships of many sizes and design,

through the oceans mighty whales sing

and sport in the waves as you intend`

All life depends on you for existence,

and you provide in every season.

They gather the food you give them,

your open-handedness is their happiness.

If you withdrew, they would be dismayed,

when you recall their breath, they return to dust.

When you send out your Spirit they live,

you constantly renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of God last forever

and take delight in all created things.

I will sing to God as long as I live,

give praise as long as I have being.

I hope God gets some pleasure from me,

as I get my joy from thinking about God.

O my human spirit, exalt in your God!

O my inspired soul, praise your Creator!

Ó B D Prewer 2002

WARM WIND

Warm wind of heaven,

moving the face of waters

twirling tree blossoms

fostering bush creatures,

visit our untamed places.

Warm Wind of heaven,

activating human clay

raising consciousness

stirring immortal longings

fill up our empty spaces.

Warm Wind of heaven

calling through leaders

singing through psalmists

reforming through prophets

unite our warring races.

Warm Wind of heaven

overflowing Jesus Christ

enfolding all the lost

keeping the church honest

swamp us with your graces.

Warm Wind of heaven

the gift of loving

the love of giving

the joy of living

bless our upturned faces.

Bruce D Prewer

ARRIVING LATE

We arrived late at Pentecost,

after the fun was over,

Peter’s sermon finished,

the baptisms completed,

and the minutes written.

What was there left?

Let this be recorded

for any who, as they read,

employ their ears

as much as their eyes:

We found a communal Gift,

priceless yet free

in that heartwood where

the Carpenter had carved

a vacant space.

This Gift we found

filling that Christ-hollow

(at the end of the day

when the curious had gone

home to their boredom)

Was the Soul of love;

not the old stuff, hedged

with conditions and exemptions,

but a new joy-love ready

to embrace the world.

Ó B D Prewer 2002

SERMON 1: OUR POLYCARPIC GOD

Acts 2

Our God is polycarpic. More that that even; our God is extravagantly polycarpic.

Yes, you heard me right: “polycarpic.”

On this day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the indulgence of the Holy Spirit, I want to remind with you that this God of Jesus, who is ever-present with us, is heavily into fruitfulness. Prodigiously polycarpic in fact.

Polycarpic means (for those of you who are neither lovers of crossword puzzles nor experts in horticulture) repeated fruiting, producing fruits many times a year.

The Holy Spirit is the prodigious Source, around us and within us, of multiple fruits. Fruits that abound both in and out of season. Polycarpic.

The extravagant outpouring of Pentecost, as so graphically described in Luke’s second best seller, the Acts of the Apostles, reminds me how much our God goes over the top. Double ices the cake. Overfills the cup. Goes the second mile. Runs to meat the lost son. Forgives seventy times seven.

This is true both at the level we call the “physical world” and in the personal world of the human mind and spirit. At both levels the Holy Spirit is polycarpic.

PROLIFIC IN CREATION

In the world of nature, the Creator Spirit is prolific.

Our town of Sunbury, nestling in a cleft on the basalt plains NW of Melbourne [where my wife Marie and I live] is not the most scenic or fertile place in Australia. We are set in a rain shadow and the soil is shallow. But when you stop rushing, and spend some time in this environment, you discover out how varied and fruitful is this parcel of God’s creation.

On example is the bird life.

We are entertained by noisy miners frolicking in the bird bath, and by the rich red-green-yellow-blue of the Eastern Rosellas.

In the adjoining reserve, crested pigeons peck around among the native grasses. Families of galahs feed in the local woodlands. Sulphur crested cockatoos hunt for witchetty grubs in wattle trees. Small flocks of the delicate little red-rumped parrots rise for the edge of the walking tracks, or drink in the shallows of the small lake. New Holland honeyeaters hunt for nectar in blossoms. Wattle birds croak and rasp, and ravens dolefully call to each other across tree tops.

We have pastoral care from laughing kookaburras, and some nights the boobook owls frequent the gnarled eucalypts. Resident magpies strut around beside us while we work in the garden. For about six weeks around the Christmas season large flocks of corellas dig for the tasty bulbs of onion grasses, and in the hot summer afternoons they clown around in the tall gum trees beside our boundary fence. Willy wagtails flit among the shrubs or flirt on fences.

The adjoining lake is the permanent home for coots, swamphens, black ducks. chestnut teal, and the little grebe. In the breading season a pair of swans may set up home and raise five or six cygnets. Sometimes pelicans arrive to rest in safety on a small island, or troll the water for yabbies. Sacred ibis and herons patrol the margins, while royal spoonbills and pink eared ducks come to enjoy what is on offer.

The diversity of shape, colour and sounds is surprising! Yet this is not some lush, tropical paradise but one unprepossessing parcel of low-rainfall land.

Our God is lavish in creation. The Creator Spirit has not given a standard model world, functional and dull, but a luxury model!

This is a polycarpic God! A God who does not know when to say ‘enough is enough.’ The world around us, wherever it as not been marred or destroyed by human greed and arrogance, is a symphony of extravagance. A masterpiece composed by a Creator-Spirit whose cup is always full and running over. Creation reveals just one aspect of the prodigal grace of a debonair God.

PROLIFIC IN THE NEW CREATION

The same is true of the new creation. The realm of our mind and soul.

The Holy Spirit displays the renovating power of God’s dynamic Presence. The Spirit is the source of new birth. The Spirit enhances old gifts and nurtures within us new ones. Again, God does not deal in half measures, or restrict blessings to occasional seasons. The Holy Spirit is irrepressibly polycarpic, mega-fruitful.

When we read the Pentecost story, there is flamboyance about the whole event. This is a God who does not know where to draw the line, or when to give up. This is a Holy Friend and Counsellor who is excessive in love and joy and passion for the renewal of the whole of humanity. Diversity and abundance are everywhere. Spiritually the cup is full and running over.

Those people on that day of Pentecost were acting up like crazy!

The onlookers had plenty to scoff at. No wonder they accused the Apostles of being very drunk and out of control. But it was not wine that was the culprit. It was the abundance of the Spirit God flooding through the hearts and minds of the believers.

Nor was it just emotional froth, not some introverted, religious binge. The first result was the new courage displayed by the hitherto timid disciples. No longer cowards, they started to fearlessly preach the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen for the healing of the nations. A second immediate fruit was another 3,000 new believers baptised that very day into the family of the Christian community.

Through this Spirit of God, believers are endowed with a plethora of diverse gifts and fruits. At first, that young Christian church was not ready for the fruits and gifts that would emerge. It would take time before the diverse gifts of the Spirit would be channelled into productive deeds and words.

Paul would be the person who in his letters would best spell out the prodigal generosity of the Holy Spirit, and insisted they be used in a disciplined way.

He would write about the gifts which enabled ordinary people

to speak with wisdom,

to understand the deep things of God, to exercise the gift of strong faith,

to take authority to heal,

to demonstrate the power to work wonders,

to enthral people with their preaching,

to discern truth from deceit,

to display the gift of speaking in tongues in a way that built up the fellowship,

to possess the gift of knowing what it all meant.

Above all else Paul revels in the best gift of all: the supreme gift of love.

Paul would also enthuse about the fruits of the spirit:

love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, self control.

Pentecost was dramatic stuff! But the gifts and fruits are the authentic, long-term results of the same loving Spirit.

ORDINARY FOLK BECOME EXTRAORDINARY

That young church was a remarkable phenomenon! Not many members were educated like St Paul.

Most were as ordinary as ordinary comes. They were people whose capacities had seemed limited, whose charisma and influence appeared minuscule. Yet they were inflooded and renewed by the Holy Spirit so that old gifts became enlarged and fruitful, and new gifts were developed to the glory of God in the service of humanity.

To a multilingual, scholar like Paul, this fact was astounding! Once he wrote:

“See what kind of people you are that have been called. Not many of you were sophisticated by university standards, not many held influential positions, and not many of you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. But God has chosen what was foolish to put to shame the clever, God has chosen weaklings to put to shame the powerful, those who were nobodies to downsize those who thought they were something!

Within the church, itself a fruit of the new creation, the Holy Spirit is shown to be tirelessly polycarpic. No person is too unimportant for the Holy Spirit to notice, no one is to ungifted to be of use. It is never out of season for love and all the other fruits of the Spirit. I repeat: never out of season for love and the other gifts of the Spirit. Throughout life’s winters and summers, springtime and autumn, the Spirit continues to bring forth abundance.

For our part, as we journey through spiritual seasons of winter or summer, springtime or autumn, the gifts are to be used and the harvest is to be shared. The fruits are to be expected in spring as well as autumn, and new blossom may be found in deep winter as well as springtime. The prolific grace of God neither sticks to a schedule, nor does it ever weary or dry up.

TODAY

On the festival of Pentecost, the believers were all together in the one place. Out of the blue there came a noise from heaven like........ like a very strong wind, which filled the whole building where they were sitting. Then they saw something which looked like..... tongues of flame which spread around and rested on each head. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in many other languages as the Spirit enabled them.

The onlookers were amazed and dumbfounded. and they asked each other: “What is going on here?” Others jeered and said:”These people are drunk!”

Then with the others apostles gathered around him, Peter stood up and cried in a booming voice: “My fellow Jews, and everybody in Jerusalem, listen and I’ll tell you what this means. We are not drunk (fair go, it’s only nine am! but it is what the prophet Joel foretold: God says: In the last days I will pour out my Spirit on every person. Your sons and daughters shall preach my message, your young men will have new visions and your old men will have new dreams”

I will pour out my Spirit on every person. Your sons and daughters shall preach my message, your young men will have new visions and your old men will have new dreams”

And we still do. Thank God.

Pentecost is not a happening in the distant past. It is present. The polycarpic God still refuses to recognise limits of time or place. The gifts and fruits of the Spirit are with us here, just as the Holy Spirit is with us here right now.

This is a day to celebrate the indulgence of our God. To revel in the extravagance of God’s Holy Spirit, to affirm each others faith, fortify each other’s hope, cherish each other’s love, and to honour and exercise our gifts for the good of all.

I recall a prayer of the late Archbishop Helda Camara of Brazil. A diminutive yet extremely tall man of the Spirit; priest, poet, and scholar, but most of all the champion of the poor and dispossessed. The prayer goes ----

Lord,

isn’t your creation wasteful?

Fruits never equal the seedling’s abundance.

Springs scatter water.

The sun gives out enormous light.

May your bounty teach me

generosity of heart.

` May your magnificence

stop me being mean.

Seeing you as a prodigal

and open handed giver,

let me give unstintingly

like a king’s son,

like God’s own.

SERMON 2: IN OUR OWN EXPERIENCE

John 15:26-27, & 16:4b-15

Acts 2:1-21

What does the holy Spirit really mean to us? In our experience? In what we see in others and what happens in our own lives?

THE HELPER

The Holy Spirit is often called the Counsellor or the Helper. I like that. It rings true to what happens in my experience and of other Christians around me. There is present, right now, an unseen Helper who is from God and is God.

Too often our chatter about the Spirit latches on to the unusual; the exceptional, the wildly flamboyant. People tend to limit the visitation of the Spirit to special, effervescent spiritual experiences. Like the talking in tongues. Or a rapturous moment of spiritual insight. By doing this, we can miss the prime importance of the normal, loving activity of the Spirit in our lives, and through our lives to others.

CONTRASTS

As a result of an over-emphasis on the flamboyant, there are some wonderful “salt of the earth” Christians who are induced to needlessly worry whether they have missed out on something.

A number who have sought my counsel actually feel guilty because they cannot recount any extravagant spiritual experience. Yet those who know and treasure them, observe lives that steadily bear the beautiful fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self control. Such folk touch lives around them with the greatest fruit of all: love.

In contrast, among those who claim remarkable Spiritual experiences are found some (note: “some” not “all”) who appear to bear very little of the fruit. Their lives are not a witness to a love that can be identified as the kind of love Jesus exhibited. Indeed, among the self-proclaimed “spirit filled” people, I have met some of the most arrogant and insensitive, egotistical yet insecure, dogmatic yet frightened, characters.

Those who only connect the Holy Spirit with the spectacular, are missing the point. The majority of the Spirit’s works are done quietly. The Spirit is our Counsellor, our Helper, our Enabler. The Spirit is that holy Friend who unobtrusively works in us and through us day by day, among the many basic activities of life.

TAKING THINGS FOR GRANTED?

Much of this basic activity of the Spirit is taken for granted after a while. The novelty wears off.

But a new convert is keenly aware of this quiet work of the Spirit. The newcomer sees it in action and wants to get a part of that action. One such newcomer, a woman who had attended an informal worship service for a few weeks, wrote to me: “It’s like looking at a most beautiful painting but being left on the outside. Please tell me, how do I get in there?”

We do take much for granted. It like when I lived in the city of Hobart, one of the jewels in beautiful Tasmania. Our house provided us with great views. Mt Wellington behind us to the South West, a wide bay of the Derwent River in front of us to the East, and beyond that more hills and mountains. On a sunny spring weekend, when the yachts were out on the bay, and Wellington was capped with snow, the view was “magic”.

When we arrived in this setting, at first we were ecstatic, and just wanted to stand by a window and drink in the scene. But after as while, as life rolled on, and the busy affairs of home and parish occupied our time, we started to take it for granted. Some days we barely glanced at the view. Only when visitors stood and exclaimed their delight, were we keenly reminded of the beauty to which we had become so accustomed.

So it is with the Helper, the Spirit of God. We tend to get used to the ongoing, quiet beauty of the Holy Spirit at work in ordinary lives around us, especially within the church. We start to take it all for granted.

SOME OF THE TRUE SIGNS

As I see it, the Holy Spirit is graciously and unobtrusively busy all over the place. The quiet Helper. The unpretentious Friend.

The Helper is quietly at work:

in the sincere concern of a friend for our health,

in those who take a stand against injustice,

in the grace of folk who go the second mile,

in the inner resources we discover in times of crisis,

in those who dare to go against the tide of popular opinion,

in the sanity that enables us to admit when we are wrong,

in the resilience of people who fight for the rights of others,

in those who surrender some of their rights for the larger good,

in times when we share the Gospel in spite of our inadequacy,

in finding joy in unexpected places,

in taking on responsibilities that we once thought beyond us,

in refusing to let the greed of society take over our soul,

in giving thanks always, even through the hard times of life,

in rising above past failures and putting past hurts behind us.

in finding a central core of peace in the midst of turmoil,

in daring to laugh in situations where some would curse,

in knowing ourselves to be children of God,

in knowing ourselves loved, even when we have been very unlovable.

And that is just the edge of the Spirit story. I could go on and on, reflecting on the quiet, pervasive ministry of the Holy Spirit in our midst; that inspiring Lover whose fruits we tend to take for granted. It is only by the Holy Spirit that Christian congregations are able to stay alive and to give themselves in love to the world for which Christ died.

HANKERING FOR THE SPECTACULAR?-

A confession: I admit that I sometimes find myself hankering for a bit more spectacular action. A slice of excitement would be nice every now and then. I have good memories of those occasions when a double dose of the wind and fire have shaken me up.

But as I reflect on those events in my pilgrimage, I now recognise that they happen at times when I was so thick-headed, too insensitive, to grasp what was happening. The Spirit had to give me a big shove in new directions. Therefore I must acknowledge that maybe these more dramatic experiences are a testimony to my own poor faith. I say that again: not a testimony to my strong faith, but a sign of my dull faith. God takes drastic measures when I get in a rut and can’t see the obvious way out. What is more, all such “wind and fire” occasions need to be tested, to see if they are authentic.

THE ONE TEST

As far as I know, there is only one test for the gift of the Spirit: Love. And it has to be the Jesus kind of love. Never forget, not for one second, that the most Spirit filled person of all time was Jesus. Love was his supreme gift. Love is the only infallible sign of the Spirit. For me, for you, for believers around the world, it is either love or be damned. For without love, we are damned.

Love then, is the accurate test, and (thank God!) you will find that test reading positive all over the place. Among some Charismatics and some high church Anglicans, among some Salvation Army folk and some unobtrusive Quakers, among some Roman Catholics and some members of the Uniting Church; among Baptists and Lutherans, and among all the other denominations you can list, there are souls who pass the love test.

As Scripture claims, the greatest gift of the Spirit is love. Where love is, quiet Pentecostal miracles happen, and occasionally spectacular miracles occur. But the spectacular is not more important than the subtle work of the Spirit. Precious is the quiet influence (inflowing-ness) that transforms our dailyness.

On this Whitsunday let us give thanks for both quiet and spectacular, but most of all for the fruits, especially for love.

THANKSGIVING

**After each section of the following prayer, “We praise you, Lord” may be sung

See “Music from Taize” 103.

Our thanks rises to you, Holy Spirit of all creation; for expressing yourself

in the prodigious energy of the cosmos,

in the nurturing of planet earth for a special destiny,

in the raising up of a host of living plants and creatures,

and for choosing homo sapiens to be your special helper and friend.

We praise you, Lord.

Our thanks rises to you, Holy Spirit of the Hebrew people, for expressing yourself

by anointing great liberators and law givers,

by calling prophets to proclaim your justice,

by enlightening psalm writers and musicians,

by preparing the way for a new age on earth.

We praise you, Lord.

Our thanks rises to you, Holy Spirit of the new age, for expressing yourself

through a young, humble, and strong woman named Mary,

through nurturing her child as your Holy Son,

through the words of his mouth and the deeds of his hands,

through the grace of his dying and the joy of his rising.

We praise you, Lord.

Our thanks rises to you, Holy Spirit of the universal church, for expressing yourself

with the breath of the risen Christ given to his disciples,

with the empowerment of the day of Pentecost,

with the daring outreach of the young church,

with the many gifts that flowed from your Presence.

We praise you, Lord.

Our thanks rises to you, Holy Spirit of the twenty first century, for today expressing yourself

among ordinary people who hear, receive and practice the Gospel,

among those who yearn for the healing of divisions,

among those who minister to the homeless and the outcaste,

among contemporary prophets who seek justice and mercy.

We praise you, Lord.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful are you, Spirit of Pentecostal love,

heaven and earth are full of your glory!

Glory be to you, O God Most High!

PRAYERS FOR OTHERS

When we pray for others, it is our contract to try and serve them. Let us pray.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we seek your blessing, God, on your church in its service to the world.

Come Holy Spirit, come with healing breath of the risen Christ,