Making new beginnings in familiar places

At the Feast of Pentecost we remember the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. To help us enter into that story afresh, I wonder if you will imagine with me that you are visiting a house that hasn’t been lived in for some time which, however, you know it really well. Perhaps it’s a summer house that has been left empty all winter; you are travelling down to re-open this house for the summer. Imagine approaching this house, what do you see? Perhaps the grass is very overgrown at the front, too many shrubs that need cutting back. All the curtains are drawn. As you turn the key in the lock and push the door you are at first halted by the amount of mail that has piled up behind the door. As you start to move through the house opening curtains and doors, light starts to filter back into the house, so that you see the furniture and the dust. Your presence starts to bring light with warmth a human touch. You pat down sofas, move some things around. Start to open and sort through the mail, look at what needs washing and cleaning. 

After a while you sit down and have a good look around. You notice the wind blowing through the windows, bird song faintly in the distance. Light is shining everywhere.

The Spirit, the gift of which we celebrate today, moves in our lives in a way that animates and activates, bringing light so that things may be seen differently. Like moving into a house that is dark, uninhabited and unkempt, the Spirit opens up our closed places; she moves through animating and transforming. She brings order and discipline; she guides us and enables us, helping us to uncover lost treasures. She cleans and purifies, bringing new life and new hope. She encourages us to share, to move outwards, to open up – to invite others in.

The Spirit challenges us to make new beginnings in familiar places, not just moving the furniture around, but actually seeing differently, with eyes that have learnt a different perspective, a new way of looking. For the Apostles of Jesus it was learning to read the Jewish Scripture in a new way; something that was for them so familiar and traditional, but that was coming true before their eyes in dramatic and deeply transformative ways. It took such courage for them to say something different about God.  It was sending them out on missions that would bring conflict and challenge, suffering and death, but new life and hope across the world to all peoples regardless of race, gender or class.

And that’s where the initial impetus might be taken away, we might have opened ourselves to receive some of the Spirit, seen things get better, but when things start to really get moving, maybe then we get a bit more reticent, start closing in. Perhaps the summer house neighbours have popped by and they’re not your sort, you don’t want to have a cup of tea with them. You like it in your own. They mention some problems in the village and you don’t want to hear, you don’t want to actually know about these people, you’re just here for a month of two….

But, the Spirit will not leave things as they are: she will uncover dirt, she will sweep away rubbish, and she will shine in the darkest corners. She will cause a commotion, she will bring change, and she will divide as well as bring peace. She will not leave us feeling cold, but will challenge, bringing rage as much as consent, confusion as much as order. The gentle breeze that at first entered the house with the fresh light might start getting stronger. Things might really start moving, we might be asked to take a risk, to make a sacrifice, to change the way we think, re-assess our judgments.

Will you receive her, will you say ‘yes’ to her transformative power, her energy and her will? Will you let her take you on a journey courageous and demanding but to eternity, fullness and glory - Or will you speedily pull the curtains, close the windows, tidy away and close in?

At Pentecost we are shown that God gives us His Spirit and has been giving His Spirit since he created the world. It is available for us, there for us to receive, ready to re-make us and enable us, all we need to do is say ‘yes’ and keep on saying ‘yes’.  Let us never stop encouraging one another in that.