On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ John 7. 38 & 39
If I'd been in charge at Pentecost, I would have done it differently!
Surely, if the aim of your mission is, as Jesus says to his disciples at his Ascension, to be his ‘witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,’ and in order to achieve this mission you will be receiving power from on high, the Holy Spirit who will come upon you (see Acts 1. 8), then the very best and most efficient way of achieving your aim is to get the whole world to speak one language, a kind of holy Esperanto that will then enable everyone to hear the message.
But this isn't what God does. In fact, God does the complete opposite: not the world speaking one language, but the Church of Jesus Christ speaking every language; not the reversal of what happened at Babel, but it's baptising.
Divided tongues, as of fire, appear among the disciples… they are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit gives them ability (see Acts 2. 3), and the crowds who have gathered from all over the world are bewildered and astonished, because each of them hears the disciples speaking in their native tongue (see Acts 2. 6).
This coming of the Holy Spirit, this birthday of the church that we celebrate tomorrow, is of huge significance for the way we understand the new set of relationships we have with one another and with God because of the dying, rising and ascending of Christ and because the Holy Spirit has come.
But also for our life and mission – and let us be clear, that in an increasingly divided, polarised, impatient and intolerant world, where the echo chambers of social media and the commodification of truth, drag us into siloes where we become fearful of each other, and fearful of difference, pull up the drawbridge on our neighbour, build bigger walls, post more sentries, we can easily end up not only hating our neighbour, but even wondering whether they are fully human at all.
Such is the human malaise across the whole of our world today, more needful than ever to receive afresh the beautiful and bewildering gift of the Spirit.
Why?
Because the Holy Spirit only speaks local dialects.
The Holy Spirit blesses the God-given diversity of our world, which is itself the thumbprint of the God who Jesus shows us is, within the godhead itself, community and diversity, the wondrous reciprocity of love that we are invited to share in and receive from Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Look at the world itself. The very diverse and interconnected world God has made.
We know that protecting and preserving the biodiversity of species is the only way of saving the planet, and without it everything suffers.
And we, the human family, are also made in God-given, and God-blessed diversity – and yet one humanity inhabiting one world.
In every age, it is tempting to define ourselves by our differences. We have always been good at building walls of exclusion, and the story of human history is a bloody story of fear and conquest.
But our God is a barrier-busting, walls-coming-tumbling-down, tombstone-rolling God!
As Jesus dies on the cross, the veil of the temple is torn in two.
When Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb on the first Easter morning, the stone is rolled away.
And at Pentecost, the very barriers between earth and heaven disappear as God's Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus who has taken our humanity into the highest heaven and bears for eternity the wounds of his suffering love, is given to us.
‘O, that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down’ cried out the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64.1).
In his dying and rising, in his ascending and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, this prophecy is fulfilled.
This Holy Spirit, says Saint Paul, makes us into a new humanity, where the old divisions of gender, class, and nation – and for that matter all the other barriers and exclusions we love to build – are reconfigured.
‘If anyone is in Christ,’ he writes to the divided and divisive little church in Corinth, ‘there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new’ (2 Corinthians 5.17).
It is this astonishing resetting of the compass of human identity in Christ that is the content of the gospel we share, and the great hope for our humanity, especially in our current confused times. But it also tells us something about how we will go about this mission, endlessly translating the never-changing gospel of Jesus Christ into the ever-changing cultures, languages and traditions of the people and communities we encounter.
It is also why Paul himself describes the church as a body, where every member has equal value and where the greatest honour is given to the least.
It is also the great eschatological vision of scripture where every tribe and every tongue and every nation and every language stands equally before God (see Revelation 7.9).
This gospel, which in less troubled times appeared unchallenged, will, I'm afraid, increasingly bring us into painful conflict with those who want the world for themselves and their tribes only.
I wish it were different.
But this gospel is also our only hope for lasting peace across the world and between its warring cultures and nations. As farmers on the great prairies of this vast continent have always known, you don't need to build walls to keep your cattle in, not if you have dug a well.
In St. John's gospel, Jesus describes the gift of the Holy Spirit not as fire but as living water. The water of life that Jesus brings, flows within us and from us. Similarly, the biblical vision that St John describes at the end of the Bible is of a river coming from the throne of God and from Jesus himself, bringing healing to the nations (see Revelation 22:1-2).
This biblical vision is very good news, especially for the poor and excluded, the misunderstood and the neglected. Especially for the thirsty. And for the planet itself.
Dear friends, dear North American friends, dear sisters and brothers of this great nation, what binds us together, and what is the only hope for our world, is that message and promise of a new humanity which God gives us in Jesus Christ, both tongues of fire to ignite us and living water to quench our thirst.
I’ve sometimes heard preachers tell me that we need more of this Holy Spirit. And, yes, I know what they mean.
But I have a different prayer. If we are going to change the world, I think the Holy Spirit needs more of us.
