A Service for Pentecost 2023
HYMN Breathe on me breath of God NEH 342- Carlisle
1 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what thou dost love,
And do what thou wouldst do.
2 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.
3 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Till I am wholly thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with the fire divine.
4 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with thee the perfect life
Of thine eternity.
PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen
PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
The Spirit of the Lord fills the world and knows our every word and deed.
Let us then open ourselves to the Lord and confess our sins in penitence and faith.
You raise the dead to life in the Spirit: Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
You bring pardon and peace to the broken in heart: Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
You make one by your Spirit the torn and divided: Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
May the God of love and power
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by his Spirit,
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.
THE COLLECT
God, who as at this time taught the hearts of your faithful people
by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit:
grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things
and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort;
through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen
FIRST READING – Acts 2.1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
SECOND READING – 1 Corinthians 12.3-13
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
HYMN O thou who camest from above NEH 431 – Hereford
1 O Thou who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
2 There let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return
In humble prayer, and fervent praise.
3 Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
To work, and speak, and think for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up the gift in me.
4 Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make my sacrifice complete.
GOSPEL – John 20.19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
SERMON – Keith Atton
Words, Words, Words.
Words are confusing but they are the best we have perhaps. Philosophers get very excited about them. The well known twentieth century philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell was said to have problems with numbers larger than two of anything – with two you could say this one is … and that one is the same in these ways but different in those other ways. But with more than two it becomes very complicated. I am told of philosophy university lecture courses which start with chairs. What is a chair? Something you sit on? Then there are lots of people sitting here. Are they sitting on chairs? No! How do you define what a chair is then?
In political life words are slippery too. Several words are used for the same thing -tax, duty, national insurance, social contribution … and yet the same word can mean different things to different people, for example, austerity. Words change their meaning over time, for example, in the prayer in the 1662 Holy Communion service that justice should be “indifferently” provided by the Privy Council: “And grant unto his whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under him, that they may truly and indifferently minister justice.” The whole idea behind this prayer comes from a quite different era when the duty of government was not the same as it is now.
Words are not clear cut when translated, as I sometimes find to my cost when trying to speak French. In ancient Greek there were 8 or so different words which specify the kind of love being considered. Inuits have many words for snow. I once came across in a French local newspaper “J’ai un turbo dans mon estrambord”. Estrambord it turns out is a dialect word meaning joie de vivre, so the sentence means something like, I am totally and utterly full of joy. If something has frightened us, we might say that it made me jump out of my skin; it is a way of expressing something which is not literally true – we have all been frightened some time or other but none of us is walking round with no skin on our body. I like the image that Canon Mark Oakley chose for the title of his book of poetry with a spiritual aspect “The splash of words” – to me it paints a picture of spiritual truth being like an Impressionist painting.
Luke in Acts gives a very specific and detailed account of the Apostles receiving the Holy Spirit, unlike John, who in our gospel reading places this on the evening of the first Easter day. Taking Luke’s story, as it stands but not literally, there are three images Luke uses to explain the effect of the Holy Spirit: a sound like a powerful wind from heaven, something that appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire and speaking in foreign languages. The image of wind makes sense; we do not see the wind, any more than we see the Holy Spirit but we see the effect of the wind – in one of his many modern hymns Michael Perry wrote “like the tall trees softy swaying … is the perfect peace of God.” These were the trees being swayed by the wind which he saw from his Rectory window in Eversley. The image of fire makes sense too; we can say a sportsperson is on fire meaning they are on top form, all fired up. Speaking in a foreign language is perhaps a more difficult image. I doubt that each of the Apostles had ability to speak a new language, but being inspired, they had the ability and the courage to speak convincingly in a way they had not done before; because they spoke so well, so clearly, despite not being learned, people could understand them; they were like new men; it was as if they had been re-born.
I wonder how each of us would describe the most wonderful day in our life. How would each of us describe a life changing positive experience we have had? Could we find a word or words to fully convey the experience, or is the best that we could do, to paint a word picture, a splash of words, which would give a feel of the experience? Is that what the reading from Acts is? Is it the best that Luke (or maybe anyone) could do in an attempt to describe an experience that was in all its profundity, to quote a phrase from Michael Perry’s hymn again, “far beyond all human telling”.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles:
this we have received, and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7
HYMN Gracious Spirit Holy Ghost NEH367 – Capetown
1 Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost,
Taught by thee, we covet most
Of thy gifts at Pentecost,
Holy, heavenly love.
2 Love is kind, and suffers long,
Love is meek, and thinks no wrong,
Love than death itself more strong;
Therefore give us love.
3 Prophecy will fade away,
Melting in the light of day;
Love will ever with us stay;
Therefore give us love.
4 Faith will vanish into sight;
Hope be emptied in delight;
Love in heaven will shine more bright;
Therefore give us love.
5 Faith and hope and love we see
Joining hand in hand agree;
But the greatest of the three,
And the best, is love.
6 From the overshadowing
Of thy gold and silver wing
Shed on us, who to thee sing,
Holy, heavenly love.
INTERCESSIONS – Jenny Walmsley
In Corinthians the reading for this morning goes on to say that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Help us to take this as a blueprint for our lives and appreciate that we are stronger if we support each other as a community, using our strengths for the common good. Let our leaders follow this rubric too so that we can be a stronger and more caring society, communicating rather than focussing on our differences.
We pray for the people of Ukraine and Afghanistan, the African countries suffering from drought and conflict and, at home, the city of Cardiff.
Lord, in your mercy – Hear our prayer.
We pray for Christians throughout the world, especially those being persecuted for their beliefs.
We remember all who visit our benefice churches. May they always receive a loving welcome and find both peace and the presence of God. We pray for those who lead us in our worship and contribute to the churches especially William, our rector. May we be wise stewards of our Church and the inheritance we share.
We give you thanks that your love for each of us is revealed to us in so many ways. We thank you for the good weather and fellowship that we have enjoyed during the last week
Lord, in your mercy – Hear our prayer.
We pray for the young people coping with the influences and demands of school, of university, of work, especially all those taking GCSEs, A levels and University exams. May they know real love and security in their lives and realise that the value of a life is not just measured in academic qualifications.
We pray for families struggling in the current economic crisis who are finding life and belief so difficult, support them in their troubles. We bring before you those who feel no one cares for or about them: the unemployed, the poor, the lonely, the depressed and those suffering injustice and neglect.
Lord, in your mercy – Hear our prayer.
We pray for everyone suffering from ill health, especially the elderly and housebound. We pray for those who have died recently, especially Ray Hills and Gordon Major, and in a moment of silence we remember all who are known to us and in need at this time………..
Lord, in your mercy – Hear our prayer.
Lord of the past, the present and the future, breathe on us the breath of God, fill us with new life. We pray that mirrored here, our lives will tell your story. Shine in our darkness.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive
those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
BLESSING
The power of God be about you,
the love of Christ enfold you,
the joy of the Spirit be within you;
and the blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
be among you, and remain with you always. Amen
HYMN Come down, O love divine NEH 137 – Down Ampney
1 Come down, O Love divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
2 O let it freely burn,
Till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
3 Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.
4 And so the yearning strong,
With which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
Till it become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.