A Service for Pentecost 2024
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 – Ezekiel 37.1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.”
SECOND 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.’
HYMN O Holy Spirit, Lord of grace NEH 419 – Tallis’ Ordinal
1 O Holy Spirit, Lord of grace,
Eternal fount of love,
Inflame, we pray, our inmost hearts
With fire from heaven above.
2 As thou in bond of love dost join
The Father and the Son,
So fill us all with mutual love,
And knit our hearts in one.
3 All glory to the Father be,
All glory to the Son,
All glory, Holy Ghost, to thee,
While endless ages run. Amen.
GOSPEL – John 15.26 -16.15
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
“I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.
“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
SERMON
Theology like any other ‘ology’ attempts to describe what is there, it doesn’t seek to invent, or to create, it only tries to use language to explore experience and share understanding. And like any other ‘ology’ it is always woefully inadequate. For what it tries to describe, what it seeks to communicate, are experiences that transcend language, that take it past breaking point. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
Talk of the Holy Spirit is talk of God at his closest. The Holy Spirit is the action of God within us and between us. The Holy Spirit is God revealed by us and for us. The idea of the Holy Spirit is still, however, a matter of description – not invention. Our language about the Holy Spirit is often sloppy, and deliberately so, the experience of God, no less than God himself, will not be tied down to categories and classification. However, it is probably necessary for us to note that we don’t always mean the same thing when we talk about the Holy Spirit. A variety of concepts might be in our minds
There is that Spirit of God known to the Hebrews as Ruah. A word which meant also breath and wind and basically denoted the life and free activity of God, but also prophetic revelation – God’s special presence with a particular person. The Spirit of God was a fearful thing for it would drive you to do that which you would rather not do. “The spirit of God has come upon me” is a prophetic cry of anguish rather than pride. There is also the idea of the Spirit being the God within all people, inspiring their goodness and their creativity. It is an attribute of humanity, since all people were made in the image of God, all people have the breath of God and therefore all people have in some measure the Spirit of God.
And there is what John calls the Paraclete, variously and inadequately translated as ‘Comforter’, or ‘Advocate’, or ‘Counsellor’. The Paraclete is the special Spirit that resides only within the people of God. Willed to the Church by Christ it is the Church’s special connection with Christ. It is the Paraclete that makes the church Church. It is what gives it life and enables it to dare to call itself the body of Christ, the life of Christ to the world and in the world. This is surely the Spirit Paul means when he talks about the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And whose gifts include teaching, healing, prophecy, leadership, wisdom, knowledge and speaking in ecstatic language, otherwise known as ‘tongues’. It was this last understanding of the experience of the effect of faith in Christ that dominated the Church’s thinking about the Holy Spirit.
For the early Church the remarkable change that Christian faith brought to people signalled the presence and activity of the Spirit. It convinced the Apostles that non-Jews could be part of the new people of God. The Spirit was seen to be demonstrably present with the Gentile converts. To the early Church as to modern Pentecostal and charismatic Christians the visible expression of the presence of the Holy Spirit was an essential part of not only their worship but also their community life. It was what proved God’s presence with them, it was what they shared and what bound them together. The ecstatic gifts, the noise of tongues and the noisy declaration of prophecy gives powerful expression to the belief in the presence of God with us. I’m sure that is why the churches that practice such manifestations are generally growing and highly committed. Their experience of God within their worship is very “in-your-face”, impossible to ignore. It shouldn’t be overlooked however, that Christianity is not the only religion which boasts ecstatic gifts and noisy demonstrations of God’s presence. From the shaman cults of South America to the Sufis of Islam, something people know as the Spirit speaks.
Surely what defines the success of so called charismatics is not so much the joyful noise and the falling about, the Alleluyas and the incomprehensible speech; what is far more important is that they really believe God to be in their midst, wanting to work with them and in them. It is surely faith in this that energises them and makes their worship unmissable and does in fact bring them to seriously offer themselves to God for his work and the witness of his Gospel.
Not to be competitive (!) but we too believe that God is present in our worship. It is, after all, through the Holy Spirit that we believe bread and wine to become for us body and blood. We have a very tangible grasp on the presence and activity of God amongst us. We too have something that energises us and makes our worship unmissable. We too have something that once understood we would never live without. And that is why we have offered ourselves for the work and witness of the gospel. And that is why we try everything we know to draw more people to know this precious gift we have been given – that renewed gift of the Spirit each week in bread and wine – turning dry bones into people of God.
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 – Val Etteridge
Dear Father, help us to pray and to think only of you, guide us in what we should ask for, and give us faith to accept your will. We remember on this day of Pentecost the promise from God of the gift of the Holy Spirit to all believers and the beginning of the Church of Christ. We pray for all Christians across the world. We pray too for this benefice and the diocese and all who work and serve in these areas, may we feel the power of your Holy Spirit. Bless those who preach, teach, heal, reconcile and bring hope, may their message be the means of salvation to those who hear, and grant that your Church may grow and increase in the knowledge of your divine love.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We pray for the king and all the royal family. We bring Lord, our world and our nations before you and we thank you for all their beauty and wonder and the diversity of the lands. We live in a world though in which your presence is easily hidden and a world we have not cared for, we reflect on the horrors man has implemented through violence, conflict, power and greed and the suffering caused by war and hardship. O God the refuge of the poor and needy, the comforter of all who suffer, we commend to your mercy, the unfortunate and the needy. Look down on all those suffering from war, disaster, hunger, disease and other trials and spare them O Lord.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We thank you God for the place in which we live and for the blessings we receive and our families and friends. Here too though there are those who are sick in body, mind or spirit. In the quiet we name those known to us… Please Lord, bring them your peace in their pain, your strength in their weakness and your comfort in their sadness.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We remember those who have died and left this world. We thank God for their lives, the joy they gave us and their good examples and earthly wisdom. Almighty God, giver of all comfort, deal graciously with those who mourn, that casting all their cares on you they may know the consolation of your love.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.
We beseech you Lord, to enlighten our minds and to strengthen our wills, that we may know what we ought to do, and be enabled to do it through the grace of your Holy Spirit.
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.