Pentecost 2025
Acts 2:1-11; 1 Cor 12:3-7; John 20:19-23
No, no, no, no, no! Bloomin’ ‘Erbert, Holy Spirit! You’ve got me in a right tangle here! I had the perfect introduction all worked out for my Pentecost homily. I knew exactly what I wanted to say: I wanted to focus on the different ways in which the Holy Spirit came to the apostles on Easter Sunday—the gentle breathing of the power to forgive sins—and at Pentecost—the spectacular descent in wind and flame for the preaching of the Gospel. For that reason, I opted to keep the Year A readings, rather than use the optional readings offered for Year C.
Then what? For no particular reason, I decided to check my homily from last year, and discovered to my horror that my bright new ideas were identical with those which I’d had a year ago, even down to the expression “all bells and whistles” which I had planned as a description of the Pentecost event.
“Ah” you may say, “that’s an example of the Spirit at work, stopping you from repeating yourself”. That’s all very well, I will reply, but couldn’t the Spirit have stopped me coming up with the repetition in the first place, and will the Spirit inspire me with something else to say?
Incidentally, I mentioned last year that I had changed my planned introduction, and wondered whether the Holy Spirit might have had a hand (or a wing) in that—SNAP! Another question strikes me: should I speak of the Holy Spirit as He, She, or It? In Latin, the Holy Spirit is masculine—Spiritus Sanctus—in Greek, neuter—hagion pneuma—and I am told that the Hebrew ruah is feminine, though I don’t know that for certain.
That in itself is useful. The Holy Spirit has no gender: the Holy Spirit simply IS. The Spirit does not descend wearing a badge indicating His, Her, Its preferred pronoun. God is above and beyond gender. We follow Jesus, the human face of God, and a male face at that, in speaking of Father and Son, but the Spirit defies categorisation. As Jesus says in another place: “The wind (or Spirit) blows where it will, and so it is with everyone who is born of God”. The Spirit blows where It will, and in whatever form It/He/She will, appearing as a dove, or a tongue of flame, or as a wind which shakes our foundations and our comfortable and comforting categories.
God cannot be defined, because to deFINE someone is to put a FINIS, a limit, upon them, and God has no limits. That is why, at the burning bush, God refused to answer Moses’ question about a name, because a name too imposes limits, and to know someone’s name is to give you power over them: you can track them down, “put tabs” on them, summon them.
In the person of Jesus, God for a time put limits on Himself, by taking a name and a human form, restricting Himself largely by the limitations of human nature, and allowing Himself to be understood in terms of human Fatherhood. The Holy Spirit has no such restrictions: The Spirit may come as breath, as a shattering wind, or as fire, but the Spirit is not breath or wind or fire, is not a He, She, or It. All that we can say is that the Holy Spirit comes from Father and Son as gift, pure gift, unrestrained gift.
How then does the Spirit come to you? And make no mistake—the Spirit does come/has come/will come to you, not only at your Baptism and Confirmation, but always, now and every day. And for what purpose does the Spirit come? The Easter Sunday Spirit came to impart the power to forgive sins: the Pentecost Spirit came to begin the preaching of the Gospel. For what does the Spirit come to you?
Firstly, the Spirit comes to you to enable you to say “Jesus is Lord”, to enable you to have faith and to profess that faith. Every time you kneel, sit, stand, or walk to pray, the Holy Spirit is moving you to that prayer, however inadequate or distracted your prayer may seem. Every good action you perform, every kind word you say, every positive thought that you have, is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Every occasion on which you keep your temper in spite of provocation, bite back the criticism you were about to utter, push aside the bad thought from your mind, the Holy Spirit is working in you. Easter, Pentecost, Baptism, Confirmation are all particular occasions of the Spirit in action, an action which continues always, and for which you should remember to ask.
