Sermon for Sunday 31st May

When people ask my wife, Ann, why she doesn’t have the same surname as me she usually says it’s because I wouldn’t change my surname to Davison. When I was first ordained it came to someone’s notice that I was living with an Ann Davison. Unbeknown to us someone told the Bishop’s office that the new curate in Weybridge was not living with his wife. Fortunately the Diocese already knew that we had just kept our own names.

For Ann’s 40th birthday the children and I gave her the slightly unusual present of changing the children’s surnames from Jenkins to Davison Jenkins. As they changed schools and got new passports they gradually began to use their new name and have it to this day. I understand Ann’s desire to keep her own surname. It is not simply about equality. It is about her identity, who she feels she is.

An ancient tradition for monks and nuns is the changing of their names when making their profession. They lose their surname and adopt the name of a saint, with or without their original Christian name. It identifies them with their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to God.

As more ordinary people we don’t attempt such life changing commitments. But as we celebrate Pentecost today, our whole identity – who we are – is brought into focus. The great festival of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, recalls the day when the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus before his death, came to the church in Jerusalem. The author of Acts is not short on dramatic imagery to emphasise just how life changing the event was. A sound like the rush of a violent wind – divided tongues as of fire appeared. Filled with the Holy Spirit they began speaking in tongues. So incredible was the transformation that onlookers thought they were all drunk.

Of course they weren’t drunk. But somehow the record needed to show just how different life was going to be for those early Christians, when they realised that God had done something truly amazing for them. God had first acted in bringing them Jesus Christ. Then he had acted in bringing them the resurrected Christ after his death on the cross. And now, in the completion of his acts of revelation, God had brought them the Holy Spirit. The spirit that would help them share in the life and continue the work of Jesus Christ.

It is very easy for us to assume that it is we who have made a decision for faith. That we have listened to the gospel and then at some moment in time, or over a long period, decided to become Christians. But this is only half of the story. Because it ignores the initiative of God and his gift to us of the Holy Spirit.

Like those first followers of Christ described in Acts, we have been given a new identity. We are identified with God through our knowledge of Jesus Christ. And at Pentecost we celebrate the gift of God to us of the promised spirit of truth. Through this spirit, the comforter, we receive the reassurance of the continuing presence of Christ.

But that account does not fully reflect the transforming nature of the spirit. The spirit described in Acts with the dramatic images of wind and fire. The spirit that suddenly enabled people of different nations, cultures and languages to speak of God’s deeds of power to each other in ways they completely understood.

Christopher Cocksworth, the new Bishop of Coventry, has commented that when Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he was aware that they were familiar with the presence of the spirit. But they were also in danger of devaluing the demanding intellectual and ethical task to which the Holy Spirit calls us. The spirit of God calls us to have the mind of Christ and the love of Christ formed within us.

We are so familiar in our references to the Holy Spirit, and our annual celebration of Pentecost, that we might also fall into the trap of devaluing the call of the Holy Spirit. To have the mind of Christ and the love of Christ formed within us deeply affects our identity as individuals. This is not simply naming ourselves as Christian, or member of the church, or even just churchgoer. Paul says the presence of the spirit in his life, and in the church, is nothing less that the personal presence of God dwelling in him and God’s people. The spirit is given to us so that we can become, in some degree, what Jesus Christ was himself.

About two months ago I had a ministerial review. The idea of this three yearly exercise is to review my work and provide encouragement and suggestions for future development. It is a 360degree review – one that takes comments on the parish from different perspectives. One that includes hearing from people such as churchwardens, fellow clergy and members of the congregation.

When I went to Diocesan House my reviewer opened our conversation by saying “I think I want to come to St Andrew’s Church!” Reading all your reviews she realised that there was a positive sense of energy and enthusiasm for the mission of the church at St Andrew’s. A sense of optimism and a sharing of ministry between a large number of people.

Today, on our birthday, we should celebrate our life. And be reminded that the Holy Spirit is not just theology, history and words of scripture. It is a physical and spiritual reality. Freeing us from our many weaknesses and putting those behind us. We are able to be what we are as a church and as individual Christians because of the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is a tangible part of our identity, a real part of who we are.

The more we recognise the Holy Spirit as God’s shaping presence the more we free ourselves to be what Christ was. And to constantly have the mind of Christ and the love of Christ moulded within us.

This festival invites us to celebrate the Holy Spirit as part of our identity. God within us, helping us in our weakness, searching our hearts and giving us the mind of Christ. We cannot do it on our own. How could we with our many imperfections? But with the gift of the Holy Spirit we can be freed to serve God and work to build his kingdom in the world.

© Revd Robert Jenkins May 2009