Pentecost - Making Room For the Spirit

The wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from of where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8)

 

I was watching the class finals of BBC young musician of the year last week when Lara age 16 played the Chopin impromptu on C Sharp minor. Several people confessed they were moved to tears – she went on to win the whole thing. She touched people’s hearts. Music has the power to move us

 

This week is Pentecost, the festival of The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit  too has the power to move. But from what we read about him or her The Holy Spirit is not a well managed logical predictable and orderly kind of spirit. Rushing wind, tongues of fire, babbling voices acts of power – not what we normally expect at all in our well ordered Anglican worship!

 

Yes, worship too can be moving. It may be the thrilling sound of a large choir and mighty organ – or we may be moved by the stillness – that special kind of silence that comes when a lot of people come together, and are totally silent.

 

I often meet people who say they like to go into a church when it is empty. They like the peace, the sense of history. You can just sit quietly and reflect. Nobody bothers you. No organised religion.

 

Well of course in one way they are right – you cannot organise the Holy Spirit, nor know when he may come by. We can work very hard to arrange our worship services and have beautiful words and music; yet even then, we cannot be sure that the Spirit will come.

But what the person alone in the church is missing out on is the beauty of worship. Whatever kind of worship it is, traditional or modern, it has the potential to be a channel for the Holy Spirit

 

The Christian Year -Seasons of Welcome series at St. Gile Evensong  is centred on the image of a welcoming God, one who is always drawing people into this circle of divine hospitality, the love of God that has been waiting for them for all time.  How can we co-operate with God's welcoming Spirit? 

 

First, we must not get in the way, make our worship and our way of doing things so busy, that there is or room for anything else. We must give the Spirit space.

 

And second we must get the balance right. Not too much noise, nor too much quiet. Worship, teaching, singing, praying that has room to breathe, so that the breath of the Spirit can be heard, and will touch those He wants to find.

 

 

(Taize chant – Veni Spirito Creatore )