We are now in what the Church calls ‘Ordinary Time’. That is, the period from Trinity until Advent. For many of us this period of the year is anything but ordinary, as we head into summer, which in our world of changing climate, can mean anything from drought to deluge, heatwave to snow and hail.

At Pentecost, we hear about Disciples staggered about mouthing strange words. Words that are oddly intelligible to people from every nation. This is unfamiliar behaviour and so those around them think and say ‘these people must be drunk’. But Peter points out that it’s only nine in the morning and so that’s not very likely.

It’s out of this scene of exhilarating confusion that Luke records the beginning of the Church. It isn’t the disciples sitting down to soberly consider the merits of Jesus’ teaching or to ponder the meaning of His death, or the minutiae of the Church finances or the meaning of Canon law – important as all of those things may be. The disciples are just carried away on a high, out of which comes preaching and prophesy and it’s this that we in St Andrew’s, St Finnbarr’s and St Maelrubha’s are heir to today. It’s the response to the spirit breathing life into the Church that started it, and it’s this that’s sustained the Church for over two thousand years.

But the Church is not the point. The Church can help to bring people to faith, nuture their faith and resond in ways that individuals can’t. But it’s the Spirit that Jesus sends after his departure, the Spirit that came upon the disciples at Pentecost that is what makes the difference It’s what the Spirit brings into people’s lives that leads to the excitement, and causes the disciples to want to tell everyone about what’s happened; that makes them want to tell anyone and everyone who’ll listen. Is it not the same Spirit that makes us want to share our faith with friends, family and neighbours and through sharing the excitement can become infectious.

At Pentecost, Mary and the other women and disciples believe that the new life welling up in them is the life of God. This feeling is the vitality, the joy, the sheer excitement of God. What happens to them at Pentecost is so unexpected, so unpremeditated, in such contrast to their fear in locking themselves away, that they just feel, they just know, that it couldn’t be anything else but from God.

Whilst many of us may not have such dramatic and overwhelming experience of the Spirit, I suspect that most of us have had unexpected experiences that are just as difficult to account for, that they simply have to be the work of the Holy Spirit. They may be feelings that are fleeting, or last a long time, but we know in our hearts that they’re of God. God breathing life into our lives; at times when we don’t know what to do and need help; at times when someone close to us needs more than we can give them and we don’t know where to turn.

The extraordinary Truth is that the same Spirit that comes to the disciples as a rushing wind and tongues of fire, moves over the chaos of our lives as well, “unceasingly at work, from chaos bringing order and filling emptiness with life.” So enjoy the summer, whatever you are doing, and give the Spirit space and time to work on you and on those that you love and you never know what extraordinary things might happen in this so called Ordinary Time.

Blessings
James