Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost are behind us and we have now arrived at the Feast of Trinity and the start of what is often referred to as ‘ordinary time’.  Since December we have reflected on God’s coming to earth as a human child at Christmas and the change that makes to God’s relationship with human beings, we have reflected on our relationship with God in Lent.  The levels to which human beings can stoop to get their own way and to stay in power are in many ways the focus of Holy Week with God rising above it all in the Resurrection at Easter. 

We have heard about how God the Son appeared to His despondent disciples during the seven weeks of Easter, culminating in His Ascension to be reunited with God the Father. Finally last week we reflected on God the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples empowering them to continue the Son’s teaching and action in the world. ‘God in three persons, Blessèd Trinity’ as that well know Trinity hymn ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ puts it.

In my sermon last week on the Feast of Pentecost I said:

“The Ascension doesn’t mean that Jesus is abandoning them, that He’s running away. He’s leaving so that something more powerful can take his place. He repeatedly tells them what it is that will take his place. He tells them that he is sending them the Holy Spirit, the advocate, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to do in them what He himself had been doing among them. The message is simple, something that’s familiar (Jesus with the disciples in person) is to be replaced by something that’s unfamiliar (God’s Spirit within them). 

The Holy Spirit is God’s way of being present with them, and also with us, all the time (if we allow that to happen), making our life and work continuous with the life and work of Jesus. So in the same way that God was present to the disciples in Jesus, he can also be present to others through the disciples and through each of us. Everything that Jesus said and did amongst the disciples can be continued in what they and we say and do. The Holy Spirit is the divine power, God at work in and through us as the perpetuation of Jesus presence in the world amongst those who follow him.”

After the service, a visitor (who incidently was from New Zealand and who with a friend from England was nearing the end of their cycle ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats) remarked that it was wonderful to hear a sermon preached about the Holy Spirit, because it always seems to be a rather mysterious and little talked about aspect of God. At that service we also sang one of my favourite hymns ‘Spirit of God, come dwell within me’ (not to be confused with the better know ‘Spirit of the living God’ or ‘Spirit of God unseen as the wind’ sung to the ‘Skye Boat Song’). No, this one is sung to a wonderful Gaelic Air called ‘Leaving Lismore’.  The first verse and chorus are:

Spirit of God, come dwell within me.
Open my heart, O come set me free.
Fill me with love for Jesus, my Lord.
O fill me with living water.

Jesus is living, Jesus is here.
Jesus, my Lord, come closer to me.
Jesus, our Saviour, dying for me,
and rising to save his people

Now that seems to me to capture rather neatly what the Spirit of God is and what the Holy Spirit does for us in our lives and should provide encouragement to us all.

Blessings
James