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Pentecost

One has to think ahead for the benefice magazine, so here I am in April reflecting on Pentecost/Whitsun. It is the feast when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the first disciples. As a feast goes, it lacks the panache of Christmas and Easter. When I wrote a piece on my blog, some years ago, I satirically described feasts through the church year in the style of a TV film guide. I gave Christmas and Easter five stars but Pentecost only two. When I was challenged about this, I reflected that I’d represented how I thought those outside church viewed this spooky eccentricity. Someone should invent Pentecost Cake and start selling chocolate Flames of Fire to raise its status.

Through the 1970s -90s my wife and I were part of the ‛charismatic renewal’. We attended house meetings where people spoke in tongues (babbled), others had hands laid on them for healing and yet others fell over. People - including ourselves - had genuinely profound experiences while others gave the impression that they were acting out fantasies or were highly suggestible. As far as I know, there is no test of genuineness for a religious experience except to look at the result: a sort of ‛By their fruits you will know them’. As no churchy thing is perfect, of course, all our fruits are a bit mixed.

I recall, in Methodism, the charismatic wing publishing a magazine called ‛Dunamis’ and also producing some videos. There was a dual vision of spreading the blessings of renewal and tempering the excesses. I recall one video, boringly presented by a minister at a desk facing the camera. Initially a sceptic about being ‛filled with the Holy Spirit’ he had none-the-less gone to a charismatic meeting. At one point someone spoke in tongues [babbled] and another spoke out what he thought this meant. The minister, who had been a missionary in Ceylon (now Shri Lanka) heard one of the Psalms (22 or 23 I think) and its translation. When he approached the two speakers after the meeting, the first didn’t know what he had said and the second didn’t understand Singhalese! See 1 Corinthians 12 v10 for St Paul’s take on this.

While excesses need to be controlled and while recognising that trained, ordained clergy must find the inspiration of untrained, sometimes uneducated, people unnerving, I feel we have lost something as the stoic mainstream and the frothy charismatics have divided and gone their separate ways. (There are both Christian Fellowships in most local towns and scattered round the country plus, of course, Pentecostal churches that pre-existed the charismatic renewal.) I don’t have answers about holding the two streams together. Fortunately God, who does have all the answers, continues to work through his Holy Spirit in us, whether we babble, do the flowers or mow the churchyard.

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