Telling the Wonders of God

I wonder if you ever watch those TV programmes or films where they have messed around with the timeline? You know the kind of thing, the film starts with a wedding and then the rest of the film is flashbacks to things that have happened in the lead up to the wedding. Through all the ups and downs of the relationship you know that there’s a happy ending, because you’ve already seen it.

Well, there is a sense in which we heard our readings in the wrong order today. In the reading from Acts we see and hear the sights and sounds of the Day of Pentecost, and then we had a flash back to an earlier scene, where we hear some of the things that happened in the lead up to that astonishing day.

In the reading we heard from John’s account of the good news, we hear Jesus making a promise and telling us something about the person who is going to be the fulfilment of that promise.

We hear Jesus as he speaks to his followers for one of the last times. They are meeting together in the days before Jesus is going to be crucified, and then raised to life. Jesus’ followers are afraid and confused. Jesus has been with them for three years, and now he is talking about leaving them.

Before he goes, he tells his followers about some of the things that are going to happen in the future. He tells them that those who have faith will do even greater things than he himself had done. (given that what Jesus has done included walking on water, raising people from the dead, healing the sick, and feeding several thousand people with a few loaves and fishes, this was a pretty big promise).

He then goes on to promise that he will not leave his followers alone. When he has returned to the Father, he will ask the Father to send someone else, the Holy Spirit.

And what does Jesus promise that the Holy Spirit will be like?

Continued here...

Pentecost Water

What is it about kids and water? My four year old, Nathaniel, came home from nursery this week one day and told me that they'd had something really special that day. They'd had the water guns out. But there was one rule. No squirting people. They'd cleaned the garden furniture, sprayed the walls of the shed and watered the plants. As summer comes the plea for the paddling pool is heard once again, on every possible occasion. Kids seem to instinctively know something, that water is one of the most exciting things in the whole of the world.

Water is essential to life as we know it. It has a starring role in the first chapter of the Bible, central to the Creation of all that is, and it is also important in the last chapter, part of the description of the way in which the new creation will be. In between we find it again and again and again. It is one of the most potent images that we have for life and the life giving nature of God.

When God had called the people of God out of captivity and oppression in Egypt, they were led by Moses out in to the desert. As they travelled the horrors of the slavery, the murder of their sons, the forced labour began to fade in their memories and they began to focus on the difficulties of the journey and their fears overtook them. They missed the pomegranates and figs. They were thirsty and saw no source of water. In their lack of faith they rebelled against Moses.

Continued here...