ART ALIVE at ALL SAINTS

ART ALIVE at ALL SAINTS, NECTON

May 3rd - 5th and May 10th - 11th

The Bishop's Address

‘And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind........’ (Acts 2.2)

A long time ago a group of theological students were making a programme for Radio Oxford. A very long time ago since I was a student at the time - thirty-five years ago. It makes me feel old even to say it. It was Whit Sunday. That’s what we called Pentecost in those days as some of you may remember. A few of us had to contribute to a programme about it. Some took the easy option and went out on the streets to do what they call a 'vox pop.' People were asked what Whitsun was all about. Thirty-five years ago nearly everyone had no idea. But they knew it was a holiday and had something to do with the church. Eventually one elderly lady said in a wonderful Oxfordshire accent that she thought it was to do with the ‘coming of the Holy Ghost’. What more did she know? After concentrating hard she exclaimed ‘He came with a rushing mighty wind’ whereupon, overcome with embarrassment, she burst into a fit of laughter.

She had no reason to be embarrassed. She’d remembered one of the most striking features of the day of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit was dramatic, instant, and unmistakable.

I’ve never forgotten that little excursion into vox pop. Generally people weren’t hostile to our questions. But they knew next to nothing about the birthday of the Christian church. General ignorance about Christianity is not new. After all, this is a crucial day in the Christian story. Pentecost is the day when the first believers in Christ’s resurrection were blown about, fired up, and propelled into God’s mission. It was from the day of Pentecost that people with no remarkable natural gifts began to speak with a new authority. It was from then on that these same people created a community marked by such mutual love that others remarked upon it. It was from then that Peter and others who seemed to be timid or cowardly were given new courage and power. The life of the church today still depends upon the power of the spirit of God moving among us. But we’ve got to be willing to be fired up and blown about.

There’s a lot that links the Holy Spirit and our human spirit. Both are of divine origin. In the act of creation, says the book of Genesis, God took clay and fashioned human kind. Then he ‘breathed into man’s face the breath of life and he became a living soul........’ It’s the very nature of human beings that they have an air of divinity about them. God breathes on those he has made in his image.

This breathing of God into us is what’s called inspiration. It’s what makes human beings so creative and unpredictable, able to do things which seem beyond mere human power. The great thing about the Art Alive Festival across the diocese is that sculptors and artists and stained glass experts have mixed with poets and story tellers and basket weavers in celebration of the art in our churches, these homes of God’s spirit. And the fact that all this has happened over the weekend of Pentecost makes it even more appropriate. Here you’ve not simply put Art Alive and Pentecost together but added the presentation of your Mission plans in the Committed to Growth programme. There will be no growth without the Holy Spirit’s power and our willingness to be shaped by the breath of God’s inspiration. There’s no artist or craftsman who can be creative without being open to inspiration from within and without.

We will only grow as a church and as Christians if we are passionate about wanting others to know and love God in Jesus Christ. Most of us have been brought to faith and nurtured in it through the witness of others. And we never become too old or too senior in faith to learn and grow ourselves.

The other day I was asked who had taught me most about faith. I owe a huge amount to my parents, to my theological teachers, to Christian friends at university who influenced me at a crucial time in my life. But there’s one person whose sheer enthusiasm for the gospel still humbles me. Everyone, I said the other day, everyone should have an Aunty Betty. Mine is nearly 95 years old. She never married, still lives between Redruth and Camborne in Cornwall, moved only once in her life to her house 100 yards from the one in which she was born. She still goes to the Methodist chapel where she was baptized 94 years ago. She looks after herself and until recently she was often found doing the shopping for some of the old people who live nearby, most of whom are twenty years younger than her.

We always speak quite late on Sunday evenings and I find out what she thought of the local preacher’s sermon that morning. Last year just before Ascension Day she asked me what I was doing that day. (She’s a well instructed Methodist in the Church’s year now that she’s got a bishop for a nephew). I told her I was doing a confirmation in a village called Horsford. Eight candidates. I had their names in front of me on my study desk. She made a note of them and said she’d pray for them that night when they were being confirmed. So last year a rather surprised group of confirmation candidates at Horsford were told that as they were being confirmed by the bishop there was a Cornish Methodist in her 90s praying for them by name that they would remain faithful to Christ. I also had to tell them that she wouldn’t start praying until 8.00 pm when East Enders had finished. She’s a very practical person when it comes to prayer.

But the glory of this is that Auntie Betty is still so committed to the growth of Christ’s church even in her tenth decade that she’s keen to do what she can – by prayer – for those whom she will never meet or see. That’s the spirit which makes the church grow. That’s the Holy Spirit which inspires. That’s the Holy Spirit that blows us about and fires us up so that the world and the church look more glorious than we can ever imagine.

The Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria lived at roughly the same time that Jesus was exercising his early ministry. We reckon Philo was born in around 20 BC and died in AD 50. He was a philosopher and believed that a breath of divine spirit lived in all people. It was what we would now call an inner conscience. He said that some people got a second wind from God which took them beyond conscience and filled them with divine ecstasy. But, said Philo, this was only given to people of exceptional gifts, intelligence and goodness.

The discovery of the day of Pentecost was that God’s new blessing and fresh outpouring of his spirit was not given just to those who had scaled the heights of human goodness. How could it have been when you think how those disciples and apostles so often failed Jesus and ran away? No, God’s spirit was given to all who would respond to the goodness of God and not trust in their own. Here was a new source of love and joy, given so that God might draw all humanity to himself.

The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the glory of God in ordinary, daily experiences and in the created order around us. That’s why we build beautiful churches. That’s why our churches are filled with art and sculpture as a response to God’s inspiration. That’s why we read the scriptures, the inspired word of God. That’s why we celebrate the sacraments here, through which God breathes on his people with the gift of his grace. We see life differently and we grow. And others grow with us. The poet Walt Whitman once wrote ‘I know nothing else but miracles ..... to me every hour of light and day is a miracle.’

I’ve always loved the simple story of a young Welsh girl who came to London to work for a wealthy family. Every Sunday she travelled many miles to worship at the Welsh church in the language she loved. One day the family with whom she lived asked her to come to church with them. She declined politely, saying she would rather make the journey across London to worship in her native tongue. Her employer gently pointed out that Jesus was not a Welshman. The girl answered ‘I know that, sir, but it’s in Welsh he speaks to me.’

What language is God using to breathe his spirit into your life and mine today? Are we ready to be blown about for God? Are we committed to grow in him and for him?