Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 20 May 2018

A Pentecost Nation!

"This sceptered Isle", as Shakespeare called England in Richard II, has never been a monochrome culture. Before England emerged as an identity under Alfred the Great (and Scotland and Wales in their turn) our Island was subdivided into different Kingdoms, very different from what we know today. Some of you reading this may well have deep ancestry stemming from any number of invading peoples who colonized part, but never all, of what we are now familiar with as our country.

In that sense we have always been a 'Pentecost nation', a place where many different languages and accents, tribes and people settled, fought, loved and merged into our tiny crowded Island. Christianity was one of the great unifiers of the nations, but even here the different flavours and traditions that formed the bedrock of a common shared morality, spirituality and faith that united us in the Middle Ages, were born in the diversity of those early Christian Communities, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.

Why am I talking about this? Perhaps because at a time of great unease, when immigration raises so many emotive words and actions, the past can help to ease the tensions by allowing us to see how diversity is not enmity, and show us that we already have a fragile unity in our shared humanity. Despite our different origins, in the evolution of our species we have ancestors in common and in faith are One, Holy, Catholic (in that true meaning of universal) and Apostolic People, God's family, the brothers and sisters of Jesus bound together in the life and love of the Holy Spirit.

That is why this Pentecost we remember our birth as Christians, not only in the font and waters of Baptism. We should also allow ourselves to be caught up again in the disruptive, life giving and confirming power of the Spirit, dwelling in our hearts, but often neglected, dwelling in our Church and community but often ignored!

We are the people of Pentecost, we are the Spirit bearers in this world, but we cannot remain complacent as these ages are not the ages of unity but division, of malice not kindness. If you read Galatians 5 about the opposition to the Spirit we find alas, that those 'works of the flesh' are all too abundant in this world. Even leaders of State and Church show us feet of clay, and many are not good examples to emulate.

So how, given the call of Christ to be his disciples can we change things? Firstly be proud of our faith, of those deep ancestors to whom we owe our lives, of the men and women of faith, unknown, not powerful, whose example still sustains and keeps the world's goodness filled up.

As an Eastern priest rooted deeply in the Middle-Eastern-Catholic tradition, the week's confusing and confounding images of the opening of the US Embassy, coupled with the Gaza deaths, in our Pentecost's Jerusalem filled me with sorrow. These images were not the language that unites, nor the faith that forgives. It was and is a reminder that Pentecost came at a 'cost', for the Spirit gives us a direction of love and the uniting language of mercy, not power and dominance and a language of hate. 'Spirit filled' means we must burn ourselves out in the service of love.

But there is always hope, Royalists or not, on the Vigil of Pentecost, Britain basked in a slightly sentimental, but ever hopeful image of a fragile Prince and his Bride pledging their vows alone before God, but supported by characters from every walk of life and of many of the races on earth. There we glimpse the Spirit asking us to channel our gifts into greater love and goodness. All people, all creatures, all life on our fragile Island, let alone our planet cry out, 'Come Holy Spirit' that we may truly become a Pentecost Nation : 'This other Eden…. This blessed plot, this earth'!

Lectio Divina, Galatians 5

Brothers and sisters, live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.

Shakespeare, "King Richard II", Act 2 scene 1

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,-- This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.