Village Shepherd

For Christmas one year, I was given a very useful piece of computer software, which enables me to dictate to my computer. As I dictate, so the words I'm saying appear on the screen in front of me and when I'm ready I can simply press a key to print off everything I've written.

It's wonderful for sermons, as it saves an awful lot of typing and makes life much easier for me. But there's just one tiny snag. The computer doesn't always interpret my words correctly, so I sometimes see some very amusing words and phrases appearing in front of me.

For instance, "There's just one tiny snag," appeared as, "There's just one tiny snack!" And when I dictated, "Jesus said we should love our enemies", the computer wrote, "we should laugh at our enemies". It always interprets "love" as "laugh"! None of this matters too much as long as I remember to go back and correct everything I've written, but if you hear me talking complete nonsense you'll know why!

It's a bit like that old childhood game of Chinese whispers, where the end result of a phrase which has been whispered around the whole room turns out to be nothing like the original phrase.

I wonder whether listening to God is a bit like that. It isn't easy to hear God's voice and to know clearly what he wants from us or for us. Mostly it seems to be a question of deciding prayerfully what you believe to be right, then taking the plunge and going for it, but never really knowing whether you've got it right or not.

God's guidance is often very clear in retrospect, when you stand at the end and look back, but I've found it much less obvious at the time.

It all seemed so easy for the disciples. They may have been terrified, huddling together in the Upper Room, but nothing could have been clearer than seeing the tongues of flame hovering over each head and hearing the mighty rushing wind, come from nowhere. And then to receive that spectacular and miraculous sign of being able to speak in hundreds of different languages.

No wonder they knew they were filled with the spirit. No wonder they were so high that people thought they must be drunk. No difficulties or doubts for them about hearing God's voice or doing the right thing.

Yet it didn't stay like that for long, despite such a terrific gift. Early in the Acts of the Apostles we read of dissension in the ranks. Ananias and Sapphira were two members of the early Church who weren't really in favour of the new policy of communism, of holding everything in common, and they held back some money for themselves with dire results (Acts 5:1-6).

Later, there was a falling out between Peter and Paul. Peter was all for insisting that Gentile converts to the Church should be circumcised. Paul, with more political acumen, opposed this view. And the resulting split in the early Church makes our arguments in today's Church of England pale by comparison.

And all this happened just after the church was started, maybe twenty years or so after the gift of the Holy Spirit, so it would seem that even after such an amazing event as that first Pentecost, it still wasn't easy to discern God's will.

The events of Pentecost were described by Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. But John describes the coming of the Holy Spirit in quite a different way. John's description was in today's gospel reading, but it was such a quiet and gentle account that you may have missed it.

According to John, on that first Easter Sunday evening when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room and showed them his hands and his side, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit".

So in John's account, the disciples received the Holy Spirit immediately after Jesus' death and resurrection but before his Ascension. In Luke's much more spectacular and flamboyant account, the disciples had to wait for seven weeks before receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus was seen about on earth by many of his friends for six weeks after his death. After that he wasn't seen again, so Luke described the event of the Ascension and the event of Pentecost just a week later.

The Holy Spirit is a way of describing the God within. God himself is within each individual human being, and each human being can choose whether or not to acknowledge that God within. So I find the picture of Jesus breathing his spirit into his friends, a very helpful one.

If God himself is within each human being, then it would seem to be the most important thing in the world to learn how to tap into that God within. For God is the source of unlimited love and strength and power, and those who learn to tap into this huge, unlimited source are able to move mountains.

The first disciples moved mountains at that first Pentecost. They discovered within themselves astonishing, undreamed of powers, and suddenly emerged with enormous confidence and courage, for all those fears which kept them hidden indoors had disappeared.

Many of us have fears which keep us hidden indoors. They're usually fears which we tend to keep to ourselves, like fears of what other people might think or do or say, fears of making fools of ourselves, fears of getting it wrong and making terrible mistakes, fears of sinning.

Fear turns hearing God's voice into a game of Chinese whispers. If I'm afraid, then I'm only able to hear God through a tiny window which I construct to accommodate my fear. But if I really want to find life, if I want to live the full and complete and exciting and enjoyable life which God has waiting for me, then I need to go beyond my fears and tap into the God within.

I need to welcome the Holy Spirit, to put my hand into God's hand and to step out into the unknown with knocking knees, but trusting in God and so stepping out in faith.