• Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
• John 20:19-23

We are here to listen, to discern the truth, to find a truth to live by. We stand, we listen.

In Adam I believe humanity is fallen. Each of us succumbs to sin- we fall, we get up, we learn, we grow. In life we are born into the innocence of Adam and grow up into Christ, each without exception. We miss the mark our hearts long for each day; the Light shines in the hearts of every person. There is guilt, there is shame. When we allow space for despair, it is filled by darkness, but the darkness cannot overcome the light. Every sin is an invitation to the evil one, sin sits at the door of our hearts. We pray lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.

In Christ is life and breath. In him our being finds its Alpha and its Omega, its beginning and its end. In Christ death is no more, there is no longer guilt, no longer shame as we stumble, and surely, we stumble, Jesus holds us. Jesus is Lord.

Stir in me, stir in me, Holy Spirit arise in me, new my soul rise-up in me, clean and pure and Holy, I was taught to sing.

The breath of God creates and forms. From dust we were formed and in common with all to dust we will return. This is sure.

Christ is our daily bread, given to all, broken for all, a life poured out for all. Without the drawing of God, we are lost, our humanity is dead. The Spirit needs-must invade our reasoning, invade our imagination; we dream and have visions; a vision of one body; one body birthed on a cross; one body begotten in the beginning, revealed as we listen and hear of Christ’s death resurrection and ascension into heaven. All are called into this body seated at the right hand of God.

All that has happened is that you have gathered to hear; to listen, to sense together with others a longing, a thirst. A thirst quenched in Christ. Jesus is alive, here now ascended to the Father in-the-midst of his people. You can’t follow him on your own, but he meets you as a friend. There is a hunger to gather; to be together, to know one another. Maybe we have nothing more in common.

This truth is a powerful truth revealed as we listen. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. To proclaim Jesus is Lord brings ruin in the ways of the world; you become a target. To stand with Christ, to align with him, to make his truth our measure. How can we doubt those who declare Jesus to be Lord; numbered, marked out by their declaration; standing together in an absurd truth; an absurd utterance.

Space is created so that mighty deeds of God are proclaimed and enacted, acted upon. From the heart of God we prophecy. We know his voice and we no longer call any man our teacher. We prophecy against injustice and lies. There are all manner of manifestations of God but declaring Jesus to be Lord brings peace and love and not violence; a narrow road. God’s Spirit is given for the common good as we step out into worldly obscurity ad trash our reputations. There is one body. There is one spirit. A body breathed into life by the spirit.

The spirit rests; rests on each one of us.

The portion of Christ exceeds that of Moses; not to seventy is it given, but seventy times seventy and more, numbered in Christ, forgiven, restored, poured out.

From his people, from the Church many thirsts are quenched. The church gathers in many camps, but you can’t be the church alone; there is only one church, and we are in it together.

The church is recognised when hearts are gathered, in a death to self, a blessed poverty; a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a heart for peace: two or three who love. The church brings life and water flows for all the world’s redemption. Humbly we come and draw water from the wells of salvation, we sang, a little flock. But in Christ we are many- a host and one heart, one mind are we, revealed and scorned

Maybe in this and in our reading our hearts burned as they did for the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Maybe as you have listened to friends and engaged ideas and experiences something stirred. There are reasons and reasonings, explanations. We can analyse and form rules. But when we encounter God in bread and wine, water and breath, then we know intimately. Then we are transformed; 200 years of modern Christianity dissolve and we become church

A young man once asked me to come and speak with him. He wanted to save me from God; he wanted to confound me with his truth, show how I was deceived. I read him a poem I had written for him. It began, The god you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either.

Master Eckhart a German mystic of the 13^th Century prayed, God rid me of God. This is a stage in the journey all of us must go through, maybe several times as we peel away our certainty. God finds a way, through tongues of fire, through babbling tongues. Pentecost heralds dreams and visions, sighs deeper than words that birth love, that flows out for all. As we journey from Adam to Christ all becomes poetry, we appear drunk, in the breaking of bread, in the drinking of wine.

As the poet George Herbert says in his poem Agonie, Love in that liquor sweet and most divine which my God feels as blood but I as wine. Truth is revealed.

Grace and peace.