May 11th: Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2: 1 - 11, 1 Cor. 12: 3 – 7, 12 – 13, Jn 14: 15 – 16, 23 – 26
In about the year 360BCE the Greek philosopher Plato first put forward the hypothesis that all things could be created from just four elements, fire, water, air and earth. It was over 2000 years before Robert Boyle, the first modern chemist, seriously challenged Plato’s view and a further 130 years before Antoine Lavoisier published his list of 33 elements. Today, 117 elements have been discovered of which 94 occur in nature.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that early Christian writers have likened the Holy Spirit to three of Plato’s four classical elements. In our readings this morning we have heard the gift of the Spirit being described in terms of air and fire: in our approach to this great feast, we have heard Jesus describe the Spirit as springs of living water. Although the Scriptures usually contrast earthly and spiritual matters, the analogy is a powerful one because we can all think of ways in which fire, water and air can transform earth.
In our first reading we were told how the disciples heard “what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven”. In the Gospel reading we heard how Our Lord gave the Spirit to His disciples by breathing on them. We tend to take the air that we breathe for granted, but we must all be aware of how essential it is to life. If we are deprived of air for just a few minutes, life ceases. So it is with the Spirit. In our lives as Christians, we cannot be fully alive unless we recognise our dependence on the Spirit. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul warns that, “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God because they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned”. (1 Cor. 2:14)
There are, of course, other parallels between the air and the Spirit. We are unable to see them, taste them or smell them, although we sometimes hear or feel them when they move. No-one warned me before I moved to Kent what a windy county it is, and it is sometimes quite a battle to get from the Vicarage to the church if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, but my experience is as nothing compared with that of the poor people of Burma whose lives have been devastated by the recent cyclone there. In just the same way that movements of air can have effects that humankind is incapable of resisting, so the Spirit can also have life-changing effects, hopefully for the good.
We heard in our first reading this morning that the Holy Spirit descended on each of the disciples like tongues of fire. We are all too aware of the destructive power of fire, and yet we are also aware of how it too can transform our lives. What proportion of our earth would be habitable if we had not managed to harness fire in order to warm our homes and our bodies? How restricted would our diets be if we had not learned to manage fire so that we can cook our food? How limited would our experience of the world be if engineers had not discovered how heat energy can be used to power so many different means of transport?
And, of course, we do not just associate fire with heat, but also with light. Many writers, like St Basil the Great, have considered the parallels between light and the Holy Spirit. Just as light enables us to perceive and understand the wonders of this world, so the Spirit enlightens our minds for the discovery of divine truths.
Once we have all lit our candles from the Paschal Candle at the Easter Vigil, the cantor proclaims, “a flame divided but undimmed”. So it is with the Holy Spirit: we all share in Him, but He remains whole, like a sunbeam that benefits each creature as though it were present to that creature alone.
St Hilary suggests that we all receive as much of the Spirit as we wish, just like plants and animals that thrive in different parts of a woodland depending on the amount of light available to them. Just as we know that the flowers in our gardens, a beautiful seascape or a range of mountains take on a new beauty when the sun shines on them, so we too, enlivened by the Spirit should take on a new beauty and reveal His glory and His power to others.
St Cyril of Jerusalem and many others have likened the Holy Spirit to water. Whenever I baptise a child I draw parallels between our need for water and the Spirit for life itself, for cleansing and refreshment. We are aware that water is almost as essential as air if we are to continue our lives. We are all able to go for several days without food, but if we are deprived of water for just a few hours we begin to feel the effects. St Cyril makes the point that water, like the Holy Spirit, all comes from the same source: both come down from heaven. It all comes in exactly the same way, but its effects are manifold. Water the world over is exactly the same stuff, it’s all H2O, it is constant, it remains the same, but it has different effects on the living things that receive it depending on their nature and their needs. The Holy Spirit is also constant and immutable, but, as St Paul reminds us in the passage from which our second reading was taken, He gives some the gift of prophesy, others the power to drive out devils, others the gifts of interpreting the Holy Scriptures, others the gifts of self-control, alms-giving, fasting and even martyrdom.
Just as water gives new life to individual plants and to whole plant communities, so the Holy Spirit can transform the lives of individuals and communities. St Irenaeus makes the point in his treatise “Against Heresies”, that without the Holy Spirit, we are just like individual grains of flour, incapable of combining together, but if the water of the Holy Spirit is present with us then we can coalesce into a dough which can be bakes into the bread of the Church.
Water, fire and air were three of the classical elements that the ancients used to enable them to understand the functioning of the world. They can help us today to understand a little bit more about the working of the Spirit, and, hopefully to enable us to prepare ourselves to welcome Him into our lives, today and every day.
