The promise of Pentecost

Acts 1: 9-26

I have this wonderful image that comes to me whenever I think about the Ascension. I imagine all the disciples standing there looking at the sky as Jesus goes to be with the Father. No one has noticed that they are joined by two extra people. I wonder how long they all stood there before the angels spoke to them. They would have been taken by surprise I’m sure. And then they go back to the upper room and start the process of being a Church. They start the process of becoming something completely new, in the world but not of it. They will become the greatest force for change in the world leaving a legacy that will still be standing the test of time nearly 2000 years after they have all been promoted to glory.

Fast forward to 2014 and we stand on the eve of another Pentecost and I think we are still, like the early disciples, looking at the sky wondering what’s going to happen next. I often wonder where we went from being a world-changing group of people to people keeping the status quo.

We look at the statistics and we see a Church that is keeping afloat. We have had some dramatic drops in numbers coming to Church but recently those numbers have started to rise. Even in my own denomination, the Methodist Church, I see how the drop in numbers is affecting the very structure of the church. A friend of mine is being taken out of full time Chaplaincy development and being put back into Church life because they can no longer afford to keep the staffing levels in the Chaplaincy Development as they are. The euphemism used is restructuring.

But before I drive us all to drink with depression about the eminent demise of the Church we need to look to Pentecost because therein lies the message of hope for us all. You see the one thing that stands out for me in the Pentecost is how the disciples’ perspective was changed from one of being insular and self-protecting to one of taking the message of Christ and of hope to the world who in the words of Jesus “hated them because of the truth within them.”

And because I am a chaplain who has the privilege of supporting 70 chaplains across the county of Kent I see chaplaincy as the ultimate expression of Pentecost. Because the role of the Christian chaplain is to take the love and gospel of Christ to a world that doesn't know or is hostile to the truth in us. We don’t necessarily do it like Peter did, addressing big crowds. We tend to do it like Paul, who had conversations with people, encouraging them to look at the Gospel because we show that there is more to Christianity than words.

But being so outward focussed places the chaplain in a place of tension. One of the questions the chaplains I serve and I get asked regularly is: “If you are doing such a good job of showing the love of God, why aren’t we seeing more people in Church?” The answer lies in the Great Commission. We are called to make disciples not grow churches. We are not called as chaplains, or Christians for that matter, to ensure the survival of a club.  

Archbishop William Temple is reported to have said that the Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members. 

More recently Rob Bell wrote:

The Church does not exist for itself; it exists to serve the world. It’s not ultimately about the church; it’s about all the people God wants to bless through the church. When the church loses sight of this, it loses its heart. (Taken from Velvet Elvis pg 165)

Gerard Hughes wrote this is his book God of surprises:

Christ cannot…really be present in a congregation whose energies and interests are focussed on themselves, and who do not show as a body and as individuals, an interest and compassion for the needs of the immediate neighbourhood, and a consciousness that the congregation exists, as a Christian group, to serve the needs of others. (God of surprises pg. 132)

Our function as other have said more eloquently than me that we are there for the benefit of others. At a meeting recently I had the opportunity to open the meeting with the devotions and my reading was the reading in Matthew in which Jesus calls Matthew and then has dinner with “sinners”. When confronted by the teachers of the law, Jesus’ reply is as always a classic: “it is not the well, who need a doctor but the sick.”

And that is the joy and the promise of Pentecost. We become obsessed with sharing the love and hope of Christ and then it no longer about bums on seats but about the Kingdom of God and we truly all become chaplains in the truest sense of the word.

Amen