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Whitsun
23rd May 2010

The gift of the Spirit

Last Saturday evening we turned on the TV and caught the Lottery programme. A man was in the very last stages of the quiz that precedes the draw, and he had a question before him about the year of the birth of John Lennon. The prize was £100,000; if he got the answer wrong he got nothing. He got it wrong. I can't forget that man's face; he was a youngish man, a young father perhaps with a wife watching nearby. There was a moment after he had lost that you knew he could not take it in, and when the presenter tried to draw him into the closing farewells of the programme, he could not do so.

Such a moment could not but be defining, either way it went. How do people cope when £100,000 slips away; what would their reaction be: recrimination, despair, even possibly a danger of self-harm? Or would it be a time for saying,"It doesn't matter - we have each other, that is what counts?"

So today it is good to celebrate a gift that is not dangled before us only to be snatched away, and has nothing to do with celebrity or success or chance. The gift of the Holy Spirit is there for everyone and for all time.

In Jeremiah God had prophesies that no-one would have to be told how to know the Lord, for all would know him. This was a foretelling of the democratic, egalitarian nature of God's gift - not to the few but to all.

But do we always understand that nature of the gift of the Holy Spirit? Do we always receive it? When I was a child, the Troll was the latest must have toy: little brown figures with funny faces - and long hair in a range of colours. One day I was given a troll cow, but it had short white hair and I was disappointed. I loved it though and as with all loved toys it had a bit of a rough life and sometimes got wet. Years later when I had long since lost interest in it, my younger sister found it and asked if she could have it. She went off with it and then came back in saying, "Didn't you know it had long hair?" In her hand was the troll cow with a great lock of damp hair all spoilt and mouldy. I stared at it in amazement: all those years when I could have been combing that lovely hair and I didn't know it was there because it had been tucked inside the troll's hollow body and hidden away.

A silly comparison perhaps but I know myself that it is easy not to explore the full nature of God's gift of the Holy Spirit: not to test it, not to enjoy it, not to invoke it, but rather to keep it hidden and get on with life in the usual way. There are Christians I know who have a special role in rejoicing in the gift of the Holy Spirit, and thank God for them, but not all of us are called to be so extrovert. Some people love quietly. But the gift is for each of us, in our own particular vocation, our individual life.

When you get home in a quiet moment, close your eyes, open your hands and think of that gift coming to you and simply ask God to let you receive it and know it in all its fullness.

Amen

© PCC St Martin's and St Paul's Canterbury 2008 - 2010