8th June 2025
The Promise of Power
Many years ago, I was leading a holiday club in Rochester with a theme of superheroes. I remember my vicar asking a 10-year old in her group what he thought the best thing about Jesus was. The boy's answer: "He has powers". As we continue to reflect on Jesus' promise of the Holy Spirit to his disciples, we remember that this is a promise not just of presence and of peace, but of power. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8-9)
When that power arrives, ten days later, it's a dramatic scene. Inside the upper room, the gathered disciples hear a sound "like the blowing of a violent wind". Then they see something like divided tongues, "as of fire", which descend and rest upon each person. Then they burst out into speech, a volley of sound in multiple languages. The noise, the visual and sensory impact of the flames must have been immense.
And it should not have been unexpected. In the first few verses of the whole Bible, at the beginning of Genesis, we read that a "wind" from God, the "breath" of God, in Hebrew "ruach", hovered over the face of the waters. In many places of the Old Testament - to Abraham, to Moses, to Isaiah - God reveals himself in flames of fire. And Jesus, the Word of God, is God's communication with the world. The Spirit who falls on the disciples in the upper room at Pentecost is none other than the Spirit of the Triune God himself - the Spirit of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all life on earth.
At Pentecost, we celebrate that God, in his love, has not left us to work things out on our own. God has empowered us by filling us with the gift of his own Spirit, the Spirit who is all that God is, the Spirit who reveals God in the noise of a rushing wind, in the dramatic flames of fire.
One of my favourite liturgical moments of the year comes at the end of the Pentecost service. We light small candles from the Easter candle which has symbolised the presence of the risen Christ with us. Then, as we blow out the Easter candle, we commit ourselves to taking the light of Christ into the world's dark places. We do not do so alone. We do so in the power of the Spirit who is all that God is. We do so in the presence, peace and power of the Risen Christ.
