Virtual Worship - 31 May - Pentecost

Service Sheet (pdf)

Call to worship

The Lord is here! His Spirit is with us
God declares: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Song: StF 385/MP 241/SF 188 Holy Spirit, we welcome you

Readings:

Genesis 2:7 – “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

John 20:19-23, which includes “And with that [Jesus] breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

Just as God breathed life into the man and he came alive, so Jesus breathed the Spirit into his disciples and gave them a new life, a life with a new dimension, a spiritual dimension. That new aspect of life would help them see beyond the physical to the spiritual, to see where God was at work, to see signs and look beyond those signs to what they were foretelling, to see deeper into people’s lives and their needs.

Acts 2:1-6

The Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma both mean Spirit, or wind, or breath – but they don’t mean air, even though it’s the air that is blown in the wind and in our breath. That tells us something about the Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus that the wind blows wherever it pleases, and so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8). So is it the movement that makes it ruach? The Spirit is active, moving, lifting, blowing away the cobwebs, carrying, moving the leaves, blowing off the dead ones, sometimes taking new leaves away with it too. Sometimes it feels like a good thing, a nice refreshing breeze on a warm day; sometimes it makes it hard to walk where we had planned to go, and we can find ourselves pulled or pushed in a different direction. We might even be carried there.

Here is one of Roy Lorrain Smith’s drawings for you to reflect on. You can see from the ripples of the water that it’s breezy. Look closely at the trees and take some time with the questions that follow. You may choose to come back to this again at a later stage.

• What sort of a tree do you feel like: Evergreen or deciduous? Tall or bushy? Majestic or mossy (better than mousey)? (Judges 9:7-15)
• How do you get on with your neighbours, as these trees must in their forest: Dominate? Compete? Parasitise? Co-operate? (1 Cor 12:4-7)
• Do you have your roots in the Spirit, like these trees by the water? (Psalm 1:3)
• Can you feel the Spirit’s movement? (John 3:8)
• How do you respond to the Spirit’s prompting breath? (Acts 16:6-7)
• How hard do you find it to know what to sway with and what to resist? (James 1:6-8)

For the younger ones: Get the craft materials out!

On a large sheet of paper, draw a tree trunk. Use brown paint, pen or crayon to colour it in. Then draw the branches as they keep splitting into smaller branches and twigs, and colour them brown. Take some green paper and cut out leaf shapes. Fold over a small part at the bottom of a leaf, and glue this to your tree, leaving most of the leaf to stick out from the paper. When your tree is complete, the leaves will be able to move in the breeze! Just as the leaves move and you can see the breeze blow through them, so you can see God’s Spirit at work in people who love him.

Reflection

We all have God’s breath of life, and the Spirt is at work around us before we come to faith, through people’s prayers for us and through the grace of God that is there before we are ready to respond. When we put our faith in God, the Spirit is then at work in us in a new way, because we are aware of her and ready to respond to her (I use the feminine because both ruach and pneuma are feminine nouns). But the Spirit comes in power at certain times, and Pentecost was one of them.

At Pentecost there was a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, and tongues of fire that rested on each of the disciples and they were filled with the Spirit and began to speak in tongues so that all the people gathered in Jerusalem were able to hear them praising God in their own languages.

We are not gathered in a crowd; we are all at home. And yet we are reaching beyond our homes to many others. A carer came to visit someone as they were about to read through their weekly service, and the lady invited the carer to read it with her. My sister-in-law contacted me and asked me what I was doing in lockdown, and I told her about the reflections and Quiet Day material on the website, and she told me that they would be helpful when she was having a wobbly time. People watch our YouTube services online and see us worshipping; they hear what is important to us, they stand at the edge of the crowd and listen in, and the Spirit is at work. The crowds are gathering to hear what is going on, but they are online, or visiting people’s homes, or present in ones and twos. Praise God for them, and the work that is going on all around us!

We cannot see the Spirit. We cannot see the wind. But the wind shakes the trees and we can see the results, the movement. If you can get out and walk, listen to the trees and the sounds they make as the wind blows through them. Each has a different sound. And each one is needed, so sing your songs of praise that the Spirit puts in your heart; look for opportunities where the Spirit is at work; be ready with words of explanation to anyone who asks you, knowing that the Spirit has prompted those questions; and wait for the blessing and the growth that God will bring!

Prayers of intercession

Pray for the Spirit to blow into your life, into the life of the church, into the life of the nation, into the life of the world, to blow away what has been harmful and blow in the things that are of God.

Pray for those who feel blown in the wind: for people whose livelihoods have been affected; for those who are short of money; for people trying to work in new ways; for those who work in shops and supply us with food; for those who deliver our letters and parcels; for our healthcare workers and carers; for parents and teachers as they try to do the right thing for their children. Pray for those schools that will be opening up to children tomorrow.

Pray for those seeking to harness the power of the wind: those learning to work in new ways or setting up new businesses; those using new technologies to enable new ways of worship to reach beyond the immediate neighbourhood and touch the lives of those looking in from the edge of the crowd; pray for those who watch, that they might come to commitment. 

Pray for those needing the gentle breeze, to scatter seeds for future growth. Pray for the seeds that are being planted at this time, that they will come to fruition. Pray for us, that we will be ready for the harvest, and for the spiritual care of those who come to faith at this time.

Let us join with all Christians in homes up and down the land, and across the world, as we say together the Lord’s Prayer.

Prayer of praise from Roots:

Who can dance for God?
Anyone!
Who can sing to God?
Anyone!
Who can play for God?
Anyone!
Who can serve God?
Anyone!
Who belongs to God?
Anyone!
Anyone?
Everyone! Amen

Song: HP 777/StF 391/MP 488/SF 407 O breath of life come sweeping through us

Blessing

Let’s bless one another, those near and those far; those filled with the Spirit and those who feel their flame is flickering; those whose faith is certain and those who are not so sure, as we say aloud the words of the Grace and know that our voices join together in blessing:

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore, Amen.

THE WIND AMONG THE TREES

I sat among the trees once. And a wind was blowing.
Quite a strong wind; I could hear it in the trees –
  rushing, rushing. A lovely sound, soothing to my ears.
I stopped what I was writing and began to listen.

I remembered that Jesus said that the Holy Spirit was like
  the wind. You could hear it; see its effect.
But you couldn’t see the wind itself. You couldn’t see
  where it was coming from, nor going to.
And I wondered, “Are you showing me something about your Spirit, Lord?”
So I sat, and I listened, and I watched.

They were big, old trees where I sat.
Tall they were, in an ancient wood, well-branched, shapely.
Beech, grey bark against the clear blue of the sky.
And leaves: they were leaves that knew the wind;
  leaves that let the wind know them.
They looked, like beach leaves look in a wind: full of life –
  and with a certain beauty all their own.

I watched the great crowns of those great trees.
I watched the branches sway and the leaves turn.
And I saw that they didn’t all move together:
  they moved as a gust caught one, and let another go;
  a sway here; and there, a swing, gently, back; with the leaves settling;
  while still another took up the game afresh and came to life.

I thought about the boughs of all those great trees
  not moving all as one,
  and realised, that’s how it is with us.
When the Spirit blows through us: he gusts,
  and each breath grasps a branch here, or there.
And just because we don’t all move together,
  does not mean the breath is any the less from God.
Back there among the trees my eyes were upwards,
  towards the tall branches.
It was there, after all, that the actions was.
“Is it so with us?” I wondered.
“Is it the reaching upwards that catches the Spirit?”

Now, hardly had that thought suggested itself,
  when powerfully, bushes along the ride side,
  low down, mere shrubs and seedlings,
  they rocked and swayed, as a strong draught
  swept down from the height and along the path.

“It’s not just the tall; it’s not just the great,” I thought.
The wind blows where it wills,
  and the Spirit blows where he wills –
  certainly among the tall and mature,
  who have known the gales of decades,
but also on the forest floor where the youngsters are,
  and the lowly, the dwarfs, the misshapen,
  who never could make it to the top.
So it is with everyone who is brought to life by the Spirit.

Then it seemed, in my wood, that the breathing of the
  wind eased. Rushing ceased; movement stilled.
And in the peace, across the road, among the larches,
  I heard a different sound.
Same wind: among trees: but a new sound.
Larches are different – they have needles, not leaves –
  and the needles play a finer, higher, rarer music.

Theirs is also music of trees responding to the wind.
No less music for being different.
Only another movement in the wind-wood symphony.

“Then I must never imagine,” came the thought,
  “that my kind of tune
  is the only sound pleasing to the ear of my Lord.”
He sends the Spirit: the Spirit blows where he wills.
And there comes the sound – of response
  among all those brought to life, by the Spirit.

Roy Lorrain-Smith
First written 13 May 1989
Slightly revised 23 October 2007