O Heavenly King, the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, who are present everywhere, filling all things, Treasury of Good and Giver of Life, come and dwell in us, cleanse us of every stain, and save our souls, O Good One.

Sometimes Pentecost is referred to as the birthday of the church, and no one could deny that this day is the one where we see the followers of the risen and ascended Jesus gathered in one place and enthused, empowered, equipped by the Spirit to continue his work of reconciliation and transformation. But the words of the prayer I have just said suggest that Pentecost has a somewhat wider reach than the life of the church in any narrow sense. These words, from an ancient prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit, point to the one who fills all things, who gives all life, who saves, cleanses, abides, is present far beyond the limits of the church in its institutional or communal reality, though all these things must surely be true of the church as well. But the work of the Holy Spirit, the life-giving life of the Holy Spirit, is free, boundless and generous; beyond our grasp and certainly beyond our control.

The traditional icon of this feast of Pentecost, which you can see on your screens now, tells us something about the realm of the Spirit’s operation. At first glance, this image seems to bring the focus very clearly onto the gathered church, seated here in a semi-circle, with the apostles receiving the gift of the Spirit in a tongue of fire. There are some very interesting features of this icon, which may not be obvious on first viewing. First of all, this is not a scene from history. There is no attempt to recreate the scene described in today’s reading from Acts because the 12 here are not just the disciples called by Jesus, but also the 4 Evangelists and Paul. This is not about mere events, but the eternal reality of the Spirit’s inspiration on all who follow in the way of Christ. Another key feature of this image is its central absence. Right in the place where we would expect to see an enthroned figure, the teacher, there is a gap. In the middle of the semi-circle is a space which is unoccupied, or, rather, a space that is occupied by Christ who is no longer present in historical form, but present now in his abundant openness, his cosmic reality filling all things.

But most curious of all is the strange figure right in the centre of the foreground. In a dark space at the heart of the image is an old king, wearied by time, holding out a sheet in which is held 12 scrolls, symbolic of the teaching of the 12 apostles seated around him. He is Cosmos, the world, eager to hear a word of life, desperate to be awakened into new life. He longs to hear words of release, of forgiveness, of healing. He longs to be freed from the darkness that surrounds him, animated by a new spirit of truth and enlightenment. He is the longing of every oppressed, weary, fearful or constrained creature who reaches out towards the light.

So what does the Holy Spirit offer to this Cosmos who holds out his hands and asks for a gift?

At Easter, you may have heard me complaining about the paucity of images of the resurrection in our churches and I’m tempted to complain once more about the relative lack of images of the Holy Spirit. But I don’t need to complain too much this time, because we have a very powerful image of the Spirit right here at the focal point of the church. Above my head are 7 oil lamps which symbolise the gifts of the Spirit of God. Traditionally, these are the gifts enumerated by St Paul in Galatians: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith meekness, self-control. But the gifts of the Spirit are not restricted to this or any other list! God pours out gifts upon the whole earth, to be embraced by any who are open to receiving them, gifts beyond our imagining, beyond our limitations. And if the Pentecost icon depicts weary Cosmos holding out his hands to receive gifts for the better living of this life, what gifts might we seek today? What would bring life to this world of ours at this time?

These gifts may not be spectacular, and they may not be what we would normally think of as charismatic gifts, but they are the most precious gifts of all. Let me suggest just a few. First is the gift of wisdom, Sophia. This is insight into the true nature of things, which is their divine nature. This is the insight that refuses to consign anything to mere utility or, worse, expendability. Wisdom reveals the God-breathed nature of all things and demands that we see worth in everything that breathes.

Next, this wisdom leads to the gift of discernment. This is the subtle gift of knowing how best to decide, how to judge a situation and respond in such a way as to benefit the common good, how to choose a path that is godly, life-giving and generous. It is the gift of a courageous and constant commitment to truthfulness and is much needed in our times.

Then there is the gift of understanding. The gift to see life from other perspectives, to see beyond our prejudices and see that God is present beneath the surface of things, always at the heart of the matter.

Then there is the gift that allows these others to work freely – the gift of inner peace. This is the gift that dispels the clouds from our true heart, our true centre, so that we may see clearly. It is the gift of quiet, of simplicity, of stillness, of inner stability; the gift to go beyond the inner turmoil or anxiety that may prevent us from acting freely and truthfully. This is the spiritual gift that is granted to any who find a way to sit still and listen, just like those disciples seated in the Pentecost icon.

I am not suggesting that these spiritual gifts, so desperately needed by weary Cosmos, are only available from the church. The Spirit is not confined. But they are given to those who follow in the way of Christ and who are willing to receive them, not for their own edification, but for the sake of the world. Wisdom, discernment, understanding, peace – these are not badges of honour but gifts to be received humbly and offered humbly, to be nurtured patiently and exercised thoughtfully. They matter now more than ever, so let us seek them with all our hearts. May God the Holy Spirit grant them to us that we may live lives that are full, free and gracious.

O Heavenly King, the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, who are present everywhere, filing all things, Treasury of Good and Giver of Life, come and dwell in us, cleanse us of every stain, and save our souls, O Good One.

Scottish Episcopalians are generally pretty chuffed to have a proper epiclesis in the Eucharistic anaphora. By ‘proper’, of course, we mean that it makes it clear that the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is the work of the Spirit, that the Spirit is also invoked upon the people and that the prayer of invocation is placed after the anamnesis and oblation rather than before the words of institution as in most Western rites. This means that the implied theology of our Eucharistic rites is closer to Orthodox than Western Catholic emphases, though I don’t think the gulf is as wide as we might imagine post-liturgical movement.

What is distinctive, though, is that our more recent Liturgy (1982) does not necessarily see the work of the Spirit upon those for whom he is invoked as being dependent on the reception of the consecrated elements in the way that our earlier liturgies may have implied. At the very least, these earlier forms focussed on the effects of God’s Spirit on those who receive. In the ’82 rite, the Spirit ‘kindles us’ with the fire of God’s love and ‘renews us’ for the service of God’s Kingdom because we have prayed for that Spirit to descend upon us and because God is faithful in granting such a prayer. However, this insight is not new and I’m grateful for the insights of Lev Gillet in respect of the Orthodox liturgy, where he insists that God can give spiritual gifts to those who never receive the sacramental signs (Orthodox Spirituality, London 1945). The Eucharist is not magic, conjouring up the presence of Christ through a set incantation, but an expression in time and in a particular place of what cannot be contained by time or space. The Eucharist is a door through which we pass into the cosmic work of renewal that is the outpouring of the Father’s love through the working of the Spirit, who makes Christ present to us.

To have the invocation of the Spirit at the heart of our paradigmatic Christian prayer is to recognise the universal nature of what we see in the death and resurrection of Christ. The whole world is reconciled to God in the paschal mystery, not just the lives of believers. Nonetheless, this work of renewal does concern us in our own particularity – it’s not just ‘out there’. Indeed, our point of contact with this universal mystery is the renewal of our own lives through the working of that same Spirit. I suspect there are many ways in which the particular and the universal connect. Among them, surely, is the necessity for inner transformation before any true and lasting change can happen at a communal level. But the activity of God’s life-giving Spirit cannot be limited by the extent to which we are individually transformed. That’s why we don’t just pray for ourselves. Life in the Spirit is a matter of ‘joining in’ with what the life-giving God is doing.

 

Five years ago, Pope Francis issued a most remarkable text, an encyclical unlike any that precedes it because it is addressed to all people of goodwill and because it confronts a matter of grave concern, which is the wellbeing of the creation itself. Laudato Si’ is also remarkable in taking as its starting point that great hymn of St Francis, the Canticle of the Creatures, with its opening words as the title of the encyclical in the medieval Italian of the troubadour rather than the formal Latin of the academy. He has invited people everywhere to reflect on this text over the last week and, if you’ve not yet had the chance to read it, it’s easily available for free online. It’s far more than just a call to action in respect of the steps we all must take to protect the integrity of the creation. It’s also, and perhaps above all, a call to see the creation differently, not as stuff to be consumed by us greedy humans but as an intricate whole of which we are a part, a vibrant, living system that proclaims the love of its Creator, and invites the grateful praise of its articulate creatures.

If all of this seems like an intrusion into the liturgical cycle, just as it approaches its Paschal climax at the great Festival of Pentecost, I would like to suggest that it unquestionably belongs here, at this pivotal point between Ascension and Pentecost. In the Ascension of Christ, we may appear to be telling a story of his being taken away from the earth, but what is actually going on is rather different. Far from indicating a removal from the created realm, Jesus’ ascension reveals the nature of his presence in the world. He may not be obviously available to our usual way of recognising another person in the narrative flow of history, but his presence is no less real. Indeed, his ascension reveals that he fills all things. John’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus must go from his disciples in order to be present with them and within them in a different way. But it’s not really a new way. God’s creative presence in his creation was there from the start.

I think we’ve got too used to thinking of creation as a process of production – you make something and then forget about it, letting it do its own thing. You get the stuff together, make it into something else, and set it on its course. But biblical insight offers a much more dynamic picture than that. Think of that most eloquent Psalm of creation, Ps 104, which is recited every single evening in the Orthodox service of Vespers. In verses 29 and 30 it says:

You hide your face, they are dismayed; you take away their breath, they die, returning to the dust from which they came. You send forth your spirit, and they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.

Creation is not a machine. It is alive, and its very life is dependent on the sustaining love of God who breathes his life into it from moment to moment. God’s very presence energises all that lives. Nothing is inert, nothing is static, the whole creation hums with the energies of God, charged, as Gerard Manley Hopkins said, with the grandeur of God. He went on to speak of the Holy Ghost brooding over the curve of the earth with warm breast and bright wings. The earth lives because the living God sustains it in life.

What the Ascension of Christ reveals to us is that this loving, sustaining presence is none other than the presence of the one who healed the sick, welcomed the outcast and dined with sinners. There is, then, an intimate connection between our love for the marginalised and the suffering, and our love for the pulsing, energetic, diversity of creation. God, who is present sustaining all life, is God who binds up wounds, God whose wounds we bind when we tend the needs of the weakest. We care for creation because God is in it. We care for creation because God is in us. We cannot be indifferent to life. We care because we love, because we desire the fullness of life for all.

If climate catastrophe is to be averted, it is unlikely that we will achieve what must be done through political calculations alone. Without passionate love for creation, will we truly find the motivation to change the way we live? Without a true conversion towards the very stuff of the earth, will be able to move away from seeing ourselves as consumers and begin to see ourselves as brothers and sisters of all that lives? This current crisis of a pandemic, caused by our carelessness with the creation, offers an opportunity to refresh our awareness of the intimate connections we share with all that lives, and to do so with a deepened compassion. Our lockdown has caused us to look again at what we really need to live well and to appreciate the small things. Our awareness of the sufferings of others has caused us to see again the impact of our actions on others. Our sense of fragility has opened up to us the opportunity to delight in the freshness of each new day, the vibrancy of each budding flower or passing bird. And at this time when we look in vain towards heaven for the ascended Christ, we are invited to open our eyes and see him in every living molecule. As we await the coming of the Spirit, we embrace life with every breath and give thanks for the one who breathes it into us. ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, how great you are, clothed in majesty and honour, wrapped in light as with a robe!’

 

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing used this endearing phrase in his free rendering of Pseudo-Dionysius’ Mystical Theology. In his more famous work, the author advised that ‘no one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge; but each one, in a different way, can grasp him fully through love’ (ch. 4, Bill Johnston’s translation). He invited us to be at home in the darkness of the cloud that seems to exist between our mind and God, feeling nothing but a ‘naked intent towards God’. It is, of course, the central paradox of mystical theology that so many words are used in the attempt to describe our reaching out towards the unknowable God who first reaches out towards us. Even the great ‘doctor de la nada’, St John of the Cross, indulged in a great many complex and technical words in his account of the ascent of a mountain whose way and end is nothing, nothing, nothing. Surely, the wise course would simply be to say nothing about the One of whom nothing can be said.

Appealing as this may seem to weary theologians and exhausted preachers, I think it simply won’t do. This is not because we can ever fully grasp with our minds that which may only be grasped through love (here meaning self-transcending ‘naked intent’) but because it is a very real temptation to say wrong or unhelpful things about God, even if we must retain a certain hesitation about saying anything at all. More than that, it seems to me to be a very noble thing to seek to understand that which is most important in life, humbly admitting at the outset that there are limitations to such an enterprise. Of course, the work of theology will always be something of a vertiginous looking into the abyss of the unknown, but should we fear to do so, once we have admitted our proper sense of hesitation?

Unsurprisingly, it is often the theology that is expressed without such hesitation that is the most dangerous – theology that confidently claims God for our own causes or that sets out a simple formula whose reliable output is salvation. The response to this, surely, is not to abandon the project altogether but to do it better, more carefully, more generously, more mystically. Mysticism is not an excuse not to think but an invitation to think the unthinkable as far as one can before falling back into the silence from which the exploration sprang. It is quite appropriate to recognise the absurdity of trying to say anything about God, but let’s not give up trying.

I raised a question in my sermon yesterday which I didn’t then address (you can only do so much in one sermon!). I used an example of religious exclusivism to ask a question about the nature of truth, suggesting that, for Jesus, truth was not so much a system of thought as his own embodied way of living. Truth is found in living as he lived – by dying to self. The question I left hanging was whether Christians consider that those of other faiths could ‘come to the Father’ while remaining within their own faith tradition. To put it in traditional terms, is there salvation outside the church?

This is a far more complex question than it seems, hence my decision to leave it alone in a sermon that was really about other questions! For a start, we would need to ask whether a Christian notion of salvation would even make any sense to people who belong to that other faith. Many religions see that there is a problem at the heart of being human, but may diagnose that problem differently and, therefore, propose a different remedy. If, as a Buddhist, you see the problem in terms of suffering caused by our cravings and a false view of the world, then release from suffering comes from an awakening to our true nature, not through forgiveness of sins. Even this example is complex when you begin to explore how these two approaches, Christian and Buddhist, may in fact offer different angles on a similar problem, and how, even within Buddhism, there are many accounts of how this operates (through disciplined effort? through invocation of the Buddha Amida? through sudden awakening?).

Of course, some people do not see any kind of problem here at all: live and let live, each religion is truthful on its own terms (an approach often called ‘pluralist’). The problem is that Christianity does make claims that are universal in their scope – ‘In Christ, God was reconciling the world [kosmos] to himself’ (2 Cor 5:19) etc. To take a pluralist line would require a significant modification of this kind of claim, so the exclusivist approach does at least have the merit of consistency. What it lacks, however, is the sense that God and God’s truth may be somewhat bigger than our capacity to grasp them, or the sense that God may be free to use other means to draw people to himself.

One kind of approach that seeks to honour both the universal claims of Christianity and its humility in the face of religious diversity is often called ‘inclusivist’, though these terms, like all attempts at taxonomy in complex realms, have their limitations. One way of describing an inclusivist approach would be to say that God’s action in Christ is far greater than our ability to describe it and that, in God’s own economy, God is able to ‘save’ Muslims as Muslims, Hindus as Hindus through the cosmically significant work of incarnation and redemption in Christ. The risk here, of course, is the suggestion that good Muslims are just good Christians without knowing it. A more nuanced approach might be to say that, for Christians, we see the pattern of God’s salvific activity in Christ (the pattern of self-transcending love) and that this pattern may well be present in other faiths and expressed in very different ways. Additionally, if we think that those of other faiths may be ‘saved’ through the exercise of that faith, then, as Christians, we must believe that it is God who is doing the saving and, as Christians, we can only describe God in trinitarian terms and, therefore, Christ and the Spirit must be active in that saving activity. This approach could only ever be a Christian account of the theology of how God might work through other faiths and any respectful dialogue would be open to hear that faith’s own account of how human beings reach their ultimate fulfillment. In other words, an inclusivist theology of religions is an internal discourse for Christians but, in a subtle form, might be capable of opening Christians up to the possibility of divine action through the exercise of another religion.

What about pluralism? Surely this is a more satisfactory approach which respects the equality and distinctiveness of religions without trying to see one through the lens of another? I think it has much to commend it but is also not without its challenges. Is truth only ever relative? Are there no categories for discerning the truthfulness or otherwise of any religious claim, whether within or outwith our own faith? Might it also limit our understanding of God, making him only ever a ‘tribal’ rather than universal deity? I do think it is possible to describe a more subtle pluralist approach that, again, expresses humility in the face of what we cannot know and assumes that divine activity transcends our categories (but would we then say that God is active even in those who are not theists? Is that not back to an inclusivist approach?). And there are certainly pluralists who are willing to work at some means of discerning both good and harmfulness in religions, thus refusing a lazily relative account of truthfulness.

All of this is a work-in-progress for me, but as a Christian, I think I find myself drawn to an account of other faiths that fully respects them on their own terms, yet admits the possibility that our Christian account of God’s saving action in Christ is partial, and that there is, indeed, a cosmic truth revealed in the shape of divine self-giving love as seen in Christ which transcends religion. To approach dialogue in this way makes it possible that, among other things, we might learn more about Christ from those who are not Christians. It would not be for me to speculate what the non-Christian partners in that dialogue might take from it. If that makes me an ‘inclusivist’, rather than a ‘pluralist’, then so be it, but I’m not too concerned about labels!

When I worked as a hospital chaplain, there was a period of a couple of weeks when the prayer room used by Muslim patients and staff was out of action while it was being renovated. During that time, we agreed that space would be made at the back of the chapel, which was just next door, for Muslims to use for prayer, with an appropriate indication of the direction of prayer. This arrangement went pretty smoothly and I must say that I felt that there was something very precious in celebrating mass at the altar in the chapel while Muslim colleagues prayed in the same space. Each group was directing its prayer towards God in its accustomed way, side-by-side, respectfully making space for each other.

The one objection I saw to this arrangement came in a fairly low-key, yet pointed form. Someone had left an open bible next to the area set aside for Muslim prayers and it was open at today’s Gospel passage, indicating the words; ‘I am the way, the truth and life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’ The objector had, presumably, read this text in a way it has often been read – as a claim to Christian exclusivity, a monopoly on truth possessed by those who sign up to its propositions. In its more generous form, this kind of exclusive claim might be made with a degree of humility, but it often comes with a kind of self-satisfaction in having backed the winning side. This kind of thinking depends on an understanding of truth as a static body of thought, a coherent and immutable system requiring our assent. Those who withhold assent are outside the system and therefore do not gain its prize – access to the Father.

I recognise that I have put this position rather starkly and don’t mean to belittle those who hold to it. As I said, many who hold an exclusivist position on Christianity’s place in relation to other religious paths do so with humility and with a genuine desire for the wellbeing and eternal salvation of those who differ from them. But I fear that this position does not represent well what Jesus was saying. I fear that it diminishes something rather central to Jesus’ teaching.

Last week, we heard Jesus describing himself as the door to the sheepfold and I suggested that we might see this image in terms of thresholds where a life-giving encounter takes place. And in this chapter of John’s gospel, we have a similar kind of image. The first of Jesus’ words to describe himself is as a ‘way’, a path, and I think the next two rather depend on how we understand this. In speaking of himself in this way, Jesus says that the life-giving truth he embodies is personal, and that it is dynamic. His way to true life does not reside in a system of thought, but is embodied in himself, in the way he lived his life, in the way he approached his death, in the way his death was no defeat but a pathway to fuller life. The way he lived his life was to empty himself of all but love – a dying to self that is the only route to full life. And it is dynamic because it is a way that is only revealed by walking it. Truth unfolds as we go along. The Christian life, I think, is not so much something that we adopt as a metaphysical lens through which we then interpret the world, but nothing other than the very living of our lives in the pattern of Jesus’ life – in his way. Don’t get me wrong – I’m quite partial to a bit of metaphysics, but the Christian life is so much more than that.

There’s a wonderful Spanish pilgrim’s palindrome that goes ‘la ruta nos aporto otro paso natural’ – the path provides the natural next step. So if Christ offers himself as a way and calls us to walk in it, then the first, last and constant thing we must do is go. The resurrection accounts are full of this: go to the tomb, go to Galilee, go on the road to Emmaus and go back again, go out into the lake. Encounters with the renewed life of the risen Christ only happen when we get up and go, and that going will always entail a going to a place we don’t yet know. Jesus is met on the way. You see how far this is from seeing Christ as a static body of truth over which we might gain some mastery? The Christian life always entails a fairly substantial helping of not knowing. The other word for that is faith.

We are living through a time when everyone wants to know what’s next for us – when will the lockdown end; when will we have a vaccine; when will we get back to church? And there’s no shortage of people happy to speculate answers. People are also asking important and difficult questions about the future of our economic and political life, the future shape of our church life, the future of our relationship with the planet. However, anxious speculation can have a paralysing effect on us. Jesus said; ‘let not your hearts be troubled.’ We cannot know the future but we can choose to live the future we would want to see right now. It seems to me that Jesus invites us to live life without certainty, but to live it anyway, and to do so in the way that he did; generously, selflessly, gratefully, trustingly.