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SERMONS Sean Gilbert — Pentecost 2008 The call of beauty summons our voice to speak… Quite a number of years ago now, Jurgen Moltmann – one of the most influential theologians of our time – wrote a seminal work entitled The Spirit of Life. And in it, he refreshingly argued that when it comes to considering the Gift of the Spirit, the Christian Church is not actually talking about a different spirit to that which gives a baby its first breath or the sea its currents and waves or the wind its extremes of calm and ferocity. No, it is more a matter of awareness and fullness of experience, he said. A fullness, that at heart is born of a received love; one that is so all embracing and empowering, that the world then looks different somehow; that the beauty and intimacy recognized out there, resonates with, and calls out, the beauty and intimacy within. The miracle of Pentecost, therefore, being our yielding to a self-perception not based in criticism, not based on false humility, nor controlled by other negative or limiting voices at all. Rather, a self loved in its entirety by God, therefore set free to love life in its entirety. That sacred, intimate place of “eruption”, of change, of hope and passion within. Now that is not to say that we can then afford to romanticise or sentimentalise the Pentecost experience. Sometimes staying put with what is familiar and routine, is far easier than “listening to what beckons us”, as Jean Louis Chrétien would suggest. Sometimes the negative self perception, the denial or inner worth and beauty, paves its own way by the means we relate to others, maintaining needed status quos. Or hiding away from the real and pressing issues we might otherwise dream about, but not consciously face in the clear light of day. In other words, the spirited, creative life has its costs, it dangers no less, something so powerfully demonstrated in the film our Pentecost Discussion Series will be based in and around, “As it is in Heaven”. For a woman caught up in domestic violence, yet yearning to sing of freedom against the wishes of her bully-coward of a husband, the choice of decision was not easy at all. And whilst this horrible experience may not be our world, the forces of resistance, the voices, which would seek to negate or temper our own unique expression of worth and purpose out there and in here, are just as real. And perhaps the more respectable and sensible they sound, the more difficult they are to deal with anyway. Mary Oliver says it this way in her striking poem, The Journey: One day you finally knew This is the paradox, indeed the rare Gift of Pentecost that somehow a divine love and presence finds its way to us - and with us - and it is not an imposition at all. “ My yoke is easy”, said Jesus. In other words, it dovetails or meshes with all that we think is important and most real. For this is truly the experience of liberation, of being freed to become, so as to contribute in the most authentic and honest ways possible within society. On the surface of things (maybe) a self-serving path, but in reality a truly self-giving one. “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water”, cried Jesus. in the market place; A wonderful metaphor for the spirited and creative (dangerous) life. Fertile, nourishing, sustaining and compassionate. All the things we would hope our lives may be in relation to each other and to the world. So friends, on this day, may we dare believe in this hopeful and spirited way and may our lives continue to be eruptions of love, kindness and goodness in the market places of our living and making. Amen
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