Today is Pentecost. It’s generally considered the birthday of the church. But because we have a baptism later this morning, I’ve been wondering about whether it’s more appropriate to call Pentecost the baptism of the church. And then I find myself coming back to the concept of new years, so I want this morning to briefly unpick all three images as we think about Pentecost.

Firstly, the new year. As I said at Advent, new years fall all over the calendar, for different things. In the church it’s Advent, liturgically, but of course you could make an argument for Christmas or for Easter. Or indeed for Pentecost.
A new beginning for the disciples on whom the Spirit fell that first Pentecost, a very new beginning.

So perhaps a good time for us to think of as a new year, a time for taking stock, for making or re-making promises. As we renew our own faith and trust in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through the Easter period, Pentecost brings us the opportunity to renew our corporate faith and trust.

As the Spirit spread throughout the assembled disciples at Pentecost, they were enabled to speak and understand different tongues. Today as the Spirit breathes on us anew, filling us with passion for a God coming to abide with us forever and energise our lives, we seek to listen and to understand those who speak a different language to us.

We seek to hear those who speak a language born of more…

John 20.19-31

In the name of the risen and living God, +Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

The other day, a young woman arrived at church on her way to her mother and sister’s graves in the cemetery and ‘on the off-chance’ came to the door. Now the doors were as closed and as black and as forbidding as they normally are, but she got lucky, because the door was actually unlocked because it was prayer group, so she could get in.

She was drawn to us in her need, and we were here and able to respond to that need, for a few quiet moments in church, a candle and someone to pray for her.

She got lucky. You might say. Or actually you might say that when she was in need, Jesus more…

Evensong for Easter Day, service attended by the bereaved.

Isaiah 43.1-7

In the name of the risen and living God, +Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

Welcome. Or welcome back. And I choose “welcome back” carefully.  Some of you are regular worshippers at this service, or at this church, some have a family connection which stretches back generations and is part of the story of who you are. Some of you are visiting for, if not the first time, the first time since we carried a loved one of yours in to – and out of – church at their funeral. To all of you, welcome back.

Perhaps this seems a strange time to some to celebrate – or commemorate – those friends and family who we have lost. Many churches hold services for the bereaved in November, at All Souls day. But here at St Mary’s, we host a moment of remembering today, Easter Day, when we also say not only welcome back to the decoration of our church which has been missing in the plain-ness of Lent, but welcome back most of all, to the Christ we saw crucified on Good Friday, the Christ we still – no passive watching only – the Christ we still crucify today with our turning away from God’s invitation to love one another, to serve the poor and the weak, to care for the lost and the lonely.

It is in the Resurrection on Easter Day that we most noticeably recognise the hope that threads through our Christian faith. The hope with which we watch more…