The Spirit Of God

The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its ‘spirit’ because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and the Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.

This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the ‘Spirit’ of God. Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there is a reason why that must be so. In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him. He is always acting through you. If you think of the Father as something ‘out there’, in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing by your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards. God is love, and that love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and the Son.
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

Today¹ we are celebrating the feast of Pentecost. A regular feature of Pentecost tends to be a talk based on the Acts reading, Joel’s prophecy and tongues of fire.

And so, I am going to talk about our Gospel reading from John; where Jesus us reassuring the disciples that this is not the end of their relationship with Him. They would not be abandoned or left helpless as Jesus was going to the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be with them … and us.

Jesus said, “Believe in God, believe also in me”. This is a fundamental relationship of trust.

Jesus graciously left the gift of His peace. He said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you”.

True peace is not derived from circumstances, people or things; true peace is derived from Jesus. His peace is peculiarly His to give as He purchased it with His precious blood. Jesus was the substitution for a perishing world. Jesus was commissioned to bring peace to mankind.

Jesus is The Way!

To know Jesus is to know both the way and the destination, which is communion with the Father. In order to complete His atonement for our sin Jesus had to leave and return to the Father. But Jesus leaving is linked to the role of the Holy Spirit – the Helper Jesus had referred to previously.

Jesus was returning to the Father to prepare a place for us.

Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life!

Jesus in His life, ministry, actions, everything that He did showed us GOd. Now it is time for Him to return to the Father, He promises the companionship of the Holy Spirit so that the disciples, and us, will be able to continue in Jesus’s way of doing things.

We can only understand and know the Holy Spirit if we know and understand the unity of the other two Persons of the Trinity – the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is often thought of as this bond of love between Father and Son.

Jesus describes the Holy Spirit a “another Advocate to be with you forever”. The love of the Father and His desire to be reconciled with His creation is what led to Jesus’s incarnation in the first place and is the reason for God sending the Spirit to us; God is our Advocate – the one who is by our side, no matter what, no matter which persona of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) it is.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and will be in us – not just by our side.

This Spirit is in us, united with us, the way the Father and the Son are united in each other. This bond with the Spirit enables the Spirit to be our guide in life just as Jesus did the will of God His Father.

The Holy Spirit is our guiding light – our tongue of fire – if the Spirit dwells in us.

But because it is the guiding light for those in whom it dwells, the world cannot receive the Spirit. The world refuses to see the Spirit of Truth alongside them, tapping them on the shoulder with a call to repentance. They do not want to return to being God’s original and beautiful masterpiece. They only see their own gain and not the loveliness of God.

If we can see it in Jesus, if we can see that the Holy Spirit is by our side and in our lives. If we can recognise the real truth and call upon our God to help us do the things He would have us do, then we will know the presence of God within us and His guiding light before us – our tongue of Spirit fire.

8th June 2025 ↩︎

“Don’t You Think She Looks Tired?”

Those Doctor Who aficionados in the room will recognise that quote. There is a point! The Doctor brings down the Prime Minister with just those words because she made one mistake. But, and here’s the thing, when the Earth was moved and was out of phase and they needed The Doctor to save them, it was that same person who gathered his old companions and helpers and found a way to show how to find the Earth and who then sacrificed herself.

The Doctor had judged her on one mistake and didn’t see past that to what she was capable of and who she really was.

The Jews in the Gospel reading (John 6:41–58) knew Jesus as Mary and Joseph’s son, as a man in their small community. They rejected Him. They did not believe. Pride prevented them from seeing Him as anything other than a poor lowly man and stopped them seeing who He really was – the Son of God – the one from God.

We likewise make assumptions about others. We put them in little boxes instead of seeing them with open hearts and minds, instead of seeing who they really are and what they will achieve.

So do we see Jesus as the Bread of Life? As the one who will sustain us?

Jesus said “I AM the Bread of Life”.

“I AM”.

These two words tell us precisely who Jesus is. We don’t need anything else. We are left in no doubt about who Jesus is.

“I AM” – the covenant name for God (Yahweh) in the Old Testament, a name for God that the Jews were very familiar with. The Jews, well versed in the Scriptures, knew precisely who Jesus was claiming to be.

But Jesus is also taking His miracle of the day before, providing actual bread, to the next level – the spiritual level. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven…The bread I will give to you is my flesh which I give so the world might live”.

Jesus is the incarnation of God who came down from heaven. He, like bread, is essential to life. Our Spiritual life, our Spiritual nourishment, renewed in our sacrament of Holy Communion.

Dying on the cross to save and forgive us and rising to new life. Just as, when we believe, our old life dies and we are raised to new life with Christ.

A repeated thread throughout the Scriptures is man’s desire for righteousness with God, a desire for eternity and to earn our way to heaven.

Jesus says those who believe in Him will never hunger or thirst. He is referring to our spiritual hunger.

By believing in Him and having faith in Him and His sacrifice for us on the cross, where He takes our sins and atones for them, He does what no one else can and feeds our spiritual hunger allowing us to be right with God.

The very moment a sinner believes in Jesus he is justified, welcomed, loved and accepted with no condemnation. He has peace with God instantly.

However, knowledge is nothing if you don’t believe! Knowing that Jesus died on the cross for us is not enough to save us. We have nothing if we do not believe in Him. The point now to be considered is whether we do actually believe.

“He that believes has everlasting life but he that does not believe will not see life” (John 3:36).

So let us believe and allow Jesus to be in our hearts, sustaining us as our Bread of Life.

Trinity

Three in One and One in Three,
Just as you did say you’d be.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
And yet it doth confuse us most.

But it shouldn’t! As believers we know and accept that God is One and Three at the same time. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This is an element of faith, an element of belief. One of the wonderful mysteries of God.

As humans, however, we do like to both complicate and explain everything. We have a need to break down and solve such mysteries- indeed all mysteries.

I believe God has a huge sense of humour and enjoys our uncomfortableness of Trinity Sunday immensely as He watches and listens to us trying to explain Him in a language that can never give the wonder and miraculous nature of God its full credit. God loves our stories.

It happens to be one of my favourite Sundays. I love coming up with different ways of explaining The Trinity and I am under no allusion that I also fall short in this as my feeble metaphors and analogies are nothing when compared to God Himself. I love listening to others giving sermons on this subject and increasing in faith and understanding. Indeed, one of my favourite and most remembered sermons as a child listening to the church service was on Trinity Sunday. It involves a rope.

Trinity Sunday is celebrated by the Church of England after Pentecost. I have heard different theories as to why this is but the one I like best is, simply put, because we had to wait until after the Spirit was sent to us to stay to fully experience the full aspect of God the Three in One. And, of course, it is Pentecost at which this occurred, where the promises and prophecies of Jesus (and the Old Testament) that the Holy Spirit would be sent after His Ascension became fulfilled. And, therefore, it is a logical progression (to me) that we celebrate Ascension, Pentecost and then Trinity Sunday.

So why a rope?

Take one thread. It is strong, it will hold weight, but pull it with a little pressure and it will snap. It is only one part of a whole and without the other parts it cannot fulfill it’s whole potential. I have faith in this thread – I sew buttons on with it. But I would not use it to save my life if I were falling off a mountain!

Take two threads and bind them together. Now they are even stronger and will withstand more weight and pressure. Yet pull them hard enough and they will still snap. Still they are incomplete and whilst they are indeed strong enough to be functional and useful, I still would not use it if I was falling off that mountain!

But, take three and bind them together. Now you have a rope which I can trust with my life (see picture)! The strongest ropes are not made of one strand and they are one rope.

Three in One and One in Three.
You my God are Destiny.
Word and Voice and Breath of God
Just as in the prophecy.

Father, Son and Spirit: Infinite, eternal, unchangeable, full of wisdom, power, holiness, goodness, strength, truth and love!