Pentecost, 8 June 2025, Austwick, Keasden
A parish I once served in Devon, Bratton Clovelly, has a healthy twinning relationship with a village near Bayeux in Normandy called Nonant. There are regular exchange visits alternating between France and Devon. And I remember, back in 2011, when the time came for the Saturday night celebration party of the Bratton Clovelly – Nonant Twinning Association, we were all gathered together in one place – Bratton Village Hall.
Now there were people there who had been doing this for years: Devonians from birth, those who had retired to Bratton to make it their home, people who seldom left Bayeux except to make this trip, experienced French travellers; good linguists, bad linguists, those whose local accents were so strong that even their neighbours sometimes found it hard to guess what they were saying.
The crowd gathered and enjoyed our evening together, the language barriers between us melted as we communicated through the intuitive language of wine, music, and dance; through body language, signs, symbols and song. As the gathering applauded a Bratton farmer’s rendition of ‘I love Paris in the Springtime’ all were amazed and perplexed, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ But others said, ‘It’s because of the wine.’ And it may well have been, because it was way, way past nine o’clock in the evening.
There are events in our lives which give us hints of the eternal truths of the kingdom of heaven. Imperfect images of the perfection towards which God is slowly leading us. Times when we experience something of living that abundant life which Christ promised his followers.
Gathering the scattered people together is today’s theme. Gathering the scattered at Pentecost: people who normally would not meet, nor could communicate, for a few moments in time united in understanding and celebration. Pentecost could be summed up as the moment that a loving and forgiving God gathered together his scattered people, and once and for all united them in love and understanding through the Holy Spirit.
This Pentecost story is the reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel, in which a people who were attempting absolute power by building a tower together, were scattered over the face of the earth by a God who was in rivalry and conflict with them, who divided them by giving them different languages so that they would not understand each other.
Pentecost is Babel reversed, because there God’s Holy Spirit gathered the scattered peoples of the earth back together, giving them a new common language of understanding, based in the ultimate self-giving of Jesus on the cross: the language of forgiveness. This is the true purpose of society under God.If you’ve ever searched for a simple way to describe what the Christian faith is all about, I think this may be it: Jesus died on the cross, offering us forgiveness, so that we could have a new way to gather together and stay together, truly as one. [1]
This is so valuable in a world which is possessed by a spirit of scattering: a world where competitive values are built into every area of life, eroding the very social bonds that were supposed to keep civilisation going. Where the ultimate goal of social life is the pursuit of advantage, we are left to constantly measure our self-worth against the success of others, so that failure becomes unbearable.
Our resultant insecurity, humiliation and miseries are exploited by leaders flexing their muscles in claiming that minorities of all kinds have purportedly thrived at the expense of the native working people, and who make empty promises about restoring our well-being at the expense of others: stripping minorities of entitlements, closing our borders to the desperate, ring-fencing the nation’s resources.
The offer of the balm of vengeance, the promise of national self-love and the cure of restoring society to a more pristine state through a violent purging of those considered ‘unclean’ – each fail in reality to make much material difference, but cause us all great spiritual harm. [2]
Think of all the ways we scatter apart from each other, the broken relationships, the bitterness and hurt. Think of the walls we build and the grief they cause; the cruel stereotypes we so readily apply to those who don’t look and speak like us, the way we blame others for wrongs in which, in truth, we all share.
Think of the troubled relationships between the French and the English over the centuries, and the 130,000 soldiers, both Allied and German, who lost their lives in Normandy this very week 81 years ago, with four-and-a-half thousand of them buried in the War Cemetery at Bayeux, five miles from Nonant. [3]
But think also of the genuine joy in surprise when you’ve spent time in the company of people you’d never usually meet: what you shared, what you learned, what you enjoyed in that experience. Think of those stories which have stuck with you, of people coming together from very different backgrounds to share food and stories, laughter and understanding, and how it changed them.
This is what Jesus came for, to gather us together in loving forgiveness. Luke’s story of Pentecost shows us that just fifty days after Easter, that powerful Holy Spirit began to blow and to gather God’s people from the corners of the earth. It brought them together in a new oneness called The Church, which, though its members have never been free from strife and division, nevertheless have practiced ways to grow and flourish together, despite our differences, for two thousand years. [4]
Achieving unity has always been a human desire; but genuine unity is hard to achieve. Pentecost affirms that the only sure foundation for a complete unity between all peoples, is the one given in Christ’s gathering. [5]
We’re all invited to Pentecost, the party which God puts on for all who will receive him. The invitation is open to everyone now and forever, to this celebration of unity in the power of the Holy Spirit, a spirit of absolute self-giving love. We get glimpses of it in our own life experiences, like in those moments when we realise that we belong to a worldwide church with its many different expressions, where that special Spirit unites us with others with whom we’d never otherwise imagine we could share anything in common.
Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit in these words: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” This was the sound of walls falling down, the sound of barriers to love and understanding collapsing; this was the wind of change which blows away our fear and suspicion of each other, and fills us instead with joyful, mutual, respect and understanding.
Notes
This is a rewrite of Gathering the scattered – the Holy Spirit’s work, preached in Devon, 2011
[1] Paul Neuchterlein, Gathering the Scattered People of God, delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, May 30-31, 1998.
[2] Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization.
[3] WW2 Cemeteries in Normandy. Bayeux Museum website, accessed 31 May 2025.
[4] Paul Neuchterlein, Gathering the Scattered People of God, delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, May 30-31, 1998; Paul Neuchterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Year A, Pentecost: Reflections, particularly those referencing James Alison’s treatment of the subject in The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, Chapters 6 and 9.
[5] James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, p.167
