The Church of Ireland

Diocese of Clogher

“REFLECTION BY THE RIGHT REVEREND

MICHAEL JACKSON, BISHOP OF CLOGHER, AT THE ECUMENICAL OPEN-AIR SERVICE ON RATHMORE HILL, CLOGHER ON WHITSUNDAY, MAY 15^th 2005”

New Testament Reading : 1 John 3:1 and 2 : Possibilities of the Spirit

 

Consider how great is the love which the Father has bestowed on us in calling us his children! For that is what we are. The reason why the world does not recognize us is that it has not known him. Dear friends, we are now God’s children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed; but we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

 

This Hill of Rathmore is a place we too often whiz past – Speed Limit permitting! - without even noticing it. It is tucked in behind St Macartan’s Cathedral Church as the main road through Clogher beckons us North, South, East or West. Whether the prevailing climate be wind, rain or sun, this place continues to greet us whether we have time for it or not. It is a powerful place. It is our place of meeting this afternoon and we are the better for gathering here and for being here together – in the Spirit of the Christ.

 

The brief Reading which we have just heard draws us very quickly and very directly into three strands of the Spirit. In weaving their way around us they bind us together in a transformed understanding of community. In the short verse 2 we hear five times not the word: I but the word: we. The love of God, the love of the Father, gives us a way of knowing and of being known which is important to us and for the world. And it is ever new in each generation. We are told in verse 1 that the reason the world does not recognize us is that it has not known the Father. This, my friends, is where our responsibilities begin.

 

Today, the only way in which the world can know the Father is in the ways in which we present the love of the Father by our words and by our actions. The onus and the imperative are on us if the world is to know the saving presence of God. We need to live ‘outside the box,’ extending our horizons beyond the temptations to interpret the writings which stand in the name of John exclusively. Exclusivity never will be a definition of community. Otherwise the coming of the Son, whose Spirit the Spirit of Pentecost is, is in vain because God shares with us in faith God’s community of being.

 

The triple encouragement of the Spirit to us is:

 

to recognize who we are;

 

to recognize that there is more to us than who we are now and what we know of ourselves;

 

to recognize that the full blossoming of who we shall be lies in the appearing of Christ.

 

Expressed more simply we are faced with the three challenges of : realism, of hopefulness and of surprise. This threefold expression of ourselves at our best ought to inspire us as we journey together with one another in the new definition of the community in the Spirit of Pentecost.

 

Let us now look at all three of these.

 

Realism: too easy is it today for good people to think too little of themselves in the face of those who think too much of themselves.

 

Hopefulness: the future for too many is already a focus of failure when it ought to be a focus of expectation and expectancy combined.

 

Surprize: the prospect of seeing Christ as he is will reveal us to ourselves in yet another way. This goes beyond either our realism about ourselves or our hopefulness for the future. It carries both of these into the heart of the love of God. We shall become eternally the children of the heavenly Father because we shall be like Christ.

 

Pentecost invites us to live in the way of the Father in the Spirit of the Christ. The freedom from death, the life of resurrection brought to pass on Good Friday and Easter Day now spread their glory in the church for the world as fire and as wind and as a common language of love. The fire gives warmth and cleanses. The wind gives movement and freshness. The language of love gives the vital ingredient of talking and listening together, respect and regeneration.

 

The challenge for us in Ireland today is to be hopeful in being realistic, to be open to being surprised by the everyday, uncontrived expressions of goodness and of hospitality. We need to discern and to enjoy the unscripted blossomings of the best of the human in the nearness of the divine. Reconciliation, revisioning, reconnecting with those around us through the greater use of the word: we which is, after all, twice the size of the word: I - all of this is now something vital for a society where words are a more attractive option than actions. The use of: we gives room for, makes space for others. In the Spirit of Pentecost we need to use the word: we a lot more often and we need to use it together.  

 

The white heat of Pentecost tempers while it burns, strengthens while it inspires. God dwells with his people in re-creation, in re-freshment, in re-surrection today and all days.

 

The Spirit moves us, moves among us, moves with us.