25/05/2026
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UNLOCKING THE DOORS...PENTECOST UNLEASHED
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Canon Tom Kennar is taking some time off. But if he had been preaching today, this is what he would have said:
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Pentecost is one of those great feasts of the Church which, if we are honest, we have tidied up a bit.
We have made it red and respectable. We have given it proper hymns, a place in the calendar, and a tasteful dove on the service sheet, looking calm and holy, as though the Holy Spirit were mainly in the business of gliding gently over laminated notices.
But the first Pentecost was not tasteful.
It was noisy, confusing, and faintly alarming. It involved wind, fire, public speaking, allegations of drunkenness, and a group of Galileans suddenly becoming comprehensible to people from everywhere. In parish terms, it was less “well-planned festival Eucharist” and more “the flower rota has caught fire and the PCC is speaking Welsh.”
Pentecost is not the birthday of the Church in the sense that God founded a calm religious institution with minutes, policies, and a subcommittee for biscuits. Pentecost is the moment when the Spirit of God blows through frightened people and turns them outward.
The disciples had been waiting. They had seen Jesus crucified. They had encountered him risen. They had been told to stay where they were until power came from on high. And then, suddenly, the house cannot contain what God is doing.
That is the first thing Pentecost says to us: God is not easily contained.
We try, of course. We contain God in buildings, doctrines, traditions, and respectable behaviour. We contain God in the sentence, “We’ve always done it this way,” which must be one of the most spiritually dangerous sentences ever uttered, usually just before someone moves a pew.
But the Spirit comes as wind. Not as a memo. Not as a diocesan initiative. Wind. Breath. Movement. The thing you cannot grasp, cannot own, cannot put in the safe with the silver chalice.
And the Spirit comes as fire. Not fire that destroys, but fire that rests on each person. Fire that gives courage. Fire that warms cold hearts and burns away fear. Fire that is not reserved for the religiously impressive. It rests on all of them.
Pentecost is not God saying, “I have selected the most competent disciples.” Thank goodness. If competence were required, the Church would have ended somewhere around Acts chapter two. Pentecost is God saying, “These people will do. These frightened, muddled, argumentative, hopeful people. I can work with them.”
Which is good news, because, looking at us all, here today, that appears still to be the recruitment policy.
Then comes the miracle of languages. And notice what the miracle is not. It is not that everyone suddenly speaks one holy language. It is not that diversity is flattened into uniformity. It is not that everyone becomes the same, thinks the same, worships the same, votes the same, or agrees about the temperature of church coffee.
The story is that people hear good news in their own language.
Some commentators have said that Pentecost is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. But, I’m not so sure. Pentecost is not the reversal of diversity. It is the sanctifying of it. The Spirit does not erase difference. The Spirit communicates across difference. Parthians, Medes, Elamites — and lots of other unpronounceable nationalities — all hear the mighty works of God in the language of home.
Home matters. Culture matters. Accent matters. The particular words by which people understand love, mercy, justice and hope matter.
So whenever Christianity becomes obsessed with making everyone conform — whenever it mistakes uniformity for unity, control for holiness, nostalgia for faithfulness — it has wandered a very long way from Pentecost.
But Peter stands up and explains that this is what the prophet Joel promised: sons and daughters shall prophesy, young people shall see visions, old people shall dream dreams, and even slaves — those right at the bottom of the social order — shall receive the Spirit.
That little word “even” is where the revolution begins.
Pentecost says that God is not the private possession of the powerful. God is not locked behind priesthood, privilege, gender, age, class, education, respectability, or any of the other barriers human beings are so wonderfully inventive at constructing. The Spirit is poured out on all flesh.
All flesh. Not approved flesh. Not familiar flesh. Not flesh with a DBS certificate and a sensible cardigan. All flesh.
And then we hear the Gospel reading from John. The disciples are behind locked doors, afraid. Jesus comes among them and says, “Peace be with you.” Then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
In Acts, the Spirit is wind and flame and public astonishment. In John, the Spirit is breath in a locked room. One is dramatic; the other is intimate. One is a gale; the other is a whisper close enough to feel.
We need both.
Sometimes the Spirit throws open the doors and sends us into the street. Sometimes the Spirit comes to us when the doors are locked, when we are frightened, when all we can do is sit in the ruins of what we thought we understood. Sometimes the Spirit is not fireworks. Sometimes the Spirit is breath enough for the next hour.
Jesus does not shame the frightened disciples. He comes among them. He gives peace. He breathes Spirit. Then he sends them.
That is the rhythm of Pentecost: peace, breath, sending. Not peace as avoidance. Not breath as private comfort. Not sending as religious busyness. But peace that heals fear, breath that restores life, and sending that carries love into the world.
So perhaps Pentecost asks us a simple question: where have we locked the doors?
Where have we decided God cannot possibly be speaking? Through that person? Through that generation? Through that culture? Through that awkward new possibility? Through that change we would rather avoid because it will involve a meeting, and probably flipchart paper?
And where might the Spirit already be making herself inconveniently known?
Perhaps in voices we have not listened to. Perhaps in young people dreaming a Church that looks different from the one we inherited. Perhaps in old people dreaming dreams we have mistaken for memories.
Pentecost does not give us a tame God. It gives us wind, fire, breath, courage, speech, listening, peace and movement.
It gives us a Church that begins not with certainty, but with astonishment.
“They were amazed and perplexed,” says Acts. Honestly, that may be the most faithful response to God most of us can manage.
Amazed and perplexed. Slightly singed. Unexpectedly hopeful. Doors unlocked. Hearts warmed. Tongues loosened. And discovering, to our surprise, that the Spirit of God is not finished with us yet.
Amen.
