Curate’s sermon Pentecost 2025, Barnard Castle Acts 2.1-21

There is a Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch titled ‘Evil Vicar’. A young couple come into a church looking around, chatting about how wonderful it is that churches are inclusive these days. As they talk, they are greeted by a fairly sinister-looking vicar. They explain that they have just moved into the area, that they are not particularly religious but it is fair to say they are spiritual and are interested in finding out more. The vicar, played by David Mitchell, replies in a very dramatic theatrical manner, ‘Not particularly religious? Interested!? SPIRITUAL!? Are you testing me, Satan?’ I apologise if my delivery does not quite convey why the sketch is funny – it is certainly hilarious performed by the actors – but I think this sketch is an excellent take on the conflict between inclusive modernity and stern traditionalism in the church, the latter here portrayed in an exaggerated manner to demonstrate how damaging and in fact un-Christian it can be. It also subtly picks out another controversial idea: spirituality.
The phrase the couple use – ‘We are not religious but we are spiritual’ – is very common and I am sure you have heard it on more than one occasion. It usually means that the people who say this have some faith in God but they cannot subscribe to any specific religious teaching or discipline. As a result, from a Christian perspective, it is often seen as a bit ‘wishy-washy’ and non-committal, as was readily demonstrated by the ‘evil vicar’, but outside the church, this seems to be a very relatable category. Where ‘Religious’ may be problematic and divisive, ‘spiritual’ is always inclusive, unifying and uplifting.
I have started to wonder why. First of all, the notion of spirituality transcends religious boundaries. When you say you are spiritual, this may include any number of thigs that are beyond the tangible physical realm – a faith in creator god, a demiurge of some kind, a belief in reincarnation, in the forces of nature or the spirits of the dead. Spirituality is something that can relate to virtually any faith without provoking disagreement. But within the Trinitarian Christian context, the appeal of spirituality may be explained by the Spirit’s relatability, especially seen in contrast with the somewhat problematic nature of the Father and the Son. Please bear with me as I explain what I mean.
The Father comes with the problems of suffering and His confusing presence in the world where He allows certain things to happen (but not others) and yet also responds to prayer (but not always). Christian and non-Christian thinkers have battled with the logic of His creation and His presence in it for centuries. Then there is the character of the Lord in the Old Testament – jealous, wrathful and happy to sanction violence. This was such a struggle in the early Church that it led to the emergence of a type of heresy called Marcionism, after its founder Marcion, who rejected the Old Testament God as a lesser deity and proclaimed that the New Testament God is a different, and true, God.
The Son poses the problem of authenticity and historic identity. What was he doing for 30 years before he started his ministry and is it possible that he is just a very good con artist? Is it not suspicious that he only appeared to the disciples and no one else after his Resurrection? How did any of the Gospel writers know what he was doing when he was alone to write it down with such confidence?
All of these problems of course should be taken seriously and there is impressive and inspiring theological scholarship that faces the problems the Bible poses head-on, and yet offers balanced, hopeful and theologically rich perspectives. I am afraid there is no time for this today, but instead it is now time to turn to the last person of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit also comes with a number of problematic questions, including most famously the filioque close in the Creed and the debate on and who exactly the Spirit proceeds from, or the divide between Calvinism and Arminianism on whether it is possible to resist the Holy Spirit. What strikes me is that these debates are doctrinal and concerned with the teaching of the Church rather than an individual Christian’s relationship with the Spirit and faith in Him. The questions about The Father and the Son I have mentioned can seriously undermine one’s faith but the questions about the Spirit do not seem to doubt the Spirit’s fundamental validity, power and holiness. I wonder if this is why the Spirit is so relatable, and spirituality is so easy to adopt. But perhaps this is also part of design and exactly how it should be.
Firstly, I think it is significant that the very first gift the Spirit gives to all people present in the scene in Acts 2 is the gift of understanding different languages. It is a complete reversal of the Tower of Babel narrative in Genesis 11, where all people, speaking the same language, decided to build a tower to reach the heavens and be greater than God. In response, the Lord confused their language and scattered them. Here, the opposite happens. In Genesis, people were not allowed to be anywhere close to God, and creation of different languages becomes a statement and an instrument to affirm it, but in Acts, the end of linguistic division simultaneously manifests proximity to God. The distance between heaven and earth, so present in Genesis 11, is collapsing in Acts. And considering it is the Father who sends the Spirit, it is clearly God’s will to reduce that distance.
Secondly, there seems to be a progression in which the Triune God is revealed to His people in ways that at the same time bring the people closer to Him. The first phase of this relationship is the Old Testament covenant between the Lord and his people; the second is the revelation of Himself in the person of Christ, the Son, and His great commands to love God and one another. The third phase, following the Son’s Ascension to the Father, is the descent of the Holy Spirit, the advocate and comforter Jesus promises in John 14. All three of course exist outside time, but we, the people, are constrained by time, and to us, the revelation happens chronologically, as if we are gradually exposed to the knowledge of different aspects of God. Having become aware of the justice, wisdom, love and mercy of God personified in the Father and the Son, the knowledge of the Spirit gives us comfort and security to complete our relationship with God and to live our daily lives guided by the Spirit and empowered by His gifts. It seems that through the Spirit, God is revealed to us with much greater clarity and immediate relevance than ever before. So perhaps it is no wonder people are drawn to the Spirit.
Holding the three persons of the Trinity together in our faith and in our prayers is a very difficult task; the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most difficult things to make sense of, but as today we are celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit, let us give thanks for His continuing presence with us and for His power to build bridges between us and God but also between all people, across families, churches and nations. Understanding different languages was the first sign of fellowship and unity the Spirit brought to the people in Acts 2. Perhaps the talk of ‘spirituality’ is another sign. Maybe we should not dismiss it as lack of commitment but see it as a gateway into deeper conversations about God and his unknowable and complex nature. Perhaps the gift of spirituality is a sign that God is working in someone and, importantly, that they are responding to Him, acknowledging their gravitation towards Him through the Spirit.
The exaggerated ‘evil vicar’ from the sketch may not exist, but he does embody quite a lot of rigid, unkind and dismissive attitudes I have personally seen in the Church, including rejecting people’s intuitive responses to God’s holiness that we may find ‘incorrect’. And I think we should be forgiven for it, because we are weak and often very broken. But the good news in all of this is that whatever we do, it does not mean that people are not turning to the Lord. The Spirit is clearly doing the job of opening people’s hearts to God, better than we will ever do, and we should trust Him to do it. Amen.