Last Saturday afternoon, as the choir rehearsed in Southwell Minster, I sat quietly in the very beautiful grounds enjoying the warm sunshine.  The sun was extremely bright and dazzling so I was glad that I was sitting under a large tree whose leaves allowed the light to filter through, dappling the lawn with dancing light.  Perhaps it was because I was reading a book about St. Anselm for whom heaven and the joy of being with God was central to everything that I thought about how God’s glory is so bright that, like looking directly into the sun,  it would be too painful.  Even Moses initially found God unapproachable.  As we read in Exodus Chapter 3, when God spoke to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.  Only later did Moses dare to speak with God face to face  and those encounters changed Moses’ own appearance – as we read in Exodus 34- when he returned from the Tent of Meeting his face shone because he had been talking with God.  Here was a picture of Glory transferred from God to Moses and that too frightened the people so that they were afraid to come near him.  If God’s glory is too dazzling for us how are we ever to be drawn to it and experience it in such a way that we are left longing for more – left with a desire to be close to God, to meet him and to share his life? 

As I looked at the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the tree in Southwell, it came to me.  We can share in God’s glory because of the Holy Spirit.  We can become transformed by glory through the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives who filters the dazzling glory of God so that we can both see it and be changed by it.

As happened, of course, to that rag-bag of disciples gathered fearfully but expectantly in the upper room that first Pentecost morning.  Dancing tongues of fire may be an imagery which belongs better to the realm of poetry but look at how they were changed!  Not only did they communicate to people in languages that were readily understood but Peter who had let Jesus down now preached boldly in the power of the Spirit about the things of God.  What a transformation.

Here was God’s glory at work in the life of one who had been visited by the Spirit.  Like Moses who had been transformed from meeting God, so were the lives of the disciples transformed by this meeting with the Holy Spirit!  And that meeting was, of course, with God Himself.  This same Spirit who had hovered over the waters at Creation and who led the Israelites dry-shod through the Red Sea and who had filled the prophets with God’s power to speak God’s uncompromising words, was now enlivening the infant Christian Church in a powerful outpouring of God’s own glory as Jesus had promised.  The Spirit is God’s way of communicating his deep and dazzling love to his chosen people and like the sun dappling through the trees, so God’s love dances over and into our souls.  And it transforms us!

Of course we have realize that such an experience of God is more than an emotional experience.

Some Christians set great store by what is known as a Conversion experience.  Often such experiences happen in a spiritually emotional gathering when people start to speak in tongues or be what is called slain by the Spirit.  As at Pentecost there are accompanying signs such as speaking in tongues and even ecstasy.  For others, conversion moments come more quietly – as in my own case - and for others there is no such moment but a slowly realised dawning that God is touching our lives and drawing us into his.  Every experience is as valid as any other and you can’t classify Christians into first, second or third division depending on how they might have experienced the Spirit in their lives.  I have met earnest Christians who ask Have you received the Spirit? hoping that you might not have in order to have another victim to work on.  The answer, for any who have been baptized is of course that we most certainly have received the Spirit.  What really matters is how we seek to live out our lives in the Spirit’s power.

Ian Ramsey, a great Bishop of Durham, used to talk of conversion moments as moments when not only our emotions but also our minds are enlightened.  He called these Penny Dropping moments  and what marks these out as different is that not only our emotions are engaged but also our minds.  T. S. Eliot, in his poem Dray Salvages warns about having the experience but missing the meaning  and faith experiences have to be understood not only by the heart but also in the mind.

The same St. Anselm, who engaged my thinking last Saturday, coined a wonderful phrase – Faith seeks understanding.  For Anselm praying to God is always linked with thinking about him.  Faith is constantly searching to understand something new or deeper about God and as we pray so should we be reaching out into the depths of God.  Theology and prayer go hand in hand.

When we begin our journey of faith – that is, when a desire for God is first awaked in us – a conversion moment if ever there was one – the thirst for God becomes insatiable. That is when many Christians turn seriously to the Bible and quarry its words for meaning about God and about his dealings with us.  The more we learn about him, the more we want to learn.  Faith seeking understanding is a life-long quest and that is why it is important to match our religious experiences with a  desire to understand what they mean.  God never just gives us an experience of Him without it leading to a deeper purpose. The more we learn about God, the more God reveals himself and his glory to us.  It may lead to some action or service to God in a deeper way or it may be a new understanding of what it means to be a Christian.  So Jesus, in today’s Gospel promises us the Spirit as one who will guide us into all truth.  If we want to understand what our faith means then we must allow the Holy Spirit to guide us.

As I think he did last Saturday. I stood in the gift shop of Southwell Minster, and though I have many books in my study that I have yet to read, I thought I might just succumb to the tiny temptation to buy just one more.  And at that moment, out of the array of books before me, the one about St. Anselm all but jumped off the shelf into my hands.  It was the right book for the right time.  The Spirit was leading me into a deeper truth.  I wonder if you have ever stood in front of our well stocked library at the back of church – lovingly tended by Doreen Miller – and asked God to direct you to a book you really ought to read.  You really should – God is always ready to point you to something that will feed this need for faith to seek understanding.

Placing ourselves into the Spirit’s hands is placing ourselves in the way of real Spiritual Direction and Jesus knew our need for such direction which is why he promised that the Spirit will guide us into all truth.  I am not speaking here of finding a definitive answer to the kind of questions that seem to pre-occupy the Church – different questions for different ages – though these too are best sought under the Spirit’s guidance rather than seeking to confirm deeply held though not always deeply truthful convictions.  It is always very tempting  to make God conform to our own image – though of course, often it is not God but our own projection of him – usually a flawed projection. 

The Truth I am speaking about is the Truth about God Himself.  That is what the Spirit leads us to and in doing so often leads us also to truths about ourselves – some of which need dealing with if we really are to grow in the knowledge and love of God.  Not for nothing is the Spirit’s role sometimes that of disturber - as shaker-up of our complacency.  The Spirit challenges us to look afresh at God and His meaning for our lives – which, of course, challenges us to act differently.  So Mother Teresa looked out from her cosy convent in Calcutta, where she led a rather peaceful and well-provided for life, and was touched by the destitute and unloved in the gutters outside.  The Spirit disturbed this woman of God – stirred her into action in a life-changing way, not only for her but for so many others who benefited as a result.

We live in a rapidly changing society which has lost so many of the Christian values – witness the loss of honesty in some of our Parliamentarians – and also in a changing Church which is being called to witness more deeply to the glory of God in new ways but also in old ways – in the way, for example, that Peter and the others witnessed to Jesus once the Spirit opened them to the absolute truth of Who he Was and what he had come to do.  Sometimes the Spirit stirs us up not to mend our ways but to act more convincingly in proclaiming the faith we profess.  The Church today needs all her members to share in that royal priesthood of all believers who collectively are charged – as the 2^nd Chapter of 1 Peter tells us – to proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.  I know I keep bashing away at that text but it is so central to what we are meant to be doing as a Church – all of us.

The Spirit, says Jesus, will declare to you the things that are to come – and what is coming, what is here, is the Day of the Lord – the Day of the Spirit – the Day of Holiness and the Day when at last we will act as those to whom the Spirit has revealed God’s Glory and – like Moses and like flame spattered disciples and like ground on which the sunshine dances we are so alive with God’s glory – so enlivened by God’s love – so on fire with zeal for the Gospel that we will be seen for what we must truly be – Spirit-filled people who understanding  our faith  show it to others - for then we shall be signs of God’s glory to them.

Abba Lot, went to see Abba Joseph in the desert in search of a new understanding of his faith

“as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’

The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven.  His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’

On Fire with God’s Love – that is the Spirit’s transforming gift to you if you will receive it.  To become all Flame!