Word and Spirit
This Sunday is what some mark as Whit Sunday. Whitsuntide is when we are reminded of the birth of the Christian Church, looking back to when God’s Holy Spirit was first poured out upon the followers of Jesus.
In recent decades, this country has been caught up in a tide of secularism. One of the minor casualties has been the sidelining of Whitsun which in former days, like Christmas and Easter, warranted a bank holiday (It has been supplanted by the Spring Bank Holiday). More importantly, in our schools there has been a dumbing-down of Christianity and, in general, bland acts of corporate worship/assemblies. This has resulted in an ignorance of Christian basics. It seems to me that this ignorance is greater now than at any time since this country was first deemed to be Christian.
In the Old Testament, we can read of times when the people of Israel were similarly ignorant of God’s ways and, indeed, of God himself. God’s own spokesmen, the prophets, declared that there was a famine in the land; a famine not of food but of the Word of God.
This concept of ‘the Word of God’ may sound a bit lofty to us. Look at it this way: we get an indication of what a person is like by the things they say with words. This, however, does not give us a thoroughgoing idea of who they are, because their words may be inarticulate, insincere, misleading or downright lies.
Now God is truth with a capital ‘T’. What he says, he is. So to know God’s word is to know God. The New Testament makes an amazing statement. The gospel of John opens with the words, ‘in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ Get it? Both God and the Word are God. Just a few verses on things become plainer. We are told that the Word took on human form and lived temporarily among us. You may know of him - Jesus.
I am excited by this because if you ask me, ‘What is God like?’, I can tell you ‘He is just like Jesus’. We can read about Jesus in the Spirit-inspired Bible. Even better, if we entrust ourselves to him, he has promised to give us his Spirit who will enable us to feed our hearts on the Word of God contained within that Bible. I suppose we could say that the Spirit is the one who lets us have a heart to heart with God. That’s a good reason for celebrating Whitsun.