The Doctrine of the Yeti

 

Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-32; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

 

This is the tragic story of a man called Mikail Szearchov, a Bulgarian zoologist.  As a young man he proved himself to be a brilliant scholar, able in all sciences, and eventually choosing to specialise in zoology.   Within a few years he had risen through the academic ranks in his native Bulgaria, before being given a prestigious position in the Academy of Advance Sciences at Moscow University.   A professor at the age of 29, he was soon talked of as a future candidate for a Nobel Prize.  His future seemed assured.

 

But somewhere in his studies he came across an article about a strange new animal, known to us in the West as the yeti, or, more colloquially, the abominable snowman.   He became intrigued, then fascinated, and, in the end, obsessed by the question of this animal's existence.  Here, he felt, was a new and exciting challenge for him that would make his name once and for all.

 

He devoted all his spare time and an increasing amount of his academic time to thinking about this creature, studying all he could find on it, which wasn't much, and trying to devise a method of determining whether or not the evidence he had gleaned could be assembled in such a way as to prove or disprove the existence of the yeti.   He organised field trips for his students in areas of possible sightings, training them to look for any possible clues of the presence of an animal of a kind not yet identified.   Every footprint and trail, every animal dropping, every bit of hair or fur caught on a bush, was carefully studied, and only dropped from his inquiries when it had been positively identified as belonging to some known species.

 

Over the years his gut extinct that the yeti did in fact exist grew stronger, but being the great scientist he was he fought it off, determined to keep an open mind: his quest was to prove the existence or non-existence of the yeti once and for all.

 

At first, money was no object.  The Russians at this time were strongly backing science, and particularly great scientists like Mikail Szearchov, hoping to reap much prestige in their competition with the West.   But as year gave way to year, his funders began to become a little disillusioned and pushed him for results.  Talking it over with some colleagues at the Academy, he came up with the idea of calling an international conference of all those working in the field in the hope that, by pooling their expertise, they may discover a way through.

 

The conference was not a success, it has to be said.  First, because of the Cold War that was then at its height, no one from the West attended.   About two hundred delegates from the Eastern Bloc attended; but to Mikail's dismay, there were almost as many views as there were attendees.   And the ensuing debates were not exactly characterised by calm, dispassionate scientific analysis.

 

The first hint of trouble came on the first day when the chairman, a non-scientist appointed to the position by the Communist Party for inscrutable reasons of its own, included in his opening statement a reference to the yeti as "a mystery whom no man has ever seen".   This provoked immediate objection from the leader of the Mongolian delegation, who insisted that, to the contrary, he had himself seen a yeti on many occasions, as, indeed, had many of his countrymen.   This claim was immediately ridiculed by the cultural attaché and official interpreter of the Chinese delegation, who went on to tell the conference that it was well known in China that Mongolians were habitual liars and could not be trusted on any matter, scientific or otherwise.

 

In a desperate attempt to restore some semblance of order, Mikail urged the chairman to suggest that the delegates be divided into two groups, one group of those who believed that yetis had been sighted, and the other of those who did not.   The chairman accepted this suggestion, and Mikail decided to go to the group of believers and listen to the 'evidence' put forward.

 

It was not a happy choice.  In that group the arguments became even more fierce, each participant convinced that his version was right.   Some said the yeti was like a bear, others said it was a member of the cat family.  Some said it had thick fur, others that it was thinly covered in hair.   Some said it walked upright on two strong legs, and had arms rather like humans, while others insisted that it ran on four legs of equal length and strength.   They argued over where it lived, what it ate and whether it was a sociable or solitary animal.

 

History does not recall how long the conference lasted.  Mikail himself had had enough after only two days, and went home bitterly disillusioned.   He turned his interest away from the subject of the yeti, and went on to do some pioneering research into birth defects.  But then came the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the lifting of travel restrictions.   Mikail was offered a visiting scholar's position at Edinburgh University and jumped at the chance.  And, as luck would have it, very soon after he took up residence in that beautiful Scottish city, he heard of a conference to be held in Geneva on….The Quest for the Yeti!

 

He was among the first to register.  All that he had experienced of his fellow scientists at Edinburgh filled him with conviction that scientists in the West were open-minded, liberal, tolerant of one another's views, and keen to learn from one another.   When the time came, he set off for Geneva with high hopes.

 

They were to be cruelly dashed, but not in the way of his previous experience.  There was no boorishness, rudeness or offensiveness.   No politically, nationally or racially motivated insults.  Every speaker was listened to politely and rewarded with polite applause when he or she had finished.   The programme included time for informal socialising and chatting, and this, too, was very low-key and without any semblance of irritation or animosity.

 

Naturally, the participants had different views on the various topics under discussion, but everyone was careful to acknowledge that they were just as open to the possibility of error as everybody else; and when the chairman pointed out in his closing remarks that all truths were equally valid, the applause could be heard four blocks away from the venue.   When it was all over many delegates said it was the best conference they had attended for many years or even ever!

 

That was not Mikail's view.  He had held his tongue, with extreme difficulty, for the four days of the conference; but when he was shown the draft communiqué that was to be issued from the conference, he could contain himself no longer.   He was loud (and alone) in his dissent.  He simply could not put his name to a document that said,

 

"As scientists working together for the good of humanity we affirm our belief that our unity with one another and our respect for one another is of the first importance.   For four days we have worked, talked, lived and laughed together, wryly amused by the trivial matters on which we disagree, and warmed by the wider truth that we all joyfully embraced and by which we are in turn embraced.   In that spirit we affirm the essential duality of truth, accepting that the yeti both exists and does not exist, has four legs yet two, has fur yet hair, lives here but there, is sociable yet solitary, and is exclusively vegetarian yet carnivorous."

 

That very evening Mikail resigned all his positions, and abandoned scientific research and study for ever.   He turned, instead, to theology, and soon became intrigued, then fascinated, and finally obsessed by the Doctrine of the Trinity.  He soon found a marked division between Eastern and Western Theology.   In the East few doubted the existence of the Trinity, but fierce debate raged over the details.  In the West there was little debate.   Theologians were free to believe anything or nothing about the Trinity, and not even bishops seemed too concerned about it.

 

He's thinking of giving up theology in favour of macramé, or welding, or perhaps sumo wrestling.  Anything really.  What does it matter?

Taking, Earning, Giving & Receiving

As I've said in the notes in our pewsheet this morning, our readings today invite us to think about the different ways in which we take possession of something.   It's quite timely for us as we formally settled the purchase of our house in Waikouaiti on Friday – in legal terms, we took possession of it, even though we didn't go near the place.   It was all done by an exchange of symbols; our solicitor handed over a cheque, a symbol of an amount of money we are paying to the vendors, and their solicitor handed over a set of keys symbolising our right to enter the house and physically take possession of it.   It was all very straightforward, as are the vast majority of transactions between two willing and law-abiding parties.

 

But things are not always so straightforward as that, and I'm not thinking of commercial transactions that occasionally go wrong.   I'm thinking of voluntary transactions, favours, gifts, that sort of thing.  Here are a few stories to illustrate some of the complexities that can arise when contract gives way to custom, culture, airy-fairy stuff like that

 

When my eldest daughter was about eleven or twelve, one of her closest friends was a Chinese girl, the daughter of a market garden family.   When it came to my daughter's birthday, she decided she would like to have a picnic birthday party at a large swimming pool complex in Palmerston North, and included in her guest-list was this Chinese friend.   Well, we had a lovely time, the weather was kind to us, the girls had fun in the pool, and we had our picnic feast.  When it was all over, I dropped our guests at their various homes, and that, I thought, was that.

 

The next day I opened our front door to find our veranda full of an amazing collection of vegetables.   It didn't take long to work out that these had come from the Chinese family.  In their eyes we had shown great kindness to their daughter, so that they must now show generosity to us.   In practical terms, their gift to us was way over the top – we couldn't possibly have eaten that amount of vegetables before they began to spoil.  But that wasn't the point.  In their cultural terms, the gift was not intended as payment, reciprocal in value to the favour we had done them; the sheer extravagance of the gift was the whole point of the thing.   But in our cultural terms, how should we respond?

 

Here's another story.  It concerns a young solo mother who arrived in a particular area with a child and virtually nothing else.   She was assisted through that early period by a local community group, who, among other things, gave her a food parcel.  She was very grateful; and later, when she had got back on her feet economically, she decided to donate an item of food every week to the food-bank, so that others could receive the help she had when in need.  

 

All went well until the following Christmas, when there was a knock on this young mum's door, and there was a person from the food-bank bringing her a Christmas food parcel.   The young mum thanked the woman for the kind thought, but explained that she was now doing okay, she didn't need any further assistance from the food-bank, and she would much prefer the parcel to be given to someone who really needed it.    Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

 

Well, not apparently to the woman from the food bank.  She became very angry and abusive.   She told the young mum that whether she liked it or not she was still just a solo mother like all the others, she was just as needy as all the others, and who the hell did she think she was, putting on airs and graces, when she had been only too quick to stick her hand out for all that was going a few months back.   The encounter came to an abrupt but inconclusive end at that point: the young mum slammed the door on the other woman, who then left the food parcel at the front gate in full view of the street traffic.

 

How do we feel about all that?  Probably, we don't have a lot of sympathy for the woman from the food-bank – her personal agenda does seem a little questionable, to put it mildly.   But what about the solo mum?  Was she only concerned to ensure that the food went to somebody needier than herself; or was she reacting against the idea that she was still a 'suitable case for charity'?   Was it compassion for others or pride in herself that guided her response?  After all, if she had accepted the gift graciously, she could then have passed it on to someone who needed it more than here.

 

The third story came in the wake of the tragedy in Auckland with the disconnected power supply.  A budget adviser was being interviewed on National radio, and he was making the point that it is not only beneficiaries or people on very low wages who get themselves into the sort of situation where their power could be disconnected.   He then referred to a client family from the North Shore in Auckland.  They both had managerial positions, and their combined earnings were well over $100, 000 annually.   They were leasing two cars; a BMW for him, and a SUV for her.  They had three or four rental properties, and their two children attended private schools.   They were, said the budget adviser, asset rich but income poor.

 

 The interviewer was nonplussed.  The budget adviser was based in Mangere.   What had he to do with a couple like that?  Well, the couple were too embarrassed to ask for help in their own area, so they had come to South Auckland.   That is quite common apparently.  But surely, said the interviewer, people who donate food to the food-bank in Mangere don't expect it to be given to people from the North Shore?   People who owned rental properties and send their children to private schools?  Let them sell one of their houses if they're so short of funds.

 

Yes, said the budget adviser, that might well be a sensible course; but all that takes time.  In the meantime, they needed help and so we gave it to them.  There was a bit more bluster and fury from the interviewer, until we reached the bottom line.   The bottom line, said the budget adviser, was that the children were hungry and we fed them.  That's what food-banks do.  We give according to need, not according to how deserving we think our clients are.

 

I don't know about the interviewer, but at that point I blushed.  Because up to that point I had been on the interviewer's side.   I, too, had thought it outrageous that some well-to-do family from the North Shore could turn up in Mangere and receive free food from donations made by people far poorer than themselves.   That's not right – there's no justice in that.  No, there isn't.  What there is, we religious people call grace.   The budget adviser didn't use that term, but that's what he was talking about.  A free unmerited gift given only because there is a need for it.   And hopefully received by the family with grateful and humble hearts.  We might hope, too, that in the future they would give to the food-bank so that others could be helped.   But they are under no obligation to do so.  Real gifts are made in complete freedom.

 

King David had to learn a hard lesson.  God had given him much – political power, protection from his enemies, peace and prosperity.   He accepted all this, but it wasn't enough.  He lusted after another man's wife, and had that man killed so he could take her for himself.   Instead of responding in love to God for his gracious kindness, David broke at least three of the Ten Commandments.  He deserved the harshest penalty under the law.   He received forgiveness – for no other reason than he needed it, and recognised his need for it.  At the heart of forgiveness is grace: it is always unjust.

 

The woman in our gospel story illustrates the proper response to grace.  She has been forgiven much, and her gratitude manifests itself in this extravagant way.   But the story only works because Jesus responds to her with equal grace.  He could have shoo'd her away.  He could have insisted that he didn't need his feet washed, thank you very much.  She should go find someone with dirtier feet than his!

 

When we really think about these stories, they seem to be about who's really in control.  The market gardener decided what vegetables we would have.   The food-bank woman and the solo mum were both struggling to impose their viewpoint on the other.  The interviewer felt that the budget adviser should have imposed control over the couple from the North Shore.   King David wanted to run his own affairs.

 

Only Jesus is willing to yield control, to let this woman do to him what she felt she wanted to.  In doing that he is clearly contradicting Jewish cultural norms, as Simon the Pharisee made clear.  Instead, he was creating a new one.  In the kingdom of God it may be just as blessed to receive as to give.

 

And a lot harder.

Set Free

Texts: Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

With all due respect to Dr Cullen, his eighth budget was not the most newsworthy event of this past week. He was overshadowed by the Privy Council decision in the Bain case, and Bain's subsequent release from imprisonment, at least for the time being. Those images of this tall, thin figure with the enormous grin, surrounded by a pack of journalists asking the most ridiculous questions imaginable, will surely stick in our minds for a long time. No words were necessary, really – the pictures said it all.

I wonder if you had those pictures in your minds this morning as you heard the words of absolution. One of my favourite parts of the liturgy each Sunday is the absolution, and I make no secret of my preference for the form we have in our first liturgy, the one we have been using throughout this Easter Season. Let me remind you again how it goes: Through the cross of Christ, God have mercy on you, pardon you and set you free. Know that you are forgiven and be at peace. God strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in eternal life.

Some of those very words were being bandied about this week as legal experts commented on the Bain case; particularly apposite is that clause "pardon you and set you free". David Bain has been set free, at least for now, but he hasn't yet been pardoned. There's a very important distinction. At this moment, he remains accused of five murders, but he has been set free. That freedom, we might say, is incomplete: he has not been absolved.

His freedom has not come "through the cross of Christ", but through legal decisions. It is a moot point whether or not he has been shown mercy; but what is clear is that he cannot yet know that he is forgiven and therefore he cannot yet be at peace. As we think about the Bain case, then, we can ponder our own position in terms of the absolution.

We, too, have been set free. Our freedom has come through the cross of Christ. Unlike David Bain, we have been shown mercy and we have been pardoned. We know we are forgiven, and therefore we can be at peace. We are, in the words of St Paul, no longer under condemnation (Romans 8:1). Unlike David Bain, we do not stand accused of anything. That is what absolution in its fullest sense means. He has merely been set free, we have been absolved, pardoned, forgiven. Why then does he have the broadest smile imaginable, and I have never seen anyone look even mildly pleased in response to the absolution?

David Bain is not the only reason why I have been pondering imprisonment this week. A friend of mine is writing a theological book about Auschwitz and the whole terrible thing we call the Holocaust, and he has asked me to act as one of his reader-reviewers as the work proceeds. So he sends me instalments, and invites my comments. The process is at an early stage and this week I have been looking at his introduction. As you can imagine, it's pretty grim stuff.

One of the statements that caught my eye concerns the reaction of the prisoners in the camps. In broad terms, and with individual exceptions, of course, this took one of two forms. Given the sheer awfulness and helplessness of their situation, many simply gave up, collapsed into despair and even insanity. Many took their own lives, or longed for death as the only way of ending the torment. That was one common approach, and the other was to become totally focussed on seeking his or her own survival at whatever cost.

At first sight, those two approaches seem to be at either end of the spectrum, but they both have one common element. What human beings tend to lose when we are completely deprived of freedom is any concern for our fellow human beings. We become totally concerned with ourself, either in the sense of seeking our death or in the sense of seeking our survival. As a general rule, in order to be concerned for others, we need to be free – free from fear, free from undue concern about ourselves. St John says perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Human experience suggests that once fear has been cast out, perfect love becomes possible.

With all this in mind perhaps it's time to turn to our first lesson today, which, of course, is set in prison. At first sight, this is one of those 'oh, dear' stories – do we really have to believe this one? It sounds a bit far-fetched, to put it mildly. St Luke says a violent earthquake occurred, shaking the foundations of the prison. Well, the Milton Hilton has probably been built to withstand fairly strong earthquakes, but a prison in first century Philippi? We might have expected the building to crumble; but no, the building stood tall. The only effect the earthquake had was to fling open the locked doors, which, perhaps, is just feasible, and to loosen everybody's chains, which is surely pushing things a bit far!

But, of course, this is not a story about seismological phenomena. This is an Easter story. This is a story about prisoners being set free through the liberating power of God. St Luke, ever the master storyteller, has set the scene for us with his usual skill. The jailer has been "commanded to guard them carefully", so he has placed them in the inner cell, manacled them, and taken up guard duty himself. What does that remind us of? Perhaps this snippet from the Gospel of St Matthew (27:65-6): "Take a guard," Pilate answered. "Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how." So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

Jesus secure in the sealed tomb; his disciples secure in the inner cell of the Philippian prison. And in each case the liberating power of God blows, the Spirit of God, liberates, and the prisoners are set free. The same Spirit that entered the man-made tomb to raise Jesus to new life now enters this man-made prison to bring liberty to the captives.

But that's only half the story; the story doesn't finish there, as we might expect. Because the prisoners don't act as we might expect. We might expect them to do a runner – the doors are suddenly thrown open, the building is shaking from head to foot – the most natural thing in the world for them to do at that moment is surely to make good their escape, to seize the freedom they have been so unexpectedly given.

That's what the poor old jailer assumes has happened, and he prepares to take his own life rather than face the consequences of allowing a mass breakout. But the prisoners are still there. Why? Because of their concern for him. They realise that their escape would be at his expense, and so they stay and save his life. And, of course, this extraordinary display of compassion shown to him by his prisoners bowls him over. He realises that he is in the presence of something or someone far greater than himself. Now it is he who is trembling, and he prostrates himself before Paul and asks the classic penitent's question, "What must I do to be saved?" The jailer and his prisoners are reconciled, they are now brothers in Christ. That's the effect of Easter – the effect of the liberating power we call the Holy Spirit.

In our gospel reading this morning we have part of Jesus' so-called Priestly Prayer, when he prays for unity among his disciples; and in our reading from the Book of Revelation we have a vision of that unity brought to completion in the whole of creation.

And, as so often, St Paul has just the words for us to sum up this Easter gospel of ours. He writes (Romans 8:21-2): The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed…in the hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. There are those words again – "liberated" and "freedom".

But look at their scope now. Not just for one man accused of slaying his family in Dunedin; not just for a small group of prisoners in first century Philippi, not even just for the rest of humanity. This absolution, this liberation, this freedom is ultimately intended for the whole of creation. That's what started at Easter: that's the liberating power of the Holy Spirit, mightier than even the most violent earthquakes, to which we will return next week as we celebrate the Day of Pentecost.

In the meantime, perhaps we can remember those TV images and promise ourselves one thing. Next time we hear the words of absolution we will try to look at least mildly pleased.

Restoring the Centre

Texts: Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

Today we come to the finale of the Easter Season, the Day of Pentecost. Tomorrow we begin that long period of so-called Ordinary Time that continues through until Advent Sunday, when we start all over again. But, of course, even during Ordinary Time, some days are more special than others. They’re called Sundays. Why are Sundays so special? Well, the answer is to be found on page 7 of the Prayer Book. There we are told, “All Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

All Sundays are feast days, days of celebration; they are, we might say, mini-Easter Days, because every Sunday is a celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. For that reason, no Sundays form part of the Season of Lent. We have Sundays in Lent, but never Sundays of Lent. When the Church says we should have no flowers in the sanctuary in Lent, it’s for purely practical rather than theological reasons. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have flowers on the Sundays in Lent; it’s just that they shouldn’t be there on the preceding Saturday or the succeeding Monday, so it’s just too much bother.

So all Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. That should be enough; but increasingly there are those in the Church who obviously don’t think it is. So we are being given an increasing number of designated Sundays - that is, Sundays on which we are invited (and, in one or two cases, directed) to focus on a particular anniversary or type of ministry. So we have Sea Sunday, Refugee Sunday, Youth Sunday, and National Bible Sunday all coming later this year, and soon we will mark Te Pouhere Sunday when we are to congratulate ourselves on our three-tikanga constitution.

And just recently a new idea has been circulated; it is now suggested that we should designate this Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, as All Faiths Day, and use it to promote the virtues of religious pluralism and inter-faith tolerance. There was a time when I would have thundered against this idea, but now in my sixties I am aware of the need to conserve my breath, so today I shall just quietly whimper about it.

Let me start by saying that I am all for inter-faith dialogue and mutual respect, so long as that is not code for the great pretence that all religions are basically saying the same thing. They are most definitely not. All religions might be fundamentally wrong, including our own; but at the most only one of them can be fundamentally true. I believe that that is Christianity, but I respect the views of those who profess a different faith.

What I object to is designating a Sunday for inter-faith celebrations, for the very reason that I have already referred to. For us Christians, all Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. Other faiths have other special days. If we are to designate a day each year for reflecting on the plurality of religious belief, let us have a day that is neutral, not specially holy to any particular faith.

And if I don’t win that argument, my fall-back position is a stout defence of the Day of Pentecost. I can see why, superficially, it has suggested itself to the proponents of this idea. It seems to have something to do with mutual understanding, with multilingualism and therefore, perhaps, multiculturalism. So maybe it’s not too big a stretch to take it to multi-faith dialogue. Or is it? Well, let’s look at what Pentecost means within the Christian understanding. And to do that, says the Church, we need to start with the ancient story of the Tower of Babel. Why start there? Well, because in some sense it is thought that what happened on the Day of Pentecost was a reversal of what happened at Babel. The confusion of language at Babel was replaced at Pentecost by mutual understanding. So let’s see if that analysis stands up.

It’s a fascinating if rather mysterious story. It starts with the statement that the whole world had one language and a common speech. Then we’re told that people were on the move, a migration eastward was underway, but when the people found a plain in Shinar (better known to us as Babylon, modern-day Iraq) they stopped their migration and settled there. We’ll come back to the possible significance of that in a moment.

The next thing we’re told is that, for building material they used bricks instead of stone. Now why is that significant? Well, there are two possibilities here. First, stone is part of creation; we might gather it, shape it, and do various other things to it, but we can’t make it. It’s either there or it isn’t. We might say, either God has provided it, or we have to do without. But bricks are man-made, manufactured as we say. If we go back far enough in the production chain, we will find that there are certain materials that we need to find, but bricks only exist if we make them. So perhaps this is about becoming more self-sufficient, and less dependent on God. We now create our own building material.

The second possibility is that this is about a cultural clash. Perhaps hidden in this story is a clash between an indigenous culture that used stone and the migrant incomers who introduced this new-fangled idea of making bricks. This, of course, ties in with the idea of an eastward migration. Then we hear their grand proposal to build a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered over all the earth. Here we have a bundle of at least four things tied into one.

First of all we have the idea of building a city, and again we may be seeing a clash of cultures here. Cities lay claim to an area, and are defended from all comers. Cites do not produce their own food, which has to be acquired from somewhere. Local farmers do not usually warm to the idea of a city being built on their land or in their neighbourhood. So, again, this may be a clash between a town-based culture and a rural culture. Then there’s the tower, the well-known edifice complex. Today the ultimate status symbol, as many countries seek to build the tallest building in the world.

But in this story the stress is on reaching the heavens, so it is about human hubris, finding our own way to God, rather than waiting for God to come to us. And tied in with this is their desire to make a name for themselves. No longer content to bear the name of God, or a name given by God, they want to choose a name for themselves. Again, indicative, it seems, of a desire for more autonomy, less dependence on God.

But then comes the strange bit. One of the reasons they give for building the city is to avoid being “scattered over the face of the whole earth”. What’s that about? That is, of course, what God does to them, but there is no indication here that they foresee divine intervention. It may be that they fear enemies, and intend to build a fortified city for defensive purposes. Or it may be that they are recognising the need for a common interest to keep them together.

Modern experience of major building programmes in certain parishes come to mind here. A friend of mine was appointed Vicar of a large, once wealthy parish, then very much in decline. He diagnosed a chronic lack of unity in the parish. One day as he got to know his new surroundings, he came across a scaled model of the church, not as it was at that time, but as somebody had once envisaged it could be. An idea came to my friend. He would launch the parish on this very building project. It took five years, and while it was going on, the place came alive. The whole town, it seemed, suddenly became interested in all the fundraising events, and took a great interest in watching the extensive building operations take shape. Attendance shot up, money poured in.

After the whole project was completed, it took about two years for the parish to return to the state it was in when the project began. A similar story could be told about one of our cathedrals. While the building projects were underway, people had something in common, enough to keep them together. But when the projects were finished, they lost that centre of interest, and they soon scattered to the four winds.

What happened on the Day of Pentecost was the coming of a new centre, a new common interest, binding the people together. But we misunderstand the miracle of Pentecost if we think of it in terms of instantaneous translation. Through the Holy Spirit all those different ethnic groups were enabled to hear in their own languages the Galileans speaking to them. But hear what? They were enabled to hear the one Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what brought them together. That’s what overcame their ethnic and linguistic differences.

And that’s what holds the Church together today. As St Paul says (Ephesians 4:5-6): There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. That is the gift the Spirit brought us at Pentecost. That is what we celebrate and give thanks for, on this day especially. It’s not St Barnabas built of wood, or Holy Trinity built of stone, that binds us together. It is our shared faith and only our shared faith that keeps us bound together in peace.

That’s why, in my quiet whimpering way, I really don’t think today is the right one for thinking about other faiths.