Evensong for Pentecost
Evensong for Pentecost, sermon preached by Revd Edward Probert.
8th June 2025
Exodus 33.7-20; 2 Corinthians 3.4-end
About 18 months ago I told the Dean that I was aiming to retire round about mid-May this year; a while later, I realised that the cathedral was due to hold a flower festival in mid-May, so I made it late May; then a former chorister asked me to take her wedding on the 31st May, so I thought of going on the 1st June; then the son of some very old friends asked me to take his wedding on the 7th. Then I drew a line – and in consequence failed to anticipate the risk that people looking at our website or today’s notice sheet would find both main services today highlighting ‘Farewell to the Canon Chancellor’. Somewhat out of proportion, I think.
For clarity: our main business here tonight is to rejoice in the gift of the Holy Spirit of God at Pentecost, and not on account of a literally ‘here today, gone tomorrow’, Canon Chancellor.
I was ordained deacon in 1985. During most of my ministry the obituary of the Church of England has been pronounced, but, weird and frustrating organisation that it is, it is still here, people still encounter the delights of God’s love in and through it, and are helped to find meaning and purpose for their lives. Of course it’s a mess, of course it fails, of course it could be better. But it’s human, under God, and like everyone it has a lot for which to repent.
I had no life plan that imagined spending most of my ministry as part of a great cathedral; I’ve always taken things as they come, and usually gone through doors that open for me. I landed here, and doors – which had previously led me into a year in a nightclub, a year in Leeds with the homeless, 4 years in prosperous Surrey, 5 years in mixed communities of South London, and 10 years in outer London suburbia – once here doors tended not to open and I came to rest.
I’m glad I did, and am profoundly grateful for the community of this place. It’s a privilege to have been part of it for so long, and now to find myself on the cusp of departure. Ancient places, and ancient titles such as we have here, give the impression that nothing ever changes; but in fact things change all the time, and the strength of a community lies in its ability to be changed and renewed, and to move on.
Which means I can give some proper attention to the Holy Spirit. Cathedrals are orderly places, things well done take a lot of planning, and planning and order are important. But the Holy Spirit is something of a provocateur. In English we don’t even have a comfortable pronoun – for it, her, him?
We have to be open to the Spirit coming in, the rushing wind and flame, and the sudden articulacy of Peter on the day of Pentecost;
- or as the breath of peace from the mouth of Jesus, after the resurrection
- or as the advocate or comforter described by Jesus at his last supper,
- or in the fiery challenging words of the prophets
- or in whatever other way that Spirit may choose.
This is God we cannot grasp, beyond definition, elusive yet intimate, eternal but unpredictable.
There is no excuse for boredom when we are open to the Spirit. There is simply the need to be thankful for the loving work of God among us, and to find that presence in the strange as in the familiar, equally present in the noise and the hum and the silence, in the confusion and the argument and the harmony.
Sometime in the late 1980s I took a parish group to a diocesan youth weekend; and during it there was a moment at which I rebelled emotionally. It came when at the collective worship – gathered as we were in a marquee in the rain – when the worship leader reminded us how great God was, and invited us to give God a round of applause. This was, I reckoned, a Rubicon which would not have been crossed by Augustine or Calvin: it takes some nerve to patronise the Almighty.
It is a remarkable privilege to lead the worship of God’s people, and it’s easy to mess it up in some way. I do it all the time (as Caroline has pointed out on innumerable occasions). I did it at least a couple of times earlier today, as I wait to be helpfully reminded. Fortunately, as Moses, Peter, and all their more lowly successors have found, we all fall short of the glory of God. We can but hope to point people towards that amazing creative love, and to suggest to them that they focus their eyes there from whom it all comes, and so I do.