Bible Reading: Acts 2:1-47, John 15:26-7

IntroductionUnlike in the last few years, this year we start – rather than end – our series at Pentecost. There is a sense that we are joining with those early followers of Jesus, who would have known the promises of the Holy Spirit but were suddenly tasked with working out how to live their lives in light of the reality of its outpouring. Now to live the life, is all fine and well but what does this actually look like in practise?

The disciples have been in a daze, they’ve come to terms with the disappearing and reappearing Jesus. They’ve dealt with their doubt about Jesus’ resurrection, they’re overcoming their fear of what lies ahead for them. They’ve seen Jesus ascend to heaven and are left with this promise of what is to come. They have no idea what it looks like and could be forgiven for expecting Jesus to reappear once more. There wasn’t a long time between when Jesus was put to death, and where the disciples find themselves now. But it feels like a lifetime ago. Jesus was right, even though they didn’t really understand what He had spent so long trying to tell them. The despair of the disciples on Holy Saturday, had been transformed into the pregnant expectation of Pentecost eve.

There must be more…We can find it difficult to live with that same sense of pregnant anticipation that God is about to move and move in power. We know He could, we’ve just conditioned ourselves to expect that He won’t. Billy Graham once said, “everywhere I go I find that God’s people lack something. They are hungry for something. Their Christian experience is not all that they expected to be, and they often have recurring defeat in their lives. Christians today are hungry for spiritual fulfilment. The most desperate need of the nation today is men and women who profess Jesus be filled with the Holy Spirit.” The disciples realised in a short time that there is more, they learned to anticipate it. Do we?

…it must run deeperOnce more we could have forgiven the disciples for assuming that they’d seen everything Jesus had to offer. They’d left everything and followed Him, they could have said we’ve seen the death and resurrection. We’ve seen it all, time to get on with the rest of my life. I think that this is what we often see in the church, but not what we see in the New Testament. On the eve, and in the experience of Pentecost I think there was something that was birthed into the experience of the church; the desire and the passion for more. More of God, more of His life and more of His way of life.

The powerful tradition of more…The worship of the church through the centuries has been infused with this prayer for more. Archbishop Maurus wrote the Vini Creator Spiritus, in the ninth century, “Come, Creator Spirit, visit the minds of those who are yours. Fill with heavenly grace the hearts that You have made.” More recently, Tim Hughes wrote, “There must be more than this, O breathe of God come breathe within…fill us anew we pray.”

The more that the church has longed for, the potential that the disciples felt, is the Pentecost experience we read about in Acts 2. Not as a one-off event, but as a sign of the rule and reign of God becoming a reality.

The Pentecost experience we read about is birthed in a God who desperately wants to be seen in the lives of His people, and a people desperate for more of the God they have glimpsed. They have seen their God in the shallows and long to be overwhelmed by the depths of the love, grace, mercy and provision of their God. That’s the message that Peter stands up to deliver. This is our God, and there is more!

How much more?When, if ever, will we be happy that enough is enough? That we have fully exhausted the depths of God’s provision for us? There’s a tradition, or perhaps more accurately a practise, of the church to act as though t