Acts 2.1-21;
1 Corinthians 12.3b-13
John 20.19-23 or John 7.37-39

THE THREE great scriptural images of the Holy Spirit are elemental. The Spirit is air, water, and fire. He is wind, river, and flame. Air, water, and fire have a common attribute. They all flow - fire as much as air and water - as the terrified people who have fled its path through a forest or across a hillside will testify.

Earth, the fourth element, can flow, too, as the citizens of San Francisco found out in 1906, and the good people of Market Rasen in 2008. In scripture, we are depicted by the same elemental imagery. We are but earth and breath, animated dust (Genesis 2.7).

On Sunday we shall try - and fail - to speak of a reality beyond words. On the day of Pentecost, the apostles had the same problem of articulating the ineffable. They coped as best they could, as many do still, by "speaking in tongues".

But, in places where we cannot resort to tongues, such as columns in the Church Times and most pulpits, we must find words that will at least save us from gibberish. The concept of "flow" helps to touch on what - like air, water, and fire - is not to be grasped: the way God's Spirit works.

Flow is the title and theme of a widely influential book by a scholar with a far-from-flowing name. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's "flow" is "the mental state of operation in which a person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus" (Flow, Rider, 1992).

Csíkszentmihályi's work interprets what is going on whenever life is lived to the full. An expert skier knows what is meant by "flow". So does a master chef. So, too, does a child building a sandcastle. Jesus said that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly - in a word, in Csíkszentmihályi's word - that we might experience "flow" (John 10.10). That experience is the distinctive gift of God the Holy Spirit.

"A feeling of energized focus" is a good description of what the disciples experienced at Pentecost. They sensed the power they had been promised for the task ahead (Acts 1.8). The "adventures of the apostles", Luke's account of the earliest Christian community, is the story of some remarkably energetic people. Aroused from their bewildered and fearful torpor, they are possessed by "the force that drives the water through the rocks".

The key-word is "focus". It is from being focused, Csíkszentmihályi maintains, that flow follows. Flow is impossible where there is a multiplicity of conflicting objectives. At Pentecost, Peter and his companions are taken to be drunk, so bizarre is their behaviour. In reality, no group of 12 people could have been more clear-headed. Indeed, it could be said that the Christian Church, such was its subsequent habit of setting off in several different directions at once, was never again as sober as it was that first Whitsunday.

Here was a wholly undistracted company. To be sure, it all unravelled soon enough. The rows started. The cracks appeared that were to become the deep fissures that are with us to this day. But at Pentecost "they were all together in one place." Theirs was the single-mindedness of which Kierkegaard spoke, "the purity of heart which wills one thing".

The sharpness of the apostolic focus becomes clear if we to read to the end of Peter's sermon. All that Peter has previously said, including his rebuttal of the accusations of drunkenness levelled against the apostles, leads to his piercingly precise conclusion, the series of bullet-points - for once, the metaphor is exactly right - in which he summarises the Christian gospel.

Peter and the rest - one in the Spirit, possessed by the wind, the river, and the flame - knew briefly the flow of life to the full. What they were not doing was going with the flow. On the contrary, the current that carried them was to take some of them to martyrdom. Peter himself will find out what Jesus meant when he said to him: "Someone will take you where you do not wish to go" (John 21.18).

Ultimately, the flow of the Spirit is not about feelings. In the giddy early days of the 20th-century Charismatic Movement, the Christian press frequently carried pictures of people with their eyes closed and their mouths open. These were worshippers, "lost in wonder, love, and praise".

Their ecstasies were real enough, and the rest of us were put to shame. But it did look as if some of them were well and truly lost in their wonder, love, and praise. In their seventh heaven, they seemed far from earth.

The experience we are promised and invited to share at Pentecost may or may not include such raptures. The transports are not guaranteed; the tasks are.

Text of readings

Acts 2.1-21;

1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ 13But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
17“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
18Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
19And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
20The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

1 Corinthians 12.3b-13

3No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

John 20.19-23

19It was evening on the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

John 7.37-39

37On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing in the temple, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, 38and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ 39Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.