Pentecost: Christmas for the Holy Spirit (II)

As I said yesterday, there have been two thoughts in my mind during this weekend.

The first being the televangelists and their apparent ability to turn on the power of the Spirit at will. The second is much more everyday and normal.

I was in Morrisons last week (other supermarkets are available), and I heard two women talking — one was a staff member, and the other was asking if she had time off this weekend.

    “I’m off Saturday, but I’m back in Sunday and Monday,” said Morrisons lady.

    “Still, you’ve got a day off,” said her friend.

    “Yeah, I suppose, but it’s not like it used to be. You get Christmas and Easter, but every other bank holiday, it’s just like a normal day.”

She’s right, I thought, we don’t make things special anymore.

Christmas is important, because it symbolises the incarnation, God walking amongst us; and Easter is important because it means and end to death and the slavery of sin. But what about Ascension? Surely that’s important too: without it Jesus would still have been walking the earth today, he wouldn’t have returned to the Father and opened the way for us.

    And then there’s Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, comes to the apostles and settles on them like tongues of fire; when the apostles become gifted, able to speak in other tongues, empowered to give the most effective of sermons.

    But it’s like the poor relation to Christmas and Easter.

Christmas: we take two, three or four days off, we give each other gifts, we sing songs that reflect the season and we celebrate with friends and family.

Easter: we take four days off, we buy each other eggs and other chocolate gifts, we sing songs that reflect the season.

Pentecost: we get a day off, unless Pentecost doesn’t coincide with Spring Bank Holiday, in which case we get the day off a week later, or earlier or whatever; and that’s only if we don’t work in a supermarket or in the service industry, then we don’t get a day at all.

Now, I’m not looking for a miracle here: if I was I’d ask Benny Hinn, obviously.

    But wouldn’t it be nice if we remembered why we have Pentecost, remembering a day when a fisherman from Galilee was able to convert three thousand people to his cause by talking to them, gifted as he had been by the Spirit.

If we were going to perform a miracle, my suggestion would be this: don’t go shopping on a bank holiday. Sure the shops are open, but you don’t have to use them, with a bit of planning you can get in everything you need and spend the time doing something nice with family.

    If enough of us did that, we’d show the shops and businesses that being open on a bank holiday wasn’t worth it, and then we’d give staff the best gift we could: time off.

Pentecost: Christmas for the Holy Spirit (I)

As I think about this year’s holy day, two things keep coming to mind.  One was a television programme I happened to catch late one Friday night.

There wasn’t much on that I wanted to see, so I started channel hopping, and I ended up on one of the religious channels.  The programme was called “This is Your Day”, and featured a televangelist called Benny Hinn.

    I’m not sure who’s familiar with Benn Hinn, but he’s got quite a following in America, and across the world actually — he claims to have reached over a billion people through his Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades.

    This particular programme was one part sermon and one part healing service, and it was one of those hugely charismatic affairs where Benny got the congregation (or perhaps audience is a better term) jumping out of their seats, weeping and wailing and falling over as they were ‘slain by the Spirit’.

    There were thousands of people, literally thousands, so that the ones at the back had to watch Benny on a TV screen. A bit like I was doing, except they weren’t in their pyjamas, and they didn’t have a cup of tea handy.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable watching the whole thing; and one of the most discomforting things was the supernatural healings. Not the healing itself: I am totally into healing. I know that it can and does happen. What troubled me was the way Benny Hinn went about it.

He has a staff team and they bring people up out of the audience on to the stage; they announce what the person’s affliction is; Benny puts his hand on their head and throws them backwards, no, not throws, hurls, he hurls them backwards.  There are two staff members standing by to catch the person; they do so and then lift them back up so that Benny can hurl them back down again.

    “Praise Jesus”, he says as the staff lay the person on the ground and leaves them there twitching and thrashing like a dying fish.

    The staff will sometimes pick them up again for a final head slap accompanied by “Alleluia!”, “Praise Jesus” or “Shazam!” or whatever.

    And the whole time that this is going on, Benny and his staff are having a conversation about the person, talking about them as if they weren’t there, or as if they were a piece of meat.

    The thing that really jarred was when Benny’s sidekick announces a woman getting up on stage.

    “Benny, this woman says she has been cured of Coeliacs’ Disease.”

And I was like, “What?”

    “Coeliacs’ Disease?” asks Benny.

    “Yes,” says the sidekick, “As you were talking she felt a warm sensation in her stomach and the Coeliacs’ Disease was gone.” (Pause for dramatic effect) “She had been in constant pain for ten years, and the pain is gone.”

    “Is this true?” asks Benny (he’s good at asking questions).

    “Yes,” says the woman and then Bang! He slaps her on the forehead and she goes down like a sack of spuds.

I had two thoughts at this point:

1.       If she had been in constant pain for ten years, this woman hadn’t been following a gluten-free diet.

2.       She said she felt healed while Benny was giving his sermon, so what were they bringing her up on stage for, and what was the slap on the head for?

Let me be clear. I believe in miracles. I believe that God can do anything.  I believe that God can use us to work miracles. But that doesn’t mean that people can do miracles in their own time to their own agenda: it takes the Holy Spirit according to his timescale. 

This Pentecost, I think it's worth remembering who the real power is, and recognising that we are blessed that we can tap into that power, but let's not get carried away. We aren't the source of the power. The I AM is.