When I was a chaplain at Oxford we always had a large college service on Pentecost Sunday.

One year the principal read the first lesson. He got to the point when it says, “And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”

He paused, looked over his glasses and said, “Which is frankly not very Anglican.” Then he carried on.


Some people take the story in Acts at face value, and assume that the gift of the Holy Spirit is about power and enthusiasm. The disciples gather in a closed room, quite uncertain about the next move.

Some are impatient to get going; others are struggling to move beyond their sense of grief and loss, and still others are sunk in disillusionment.

And yet, after Pentecost, shy people had become bold, scared people had become gutsy and those who were about to throw in the towel and go back to the fishing boats had found a sure direction.


All that enthusiasm is an uncomfortable prospect for those of us who grew up in churches with scratchy theology and an abundance of right angles.

There’s something slightly disreputable about the actions of the Holy Spirit. It’s more like performance art than the kind of behaviour you’d expect at a dinner party. 


There’s another way of understanding the gift of the Holy Spirit which is much less spectacular and a bit more respectable.

In John’s Gospel (14:16) Jesus says, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, who will abide with you for ever.”

I was waiting in line at the supermarket checkout recently. A few feet in front of me, a mother guided her toddler ahead, anchored her baby on her hip and elbowed open her handbag to pay.

In a single gesture she removed her toddler’s hand from the lolly rack, took out her EFTPOS card and offered it to the cashier and placed a comforting kiss on top of her baby’s head.

The baby dribbled down her shoulder, the toddler clamped on to her leg like a vice, and the mother wrapped her arms about both of them while she waited for her payment to be processed.


The Holy Spirit is a bit like this. It consoles us when we are in distress, gently reproves us when we do stupid things, and searches us out when we are lost and lonely.

The Greek word Parakletos we translate as “Comforter” is one of those that theologians enjoy arguing about, but a literal meaning is ‘one who runs to our side to pick us up when we fall.’

God doesn’t discard us when we get it all wrong and strike out on our own headstrong paths. Each time we trip ourselves up, God watches and grieves with us and then gently helps us to our feet again.


Ven Lynda Patterson is Acting Dean of ChristChurch Cathedral.