In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
One thing I can’t stand is waiting. I’ve stopped going to Tesco because the queues are always too long. One thing that I dislike about Stockport is that there are always traffic jams.
I hate it on those reality TV shows when they leave a huge pause before finally announcing the winner. Is there anything worse than going to a Doctors appointment at 9am and not being seen until quarter to ten? Last year I cut my finger quite badly and had to go to A and
E at Stepping Hill. When I arrived, the receptionist cheerfully told me that there was a 3 hour wait. I was actually bleeding pretty badly, but I thought I would rather take my chances at home and die of blood loss, than sit in A and E and die of boredom. Jenny had other ideas. Waiting, for me at least, is frustrating, boring and tedious; and that’s the experience of many people in our society today. In today’s world, people want things now. You may remember that credit card advert a few years ago, the strapline for which was “why wait?”
Well it turned out that nobody waited, so we got a credit crisis. But the point is that waiting is hard, as least for some of us.
With that in mind, one can just imagine how agonizing it must have been for the first disciples as they waited in the period between Jesus’ ascension, and the day of Pentecost.
Jesus had promised that he would send them the Holy Spirit, but hadn’t given them a timeframe or been very specific as to when anything was going to actually happen. For all
Matthew, John, Peter and the rest of them knew, they could be waiting for weeks, or months, or years f or Jesus to live up to his promise. Furthermore, they weren’t sure what they were waiting for. What was the Holy Spirit going to be like? How would it change

them? What would it do? They must have been on tenterhooks, as they watched and wondered and waited for the unknown promise of Jesus to be fulfilled. For me at least, it would have been incredibly frustrating.
The fantastic thing is that for the disciples, it was worth the wait. After 10 days, a period which must have seemed like years, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, moves amongst them and utterly transforms them. The simple fishermen among them are transformed into world-class orators. Provincial tax collectors are suddenly fluent in 12 languages.
Uneducated labourers can overnight understand the intricate nuances of theology and hold their own against the greatest philosophers and thinkers of the age. The Holy Spirit completely and utterly changes them forever, and instils them with a hope and optimism and confidence as they step into the world to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. As in the church today, it was the presence of the Holy Spirit that made all the difference. On paper, the early church looked like it didn’t have a chance of doing anything meaningful at all- a small bunch of ragtag men and women, preaching against the combined might of the
Roman Empire, an established belief system based around a whole pantheon of Roman and
Greek Gods, Paganism, barbarism and all sorts of difficulties. It looked pathetic and hopeless. And yet, with the Holy Spirit’s guidance, within just a couple of generations, the world was a completely different place- transformed by the grace and mercy of God, and all of those other religions and beliefs were fading into obscurity, eclipsed by the universal truth of Christianity.
As the first disciples waited for the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost, so too today we are waiting. And we are all waiting for different things. You may be waiting for news about your

health. You may be waiting for a loved one to come home. You may be waiting for God to answer a special prayer. You may be waiting for your lunch. You might even just be waiting for this sermon to be finally over. But whatever you might be waiting for, we share a common bond, each one of us. Because we are all together waiting for the next coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus has promised to return to us; he hasn’t said when or where, but he has promised that he will return. Firstly, he promised to send the Holy Spirit, which he did, and then he promised that he himself will return to complete all things at the end of time. The question is, what shall we do with our time, now, while we await the next coming of our Lord?
Well, we could waste a load of time predicting when he might come back. There are groups today who do that sort of thing, and so far at least, they have always been wrong. Or we could bury our heads in the sand, accepting that Jesus might not come back in our lifetime, and so just forgetting all about the whole thing. Neither of those approaches is going to get us very far. But one thing we can do with our time today is exactly the thing that Jesus asks of us. We can seek, as the first Christians, to live as his disciples. All of us share the same calling as Peter and James and John and the rest; Jesus wants us to follow him in discipleship, preparing the path for his next coming.
Just as at Pentecost, the apostles received very different gifts and skills according to their abilities, discipleship will look different for everyone. But the point is, we all need to seek to be disciples. I was talking to someone who went to the Lay Conference last month, and they told me that the big theme of the event was that Jesus doesn’t want volunteers; he wants disciples. And that’s a huge distinction. In the church, we’re not looking for volunteers to do

things because they feel they should; we are looking for people who do things because they want to be a disciple. Every time we offer something to the church, we aren’t demonstrating kindly volunteerism; we are embracing Christ’s call to discipleship. I was delighted to welcome Grace Owens as our new Treasurer a couple of weeks ago; but she didn’t take on the role to volunteer- she did it because she wanted to follow Christ and be his disciple, so she offered the church her gifts. The feast of Pentecost reminds us that we are each called to give ourselves in the service of God and his Church, and it reminds us that equipped with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can achieve very great things if we work and pray and praise together.
As we remember the first coming of the Holy Spirit, and recall that he moves amongst us even now, let’s refresh our hearts and pray that we might be energised with the sort of zeal for the mission of the church that was shown by the early disciples as they sought to share
Christ’s love with the world. And perhaps today we could once again invite the Spirit to be at work in our hearts and lives- that we may use well the time that is given to us here on earth as we watch for Christ’s next coming amongst us. For one thing is certain: when Jesus does return, if that day is tomorrow or in twenty thousand years, for us, his disciples, it will be worth the wait.
Amen.