by Julian Mann, TCW
THE collect for today, Whitsunday, in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer reflects the fact that Christianity is not a legalistic religion involving rigid adherence to a code such as Sharia law or the detailed rules Mormons are expected to obey.
On the day the Church celebrates God’s gift of his Holy Spirit, the collect invites Christian worshippers to pray that the Spirit will enable them to exercise their own judgement rightly: ‘O God, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.’
The collect resonates with Jesus’s teaching in his farewell discourse to his disciples in John’s Gospel chapters 14 to 17. The prayer book Gospel reading for Whitsunday is from John 14:15-31.
On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus promised his disciples that he would ‘pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you’ (John 14:16-18 – King James Version).
The Lord poured out his Holy Spirit on his Church at the Jewish Festival of Pentecost after Jesus’s Resurrection and Ascension. The prayer book epistle reading from Acts 2 describes the Holy Spirit filling the first 120 Christian disciples gathered in Jerusalem: ‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4).’
The Holy Spirit empowers Christians to obey Jesus’s commands. In John 14:15 he told his disciples: ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments.’
See also: Pentecost: Its meaning, significance and relevance for Christians today, from Christian Today