Sunday 08 June 2025
Pentecost
Welcome!
We know not everyone who is part of Westwood Church is able to be in church on Sunday morning however, we thought it would be good to offer some excerpts from the Sunday morning service. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you. If you want to plug in headphones to your computer, tablet or mobile phone now is a good time to do it ! If you want to offer some comment or feedback just use the comment box at the end of this post.
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Acts 2: 1 – 21
John 14: 8 – 17
Praise – Open my eyes that I may see
Prayers
Why Lord, do we sometimes feel you are a God who hides yourself from us? A silent God who politely ignores our prayers seeking help and strength? Why Lord, do we sometimes feel that you are no longer powerful?
We have heard of you working in past ages; scripture testifies to your working amongst your people, guiding, chastising, but above all loving your people. Are we not your people? Do we not belong to you and are you not our God? We worship you, we adore you, we come to serve you in and through our lives, we worship no other God but you.
We know your instructions to love You above all else, all others. We know Your command to provide for the hungry and needy. Your way is for us to love others as we love ourselves, the way You love us. Will You visit us as You have done in the past? Immerse us in that place where wind and fire meet. Your power filling us to overflowing.
Holy Spirit, flood our hearts, souls, and minds; be our strength.
May we point to and reveal Jesus, so that this day and the days ahead, are times where all peoples can hear the name of the Lord Jesus, call on You and be saved.
Let this be a Pentecost time for us. Let God’s Kingdom come and God’s will be done here.
So hear us as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” An old adage I’m sure you are familiar with. It may be this morning that you will not need to look very much further to find one of those “fools”.
Given that I am one of just a few men in church and mostly everyone here is female I decided that it would be a good idea to talk about pregnancy and childbirth. What a fool, you are saying to yourself. What does a man know about pregnancy and childbirth? Well, exactly. That’s my point. A dad’s experience of pregnancy and childbirth is entirely different to a mum’s. A woman might well say that men know nothing about this and I’m not about to dispute that point of view. A man will never feel a baby kicking inside him and never experience the pain of childbirth.
But even for a woman the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth can be remarkably varied. Morning sickness, back pain, tiredness, hours or maybe days in labour, caesarean section, breach birth, twins, triplets, IVF, and I could go on mentioning seemingly endless variations on the theme.
So, ladies. You might well sit and chat to each other about motherhood and all that it entails and find that you have so much in common and yet each of you will have had a different experience, one so very individual to you. And this is where words let us down because it can be so very hard to convey even to another mum, what your experiences have been like. But try conveying those experiences to a man, who knows nothing, obviously, and you might as well be banging your head against a brick wall.
Now today is Pentecost Sunday and like so many other Pentecost Sundays we have read together the passage from Acts 2 about the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is all so very familiar. Mighty rushing wind. Tongues of fire. Speaking in all kinds of languages so that folk thought those believers were drunk.
And then we notice the figures of speech. It sounded “like” a strong wind blowing; it was “like” tongues of fire and it dawns on us that Luke, the author of Acts, is doing his best to describe an experience. And he is a little lost for words clutching at images that best describe what he saw, what he heard, what he felt.
Gathered together in one place the believers (about 120 in all) came to worship God and as they offered their prayers and praises they experienced the presence of God in a wonderful, powerful and overwhelming way. That experience of God’s presence, that sense of the living reality of God changed them as people. They knew they had Good News to offer to people everywhere and began to speak with boldness about Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection.
It is very difficult if not impossible to enter into another person’s experiences, especially when they can be so varied. Think on the Apostle Paul who undoubtedly experienced Jesus Christ in a powerful way as he walk the road to Damascus intent on persecuting Christians. A blinding light, a voice from within it, the loss of his eyesight for three days, this too was an experience of the living Christ yet this was so different to the day of Pentecost. Think on the lame man sitting at the Beautiful Gate outside the Temple begging for a living, begging of Peter and John for some money. He too experienced the presence of God when Peter and John commanded him to get up and walk. Soon he was walking and jumping and praising God. That Beggar’s experience was different again but no less valid.
We would most likely describe our experiences of God in a different way to that which we read in the Book of Acts. I suspect that for most of us God has come to us in a very gentle way – like the way that Jesus gives the Spirit to the disciples in John’s Gospel, Jesus simply breathing upon them.
And maybe because of all that variety, one might even say confusion, around our experiences of God’s presence; we have stopped talking about them. How, then are we going to learn from each other about the way God works in us and through us if we don’t try to talk about these things. How will we recognise God working in us and in others if we don’t have a language that helps us describe it.
Tongues of Fire and mighty rushing wind are not part of my experience of God but I will always be grateful to Luke for sharing his experiences in the Book of Acts because somehow, I am now all the more open to the endless possibilities that come with knowing Jesus Christ.
Praise – Spirit of God
Prayers for Others
Praise – O breath of life
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.