SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY AT HOLLOWELL. 2000
I always used to be a little hazy about the meaning of Whitsun, which in my childhood was associated with a Bank Holiday in bad weather.  I knew it meant White Sunday, but I cannot recall anyone telling me why, until I discovered not so long ago that it was one of two Sundays, Easter being the other, when in years gone by, most baptisms were performed and those to be baptised wore white.  It is also linked with Pentecost and I notice that coming 50 days after both Easter and the Passover, it is a day that has meaning in both the Jewish and Christian religions. 
So in thinking what I would say to-day I looked first (in the context of Whitsun) at the two baptismal ceremonies in the Prayer Book – one for infants and one for those of riper years - to remind myself of the undertakings made on those occasions when we are asked to declare, either for ourselves or on behalf of a child, that we shall renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, all covetous desires of the same and the carnal desires of the flesh. We then declare our Christian faith in the words of the Creed. 
So it seems a good opportunity at Whitsun for us to think again about what was renounced on our behalf all those years ago and examine those promises and ourselves to see how far we have managed to carry them out in our own lives. 
There are, I confess, some problems of definition here. What is “the vain pomp and glory of the world”?  If, for example, you have two Jaguar motor cars and a  grace and favour flat at a peppercorn rent in the centre of London courtesy of a trade union, does that mean that mean that you have succumbed to the vain pomp and glory of this world – or are you simply enjoying the fruits of your hard work?  Prudently, you may think, I do not propose to go further into that matter to-day – time being limited. But it might be worth asking a professional to preach about vain pomp sometime.
The other half of to-day’s celebrations is, of course, Pentecost.  The collect for to-day and the story of Pentecost itself illustrate, it seems to me, very two crucial aspects of our day-to –day lives : communication and judgement. 
The miracle of that first Pentecost  is about communication.  The story of the cloven tongues of fire hovering over the Apostles heads, after which they became polyglot, speaking all sorts of languages, is startling stuff.  For someone who wrestled long and hard with two foreign languages, it’s quite hard to swallow the fact that the Apostles managed, at a stroke, to avoid all those irregular verbs and vocabulary tests. What happened at Pentecost was either miraculous, or allegorical in the sense that the story was intended to foretell the spread of the Christian faith through the medium of many different languages.  One miracle of Pentecost in our own time – it seems to me - is that The Bible remains the most translated book of all.
Whichever way you look at Pentecost, the events of the past week at the Conference of the Women’s Institute show how important it is to communicate effectively. Not only getting one’s point understood, but also try to ensure that your hearers want to receive the message, and remember at least some of it.  The great danger is that if you are important,  and you get the message wrong, it will certainly be remembered. 
Now, I realise that also raises the question of how far I am communicating.  And it also brings me to the second aspect of Pentecost illustrated in the Collect for to-day –  namely judgement.   
The Collect asks God to “Grant us…a right judgement in all things”.  How difficult that is to achieve!   My first boss in the Civil Service once told me that it was better to have one’s morals doubted than one’s judgement. As a Christian, I am not sure that I would go along with that particular assertion, but we all have to accept that judgement is of profound importance in our lives. 
 And the Old Testament underlines that when it recounts the inspiring story of Solomon’s dream at Gibeon .  “Ask what I shall give thee”, says God; and Solomon asked for judgement.  The rest, as they say, is history.  
But there is an interesting paradox in that story. Solomon asks for wisdom- and becomes the wisest ruler history.  Why does he become the wisest ruler in history? 
“And God said unto him. Because thou hast asked his thing and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself…lo I have given thee a wise and understanding heart.and have also given the that which thou didst not ask both riches and honour” So Solomon receives for good measure  what one can only call some of the pomp and glory.
The need for that wise and understanding heart coupled with the ability to communicate in the widest sense, seems to me, then, to be a important Pentecostal Message.  Add to that our baptismal vows and we have a blue print for the Christian life which will steer us from birth to death. So let us pray in the words of the hymn:
Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire
And lighten with celestial fire; 
