Thought for the week - 10 May 2026

It’s a part – an important part – of the practice of our faith to find peace and stillness. It’s hopefully easy to find, we are open all day just so that people can come in and find peace. As Christians, we associate peace with the presence of God. The still quiet places are where we expect to find God, and the Spirit in particular is associated with peace. We go on pilgrimage to find stillness and peace, and it’s very possible to find it with other people as well, as we share in the peace that is one of the marks of the presence of God. Sometimes it’s not so easy – we all know people who talk so much and appear before us with a head full of questions and comments and opinions and judgements about all kinds of things that we don’t care anything about. But it is peace that Christ gives to His Disciples and I would go so far as to say that we recognise each other not by words or actions, but by the sharing of hearts that know amid the turbulence and uncertainly of the world that God has won the battle, there is to be peace and we can relax into that knowledge.

So used are we to associate the Holy Spirit with tranquillity, that it comes as a shock to see how often in the Old Testament the Spirit of God is much more seen as a wild presence, a turbulent whirlwind, rather than a gentle breeze. Samson is taken up by the Spirit of God to work slaughter among the enemies of Israel, Ezekiel is snatched up into the air by the Spirit, and the Psalms talk of the raging wind that God sends among us. Saul is beset by an evil spirit from God.

If we understand this, the passage in the first chapter of Mark, where the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert, is not as surprising as many commentators have thought. This was a more normal view of the Spirit at the time, than the one which the New Testament has taught us, and the glory of Easter begins with the fury and power of God leading – maybe forcing – His Son I not the desert.

The Spirit seemed like a wild powerful thing before the incarnation because it is seen as something outside of us. Just as the sins of the chosen people made God appear to be angry, so our own instability makes the Spirit seem more like a storm at sea than a haven of peace. When John the Baptist in the Gospel of John recognises Jesus as the Messiah, it’s not by the presence of the Spirit as such. That would be nothing new. It’s the way that the Spirit comes that is different. He on whom you see the Spirit descend and stay is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The crucial word is ‘stay’, which speaks of the new stillness and peace which the Messiah alone can reveal. It’s a favourite word of John, and it occurs again in today’s Gospel.

…the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he stays with you, and will be in you.

It is the Spirit of God, no longer seen as a thing outside us, but as he truly is, the person of God, not a thing at all, but the unchanging stillness of the divine Trinity.

We cannot perceive the Spirit properly, unless we are thereby drawn into the heart of the Trinity. This is how the Spirit conveys something of its peace to the church.

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

As long as we stay back, the Spirit seems to be elusive and otherworldly, rather than the life force that moves our church and moves us to live in God. It’s as if we were born on a carousel, and never having left this, we think that the rest of the world is spinning while we remain perfectly still, as indeed it is. The cross forms the still centre of the world, the eye of the storm that so often threatens to overpower us. When instead we consider humanities personal dignity from the standpoint of divine revelation, inevitably our estimate of it is incomparably increased. We have been ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace has made them sons and friends of God, and heirs to eternal life. At the incarnation, Jesus jumped onto the spinning globe, and by his death and resurrection jumped back off, just to show us it could be done. The wild spirit beckons us to follow him. If we make that leap, against all expectations, we will find ourselves on the still rock of solid ground, in a place of stillness, in a place of peace.

So may Christ inflame the desires of all to break through the barriers or self and perceived need which divide them, to strengthen the bonds of mutual love, to learn to understand one another, and to pardon those who have done them wrong. Through His power and inspiration may all peoples welcome each other to their hearts as brothers and sisters and may the peace they long for ever flower and ever reign among them, for He has overcome the world. Alleluia.