Talking with many of our students preparing to leave Queen’s about their hopes for ministry, there is a strong sense that we are living through turbulent times. Whether we look to the international stage, the proliferation of conflict and unpredictability of world leaders, or closer to home to our internal politics, frequent changes of prime ministers and governments, and to the rise of the Far Right, it is an uncertain world within which God calls us to serve. There is also real fear in the air for some. Members of our diverse staff at Queen’s have spoken to me about their sense of threat as some drive to work along West Midlands roads lined by union jacks billowing from lampposts, or as Jewish friends who support our interfaith programme share about the tightened security in the synagogues.
Meanwhile there can be a sense of anxiety also within the church. The joy of being called by Christ to share in his kingdom mission in the world can be diminished through concern about declining numbers and reducing finances. There are many inspiring initiatives and good news stories around, but for those longer-standing members of our churches there can be a quite bewildering sense of change and loss of “the way things were” as society around us changes and so do patterns of faith and church attendance.
But change is what we are about. Not change and decay, nor change that brings threat, but change that brings life. We’ve just celebrated Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit as I write this, and we are now in what we call 'ordinary time', except in the Christian life it is anything but ordinary because Pentecost is about being filled with the extraordinary life of God.
The rushing wind is one of the metaphors through which we understand something of the nature of God’s Spirit - a presence that signals freshness, energy, transformation, new creation. As a new wind can bring the scent of a new season, signaling change is in the air, so as those filled with the Spirit of God, our own lives are to signal the scent of something new and transformative at work in our world – the fragrance not of fear, but of God’s Kingdom of truth and love.
My prayer for us all in the Diocese of Lichfield, as for all the staff, students, and this year’s student leavers at Queen’s, is that we may know this Ordinary Time ahead of us as anything but ordinary. I pray that the God who says “see I am doing a new thing”, our brother Jesus who is the Way, and Holy Spirit of Pentecost, would find us ready to keep in step with that Spirit, to be part of the winds of change that our world so very much needs - the scent of fresh hope amongst the communities we serve. Let’s hear again the risen Jesus speaking to us as he did to his first disciples –
Jesus said to them “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. John 20.21-22
Rt Revd Anne Hollinghurst is Principal of the Queen’s Foundation and Assistant Bishop in Lichfield.