Dear
People of God,
At
Pentecost, we celebrate the birth of our Church, marked by the empowering of
Jesus’ Apostles by the Holy Spirit. So Pentecost, and the season which follows,
give us an opportunity to ask questions about the nature of the Church.
Questions such as: What are we as believers supposed to become if we want to
witness to the presence and the working of the Holy Spirit?
On
Pentecost Sunday, I worshipped with the congregation of St Monnica's in
Midrand, north of Johannesburg, where we used the reading for the day from Ezekiel,
in which the prophet is set in a valley that was full of dry bones. I call that
passage my conversion passage, because growing up in Alexandra Township I
recall vividly how the Revd Sam Buti, the schools chaplain in Alex, linked the
image of the dry bones to the frequent gang killings that happened there. In
particular, he warned us that one day all of Alex would be a valley of dry and
dead bones if we didn’t pluck up the courage to root out the gangs.
