Come, Holy Spirit
We're still in that in between stage.  The lock-down is about to ease, albeit slightly, and only for some. We can meet up to six people in the open air. Some schools are re-opening for some days weeks/ for some students
But for others, the shielding continues. 
For all of us, social distancing is still the 'new norm'. 
Right now, things are neither what they once were NOR what they will become. So, we’re still waiting - and hoping - for the day of liberation. Freedom. What a day that will be! Just imagine how you’ll feel on that first morning when lock-down is over. How excited will you be? Euphoric. Sing and dance… What will the neighbours think? We’re nearer to that day than when we entered lock-down. 
But right now, were in between – still waiting, praying…
Meanwhile, 2,000 years ago, Jesus was preparing The Twelve - His disciples - for what was to come. They too were in that in between stage.  Things were neither what they once were before they met Jesus, NOR what they would in time become – when they experienced the fulness of Christ.
Today, the sun is shining. With no planes on final approach, I can hear the gentle breeze, the birds are signing.  If I look out of my window I see rainbows and positive messages everywhere. Standing in solidarity with neighbours on a Thursday evening is far more than just clapping for NHS and care workers. It’s standing together for a moment, in our shared vulnerability, humanity, knowing that we all need each other. Even in lock-down, the world seems a beautiful place.
Jesus’s message of love, hope, and peace only added to this beauty. When someone insults you, don’t sink to their level - forgive them. When you encounter hungry people, feed them.
And yet, the world can also be a very scary and brutal  place too. Covid-19 has killed more than two an a half times proportion of black and minority ethnic people as white people. 6 out of 10 health workers killed by Covid-19 were black or from minority ethnicities. Something isn’t right. 
No wonder Jesus said, in John14 verse 30: “the Prince of this World is coming”. Who was Jesus talking about? 
On the one hand, it was Pontius Pilate & the soldiers that would arrest Him. But it is also the dark power that stood behind Caesar and the system of Empire. It was the lies, deceit, stirring that manipulated Judas to betray Jesus But it was also the powerful spiritual forces that always want to twist and thwart was is good.
We all at times experience the Prince of this World, either drawn in and manipulated by it, or just plain beaten up by it. So, that battle rages on. We see it daily on our news bulletins:
When we hear of those living with domestic violence or controlling and coercive behaviour
When postcodes or skin colour determine our better or worse life chances. 
So, Jesus says the Prince of this World is coming. 2,000 years later you don’t need to be a Christian - a follower of Christ – to accept this is now the case. But, remember, he or it may be the Prince of this World but Jesus is the King. More than that, the KING of Kings. Even his accusers agreed He was the KING of the Jews. And King beats prince.
Jesus does this, not by sinking to the level of the Prince of this World, but by disarming the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross. The triumph was not that he died – there’s nothing unique in death. The triumph was the resurrection. Death could NOT hold Him.  The best that the Prince of this World could muster was death. It still is. Kill Jesus, kill hope. So, he sought to kill Jesus.
Jesus triumphed, not by striking back or first, killing the Prince of this World (which would have made Him no better than that), but by rising from the dead. Resurrection. Triumphing over death itself. His new life can be our new life too. Eternal life.
Sometime later, after Jesus had been killed and then risen – We read this in Acts 1 – Jesus gave them this command (this is not a request. It is an instruction):
You MUST Stay at home. Wait for the Gift. Be baptised in the Spirit. This is your spiritual duty as citizens of heaven.
So, they stayed together in their bubble in the Upper Room. It was their lock-down. It can’t have been easy. Jesus never said for how long.  There was no, “when these five conditions have been met, then the lock-down can start to be eased.”
Can you imagine one saying, Actually, I’m needed back in Galilee. I think, if you read the small print, you are permitted to…  NO. We all heard Him clearly say, “Stay at home. Wait for the Gift. Be baptised in the Spirit.”
And, then a bit later, saying, I think I’ve got something in my eye. I can’t see. I think I’ll go for a ride out to Bethlehem to see if I’m fit enough later on to ride back to Galilee? 
You can imagine the muttering, frustrations, arguments.
And all the time, the Holy Spirit was busy reminding them of all that Jesus had taught them. Wait. Didn’t He say something about eyesight problems? That was it, “Don’t take the speck out of someone else’s eye when you’ve got a whole tree in your own.”
Then, on the seventh week of their lock-down, 49 days after Easter Sunday, something happened. They’d been waiting for days, weeks. Then, SUDDENLY. Like out of nowhere.
Amazing. Wow. Awesome. Unbelievable. How do you describe something that no-one has ever seen before? Well, I guess it looked like… it sounded a bit like…
So, later when they were telling people what it was like, they said they heard a sound LIKE a powerful, even violent, wind from heaven – it filled the whole building.
Then the saw what looked LIKE a fire – a big fire – that separated into small fires that rested on each of them. But nothing was burning, except their hearts.
This must be what Jesus had promised - Stay at home. Wait for the Gift. Be baptised in the Spirit.
ALL of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak funny. They were so full of God’s Spirit, some even thought they were drunk.
This was the final piece of the jigsaw for The Twelve. Before the lock-down, Peter hadn’t even been able to stand up to a child and admit he was a follower a Jesus. Now, full of the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of Christ – he was speaking in front of huge crowds.
We too need the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Christ to enable us to do the work of Christ. Yes, it’s great we’ve discovered we’re more adaptable and open to change than we ever realised before. We’ll never be able to say, “That’s not how we do things – we do it like this” because we’ve shown during the lock-down almost everything can be done differently. And it’s OK – and sometimes even better. So, we’re exploring fresh ways to worship, releasing more people into their giftings, connecting with a broader and bigger mix of people through our Sunday Online services… And yet, and yet, we need the Holy Spirit. So we pray, come, Holy Spirit.
That’s why, we’ve been praying for 24 hours non-stop. We started yesterday at 10 am and prayed through the day, evening, through the night and into this morning. Praying, Come, Holy Spirit. Come. We’re not praying out of some religious duty. As if, we do something unpleasant and self-sacrificial and God might see we really, really deserve. And He might then begrudgingly say, Oh, go on then. You can have a bit.
No, by praying we are opening ourselves up to what God already is desperate to do for us – and has already done for us – but we were too preoccupied or too caught up in our own religious nonsense, to see. Come, Holy Spirit, Come.
So, take some time out. Press pause and open yourself to all that God has for you. 
You may have been baptised with water.  Maybe when you were a baby. That was a long time ago and, TBH, you were too young to remember.  Or you might have been baptised as a believer, when you declared before others your faith in Christ and went under the water. What a moment that was. Jesus said you would be baptised also with the Holy Spirit. That’s not a one-off moment, with a nice family “do” afterwards. It’s a continuous, on-going, daily need to baptised in the Spirit – again and again and again.
So, let’s pray, Come, Holy Spirit.

DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk