On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders,

Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you.

After he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again, Jesus said, peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that, he breathed on them

and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven. If you do not

forgive them, they are not forgiven. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. Good evening.

Thank you for your welcome and for the extraordinary privilege of being with so many of you

tonight.

And I want you all to know that on my body clock it's about four in the

morning or something like that and so if I appear a little bit dreamy then forgive me but

there is much to dream about in that passage which we will get to but in order to get to

that passage in John chapter 20, I want to begin

where many, many people begin when they think about the Holy Spirit, which is the scene

of the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Now, when people think about the Holy Spirit,

people who haven't studied the subject particularly, often they just know enough

to know that on the day of Pentecost, that's when the Spirit came.

And people wonder what exactly that meant.

When Luke writes the story in Acts chapter 2, what does he have in mind, how does he interpret

what's going on there?

And many people in my tradition, the Anglican Church, when they think of the Holy Spirit,

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