On earth as it is in heaven?

Pentecost 2026

On the day of Pentecost, something extraordinary happened. The Holy Spirit fell on a room full of frightened, uncertain people, and suddenly they found themselves speaking in languages they had never learned. And the crowds outside were astonished, not because everyone was saying the same thing in the same way, but because each person heard the good news in their own language, the voice and cadence of home.

The Holy Spirit honoured every language, every people, every place of origin. Parthians and Medes, people from Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, visitors from Rome and from North Africa, all hearing the same message, each voiced in a way which was familiar to them. Difference and diversity was not the problem. Diversity was inherent in how the Spirit chose to speak.

So this is where the Church begins: not with uniformity, but with a Spirit-filled community that holds together people of every nation and background.  And then, watch what happens next: as the weeks and months unfold in the early chapters of Acts, we see what that Pentecost community becomes in practice.  St Luke gives us two pictures of this, in chapters two and four of Acts.  All the believers were together and held everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. They broke bread in each other’s homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds to the apostles, to be distributed to anyone who had need.

This is a community defined by how it loves and shares, not by who it excludes.  It crossed every social boundary of the ancient world. Wealthy landowners and day labourers; Jewish believers and Greek converts; men and women; the respectable and the marginalised, all held together by a common life rooted in the love of Christ.  And everyone notices!  Luke tells us they enjoyed the favour of all the people.  There was something visible, something distinctive about this community: you could see, from the outside, that something different was going on here. People were being cared for and nobody was being left behind.  The vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, they all had a place at the table.  This is what the Holy Spirit produces.  Not just a warm feeling when they gather in worship or prayer, but a whole new way of living together.

Now, I want to make a connection that might surprise you, and I want to make it carefully lest I be misunderstood.  It involves a loaded and often divisive word: nationalism.  The Christian community we see emerging from Pentecost in the Book of Acts is a picture of what human society, at its best, is meant to look like.  And when we talk about nations, about what a nation is for and what holds it together and defines it, the Acts vision has something urgent and important to say in answer to the growing tide of nationalism around the world, including in our own country.

We have watched versions of nationalism grow, versions that are built on fear, on grievance, on the idea that our nation can only thrive if we define ourselves against someone else, the immigrant, the outsider, the other.  We have seen nationalism weaponised by politicians and influencers who wrap themselves in religious imagery while pursuing agendas of exclusion and division.  That version of nationalism is rightly challenged by followers of Christ as it is entirely at odds with the ministry of Jesus and the Holy Spirit-inspired Pentecost community of inclusion, empowerment and love which we celebrate today.

But this is not the only vision of nationhood and nationalism available.  If by nationalism we mean a way of defining what makes us cohesive as a nation, what our shared values and vision are, what both the breadth and the limits of our sense of nationhood are, Christians have, in the post-Pentecost community of believers, a wonderful model to draw upon.  And we, the Church, as people inspired by that same Spirit, absolutely must stand up for that vision in times like these.

Earlier this year, the former Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, published a substantial and thoughtful report called Reimagining Europe.  It is a serious piece of work, and I commend it to you.  In it, Bishop Nick makes a careful argument that nationalism, properly understood, is not inherently destructive. He points out that civic nationalism, a shared sense of belonging rooted in common values, mutual obligation, and the rule of law, has provided the foundation for democracy, for the welfare state, for public education, for all the institutions that exist to serve the common good rather than the powerful few. This is a nationalism which gives a sense of belonging, interdependence and shared values; a national identity which makes for a stable, safe society in which all may flourish within a clear legal and constitutional framework.  The problem, he argues, is not nationalism itself, but the ethnic, exclusionary version of nationalism which hijacks the language of national identity for its own narrow purposes.

Bishop Nick goes further.  He says that Christians are particularly well placed to offer a different vision because the Church, at its best, is already a community that holds together people of every background in a common life shaped by shared values.  Church communities practise, however imperfectly, what a genuinely inclusive community looks like.  And we have something transformative to say about how nations could similarly thrive if we draw upon the vision of the early Church in Acts as a model of communal living and interdependence.

That argument feels urgent right now. We are living in a time when the settlement that has kept Europe largely at peace for eighty years is under serious strain. The war in Ukraine is not just a distant tragedy. It is a stark reminder of what happens when one nation decides that another has no right to exist, no right to its own identity, its own language, its own place in the world. Thousands of people are dying because a neighbouring power refuses to honour the particular dignity of a particular nation. And across Europe more broadly, we are watching the slow erosion of the values that have underpinned our common life since 1945. The rule of law, the rights of minorities, the independence of courts and press, the right to trial by jury, the willingness to pool some sovereignty for the common good of all, the concept that telling the truth in public life matters.  These things are being quietly dismantled in some places, and loudly trashed in others, with no commitment to finding positive new structures, safeguards and shared moral vision to take the place of that hard-won scaffolding which sought peace, stability, mutual respect and flourishing.

This is the moment for Christians to speak, not with anger or with partisan political noise, but with the clear and grounded voice of people who know, from their own Scriptures and their own communal life, what genuine mutual flourishing looks like.

A nationalism worth the name is not about who we keep out. It is about what we hold in common. It is about the kind of society we are building together: whether the vulnerable are cared for, whether the stranger is welcomed, whether the rule of law applies equally to everyone, whether truth matters, whether the next generation inherits something worth having, whether our shared planet, its natural environment, climate and resources remain sustainable and liveable.

That is the Acts vision, scaled up. God’s people are called to be a holy nation, a model of what an earthly nation might also strive to become: a community of people, rooted in a particular place, shaped by particular values, committed to the common good of all who live among them. Not because they are all the same, but because they are all held within the same generous, costly, inclusive love. We know this as the love of Jesus. And we should seek to spread that love, not by conquest, but by being the pervasive and irresistible aroma of Christ in the world. We should love as lavishly as those first-generation Christians did so that everyone notices how we love one another, and how we model holy nationhood in our church communities. The fragrance of Jesus must fill the world around us as we live his risen life together in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost did not erase the nationhood of all those diverse people. The Holy Spirit redeemed their nationhood by revealing a new way of living communally. They received the Gospel in their own tongue and the Holy Spirit revealed to them what belonging to a people could look like when it is animated by something larger than fear or pride or grievance.

That is the vision we are called to embody in the common life of our church community, and in the way we speak into the public conversation of our times. May the Holy Spirit fall upon us, and equip us with the courage, and the clarity, to do so. Amen.