Thresholds
29th May 2020
Here’s the reading and the reflection from yesterday’s Communion. We were thinking about Thresholds. I’ve highlighted the five questions I mention, and I’ll put them at the end, in case you want to spend time with them. After the service I played the UK blessing, which is beautiful.
When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.
There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues? They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”
I wonder if you have been noticing the threshold of the place where you live more recently – the door to your flat or house, or maybe the garden gate. The place where online deliveries arrive and the deliverer steps quickly away. The place you go past to leave the sanctuary of home and step out into the world. The place where you stand, perhaps, to clap with your neighbours, or to have a socially distanced conversation.
I always thought that the word threshold came from the medieval custom of spreading the threshed straw on the earthen floor of houses and other buildings – like a church I once saw in North Wales. You needed a stone or wooden barrier to keep the straw in – the threshold.
Apparently, this isn’t actually the root of the word, which is sad. But it still can mean something which keeps us in – we have been kept back behind our thresholds, and some of us are longing to be released.
As well as a sort of barrier, a threshold is also an in between place – a space between one way of living and another. We are all in a threshold space at the moment – between our old life and whatever life will be like in a different future..
And there’s a third way that we often speak about thresholds. When we say that we are on the threshold of something we mean that we are about to embark on something new – it’s is a place of new beginnings.
All of this was true for the disciples, gathered together for the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after the Passover. They had been meeting since Easter Day – but still behind closed doors. They were told to wait – kept back – not yet ready to go out and tell the world what they knew.
This was an inbetween time – between their life with Jesus, watching, listening and learning, and the new life where they would be the ones teaching, and bringing healing, and spreading the news of the kingdom.
Now they are poised on the threshold of all that is to come. They are gathered together in a large room, when suddenly they hear this noise of a roaring wind, and they experience what feels like fire spreading between them – now we might think of a powerful electrical current passing from person to person – the Holy Spirit of God.
And it’s as if the doors are flung open and they are propelled out over the threshold to share their message of all that God has done, not just with the locals but with visitors from all over the world. This was the beginning of a new movement – which we are part of today.
So that was their threshold – but what about us? Are there thresholds that we are each standing on, along with the ones we share?
I came across five questions this week, which is what made me think about all of these. The first is this, At which threshold of my life am I now standing?
For some of us this might be tied up with the end of the university term coming next week – the threshold between this year and the next, and maybe the end of our university course and whatever lies beyond – that’s a big threshold.
For others it might be that we are on the threshold because of leaving a job, or starting a new one, or because of our stage of life, or through some other change, chosen or unchosen. But maybe even if none of that is true for us we still have some sense of a threshold – a sense that in some way we are being called onward, to something new.
The next two questions ask… At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter?
We may not find it easy to identify or put into words our answers to those questions. But my belief is that, as we walk with God, just like those first disciples, we are always being invited on to new discoveries, new growth, new ways of living in and sharing God’s love. John O’Donohue, who offers these questions, says this:
‘It is wise in your own life to be able to recognise and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time, to listen inwards with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.’
If we have an inkling of that call, then we might want to spend time with two more questions: What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?
When I read those questions, my response was – I did all that threshold stuff when I moved to Cheltenham 2 ½ years ago – and I’m not in a hurry to do it again! But then when I reflected on each question, I began to think of one threshold I may be being called to cross, in the way I live my life – the threshold from doing, to being. What I am being called the leave? A focus on achievement. What I am invited to enter? A place of contentment. What is preventing me from crossing this threshold? Habit, years of training… What gift would enable me to do it? The grace to let go.
That’s just an example from my own reflection. For each of us, our responses to those questions will be very different. I think that it’s worth spending some time with them, so here they are again…
At which threshold of my life am I now standing?
At this time in my life, what am I leaving?
Where am I about to enter?
What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold?
What gift would enable me to do it?
Where might the Holy Spirit be prompting you?
What thresholds might God be calling you to cross?
Here are the prayers that we shared…
- We think of those at thresholds in their lives at the moment – thresholds which might not be marked this year – students finishing courses, people leaving jobs and beginning new ones, those being married, those preparing to be ordained. We think of those we know… Lord, give them grace to acknowledge all the different emotions, anxieties and hopes of their situations, and to be open to the gentle guidance of your presence.
- We think of those at thresholds not of their choosing – facing changes in circumstances, the challenges of aging, the loss of loved ones – and all of us caught up in this uncertain time as we look to the future. May we have a sense of you leading us through difficult times with your unchanging love.
- We pray for ourselves… Lord, help us to sense what is shifting in our inner life. Give us glimpses of new paths you are preparing for us. And give us the courage and grace to move forward with you.