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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
While your Easter eggs and candy may have been gone for a while (I could not buy a Peep anywhere in town already the day after Easter), today is the last day of the fifty-day Easter season, and, of course, Pentecost is a festival in its own right. What in the Old Testament fifty days after Passover was a festival day of the first-fruits of the nation’s wheat harvest with a communal meal welcoming, among others, the stranger, became in the New Testament fifty days after Easter a festival day of the first‑fruits of the Church’s spiritual harvest with a communal meal welcoming sinners. Today’s Second Reading narrated the Holy Spirit’s filling Jesus’s apostles, enabling them to proclaim the Gospel in languages that they had never learned (Acts 2:1-21), but, since we no longer expect such outwardly‑miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit, what does this festival centering on Jesus’s promised sending of the Holy Spirit in a special way to His apostles have to do with us? Today’s Gospel Reading answers that question, as Jesus makes arguably three explicit statements about what the Holy Spirit would do “when” He would come in that special way. With the Holy Spirit’s help, then, this morning we will consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “The Spirit’s Witness and Our Confession”.
The Holy Spirit has always proceeded from the Father and was active in the world from the beginning, for example, hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1). But, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, in what is called His “parting” or “farewell” discourse, said that when the Holy Spirit—which Jesus in the Gospel Reading calls “the Helper” and “the Spirit of Truth”—comes in this special way, that He would bear witness about Jesus. That witness about Jesus would convict the unbelieving world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, but that witness about Jesus would also guide the apostles—and other believers—into all truth, for the Spirit would not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears—presumably the Father speaking the Word that is the Son—that the Spirit would speak, taking (or “receiving”) what is the Father’s and so also what is the Son’s and declaring it to the apostles.
Jesus’s statement about the Holy Spirit’s convicting the unbelieving world can be difficult to understand. One Bible version perhaps helpfully has Jesus say that the Spirit will “show where wrong and right and judgement lie” (NEB), continuing in this way:
He will convict them of wrong, by their refusal to believe in me; he will convince them that right is on my side, by showing that I go to the Father when I pass from your sight; and he will convince them of divine judgment, by showing that the Prince of this world stands condemned. (NEB; confer Behm, TDNT, 5:813; Brown, ad loc John 16:8, p.705.)
On its own, the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus said earlier that night, because the world neither sees Him nor knows Him (John 14:17). So St. Paul tells the Corinthians and us that the natural person does not accept the things of the Holy Spirit and, indeed, cannot understand them (1 Corinthians 2:14). Yet, despite the Holy Spirit’s bearing witness about Jesus, the unbelieving world still sides with sin, and unbelief is the most severe and damning sin (Pieper, I:570), because unbelievers reject the forgiveness of sins that would save them. However, when the Holy Spirit shows us who believe our sin and calls and enables us to repent (Büchsel, TDNT 2:474‑475), then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for Jesus’s sake.
The Holy Spirit’s bearing witness about Jesus arguably presupposes that Jesus existed as a historical person, and so the Holy Spirit’s bearing witness about Jesus has more to do both with His nature as the eternal Son of God in human flesh and with His significance as the Savior of the world (Strathmann, TDNT 4:498). For example, through the apostle and evangelist St. John, who was with Jesus from the beginning of His public ministry (John 1:35-42), the Holy Spirit bears witness that Jesus is the Word Who both was with God and was God in the beginning of the world, and Who, in time, became flesh and dwelt among them, showing forth the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14). Through St. John the Holy Spirit also bears witness that Jesus was lifted up on the cross that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:15‑16). In fact, everything the Holy Spirit inspired St. John to write was so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, by so believing, we may have life in His Name (John 20:31).
The Holy Spirit especially bears witness about Jesus to us, and forgives our sins by grace through faith in Him, through the Word in forms that we can feel, see, and taste. Together the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit give us our own personal Pentecosts, as it were, fresh experiences of them (Strathmann, TDNT 4:498), in such ways as Holy Baptism, where they call us by our names and put their Triune Name upon us. At the Baptismal Font, the Triune God gives birth to us from above by water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 5; confer John 1:13). There, as we sang in the Entrance Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 489:5), the Holy Spirit flows in us as “the fount of our being”. Jesus breathed that same Holy Spirit out on His apostles and enabled them, as He enables their successors, to forgive people their sins, as in individual Holy Absolution, with the effect that those sins are forgiven in heaven (John 20:22-23; Matthew 16:19). And, the Holy Spirit gives life to us in the Words that are attached to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ and wine is the Blood of Christ, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (John 6:63).
Today’s Old Testament Reading (Ezekiel 37:1-14), with the valley full of dry bones brought back to life, gives us a great example of how the Holy Spirit gives life to us not only now through such Means of Grace but also on the Last Day, when God will open our graves and raise us up from them. Until then, we confess Jesus. We cannot bear witness about Jesus in the same way as the apostles, for we were not with Him from the beginning, but we can say the same things that the Holy Spirit working through the apostles has witnessed to us: namely, that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14-15; Strathmann, TDNT 4:498). Although some sin remains in us here and now, with daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, and so, instead of having hearts filled with sorrow as the disciples in the Gospel Reading, we—as Jesus a few verses later said they would have (John 16:20), we—have hearts full of joy.
With Scandinavian roots predating the Reformation (Precht, #163, LW:HC, 180), today’s Closing Hymn (LSB 503) well emphasizes the joy that we have, as the Holy Spirit’s witness leads to our confession of faith and so also to eternal salvation. Though we by nature cannot know the Holy Spirit or spiritual things, through Word and Sacrament—admittedly less‑outwardly spectacular than the apostles’ miraculously speaking languages they had never learned, but nevertheless still inwardly miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us and leads us to repent, confess, and be saved. We are full of God’s joy not only this season, but also, by His grace, we will share in the joy of heaven, as we walk in the light of God’s own place, with angels His Name adoring.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +