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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!)
Today is Pentecost, the fiftieth and last day of the Easter season but also a feast day in its own rights. In today’s Second Reading (Acts 2:1-21), we heard how, on the day of Pentecost, Jesus’s apostles were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance, transcending the confusion of Babel that we heard of in the Old Testament Reading (Genesis 11:1-9). That coming of the Holy Spirit Jesus had repeatedly promised, on occasions such as that which we heard in today’s Gospel Reading. That Gospel Reading we primarily consider this morning, under the theme of “The Holy Spirit’s work for Jesus’s apostles and for us”.
Jesus’s words in the Gospel Reading came in the upper room on the night when He was betrayed, after He had been speaking to His apostles about the world’s soon not seeing Him but the disciples’ seeing Him, as Jesus manifested Himself to them (John 14:19-21). Seemingly misunderstanding what Jesus had said, the other apostle named Judas, not the one from Iscariot but apparently the one sometimes also known as Thaddeus, asked Jesus how it was that He would manifest Himself to them but not to the world (John 14:22), and Jesus answered him with the words of today’s Gospel Reading, perhaps essentially saying that, while God would only dwell in those who love Him and keep His word, Jesus’s going out to meet the ruler of this world head‑on, even though that ruler had no claim on Jesus, would in some sense make the world know that Jesus both loved the Father and was doing as the Father had commanded Him.
In the course of that answer, Jesus spoke about the Father’s sending the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s Name. Earlier Jesus had said that the apostles already knew the Holy Spirit, for He already dwelled with them and in the future would be in them (John 14:17), presumably in another way or with different gifts. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus specifically says the Holy Spirit would teach the apostles all things and bring to their remembrance all that Jesus had said to them, which was not Jesus’s Word but the Word of the Father Who Had sent Him (confer John 3:34; 7:16; 12:49). And, Jesus arguably said that a person’s loving or not loving Jesus and a person’s keeping or not keeping that Word affect whether God loves and remains with that person.
So, we do well to consider whether or not we love Jesus and keep God’s Word. Keeping God’s Word includes not only treasuring God’s Word, but keeping God’s Word also can include obeying God’s Word. How well do you and I treasure and obey God’s Word, such as His moral law expressed in the Ten Commandments? Do we perfectly treasure and obey all Ten Commandments all of the time? On the basis of Holy Scripture, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism links the keeping of those Ten Commandments with our fearing and loving God, and so, since we do not keep the Commandments as we should, then we arguably do not love God as we should. By nature, the people of the world are lost, not receiving the Holy Spirit because they neither see Him nor know Him (John 14:17), but even those of us who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us still can and do ignore His leading us to live holier lives than we currently live. Our ongoing sin would give the ruler of this world, the devil, a claim over us, as it were, resulting in our eternal torment in hell, apart from our turning in sorrow from our sin and trusting God to forgive our sin, by the Holy Spirit’s leading and empowering. So, we are sure to follow that leading and empowering of the Holy Spirit, turning in sorrow from our sin and trusting God to forgive our sin not only once but each and every day, living our whole lives in such repentance and faith (SA III:iii:40), and thereby receiving God’s forgiveness by grace through that faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Although in the Holy Trinity no Blessed Person is greater or lesser than another Blessed Person (Athanasian Creed, paragraph 14), the Father was greater than the Son according to the Son’s human flesh, and especially in His state of humiliation. And, Jesus loved the Father and did as the Father had commanded Him; out of love for the world, the object of His divine condemnation but also the object of His plan of salvation, Jesus laid down His life and took it back up again (John 10:18). Jesus went out to meet the ruler of this world head-on and ultimately cast him out (John 12:31). The devil, as it were, had no claim on Jesus, but Jesus took His apostles’ sins and our sins to the cross and there died in our place the death that they and we otherwise would have deserved. So, Jesus freely gave and left His disciples His peace, peace between them and God, worked by His death on the cross and evident by His resurrection from the dead (John 20:21, 26). And, Jesus freely offers and leaves us that same peace. When we repent and believe, then that peace is ours. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. As we sang in the gradual, with our hearts we believe and are justified, and with our mouths we confess and are saved (Romans 10:10).
Manifest on the Day of Pentecost by a sound like a mighty rushing wind and divided tongues as of fire, the Holy Spirit not only filled the apostles and gave them the utterance of other languages, but the Holy Spirit also, more importantly, taught the apostles all things and brought to their remembrance all that Jesus said to them (for example, John 2:22; confer John 12:16), so that they could preach that Word of the Father Who sent Jesus. That Word brings about our salvation. Not with tongues of fire does the Holy Spirit come to us but with that Word, especially as it is connected with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in individual Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. In all these ways, the Triune God Himself comes to us and dwells in us, and, as we are so united with Him, He saves us (AC V:2; confer Scaer, CLD VIII:152).
Earlier in St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, Jesus said that those who keep His Word will never see eternal death (John 8:51). According to our individual vocations, we at least try to keep all of God’s Ten Commandments perfectly, and, with daily repentance and faith, we live in His forgiveness of sins when we fail, as we will fail. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 143; antiphon: v.10), God’s good Spirit leads us on level ground and for His Name’s sake He preserves our life. No matter what God in His wisdom permits us to face, our hearts are neither troubled nor afraid. Ultimately, we are part of the eternal undoing of the dispersion of Babel as the Holy Spirit gathers into the Church people of every land and every tongue who worship God standing and singing in His eternal presence (confer Revelation 7:9).
This morning we have considered the Gospel Reading under the theme, “The Holy Spirit’s work for Jesus’s apostles and for us”. Although in some sense the Holy Spirit does different work for Jesus’s apostles than the Holy Spirit does for us, both matter to us. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit not only filled the apostles and gave them the utterance of other languages, but the Holy Spirit also, more importantly, enabled their preaching of the Word of God that brings about our salvation, as the Holy Spirit even now works through that Word to lead us to repent and believe and to bring forth the fruits of repentance and faith. So, not only on this Pentecost Day but every day we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love” (Appointed Verse).
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 + + +