Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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 the fiftieth and final day of the Easter season, and it is also the Day of Pentecost, an Old Testament festival of the harvest of grains (for example, Leviticus 23:15) transformed into a New Testament festival of the harvest of souls (Acts 2:41). On this Day, the Helper, Whom Jesus in the Gospel Reading promised to send His disciples from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, came, as we heard in the Second Reading (Acts 2:1-21), fulfilling in at least one way the prophecy given to Ezekiel in the Old Testament Reading (Ezekiel 37:1‑14)—prophecy of the Lord’s putting His Spirit within people who were dead and making them alive. Although the Holy Spirit does not come to us in the same way that He came to Jesus’s disciples, the Holy Spirit does come to us, who by nature are spiritually dead, and, if we do not reject Him, He makes us spiritually alive. “The Holy Spirit gives you life.”
On the night when He was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ had been speaking about the Holy Spirit’s coming and work, even before the Gospel Reading. Jesus had called the Spirit the “Helper” (John 14:16, 26)—the Greek word is παράκλητος, which sometimes is transliterated as “Paraclete” or is translated by such English words as “Comforter” (KJV, ASV, AAT), “Counselor” (NIV), “Helper” (NASB, ESV, NKJV), or “Advocate” (NEB)—and Jesus also had called Him “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17), and Jesus had said that the Spirit would teach His disciples all things and remind them of everything Jesus had said to them (John 14:26). In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus again called Him the “Helper” twice and “the Spirit of Truth” twice, and Jesus said that the Spirit would bear witness about and glorify Jesus; convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; guide the disciples into all truth, speaking whatever He hears, and declare to the disciples the things that are to come—that declaring seems especially emphasized, as Jesus mentions the declaring a total of three times.
Of course, as I mentioned, the Holy Spirit does not come to us in the same way that He came to Jesus’s disciples, with a sound like a mighty rushing wind and divided tongues as of fire, nor does the Holy Spirit do the same work through us that He did through Jesus’s disciples, such as inspiring their speaking and writing so that it became inerrant Holy Scripture. Some people wrongly look down on the gifts that the Holy Spirit does give us—gifts such as the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—and they may wrongly think that those upon whom the Holy Spirit has come should be able to speak in other tongues as the disciples did, even if those “tongues” are not real languages that can be understood and so only the speaker is built up instead of the church and so Jesus is not glorified (1 Corinthians 14:1-28; confer Park, CPR 31:2, p.53). Other people wrongly look down on the way the Holy Spirit works, resistibly through Word and Sacraments, and they may also wrongly crave flashier, more-engaging media, such as those used by the latest high-tech virtual-reality video games.
Whether or not we all sin in those ways, we all sin, for we all are sinful by nature. We might think of our secret sins, our false piety, and our self-righteousness. For any one sin we deserve physical death now and torment in hell for eternity. Without the Holy Spirit, we, like the rest of the fallen world, are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), and so, as the Small Catechism’s explanation to the Third Article of the Creed reminded us (Small Catechism II:6), by our own reason or strength we cannot believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him. Even with the Holy Spirit, our sinful nature still clings to us and remains a part of the world that the Holy Spirit convicts concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. The Holy Spirit calls and enables us to repent of our sin, so that, when we do so repent, then God forgives us all our sin, for Jesus’s sake.
The Holy Spirit bears witness about and glorifies Jesus, creating faith when and where the Holy Spirit pleases in those who hear the Gospel that for Jesus’s sake God forgives those who trust that they are received into God’s grace for Christ’s sake (Augsburg Confession V:2-3). The Holy Spirit works through the witness of Jesus’s disciples, who were with Him from the beginning (confer Acts 1:21-22)—their witness both to Jesus’s death on the cross for our sins and to His resurrection from the dead, which shows the Father accepted the Son’s sacrifice on our behalf. Especially the evangelists also preserved Jesus’s Word, such as in the Gospel Reading, with its peek into the inner workings of the Holy Trinity, where the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son, and the Holy Spirit hears the Father speak the Word that is the Son. In today’s Second Reading, when the people from all over the Mediterranean region heard the apostles’ telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God, some mocked them, saying that they were filled with new wine, but others received their Word, repented, and were baptized (Acts 2:41). When we likewise in faith receive God’s Word, in all of its forms, we are forgiven by grace for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Notably in the Old Testament Reading, the prophet Ezekiel, set down by the Spirit in the middle of a valley full of bones, spoke the Word of the Lord to the bones and to the breath (or, “wind”, or “spirit”—in both Hebrew and Greek, the same word can mean any of the three). The Lord through Ezekiel promised to put His Spirit within them so that they would live, and, in Holy Baptism, the Lord does just that for us: He puts His Spirit within us so that we live. In Holy Baptism we are born from above of water and the Spirit and so can see and enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3, 5-8). Jesus also breathed out His Spirit on His disciples, sending them as He had been sent, with the authority to forgive sins or withhold forgiveness (John 20:21-23), and the Holy Spirit and that authority for individual absolution is likewise given to the disciples’ successors, pastors today. And, the Holy Spirit also works through the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us, and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us, to give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
With good reason, we tend to think of the Holy Spirit as the primary Blessed Person of the Holy Trinity responsible for our being made holy, what is called our “sanctification”. But, certainly at least insofar as the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, or insofar as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, They also are involved in our being made holy, something that should be evident by the good works that God works in us to do. Again, unlike Jesus’s disciples who had vocations as full-time witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection, you have primary vocations that do not involve full-time church work, not that you do not still confess your sins and faith, give thanks and praise God for His gifts, and support the work of His Kingdom in this place with your offerings of first-fruits, such as those traditionally offered on the Old Testament festival of Pentecost.
Whether a harvest of grain or a harvest of souls, God is responsible for the harvest. As we are seeing repeatedly in our Midweek Bible Study’s close reading of the book of Acts, the Lord adds to the Church those whom He saves (for example, Acts 2:47), and He unites in the teaching and practice of the Church the full number of those who believe so that they are of one heart and soul (Acts 4:32). Notably, the miracle of the New Testament Pentecost Day did not undo the confusion of languages and the dispersion of people that occurred as a result of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-11), for, in the revelation given to St. John, the great multitude that no one could number is from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages (Revelation 7:9). We join with them in the liturgical worship of heaven, singing, “Salvation belongs to our God Who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”, and responding, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7:10, 12.)
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 + + +