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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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, alleluia!)
On this Day of Pentecost, the risen Christ as promised sent the Holy Spirit from the Father in a special way to His chosen apostles. Whether called “the Helper” or “the Spirit of Truth”, as twice each in today’s Gospel Reading, the Holy Spirit (confer John 14:26), as Jesus described in the Gospel Reading, both bears witness about Jesus and guides His followers into all the truth, declaring what, in the dialogue between the three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity, He hears the Father say to the Son. What Jesus in the Gospel Reading promised to His disciples on the night when He was betrayed was not really a new promise, for, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Ezekiel 37:1-14), the Lord God promised through Ezekiel to put His Spirit within the people of Israel that they might live. And, as we heard in today’s Second Reading (Acts 2:1-21), when the Day of Pentecost came and the Holy Spirit filled the apostles, Peter referred back to prophecy that God had spoken through Joel about the Holy Spirit’s coming and working (Joel 2:28-32). So filled with the Holy Spirit, the apostles told, in languages that they had not learned, the mighty works of God, and, as prophesied through Joel, everyone who called upon the Name of the Lord was saved. So, also, this day, not in Hebrew or Greek, Latin or German, but in English, “The Holy Spirit comes and works for you”, and, as you call on the Name of the Lord, you are saved.
In a national survey a number of years ago, more than half of the Americans who identified themselves as Christians wrongly agreed with an inadequate description of the Holy Spirit as “a symbol of God’s power or presence but … not a living entity” (Barna). Their wrong agreement with that inadequate description flies in the face not only of what Jesus says in today’s Gospel Reading but also of what Scripture says as a whole about the Holy Spirit, Who shares the same substance of the Godhead and has equal glory and co‑eternal majesty with the Father and the Son (Athanasian Creed). How does “a symbol” work a miracle like that in today’s Second Reading? Of course, earlier on the night when He was betrayed, Jesus had said that the world is not able to receive the Holy Spirit because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, though Jesus’s true disciples already knew the Holy Spirit because He already dwelled with them and would be in them (John 14:17). So, as Jesus said in today’s Gospel Reading, the Holy Spirit convicts the world: concerning its own sin, concerning the righteousness of Jesus, and concerning the judgment that the world deserves for being in league with the ruler of this world. Of course, most of those in that same national survey wrongly agreed with a similar inadequate description of that ruler of this world, Satan, as “not a living being but … a symbol of evil”.
Of course, like the world, you and I by nature are not able to receive the Holy Spirit. On our own, our sinful nature and our actual sin deserve nothing but present and eternal punishment. But, like the bones in the Old Testament Reading—where “Spirit”, “breath”, and “wind” all translate the same Hebrew word ruach—the Holy Spirit Himself raises us from the death of our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5). As with the people who heard Peter’s address in today’s Second Reading, whom the book of Acts tells us later were cut to the heart, so we repent and are baptized for the forgiveness of our sins and we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself (Acts 2:37-39). “The Holy Spirit comes and works for you”, and so you call on the Name of the Lord and are saved.
Today’s Gospel Reading is part of the Scriptural basis for our believing, teaching, and confessing in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Jesus says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and we understand that proceeding as the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father, just as we understand that the Son is begotten of the Father before all worlds. As the Creed continues, that Son came down from heaven, for us and for our salvation, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. Out of God’s great love for even the fallen world, the Father sent the Son to die on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. Jesus died in our place, the death that we deserved. Such are the mighty works of God! Through His death and resurrection the Son returned to the Father, and from there He sends the Holy Spirit to lead us to repent. As Paul writes to the Corinthians and to us, no one can say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). When we are sorry for our sin, trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms, by which He gives us the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit bears witness about Jesus to us through the witness of His apostles who had been with Him from the beginning (confer Acts 1:21-22). As divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, so the apostles’ successors, pastors today, are given a gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of their predecessor’s hands at their ordinations (confer 1 Timothy 4:4; 2 Timothy 1:6). And then, the Holy Spirit is given to us through their reading and preaching God’s Word to groups such this group and through their applying God’s Gospel to individuals: with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Holy Supper. We might wish for flashier or greater signs, but these are the ways that God has promised that “The Holy Spirit comes and works for you”. We are born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:5). The Holy Spirit was breathed out for pastors to forgive or retain our sins (John 20:22-23). And, the Spirit gives life through our eating Jesus’s flesh and our drinking His blood (John 6:33, 54).
In today’s Gospel Reading, sorrow filled Jesus’s disciples’ hearts at His talk of His going to the Father. But, their sorrow was turned to joy when they saw Him again, and no one took their joy from them (John 16:20-22). The same can be true for us. We may not know exactly everything that will happen in our lifetimes, but we know that we should expect suffering and afflictions. Even in those we can rejoice, for we also know that God works through them for our good. He rules over all for the sake of His Church. Even when the rest of God’s prophecy through Joel is fulfilled—when the sun is turned to darkness and the moon to blood—we can straighten up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:28). If our bodies rest in the grave before those things happen, then we know that, as He promised in today’s Old Testament Reading, the Lord will open our graves and raise us from them.
“The Holy Spirit comes and works for you”. So beloved and so important are you to the Lord, that even before His first promise to send the Holy Spirit, the Lord, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 139:1-16; antiphon v.17), knew not only your physical life but also your spiritual life, and He planned to save you by both the death and resurrection of His incarnate Son and the call through His Word and Sacraments of His Holy Spirit, Whom the Son sent from the Father. There is no place that we can go from where God cannot recall us or where God cannot protect us. We praise Him, for we are fearfully and wonderfully made; His works are wonderful; our soul knows it very well. And, God will strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
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 + + +