Happy Pentecost! As we celebrate the birthday of the church, this week’s sermon looks at three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost work: The Holy Spirit fills the church. The Holy Spirit sends us. And the Holy Spirit goes with us. Those promises are as true today as ever. Receive the Holy Spirit!
This week’s readings are John 20:19-23, Psalm 104:24-33, 1 Corinthians 12:3-13, and Acts 2:1-21. A few phrases towards the end of this week’s sermon come from my 2021 Pentecost sermon when we were also celebrating high school graduates, as we were this week at Living Hope. I also found helpful a brief Facebook post on Pentecost from Rev. Dr. Norma Cook Everist (one of my seminary professors) and Elizabeth Hermeier’s May 22 GodPause devotional.
Here’s the livestream from Living Hope and the sermon podcast audio.
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Grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen
Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
For seven weeks now, we’ve been celebrating the good news of Easter. Jesus is alive, the power of death is defeated. The tomb is empty! Good news!
After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples, showing them the wounds in his hands and feet, teaching them, opening the Scriptures to them.
Then last Sunday, we celebrated Ascension Day. Jesus blesses his disciples, trusts his mission to them, commissions them to be his hands and feet in the world, sends them to do his work, and then he ascends to heaven.
The apostles are left to face the question: Now what? What’s next? Jesus has trusted his mission to them. The angels have told them to get to work. The mission is theirs. And they have no idea how to do it.
Jesus had promised to stay with them. Even before his death, on the night in which he was betrayed, he’d told them, “I will not leave you orphaned.” He’d promised to send them an advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach them everything, to remind them of all he’d said to them. And here they are.
After the ascension, Luke tells us, they returned to the city, to the room where they’d been staying. And they devoted themselves to prayer. They don’t give up, but they don’t seem quite sure what to do. They select a new leader named Matthias to replace Judas as the 12th apostle, and they “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”
On the day of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, 49 days after Jesus’ resurrection, God does something new. The Holy Spirit shows up. And when the Holy Spirit shows up, things start to happen. This is the birth of the church, the Body of Christ sent into the world.
This morning, I want to look at three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost work.
First, the Holy Spirit fills the church. In the story, the house where they are staying is literally filled with the sound of a violent wind.
This group of people, who had been keeping to themselves since Jesus’ death, hiding from the same people who had killed him, unlock the doors and go out with boldness.
Last time we heard someone question Peter about his faith, he denied even knowing Jesus. Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he proclaims Jesus to a crowd, and thousands listen. People start speaking in tongues, languages they don’t even know, as the Holy Spirit gives them ability. Peter explains what’s happening: This is a prophecy fulfilled.
This is something new God is doing, but it’s been part of God’s plan. “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit.” Now is the time. God’s Spirit is at work.
And look who the Holy Spirit is poured out upon: All flesh. Sons and daughters. Men and women. Old and young. Slave and free.
God’s work at Pentecost is not limited to a certain group of people; human categories are no hindrance; everyone is included, no matter where they’re from or what language they speak. No matter what your background, where you’ve come from, you are included in God’s Pentecost promise. All flesh.
As Paul tells the church in Corinth a few years later, Christ’s body includes a wide variety of people with a whole variety of gifts, talents, and abilities. And all those gifts come from the Holy Spirit, given for the common good.
Our little congregation here has people with different interests. Some are skilled at making food, others are skilled at teaching Bible studies. Some care for the building, others care for children, others are gifted at listening and visiting.
But all these varieties of activities are done by the power of the Holy Spirit. “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free [again, the Spirit is poured out onto all flesh, even you and me]—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” All for the common good. Loving our neighbors in Jesus’ name.
The Holy Spirit fills the church. And…The Holy Spirit sends us.
A church filled with the Holy Spirit cannot stay where it is. Jesus told his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Pentecost is an interruption. The Holy Spirit doesn’t let us just say, “Oh, God is on the move. That’s nice. We’ll just sit here and watch.”
No, the Holy Spirit sends us to go and live what Jesus commands, to go out and serve our neighbors. The Holy Spirit stirs up passion, lights a fire. The Holy Spirit is the one nudging you to care about friends in need, to reach out to enemies, to change the world, joining God in building the kingdom.
Sometimes the ways the Holy Spirit sends us can look chaotic. Unexpected. An awfully big part of church history is people trying to organize what God has doing.
Sometimes that’s helpful—human beings do better with structure. It’s the little things: If we’re going to have a building, someone needs to be responsible for vacuuming, for mowing the lawn. The tasks to be done need to connect to the gifts we have, the passions the Holy Spirit has given us. Committees are important. Structure lets us be good stewards.
But sometimes the church gets so focused on structure and good order that we start trying to limit what the Holy Spirit is doing. We get stuck on how we’ve always done it, on what we think church looks like, on who can be a pastor, or what language we ought to use, and the danger is when it becomes more about our comfort than about what God is doing.
But the Holy Spirit isn’t limited by our rules. Pentecost is chaotic. Apparently, the Holy Spirit’s movement can sometimes look like being filled with new wine. Perhaps we’d do well to remember and be open to the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing beyond our comfort level, sending us to places we don’t expect.
The Holy Spirit fills the church. The Holy Spirit sends us into the world to carry out Jesus’ mission. And the Holy Spirit goes with us.
God isn’t the kind of general who stays behind at headquarters sending troops out on a mission; the Holy Spirit leads from the front.
We are always following where God is leading, always trying to keep up with where the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing. Everywhere we go, God is already working; we just get to be a part of it. Our call as Christians is to pay attention to what God is doing, and get involved in it.
In a sense, Pentecost is a graduation for the disciples. God is sending them out into the world, sending them out to carry on the work they’ve seen Jesus do, the mission entrusted to them. This is a day of sending, commencing a new chapter.
What’s next? 2,000 years later, the promises of Pentecost are as true as ever. The winds of Pentecost are still blowing; on us, on our church, in our world.
Sometimes it’s clear where to go, obvious what God is doing. More often, I suspect we don’t know exactly what God is up to, but that’s ok. Even when we don’t know what’s next, the promise of Pentecost is that God is at work in our world, and God is at work in you.
God’s Holy Spirit is poured out on you. You are equipped with gifts to serve God, all you need to live out God’s love. You are sent by the Holy Spirit. And God is present with you.
Hear again the words of Jesus: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.” Amen