This week’s sermon borrows more from someone else’s work than I think anything I’ve ever preached. If you’re interested in more on this topic, I cannot recommend watching William Willimon’s video “What does the Spirit do?” highly enough! I found it tremendously helpful and inspiring for this week. Here’s the link.
On this Pentecost Sunday, the readings for RCL Year C are John 14:8-17, 25-27, Romans 8:14-17, and of course the Pentecost story itself in Acts 2:1-21.
One of the challenges of being a Christian is “church math.” We believe in one God who exists in three persons. We believe in the God the Father, we believe in God the Son, and we believe in God the Holy Spirit, yet we believe in one God, not three. 1+1+1=1. Three persons, one God. The Holy Trinity.
We know who God the Father is and what God the Father does. The Father is God the Creator who spoke the heavens and earth into existence.
We know who God the Son is: Jesus Christ who taught and healed, who suffered and died on the cross for our forgiveness.
But then there’s the third person of the Trinity: God the Holy Spirit. What does God the Holy Spirit do?
A lot of today’s sermon comes from United Methodist bishop William Willimon. Bishop Willimon describes Pentecost and the work of the Holy Spirit by talking about relationship. You can’t be in a relationship with someone you don’t know. If you want to be friends with someone, step one is getting to know them.
Let’s assume you’re here today in church because you want to get to know God. Christianity is about a relationship with God, right? So how do you get to know God? God doesn’t have a body. You can’t shake God’s hand and introduce yourself!
In the very first chapter of John’s Gospel, he says no one has ever seen God. If seeing is believing, it’s hard to believe in something you can’t see! But John keeps going: It is the Son who makes God known. Through his parables and teaching and healing, Jesus reveals God to us.
Jesus enables us to be in relationship with God by revealing to us who God is and what God’s kingdom looks like. He shows us the true nature of God. He shows us our Creator, whose love for us extends even to entering the world and dying for us. The cross is the proof of God’s love, the ultimate demonstration of God’s character. Jesus the Son makes the Father known to us.
So as John tells the story, Jesus spends three years teaching about what God is like, and we don’t get it. There’s still more to be taught.
In our Gospel readings over the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing pieces of a long speech from Jesus there with his disciples at the last supper. Jesus knows his time is up.
This is his last night with his disciples before he goes to the cross, and he’s squeezing in as much more about God as he can. This is the teacher cramming with his class on the night before the test.
Philip asks him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” You hear the teacher’s frustration, don’t you?
Everything Jesus has done and taught has been about making God known to them, revealing to them who the Father is, and at the end of the course, the students seem clueless.
Jesus answers him, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”
He says it to them bluntly about three different ways – I am God. I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.
Jesus is God in the flesh. To know Jesus is to know God the Father. The way God is revealed is in Jesus, God the Son!
Sometimes people think God is up there somewhere waiting for us to mess up, waiting for us to slip and do something wrong or even just think something wrong, and then God’s there ready to jump on us and punish us.
But that’s not the God we know in Jesus. That’s not the God whose self-revelation is Jesus Christ.
We know God is loving because we know Jesus. We know of God’s care, of God’s compassion, of God’s mercy and grace because we know Jesus, Jesus who loved so much he went to the cross, Jesus who gave his life for people who rejected him, for people who don’t deserve mercy and grace, for people like you and me.
Jesus wasn’t sneaking around behind God’s back secretly loving people despite what God thought of them. Jesus is God in the flesh. That’s who God is.
It’s easy for us to look at Philip’s question, “Lord, show us the Father” and be amazed he doesn’t get it. It’s easy for us to look at the disciples throughout the Gospels and wonder how they can keep being so clueless. Perhaps it’s because they think they know what God is like.
There’s a song by Danny Gokey-maybe you know it from Life 101.9-that has God saying,
“You always think I’m somewhere on a mountain top,
but never think behind bars.
You’d be amazed the places that I’d go to be with you, where you are.So forget what you’ve heard, what you think that you know.
There’s a lot about me that’s never been told.Rumor has it there’s a gavel in my hand.
I’m only here to condemn.
But let me tell you secrets you would’ve never known.
I think of you as my best friend.
So much has been said, even done in my name,
but I’m showing you now who I really am.”
Jesus is the one who shows us who God really is. God is the one who creates, who heals, who saves, who loves. God is calling us through the law to live as the people we were created to be—and showing us grace and mercy when we fall short.
Perhaps in saying, “Lord, show us the Father,” Philip is saying, “Jesus, stop holding back. Let us have it. We appreciate all this love stuff, but show us the God we expected.”
But Jesus responds, “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. When you’ve been loved by me, you’ve been loved by God. There’s no God waiting to jump you later. When I say you’re forgiven, when I show you love, that’s God showing you love, because I and the Father are one.”
Jesus’ time on earth with the disciples in person is nearly over, not because he’s given up on them or something, but because the world has rejected him and the world is going to kill him. But his work is not done.
He knows the people he’s with—he knows us—and we’re really good at forgetting the message. We’re really good at going back to our old ways. Jesus has revealed the Father to us, but we need help to remember and to trust God’s revelation.
And so Jesus makes a promise. He says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” God will continue to be present with us in a new way, through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will remind us of what Jesus has said to us.
The Holy Spirit will build our faith; the Holy Spirit will lead us to trust and be in relationship with the God whom we cannot see, the God revealed through Jesus Christ.
In the reading from Romans, Paul says it’s the Holy Spirit who leads us to be children of God, to address God as Abba, Father. The Spirit testifies we are adopted as children of God.
Jesus tells us we can know God, but he doesn’t expect us to do anything by ourselves. We can’t believe on our own. We can’t repent on our own. We can’t have faith on our own. But God the Holy Spirit is here working on us.
We will continue doing the good works Jesus does, and more than he did in the three years of his ministry. By the Holy Spirit’s power, the good work Jesus is doing will continue through us as the church, as God’s people.
Martin Luther explains the work of the Holy Spirit in this way:
“I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.”
[Luther’s Small Catechism, Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed]
Jesus didn’t leave his disciples alone; he promised God’s presence would be continually at work in and through them, in and through us.
Today on Pentecost, we celebrate the fulfillment of that promise. We celebrate that the Holy Spirit is still at work today, enlightening us, inspiring us to faith.
The Holy Spirit expands our understanding of faith, challenges our assumptions about God, and sets the church on fire to spread the good news of Jesus.
God is with you. The Holy Spirit is gathering you and empowering you to be the people of God.
Thanks be to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen