The Day of
Pentecost (B)
May 23, 2021
Text: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
“I
believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my
Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened
me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”[1]
The
Holy Spirit was poured out upon you in Holy Baptism, and He abides
with you as He blows through on the wind of His Word, the Holy Scriptures, the
Preaching, the Absolution. And He dwells
within you as you receive the true Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper,
for wherever Jesus is, there is His Spirit.
These are the Means of Grace.
They are the Means to which the Holy Spirit has attached Himself, His
vehicle, the place where He has promised to be for you so that you can know it
is the Holy Spirit you are receiving, and not some other spirit. By these means, the Spirit does His
work. That is, He does His calling by
the Gospel. He calls you, calls me,
calls all who hear the preaching. You
know that the word for Spirit in both biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek, can
also mean wind or breath. So the Spirit
comes on the breath of preaching. He
blows into your ears on the wind of the Word.
And He enlightens with His gifts.
That is, by this same Word, and by the Sacraments (Baptism, Absolution,
the Supper), the Holy Spirit brings about the results of His call. He turns on the lights for you, so that you
see and believe that Jesus Christ is your Savior from sin and death, that He
restores you to the Father, and makes you God’s own child. And by these same gifts He sanctifies you,
sets you apart as holy for God, marks you as belonging to Him. And He keeps you in the true faith. He alone is responsible for your perseverance
as a Christian unto eternal life. He
does it. By His Word.
And
what this is, this pouring out of the Spirit upon you in Baptism, and His work
in you through the Means of Grace, is the direct result of Jesus’ death for
your sins, His resurrection, and His ascension.
For since He has been exalted to the right hand of God the Father, He
sends the Helper, the Holy Spirit. The
Greek word for “Helper,” as you may know, is “Paraclete,” and that word can
mean Comforter, Counselor, Advocate, Intercessor, Mediator, and yes, Helper
(Schmitt). The imagery of a defense
attorney comes to mind. Or even better,
Paraclete literally means the one called to your side, as when a child falls
off of his bicycle and calls upon his mother for comfort and for aid. Because our Lord Jesus was crucified for us,
and is risen, and lives, and reigns, the Helper comes, sent by Jesus, the
Spirit of our Father.
And
this is simply the ongoing reality of Pentecost. Pentecost is actually the Greek name for the
Old Testament Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot in Hebrew. Pentecost means fifty. It is the fiftieth day after Passover, or
seven weeks. That is why we celebrate
Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter.
And it was a first fruits festival.
But the Jews also commemorate it as the day God gave the Ten
Commandments on Mt. Sinai. And think about
what happened on that day. God came down
upon the mountain. A great fiery cloud
appeared… where(?), but on the top of the mountain, on Sinai’s head. And there was a great sound, “thunders and
lightenings… and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp
trembled” (Ex. 19:16; ESV). And God
spoke. He gave His Word. He preached.
And the first fruit God was looking for in the people with whom He was
making Covenant, was a life lived according to His order set forth in the
Commandments.
So
this is what the multitudes have come together to celebrate in Jerusalem in our
second reading (Acts 2:1-21), and now all at once, there is the sound of the
mighty, rushing wind from heaven, and it is God coming down, the Holy Spirit
blowing through. And there appear on the
heads of the Apostles “divided tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3), because
now God will speak, not from the fearsome conflagration of Mt. Sinai, but in
the preaching of His Apostles.
Immediately, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to
speak,” to preach, “in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance”
(v. 4).
Now,
this Pentecost pouring out of the Spirit is miraculous, but notice all the
plays on words and images that set up what is now the regular pattern. The Spirit/wind/breath rushes in from heaven into
the gathering of the Church. And the
Spirit/wind/breath fills the lungs of the Apostles, who open their mouths to
exhale, to breathe the Spirit/wind/breath out in preaching. And not just any preaching, but the Apostolic
Word. We’ve seen this image before, and
all over the place in Holy Scripture. “Then
Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit
my spirit!’ And having said this he
breathed his last” (Luke 23:46). “And
when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy
Spirit” (John 20:22). God breathed
into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being (Gen.
2:7). “Prophesy to the breath;
prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the LORD GOD: Come from
the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live”
(Ez. 37:9). “The wind blows where it
wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. So it is with everyone
who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
Thus we confess in our Augsburg Confession that the Spirit works faith
where and when it pleases God in those who hear the Gospel (AC V:2-3). He breathes Himself into us by the preaching. That is the pattern now. And so God sends His preachers to breathe
that Apostolic Word into you. The Spirit
blows in on the wind of the Word preached.
So we don’t get a mighty, rushing wind, but we get a sermon. And believe it or not, it is a miracle every
time. We get the Scriptures. We get Words… and water, bread, and wine
attached to the Words, the Words we have received from the Apostles, who
received them from our Lord, Words upon which the Spirit comes.
So
Pentecost may be a fixed point in history, but its reality continues in the
Church among you to this very moment.
Here the Word is preached, and here the Spirit blows through to do His
calling, enlightening, sanctifying and keeping.
And
so the Spirit blows through the world. Jesus
says that as the Spirit comes, He convicts the world concerning sin and
righteousness and judgment. This can be
a little confusing, so it is worth speaking about each one. The Spirit convicts the world concerning sin,
Jesus says, “because they do not believe in me” (John 16:9). In the final analysis, sin is unbelief. But in the Word, the Spirit shows Jesus to be
the Son of God, the very truth the world denies.
The
Spirit convicts the world concerning righteousness, Jesus says, “because I
go to the Father, and you will see me no longer” (v. 10). The world, believing itself to be
righteous, crucified Jesus as an unrighteous criminal, the accursed death of
the cross. But God the Father raised Jesus
from the dead, exalting Him to heaven, to be seated at the Father's own right
hand, to rule, thus vindicating Jesus and declaring Him to be THE Righteous
One, and the One in whom is all our righteousness. As the Word is preached, the Spirit convicts
the world of this truth.
And
the Spirit convicts the world of judgment, Jesus says, “because the ruler of
this world is judged” (v. 11). Satan
is defeated. The serpent’s head is
crushed. Jesus wins, for He was
crucified for our sins, and raised for our justification, and He claims for
Himself a Kingdom. He rules over all
things. As the Word is proclaimed, the
Spirit blows through to announce the good news that Jesus has conquered as the
true and rightful King. In this way, the
Spirit glorifies Jesus. He takes what
belongs to Jesus, all that Jesus has received from the Father, and declares it
to you.
Now,
as we said, this same Holy Spirit was poured out on you in Baptism. Just as the Spirit descended like a dove upon
Jesus at His Baptism, and remained on Him, so it is with you. He possesses you. You do not possess Him. Nor are you any longer possessed by Satan and
the demons. The Spirit possesses
you. And He remains on you. He abides.
And again, He does this through His Word. And this means every time you sin or go
astray, there is the Spirit calling you to repentance and to faith in Christ,
preaching to you redemption and forgiveness in the Gospel. When you need wisdom and patience, there is
the Spirit enlightening your mind by His Word, counseling you and helping
you. When you need comfort, when you’ve
been bloodied and hurt, when you’ve been soiled by the devil, the world, and
your own sinful flesh, when you need help loving your neighbor, there is the
Spirit sanctifying you for God, cleansing you and setting you apart as holy,
God’s own possession, and nourishing you with the Word and Body and Blood of
Jesus. And He prays for you and in you,
and brings your prayers, sanctified, cleansed, before God with groanings too
deep for words (Rom. 8:26). And when you
are in danger of falling, He keeps you.
Even as He does for the whole Christian Church on earth. He keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true
faith, daily and richly forgiving all your sins, and giving you eternal
life. And so He will do until the Last
Day, when He raises you and all the dead, and gives eternal life to you and all
believers in Christ. This is most
certainly true.
I
cannot believe by my own reason or strength.
But God has poured out His Spirit through Christ, and this Spirit blows
through as God’s Word is proclaimed, giving me a living and abiding faith in
Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And so
He does for you. In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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