Sermon for May 23, 2021, Pentecost Sunday, Year B
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John 15:26–27, 16:4b–15
John 15:26-27
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
John 16:4b-15
“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
An off-hand comment by a professor of theology caught my attention and has stayed with me ever since. He said,
“You know, of course, that the work of the Spirit is wider than the church.”
That is a beautiful way to think about the Spirit. On Pentecost, we celebrate the work the Spirit does in and through us.
We call Pentecost the birthday of the Church because according to the story, the promise that Jesus made to the disciples came true that day: the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples and they started proclaiming the good news; the gospel.
But the Spirit was present from the beginning of Creation, according to the biblical story. And it is right to think of the Spirit that way: always and everywhere active, because the Spirit is the Spirit of God who is always and everywhere present.
In All Traditions
The work of the Spirit is much wider than the church. We worship in the Christian tradition, but we also recognize that the Spirit is active in all religions as people seek God in different ways.
When Jesus met the woman at the well in Samaria, she wanted to have a theological discussion with him about who had the right temple, and therefore, the right worship: Jews or Samaritans?
Jesus’ answer was interesting. On the one hand, he told her that the Jews had the right temple. But maybe that didn’t matter because, as he said,
“the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4
When Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, brought God’s healing to people, whether they were Romans or Cyro-Phonecians, he did not ask them to convert as a condition for receiving God’s care. The work of the Spirit is much wider than the church.
Naming the Spirit
What do we call the Spirit? In John’s gospel, Jesus calls the Spirit the Advocate. Older translations used the words Counselor and Comforter. The Spirit’s role is to be helpful to us.
In John’s gospel, Jesus calls Spirit the Spirit of truth who leads us to discover the truth. Paul calls the Spirit the Spirit of Christ. This is the spirit of the risen Christ that appears to Paul in a vision when he was on the road to Damascus.
The Parable of Pentecost
Luke wanted his community of Christians to understand how the Spirit was supposed to help them, so he told a story that I take as a parable, to teach them what to believe. So let us look at this story together.
It starts with the community of Jesus-followers gathered together. This is significant. They are not isolated individuals, but a community. Eventually, Paul will call this community the Body of Christ, bound together by the Spirit of Christ.
Then, in the story, they hear loud sounds and see flames of fire. These are symbols of the powerful presence of God, just like the sounds and fire on Mt. Sinai that made all the people afraid as Moses went up to meet God, according to the Exodus story.
Then all of them were suddenly given the ability to speak in other languages. The good news that Jesus taught, of the Kingdom of God, the good news that God was good, compassionate, and forgiving, was never meant to be good news for one nation alone. It is good news for everyone, so of course, they needed to be able to speak to everyone in their own languages to proclaim the good news effectively.
But then, like the way in dreams, the storyline changes without logic or explanation. Suddenly a crowd of people appears. Without the need to explain how something happening indoors could draw a large crowd, nevertheless, it does.
This story is driving home the point that the Spirit’s effect is to break down walls that divide people. The story belabors the point by naming the long list of nationalities present to hear the message.
The focus of attention stays on the international group by reporting that conversation about whether or not the disciples are drunk. It gives Peter the chance to explain that it was God’s will all along that the Spirit would be available to “all flesh” as the prophet Joel said. Men and women, the young and the old, even slaves as well as citizens could receive the Spirit.
Peter says that this is the prediction of Joel coming true, which is interesting because Joel said that the Spirit would be accompanied by cosmological signs:
“blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood.”
And although Peter said that this was all being fulfilled, no one in the story looked up and waited for it to happen. Of course not; again, it is symbolic language. This thing that is happening is earthshaking, we would say. It changes everything.
It Should Change Everything
Or at least it ought to change everything. It ought to be the case that people who have the Spirit of God know that the old divisions of race and ethnicity no longer matter.
It ought to be the case that the way people identify themselves in groups that are then are hostile to other groups is a thing of the past.
It ought to be that all the bloodshed in all the wars between nations can come to an end. It ought to be the case that phrases like “Christian nationalism” were simply oxymoronic and unimaginable.
But this is a hard lesson to learn. Paul told his young Christian communities that in Christ there was
“no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male and female.”
Gal. 3
But shortly after he was executed, people wrote letters in his name telling masters to be good masters, slaves to be good slaves, and women to be silently obedient.
The Spirit can be resisted. The Spirit can be ignored. The Spirit of God does not force or control people, and so divisions and nationalisms remain, even among Christians.
But the Spirit never tires of luring us to goodness. The Spirit never gives upon us. The Advocate, the Comforter, the Counselor, is present in every moment, coaxing us to the next right thing, presenting us with opportunities to look past our own ego boundaries and to see everyone as a child of God.
Tangible Help
To help us in our human weakness, we have been given a marvelous practice that concretely illustrates what we believe. Jesus told us that we are to take one loaf of bread, symbolizing one united community, and break it so that each one can receive it.
And we are to take one cup and offer it to each one so that we can share a common cup, symbolizing our unity. And these gifts of bread and cup, taken together, help us to see, and feel and even taste the truth that we are one body.
In his instructions to the church in Corinth, Paul assumes that their gatherings will include the Lord’s Supper. He says, “when you come together as the church” and then he tells them how to share the Lord’s Supper properly, meaning without distinctions between rich and poor. (I Cor. 11)
The point is, he assumed they would celebrate the Lord’s supper whenever they came together, and at that sacred meal, it was crucial that former walls of separation should be dismantled. The Spirit is the Spirit of unity. The fruit of the Spirit, he said, includes love, joy, and peace.
It is a great sadness that our churches are divided racially. We would love to have a multi-cultural congregation; that would show to the world that the Spirit was truly present.
Maybe that day will come for us. In the meantime, we do all we can to fulfill the mission of the Spirit to bridge chasms of separation. We join in the quest to be anti-racists in our personal lives, in our community, and our nation. This is our joy, as we celebrate the beautiful ministry of the Holy Spirit.
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