Today, as well as being Mother’s Day, is Pentecost. Pentecost gets its name from being the fiftieth day of Easter, as well as being the same date as the old Jewish festival of weeks, the time when the firstfruits were presented to the Lord at the Temple. For this reason, we have the great gathering of the pious Jews from across the nations, gathered to give thanks to God at the Temple, setting the scene for today’s second reading. Our paraments are red today, to commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit in fire to the church, the powerful sermon that Peter preached to the gathered Jewish faithful that day, the three thousand who heard Peter’s message and believed the good news and were baptized.
Today we celebrate the good news that the Holy Spirit is still with the Church, still hard at work to cause faith in the hearts of those who hear the Word, still hard at work to build up the church. And as we celebrate the Holy Spirit, we need to consider just what the work of the Spirit is and how we are also brought into that Spirit today.
First, the Spirit works through the Word. Consider what Peter and the other disciples did with the gift of the Spirit. They didn’t just chatter amongst themselves, and feel good about it. No, they went out and told of the mighty works of God. Not even about the Spirit but about God the Father and what He had done through His Son.
The story is told of an older pastor who had what seemed to him to be one particularly busy week, constantly being interrupted by visitors and meetings whenever he sat down to start the work of writing his sermon, and arrived at Saturday without having done any work on his sermon whatsoever. In his exhaustion, he decided that he would simply get up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and say whatever the Holy Spirit would have him say. Sunday morning arrived. He carefully prayed before the altar before preaching his sermon, and, to his way of thinking, it had gone pretty well. He was feeling pretty good as his congregation members greeted him as they left the church that morning. After lunch, at home, he asked his wife what the Holy Spirit had taught her. She replied, “That my husband ought to have spent more time working on his sermon this week.”
This story, which has been told with some variation about many of the famous preachers since the Reformation, points out one of the fallacies about the Holy Spirit. It is easy to assume that if you have the Holy Spirit in you to work through you, you don’t have to do any work. Just open your mouth and the perfect words will flow out, and everyone will listen.
That’s not how it works, most of the time. Jesus only promised about having the perfect words when we are in times of persecution. We see Peter and the other disciples speaking of the mighty works of God in various languages in the reading from Acts for today and it’s easy to think just how wonderful that would be. But even these were people who were steeped in the word of Christ and in the Scriptures. Jesus spent His Sabbaths in the synagogues and never missed the appointed feasts which the Jews held to, at which the Word of God was read to the gathered. The apostles, likewise, were faithful Jews, meeting in the temple courts. Most of the time the work of the Holy Spirit is not as over-the-top and exciting as the events of the first Pentecost. It’s more steady and ordinary.
The Holy Spirit’s role, in the Trinity, is first and foremost to point us through the Word to the Father and the Son. We don’t have a lot of hymns to the Holy Spirit, nor is there a lot written about the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, because the role of the Holy Spirit is simply to work faith in us and point us to the other members of the Trinity.
Second, The Holy Spirit does this work with the Word through means, what we call the means of grace. God’s Word of grace— the Gospel, through hearing the Scriptures, through preaching, through Holy Baptism, through absolution, and through the Lord’s Supper. Now, when these things happen, you’re not going to see tongues of flame. You’re not necessarily going to feel a wind blowing through the church or anything like that. That’s really not the Holy Spirit’s style. Whenever we see the special manifestations of the Spirit, it isn’t to put attention on the Spirit. I have a book in my library called “The Holy Spirit: The Shy Member of the Trinity” and that’s a pretty decent way of talking about the Spirit. He wants us to know Christ so that we can know the Father.
Even the flames of that first Pentecost, as one Bible scholar has noted, weren’t so much about showing the Spirit as they were to demonstrate God’s presence. After all, God had promised His presence among His people through the fire and cloud in the wilderness, culminating in the construction and dedication of the Tabernacle, where the fire on the altar was God’s promise of presence to hear His people’s prayers and forgive their sins through the sacrifices there presented. The flame was required to be kept going at all times, as a symbol and guarantee of God’s gracious presence for His people. These flames, now resting on the heads of the disciples, showed that God was graciously with them to hear prayers and forgive their sins through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
The Holy Spirit works to point us toward God’s grace. All the means of grace through which He works are those things which carry along with them the forgiveness of sins. Through the spoken Word, forgiveness comes. Through the preached word, forgiveness comes. Through the waters of Baptism and the promise connected to this word, forgiveness comes. Through absolution, by Jesus’ own command and promise, forgiveness comes. Through the Lord’s Supper, by Jesus’ word and promise, forgiveness comes.
It’s important, too, to point out that we are only promised the Holy Spirit through these means. Any time the Holy Spirit is given in the New Testament, and especially when the special gifts of the Spirit are given, it is always connected with the Word in one way or another. The disciples who received the tongues of fire were waiting for the Spirit according to Jesus’ word of promise. Throughout the book of Acts the Spirit comes as a result of the Word and of Baptism. Peter would finish his sermon, of which we hear only the first little part today, with an exhortation to “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will 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 2:38-39)
Through Baptism–the living waters that Jesus promised, the water which gives life, forgiveness, and salvation to all who trust in Christ’s promise, we also receive the Holy Spirit. Now, it is true that most of us don’t even remember when we were baptized. But that doesn’t make the gift of the Spirit any less valid. For it is not our feelings or our understanding which makes the Holy Spirit work but rather God’s promise. You don’t need to pray really hard or go off to a secluded place to receive the Holy Spirit. You don’t need to do anything to receive the Spirit other than hear God’s Word and not resist the work of the Spirit on you.
The work of the Holy Spirit is not primarily found in doing miracles or speaking in tongues, as much as popular Christian speakers and writers would like to make this so. The Pentecostal movement only dates back a little over 100 years. If these works of the Spirit were critical to the mission of the church, critical to preaching the Gospel, why would they have ceased for such a long period of time, only to be revived in the early 20th century? The work of the Spirit is primarily in what we celebrate in the explanation of the Third Article of the Creed. “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. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.”
We need to keep this in mind at all times. Our own feelings and abilities cannot save us. To trust in yourself for salvation, in even the smallest part, is to trust in a false god and condemn yourself to Hell. But to be led by the Holy Spirit to trust in Jesus' perfect death for the forgiveness of your sins is eternal life. When it comes to salvation, the Holy Spirit gets all the credit. Where the Holy Spirit is, there the church is, and where the church is, there the Holy Spirit is. Where the forgiveness of sins is, there the Holy Spirit is, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is the forgiveness of sins. Where there is faith, there the Holy Spirit is, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is faith. Where there is eternal life, there the Holy Spirit is, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is eternal life. The Holy Spirit is here with us in our singing of the hymns, and in our liturgy, for our hymns and liturgy are derived from the Word which the Spirit promises to accompany. Every worship service which is based on the Word and focussed on Christ is by definition Spirit-filled, for it exists to do the purpose for which the Spirit was sent—to bring people to Christ through the Word.
It is right for us to celebrate God sending His Holy Spirit to the church, for without this giving, there would be no church. Without this giving, there would be no hope. Without this giving, there would be no forgiveness of sins. Thanks be to God for sending His Spirit to be His presence in the Church, for sending His Spirit to give life to His people and make them one body, the holy and eternal bride of her Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Come, Holy Spirit and guide your people in the way of truth, now and into eternity! Amen.
Last updated May 2008 by the webmaster.