Sermon: Pentecost (Salem) – 2024

19 May 2024

John 14:23-31 (Gen 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Pentecost was a day of miraculous signs that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised: “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.” 

While we focus on the extraordinary and supernatural things that happened on that first Christian Pentecost Day: the sound of the wind from heaven, the flames coming to rest on the apostles’ heads, and the miraculous ability to preach in foreign languages – what the Holy Spirit was really doing was empowering the apostles to preach the Gospel, to proclaim the Word of God that they learned from Jesus.  All barriers to this proclamation were torn down, just as the curtain was ripped from top to bottom in the temple: the former division between God and man.  And now, even the barriers between men based on language and nationality have been torn asunder, causing the Gospel to resound from this upper room, to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, across the provinces of the Roman Empire, and to the ends of the earth, in the languages of the Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and all the rest, telling the “mighty works of God” in each of these languages.

The Holy Spirit is not giving us these extraordinary miraculous signs so that we can feel good about ourselves, dear friends.  So many people want spiritual gifts to somehow exalt themselves, even to the point of faking it – as if they had the gift to speak in foreign tongues like the apostles.  Some people today claim to be prophets and faith healers – when at best, they are fooling themselves, and at worst, they are misusing the Lord’s name to make money.  The point of Pentecost is to preach the Gospel and to spread the Good News about Jesus without regard to boundaries and borders. 

Indeed, that first Pentecost was very much like the temple curtain being torn.  The miraculous ability to communicate in foreign languages was an undoing of the curse of the tower of Babel. 

For when God created Adam and Eve, they and their family were of one nationality and one language.  And this remained the case even as the world fell into great darkness and depravity.  When God restarted the world after the flood, Noah and his household were likewise of one nation, speaking one common language.  But once again, Noah’s descendants resisted God’s will.  Instead of repopulating the world, they concentrated in one place, in the land of Shinar.  Instead of submitting to the Lord of heaven, they desired to build a tower to the heavens.  And “there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.  And from there, the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” 

Mankind’s sinful folly ended in failure, and in a multiplicity of languages.  People spread abroad, and formed themselves into nations.  And we poor miserable sinners in our poor, miserable nations fought with one another.  We made war.  We captured and enslaved and killed other people of other nations.  We took one another’s land and property, and even their families.  Our divided world was once again a mess of sin and violence.

But Jesus came to bring peace.  This is the Gospel.  This is the message the Holy Spirit has for the world.  This is why the dove is a symbol of peace.  Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and the Holy Spirit has come to the church that the church may proclaim this Good News through her preachers.  “Peace I leave with you,” says Jesus.  “My peace I give to you.”  And this is not like the world’s peace, dear friends, which is just a temporary halt in external warfare.  Rather the peace of Jesus is true internal peace: harmony, love, and coexistence of all nations because of the Gospel that is proclaimed: the peace that Jesus won at the cross and in the empty tomb.  He has made peace between God and man, and He has made peace in His kingdom, which transcends tribe and tongue.

For beyond all of the supernatural wonders of that first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is still with the church, still being fanned into flame when preachers are ordained, still given to believers through Holy Baptism, still calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying Christians and binding us together into churches, still kindling faith in the hearts of penitent sinners who are transformed into saints by the mighty Word of Jesus – the same Word still preached to this very day today.

For even as every Divine Service is a kind of Christmas: the coming of Jesus, and a kind of Easter: sharing in the crucified and risen body and blood of the Lord, each time we gather around altar, font, and pulpit, dear friends, it is also a kind of Pentecost: the Spirit causing the Word of God to go forth into all the world, kindling faith in the hearts of all believers, and working the miracle of the forgiveness of sins.

It doesn’t matter what our native language is. It doesn’t matter what nation we come from.  It doesn’t matter what our condition of life is.  The Word of God is preached all over the world, universally, to all creation.  The Spirit sends preachers armed with the good news into every metropolis and every remote village. 

And in that sense, every day is Pentecost, a feast of harvest from the Old Testament, a celebration of the first-fruits to ripen in the year, an ingathering of that which was sown.  Preachers cast the seed of the Gospel, sow it into your ears and hearts, and, dear brothers and sisters, Christians who hear this good news are given the gift of faith.

Today is a day in which we celebrate the Holy Spirit.  And the work of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, is to enlighten us with the Good News of Jesus Christ.  May this entire Pentecost season be a harvest of faith, an ingathering of the faithful, and a celebration of the Spirit’s coming to us in the Word of God preached, the Gospel proclaimed.  For as St. Peter proclaimed on that first Pentecost day: “It shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.