“PENTECOST”
Saint John 14. 23-31
Whitsunday - The Feast of Pentecost: 4 June Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
Correctly understood, Augsburg Lutheran parish of Olathe, Kansas is a Pentecostal congregation. Correctly understood, the Lutheran Church is a Pentecostal communion. Pentecost is fifty days after the Resurrection of the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ is risen and lives and reigns, to all eternity. His atoning work is done. His sacrificial “input” is finished. But the Lord still works constantly on your behalf.
You need His work. Your sin weighs heavy upon you. It’s not the “little” things that you do badly every day with your rudeness, childishness, pettiness, and anger; it’s the “you” deep inside that seems like it can do nothing else than sin. You don’t love God the way His Law demands. If you did, well, think to yourself the things that would demonstrate loving God more than anything else. You don’t love your neighbors as God’s Law mandates. If you did, well, think how you might treat your brothers and sisters, why even the ones here at Augsburg, differently than you now do. You don’t forgive others as the Lord has forgiven you. Thus, you need to be daily forgiven by your Savior. Jesus continues to come to you and “deliver” what He purchased for you at Calvary. The Lord brings you the “output” by His Word of Holy Scripture, by His initiation into His fold in Holy Washing +, by His powerful Word of Holy Absolution, and by the Eucharist.
Pentecost gives us a glimpse of when it all started publicly for the Church.
“Jesus answered and said...’If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with Him.’” This is both Trinitarian language and Pentecostal (correctly understood) language.
Since the Lord has “ascended” out of your immediate physical sight, you now receive Him in a “faith sight,” with eyes of belief, through His appointed “delivery” systems. You receive the Savior’s forgiveness, love, strength, and presence when God the Holy Ghost brings you the Savior in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things...Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you.”
The Holy Ghost gives you the Son. The Son is the perfect image of the Father. The Son and the Father are one. He who has the Spirit of Pentecost (correctly understood) has the Son and the Father, as well as the Paraclete.
And how did the Father go about sending the Comforter? How did the Lord make His presence known and real to Peter and the others? How is that this morning you have the same God of God that walked through Israel teaching, preaching, healing, loving and forgiving? You have these things, these gifts, this Grace, by the Word preached as well as by the Word applied in washing, eating, and drinking.
Peter, James, Andrew, John, and the rest, did nothing different than Jesus’ called and ordained shepherds do today. Oh, their miracles were a bit flashier and spectacular to human eyes, but the forgiveness they preached, i.e. the remission of sins that they actually gave, was no different than what you receive this morning. “Repent and be baptized all of you.” Turn from your sin and drown the “old Adam” daily in your Baptisms. Receive the Holy Absolution from my lips as from the Son of God’s own lips. Take His Body and drink His Blood and have the Bread of Heaven, the Water of Life, and the guarantee of eternity.
Being Pentecostal is not about rolling around in pseudo-ecstatic fervor. Being a Church of the “Spirit” is not about barking like dogs, crying like buffoons, jabbering like Fred Flintstone, or feeling “warm and tingly” inside. Being Pentecostal is being Evangelical---Gospel filled. Being Pentecostal is being Catholic---being filled with the Faith of our fathers; the faith of the Apostles and Prophets. Being Pentecostal is being filled with Jesus, which means being filled with the Father and Holy Ghost as well.
You want miracles? The wonder is His life, death and resurrection just for you; done, accomplished and yours. The holy “sign” is the God/Man coming to you today into your ears and into your souls. The miracle is that “The” truth spoken in Hebrew and Aramaic, recorded in Greek, preserved in Latin, and made accessible first in German and then in English is heard by you this very moment.. Because your ears have been opened by the Spirit, you have the Pentecost light of fire glowing over your heads. Because your inner man has been refreshed with a cleansing and re-birth + you have a tongue of fire dancing atop your skull. Because you eat and drink the God/Man you have his light and life in your soul.
With new eyes you can see your brothers and sisters not as the sinful, hurtful, mean, and oppressive people that we are by our “old natures,” but rather you can see one another with flickering flames of immortality marking us as Holy Saints.
Forgive one another. Don’t hold grudges. Let your hurts and affronts and grudges go; burned away as dross and chaff by the “Fire” of His love.
Jesus forgives you. You are whole.
The Father is yours, in the Name of The Son, + by the power of the Spirit.