Pentecost C 2022-- The Work of the Holy Spirit

Text: 25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Are the we putting the Holy Spirit out of business?

Now, please forgive the sarcasm. (There will be a fair amount of it today. Hopefully it’s not too off-putting.) But the question remains: What does the Holy Spirit do? This Holy Spirit is, as Jesus said, His great gift to us.

“It’s ok that I’m leaving,” Jesus told the disciples, “because I will give you the Holy Spirit.”

But, as we reflect on that gift today, we need to wrestle with what, exactly, the Holy Spirit— the great gift to you from the Father and the Son— does for you.

When we think of the Holy Spirit—if we think much of Him at all—it’s in connection with the day of Pentecost. That’s fitting, of course, since that’s the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ’s church. But then the main work of the Holy Spirit becomes the miracle of the Apostles speaking in tongues—that is, they immediately went outside and started preaching and were understood by people from all over the world, in their own languages! And so we pair the account of that day with the reading from Genesis about the tower of Babel when God confused human languages and scattered us over the face of the earth.

The main job of the Holy Spirit becomes… translating.

Helping these Galilean fishermen, for example, be understood by people from the nations and tribes and peoples and languages who were gathered in Jerusalem.

Leading me to ask:

Are the engineers at Google putting the Holy Spirit out of business?

Today, arguably, we could replicate the great miracle of Pentecost using smart phones. With the right app, you, too, can hear foreigners in your own native language. Now, based on the examples of Google translate that I’ve seen, they still have a little further to go in order to really get it right. But they’re doing better and better.

At a minimum, we have the ability to learn foreign languages. And the Bible, itself, is constantly being translated into countless languages right now. Is the Holy Spirit out of work?

If not translating, then perhaps there is other work that you can look to the Holy Spirit to do for you.

In our text, Jesus also says that the Spirit will “teach you all things” and “bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). Do we still need that?

Have you ever seen a pastor’s office? Books. Everywhere. Explaining and expanding upon every single verse in every single book of the Bible. Teaching you everything you need to know about each of the words in the original Greek and Hebrew texts— exactly what they mean in different contexts, with an amazing amount of nuance.

And now, practically that whole library is accessible through an app. As I sit at my desk, working on my laptop, I don’t even need to make the effort of actually swiveling around in my desk chair, reaching that 2 or 3 feet to the bookcase, pulling a book off the shelf, and finding the right page. Now, it’s just a matter of typing a few words into a search bar and the full text is right there on the screen. Amazing tools.

Jesus promised that the Spirit would teach us all things.

Is software putting the Holy Spirit out of business?

We could keep going beyond the text. In the past, the Holy Spirit demonstrated His power and presence by miraculous healings. Our medical science does a pretty good job of that today. We still lean on Him for that, occasionally— it’s nice to have the Spirit on call when we need Him, available to help whenever we pray. But, still,

Has medical science put the Holy Spirit out of business?

Again, let’s remember: Jesus considered the Holy Spirit to be a very precious gift that He was sending— to the point that it was good that He was leaving so that the Spirit could come to you. What does the Holy Spirit bring to your life? What greater gift could Jesus give than taking your sins upon Himself and suffering the death that you deserved? What is it that you and I should look to the Holy Spirit for?

The Spirit at Work

The work of the Holy Spirit goes much deeper than translation. It goes far beyond any book.

The work of the Holy Spirit began on the day of Pentecost as He drove those terrified fishermen and tax collectors out from behind their locked doors to confess Jesus Christ.

It just happened that they were also understood, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the native languages of all those gathered.

The work of the Holy Spirit isn’t just to overcome the language barriers between us, it is actually in gathering the scattered nations, people, tribes, and languages into one people (N.B. Rev. 7). The work of the Holy Spirit is to join that one people, the body of Christ, to its head. I think it was St. Augustine who described the Holy Spirit as the love that is shared between God the Father and God the Son and binds them together in perfect unity. That “love,” if you will, is now poured out upon God’s people. God the father and God the Son “come and make [their] home with [you],” to use our Lord’s own words (John 14:23).

What greater gift can Jesus give than taking your sins to the cross? Sending the Holy Spirit to bestow on you the benefit of what Jesus did for you on the cross.

I’ve mentioned recently that one of the things that has really struck me over the past several years with regard to Ascension Day is the fact that you and I don’t just remember that day, you participate in it. Jesus was exalted to the position of power and authority at the right hand of the Father in order to gather you there with Him to the extent that we really can say that His ascension is your ascension.

We can say the same thing about Pentecost. You participate—not just witness! You participate—in Pentecost. Every time God’s Word is read, preached, and taught, it is a giving of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit does something even greater than making that Word understood by people of countless different languages, something greater than any book can do, something greater than any physical healing that you and I might ask for: He gathers not just strangers—even outright enemies!—together into the One body of Christ.

Through the Holy Spirit, the Son of God is there in the water of baptism, gathering you into His body.

In Colossians 2, Paul encourages the Church, the body of Christ, to:

“...[Hold] fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:18-19, ESV), and we might even say, specifically, “grows with a growth that is from the Holy Spirit.”

The psalmist writes, “13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.” We’re all familiar with those words. Comforting, aren’t they, that God shows such knowledge about and care for you and me. Then it goes on to say something a little strange: “15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:13, 15).

Whose body was knit together, was “intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:13)?

Not yours or mine. You were knit together in our mothers’ wombs. The body of Christ, however, is knit together as He lay in the darkness of the tomb as, one by one, you and I and every believer are united with Him, through baptism, in His death. Yes, the Father “formed (his) inward parts… knitted (him) together in (the womb of the Virgin Mary).” Then, some 33 years later, the Body of Christ was “intricately woven in the depths of the earth”—there in the tomb so that the entire Body of Christ would rise with Him three days later.

As I said, Jesus ascended, not in order to be absent, but in order to fill all things and, by filling all things, knits us together as His body, even to the point that St. Paul is able to say, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” That only happens through the Holy Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit, the Son of God descends again to be present for you on this altar in, with, and under bread and wine as we, with angels and archangels and with all the host of heaven, sing the great, eternal song of praise and, in due time, return to our homes filled with the inexpressible joy that He is risen and He has now ascended—not to be absent but, through the Holy Spirit, to fill all in all, starting with His people.

Pastor Tino from Peace, Sandusky, made a beautiful point at one of our pastors’ gatherings that relates to this. He was talking about you and I, as believers, being ‘holy people’. If you’ll forgive me for butchering a point he made so beautifully and powerfully, his point was that being holy people is not a matter of setting ourselves apart by our own, personal righteousness. It’s not something that we achieve. It’s about Christ filling you. He joins Himself to you in baptism, He gives Himself to you in His Word, He feeds you with His body and blood in the Supper. In other words, as Pastor Tino put it, Christ is stretching his arms and legs into yours, His hands and feet into yours. It is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives within you—Why? Because He has ascended into heaven and now fills all in all and made you part of His body.

That is the work of the Holy Spirit. Not just to undo the confusion of our languages, but to actually gather together what had been scattered across the earth.

Remember, the tower of Babel isn’t just the the source of different languages. It’s also the origin of all the various nations and tribes and peoples and languages as they were scattered across the face of the earth. The languages are just a symptom of that— just one way that we see how humanity has been fractured, divided, and scattered.

Pentecost is the restoration of that deeper division. It is the promise that is fulfilled in the book of Revelation as John sees “9…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9, ESV).

The work of the Holy Spirit is to gather people from every nation, tribe, people, and language together into “9 …a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10, ESV)

How do you ‘keep’ Pentecost? Confessing Jesus Christ. Proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:10).

“[Hold] fast to [your] Head, [Jesus Christ,] from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God [the Holy Spirit]” (Colossians 2:18-19). Trust that the Holy Spirit has been given to you in baptism and that you are holy.

The Holy Spirit obviously has nothing to fear from Google’s engineers. They will continue to try to make our lives easier. They will succeed at times and, at others, they will fail.

But, on this side of heaven, the Holy Spirit will always have plenty to do. And He is just as faithful in His work as the Father and the Son are in theirs. In His power—working through the Word, through baptism, and through the Lord’s Supper—confess Christ, hold fast to your Head.