May 31, 2020 – Pentecost
Old Testament – Gen 11:1-9
Psalm – 104:24-35v
New Testament – Acts 2:1-21
Gospel – John 14:8-17
Spirit of Truth
The Rev. Jay Traylor
Today we celebrate Pentecost, and I want to talk a little about what that means. We are going to be jumping around to a lot of scripture, and I would urge you to look at these with us. But if you don’t feel like keeping 4 fingers in your bible as placeholders, hold on to your worship guide so you can re-read these passages when you get home. So, today is Pentecost, which means we’re going to start by talking about the Tower of Babel.
In Gen 11, the people of the earth all spoke one language, and tried to place themselves on equal footing with God. They tried to link heaven and earth together by building a tall tower out of brick and mortar, out of the dirt of the earth with its foundation on the ground, but stretching up to the heavens and piercing the sky. And they did this because they wanted to glorify themselves, they wanted to position themselves as equal to their creator God. AND, it’s clear that they wanted to go against an EXPLICIT command that God gave to his people. In Genesis 1:28, God gives the command to his people: “GO.” “Be fruitful and multiply, FILL THE EARTH and subdue it.” Get going, spread out, GO. This world is mine because I made it, and you’re going to take care of it for me. GO. When we talk about God’s people being on mission for GOD’S work in GOD’S world, that’s not just a New Testament thing. That’s been God’s pattern since Genesis 1. So in Genesis 1, God says, “GO and fill the earth and subdue it. Spread out and act as my agents here on my earth.” But in Genesis 11, verse 4, the people get together and say “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” So God said, “Scatter,” the people said, “We’re not going to scatter.” *PAUSE* And so God said, “Wanna bet?” *POOF* Now you can’t understand each other. And Genesis 11 says, therefore, the name of the city was called Babel (Babel means “He confused), because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” And so the people’s plans were thwarted, but God’s plan continued, because God is not going to be disrupted from his plan for his creation.
In Acts 2, on Pentecost, that pattern is reversed. The prophet Zephaniah predicted this is Zephaniah 3:9. Zephaniah spoke of a coming Day of the Lord when all things are set right, when evil is punished, when God judges the people and sweeps out all sin, and when all of His people are all swept into his eternal embrace. And what he says is – “For at that time I will change the speech of the nations to a pure speech, that ALL of them may call upon the name of the Lord.” Obviously, that was not fully ACCOMPLISHED at Pentecost. because this is clearly language about the new heavens and the new earth, when Christ comes again to make all things new. I’m not saying it was ACCOMPLISHED at Pentecost, I’m saying it was BEGUN at Pentecost. We get a little foretaste of this at Pentecost. Now, Pentecost happened during an Old Testament festival, called the Feast of Weeks, or the Feast of Firstfruits. This was a time to celebrate the wheat harvest and praise God for how he provides. This is no accident – God chose to launch the New Testament church during a feast celebrating the firstfruits of the new harvest, and God’s providence. Jesus had said in Matthew 9:37 that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, and that his disciples should pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. And so the disciples had been waiting. They’d been told by Jesus to wait in the city until they were clothed with power from on high by the coming of the Holy Spirit. So they had been sheltering in place, and when we find them, they are waiting in the Upper Room, presumably the exact same room where Jesus had washed their feet and instituted the Lord’s Supper. The same Upper Room where he had said the words of John 14 that we just heard, “I will NOT leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but YOU WILL see me. Because I live, you ALSO will live.” And so they are in this weird liminal space, waiting. Over the last 2 months, I’ve started to understand just a tiny bit of what it must have felt like for them between the Resurrection and Pentecost. Waiting, in an in-between space, but they trusted in the promises of Jesus because every OTHER thing he’d told them so far had been the truth, every other promise he’d made had come true. And so they wait.
And this event, this wind and fire and gathering of people, this was the beginning of that, the firstfruits of that harvest. And when the Holy Spirit comes, it was unmistakable. We heard this in Acts 2, verse 6 “The Holy Spirit descended on them with the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.” And then it says “And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’” *PAUSE*
What DOES this mean? It means that what happened at Babel is being reversed. It means what Zephaniah prophesied about in chapter 3 verse 9 is starting to come true. It means that God chose the Festival of the Firstfruits of the Harvest to begin the firstfruits of the harvest that Jesus had spoken about! And it means this was the launch party of the New Testament, New Covenant church, a church that would spread, as Jesus SAID it would, from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.
So this was not only kind of prefigured (although in reverse) at Babel, and it was not only prophesied in Zephaniah, but it was predicted by Jesus in Matthew 9, and then promised by Jesus in John 14. John 14:16, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” So Zephaniah was telling the truth, and Jesus was telling the truth, and the gift that he sent was the Spirit of Truth.
God promised, and God delivered. And if God was faithful and careful with his Word of Truth to us, if he was accurate, then we must be faithful and careful and accurate with our words, too. Jesus said later in John that it’s GOOD that he was going away, because if he didn’t go, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come, and it’s the Holy Spirit that spiritually unites us to Christ. See, here’s a little bit of incarnational theology. Jesus is fully God and fully man, right? And, Jesus has a body. When he died, he had a body. When he rose, he had a body. A resurrected and perfected body that can never die, but still a body. And even though he could do amazing things like appear suddenly, he still is only in one place at one time. That’s what it means to have a body. And here’s something I NEVER thought about when I was younger – Jesus still has a body right now. Jesus is somewhere within God’s creation, this physical universe, right now, in a body. And so if he had stayed on earth, stayed with his disciples, he could only be at one place at a time. But when he leaves, and the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit is what unites us to Christ, and to one another. And so every single Christian has what’s called “Union With Christ,” what Paul talked about as being “In Christ” or “With Christ.” And when we have faith in Christ, we HAVE the Holy Spirit in us. This is the gift promised by Jesus and demonstrated in a radical way at Pentecost. And it’s true for all believers at once! And the reverse is true too! When we are in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit in us. And that Holy Spirit works in us, pointing us to Christ and molding us into the image of Christ. Part of that is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, honing our conscience, tuning our hearts, opening our eyes and and showing us God’s truth. And so we speak truth, because to speak otherwise is to encourage ungodliness in the listener. We speak truth because we CAN, and we speak truth because we MUST. As the people of God, we are ALL called to be faithful workers who should rightly handle God’s Word of Truth.
Being able to speak God’s truth is vital. Being able to speak God’s truth and not be ashamed or scared is essential. We can speak the truth because we are grounded in a greater set of promises than this world could ever give, and we have access to the same power that the disciples had. Because we have CONFIDENCE of God’s truth, and we have CONFIDENCE in the promises that God makes to his people, we can TRUTHFULLY say that earlier this week, Derek Chauvin, an image-bearer of God, murdered George Floyd, another image-bearer of God, who was defenseless and unarmed, posing no immediate threat to anyone. This is plainly wicked and evil, and God detests it, and so should we. And as people who know God’s truth, we can stand up and cry out for justice to be done. The heart of God’s law, Old Testament and New Testament, is love for one another, self-sacrifice, and the preservation of life. And what happened was wicked and evil and we cry out for justice.
And as a new little church here in Staunton, we are a new embassy of God’s kingdom, a new missional outpost of God’s mission in his creation. And so we can add our voices to all the other churches out there who are leaning on God’s truth and trusting in God’s promises, and we can speak confidently, humbly, prophetically – we can cry out that God’s law speaks clearly that we plead the cause of the widow and the orphan, that we stand up for the powerless and the downtrodden, that we call for justice to be done to the powerful and the marginalized with equal weights and measures, that we fight for the preservation of life, and that we condemn evil and wickedness. And we can weep and mourn for a society where justice does NOT seem to be equal, where the powerless are pinned down by the powerful, and we can point back to God’s truth and show IT as a better way.
The mission of God is the work of the church. And part of the mission of God is to be ambassadors of his kingdom, and a light to a dark and broken world. Part of that is how we handle truth, and how we value justice. Deuteronomy 4 verse 5 says that God had given his law to his people Israel, in part so that their neighbors would see how they lived and say “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”
You see? God’s truth is missional. Even God’s LAWS have a missional or evangslistic component. God gave his law to his people, in part, so that their neighbors might see how we live and say, “What kind of people can stand up for what is right, regardless of the cost to them?” We have access to the very character of God, through his law, through his Holy Spirit, and through the life, death, resurrection, and coronation of King Jesus. When we live on mission for God, we are living as people of the Pentecost promise. When we live as people united to Christ and filed with the Spirit of Truth, we have nothing to fear. Even this little gathering, out here in the woods, this is part of God’s mission for his creation. Gathering and praying and singing, part of the mission. Gathering around this table, part of the mission. Being sent back out into the world armed with his truth, reminded of his love, and filled with his power, part of the mission.
At Babel, God frustrated the people who wanted to puff themselves up and disregard the mission of God, who wanted to knock on the door of heaven and announce their presence; he divided them with multiple languages so they couldn’t follow through on their plan.
At Pentecost, God united the people who wanted to humble themselves before him and participate in the mission of God, who wanted to kneel before the throne of God and announce HIS presence; he united them across multiple languages so that they could follow through on HIS plan.
What does that mission look like for you this week? What does being a part of God’s plan to push back darkness and bring the light of love look like? Think about it, pray about, and PLEASE let’s help one another live that out. Because the Gospel of Jesus is comfort to everyone. No matter how messed up you are, or no matter how much someone else has hurt you, Jesus offers forgiveness, and Jesus offers true rest. Because the gospel of King Jesus says that real and ultimate justice, PERFECT judgment from a PERFECT God, WILL happen. And the reality is, all through scripture, that it might never happen in this life, but we are clearly called to pursue earthly justice while we lean on the truth of perfect heavenly justice. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God says that we are all image bearers of God and that we all have dignity, but that we have all sinned and we all need the perfect work of our resurrected savior. If you look at a country like Rwanda, where our diocese was born, this is a country that was torn apart by genocide, where two tribes tried to wipe each other out. And that’s not ancient history, that was 25 years ago. And that country has done miraculous work of healing. How? By the healing work of the Gospel. By people from all walks of life acknowledging their sin and bowing their knee to the Lordship of Christ, by throwing themselves on the mercy of God, knowing that as followers of Jesus, their sins are covered by his blood. That’s the only good news we have, but it’s the only truly good news there is.
Often pastors will end a sermon by praying, and I want to do that today. But I want to use a prayer from our new Book of Common Prayer. It’s page 659 if you want to look it up later and pray it yourself.
“Almighty God, you created us in your own image: Grant us grace to contend fearlessly against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and help us to use our freedom rightly in the establishment of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.