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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Earlier this year in one of our Bible Classes, someone asked me to explain the shift from calling the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity “the Holy Ghost” to calling Him “the Holy Spirit”. I did not give a good answer at the time, nor have I given a good answer since, at least in part because I never really found what I thought was a good, reliable explanation for the shift. Basically, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German words, in some cases meaning both “wind” and “breath”, feed into English. “Holy Ghost” comes more from German roots, and “Holy Spirit” comes more from Latin roots, but both names mean essentially the same thing, and, in the most‑recent Lutheran Service Book, the liturgy and hymns pretty much use the two names interchangeably. In some ways, Bible translations are another matter, and not just when it comes to the name “Holy Ghost” or “Holy Spirit”. In today’s Gospel Reading, for example, translations differ as to whether Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit by the name “Helper”, “Comforter”, “Counselor”, or “Advocate”. Regardless of the name used, we, at least, believe, teach, and confess the Holy Spirit to be a distinct person of the Triune God. This morning we want to focus less on the names and more on “The Coming and Work of the Spirit”, for the Holy Spirit comes and works for your and my advantage.
Today’s Gospel Reading is again from St. John’s divinely‑inspired account of Jesus’s teaching His disciples on the night on which He was betrayed. Jesus had already promised that the Holy Spirit would come, and in the two excerpts that make up today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus three times again mentions the “coming” of the Holy Spirit, further describing it as both a “sending” and a “proceeding”, and Jesus uses at least four different verbs to describe the Holy Spirit’s work: bear witness, convict, guide by speaking, and glorify Jesus by taking what is His but ultimately the Father’s. In short, Jesus sends Whom He calls the Spirit of Truth, Who proceeds from the Father, in order to bear witness about Jesus. The Spirit comes and bears witness about Jesus by guiding the disciples into all truth, speaking what He hears from the Father, and the Spirit by that same witness also convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
Jesus explains to the disciples that He did not say these things to them—things such as His going to Him Who sent Him—from the beginning of His time with them because He was with them. And, because He did say these things to them on the night on which He was betrayed, sorrow filled the disciples’ heart. They were filled with, or plunged into, grief; they felt very sad. Yet, what Jesus goes on to say is true: His going away is to their advantage; it is expedient, for their good, though they do not see it. You and I can relate to the disciples, can we not? Sorrow often fills our hearts, and sorrow sometimes fills our hearts even over things that are for our good, though we do not always see it. What, if any, sorrow is filling your and my hearts this morning? What has filled us with or plunged us into grief? Why do we feel sad? Have we lost a friendship? Has a loved one died? Is our own health, family, or job in jeopardy? Do we wrongly think that we are so unworthy that there is no way anyone, including God, could love us? Or, do we err to the other extreme that we wrongly think there is nothing wrong with us and that in some sense we do not need God at all?
All who believe, are by nature as dead in trespasses and sins as the dry bones Ezekiel in today’s Old Testament Reading found himself in the middle of a valley full of! The Holy Spirit bears witness about Jesus and thereby convicts not only the world but also our sinful natures concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. The Holy Spirit makes clear that apart from faith, sin and its lack of righteousness deserve judgment that results in punishment now on earth and eternally in hell. Thus, the Holy Spirit calls us to turn from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better! As Ezekiel prophesied the Word of the Lord and caused breath to enter the bones and live, so the Holy Spirit with its call to repent gives us faith, as today’s Gradual put it, to believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths and so be justified and saved. When we so repent and believe, God forgives our sins for Jesus’s sake.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus speaks of going to Him Who sent Him, the Father, and He speaks of going away so that He can send the Spirit. Now, St. John records Jesus’s statements using a number of different words for “going”, and one of them in particular is an euphemism for death, a way of speaking about death without specifically mentioning death. (Euphemism or not, the disciples probably understood what Jesus meant in this case, since sorrow filled their heart.) Jesus’s going away, or ascending, to the Father was through death and resurrection—a brutal death on the cross and a victorious resurrection from the grave. His going away was to the disciples’ and our advantage, not only because His going away made possible His sending the Holy Spirit but also, and perhaps more basically and importantly, because His going away through death and resurrection made possible the forgiveness of the disciples’ and our sins, whatever they might be, and thus also the restoration of our sinful natures. God loved sinful you and me so much that He sent His Son to die and rise for us. The Holy Spirit bears witness and enables to do likewise the disciples with Jesus from the beginning, who saw with their own eyes His death and resurrection for themselves and for us.
Today’s Second Reading gives us the account of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on those disciples, fulfilling prophecy, including that made by the pattern of the Old Testament feast of Pentecost—so named for its observance 50 days after Passover and celebrating the firstfruits of the wheat harvest. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples preached and baptized, and thereby the Holy Spirit touched others and gathered them into the Church. The Holy Spirit similarly touches others, including you and me, in our time, but He does not do so apart from the Word emphasized so strongly in today’s Gospel Reading. With the Word of God, the water of Holy Baptism is a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit that saves us. There, at the Baptismal Font, the Holy Spirit, with the Father and the Son, God Himself, comes to live in you and me. After private confession, the Holy Spirit given to the disciples and their successors makes their words of forgiveness in Holy Absolution as valid and certain, in heaven also, as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself. Enabled by the Holy Spirit, we in Holy Communion receive rightly in faith Jesus’s true body, in, with, and under bread, and His true blood, in, with, and under wine, for the forgiveness of our sins, life, and salvation. As Jesus’s disciples were with Him, and He was with them, so in Holy Communion He is with us, and we are with Him. As St. John writes elsewhere, Jesus comes by water and blood, and the Spirit testifies. Since the Spirit is of the Father and the Son, each sacramental action is an action of all three Persons of the blessed Trinity. Such things are foolishness to those without the Holy Spirit, for they are spiritually discerned. The Holy Spirit is present with the Church, however, and guides it into all truth. Not that we should think the Church has a monopoly on each and every truth that there is out there in the world, but we can say the Church has a monopoly on the truth that comes from God pertaining to salvation. That saving truth about Jesus Christ is revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Word and Sacraments. They are the means and measure of all the Spirit does as He guides the Church into the future.
Jesus went to the Father through death and resurrection for you and for me. Likewise, “The Coming and Work of the Spirit” is for you and for me. The name we use for the Holy Spirit matters far less than the Holy Spirit’s presence with us and work among us. Nevertheless, living up to His name of “Helper”, the Holy Spirit indeed helps us here in all our struggles. He helps us by continuously leading us to repent and believe so that we live each and every day in the forgiveness of sins. He helps us by praying for us in our weakness, and He helps us by using the trials we experience to strengthen our faith—an advantage of some of the things that fill our hearts with sorrow! The Holy Spirit helps us fight against the “ruler of this world”, with whom, even though he is judged, you and I still must contend. As we heard last week, we are not of his world, but we are still in it: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe are all under his reign. He accuses us of evil outwardly and inwardly, and sin clings to us and saddens us. But, faith encourages, instructs, and rules our will so that, by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we neither falter nor faint. To that end, we close by praying the final stanza of our Hymn of the Day, the words and music of which The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther said were composed by the Holy Spirit Himself.
Come, holy Fire, comfort true,
Grant us the will your work to do / And in your service to abide;
Let trials turn us not aside.
Lord, by your pow’r prepare each heart, / And to our weakness strength impart
That bravely here we may contend, / Though life and death to you, our Lord, ascend.
Alleluia, alleluia!
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +