May 19, 2024 The Gift: Pentecost Sunday | Acts 2:1-13

Today we will reflect on Pentecost; the great harvest feast of the Jewish people. We will focus our reflection on Acts 2:1-13, The Gift. On Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 days after his ascension to heaven, Jesus sends his Spirit to empower the church and to carry forward his last instruction to go make disciples. The Spirit gives us the gift of communication and courage to go into the world to share the Good News.

Transcript

The Gift

Acts 2:1-13

Last week we focused on Ascension Day when Jesus returned to claim the throne as King of kings and to send the gift he promised of his Spirit. This morning, we remember and celebrate the giving of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has returned home and told his disciples to go wait for the coming of his Spirit. The disciples go from Galilee and head to Jerusalem. It’s Pentecost, the big harvest festival 50 days after Passover, which is why it’s called Pentecost, which means 50. The disciples go to Jerusalem as Jesus had told them, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit…. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The coming of the Holy Spirit is connected to the harvest, reminding us of Jesus’ comment that the fields are white with harvest, just needing workers.

The Holy Spirit comes with the sound of a rushing wind. For Israel, the wind is a familiar symbol of the presence of the Holy Spirit. In Ezekiel 37 we read of the Valley of Dry Bones, “The Spirit of the Lord set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones…. bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones…. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; … So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army….” 

The Lord goes on, “you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’” The Lord uses word play here as the word for wind, breath, and Spirit are all the same word. When Jesus met his disciples in the upper room right after his resurrection, we get the same image when Jesus breaths on his disciples in John 20, “And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” The Holy Spirit is God, is God’s gift and presence, bringing new life and new hope. 

Luke writes, “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” This is another play on words, as tongues and languages are the same; an echo back to the Tower of Babel when the people’s languages are confused because they were building a “tower that reaches the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” The Lord responds, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” The Holy Spirit gives them the ability to communicate in order to gather all people together into the body of Jesus. This new church is now equipped through the Holy Spirit to go into the nations to share the gospel news, to the “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs.” 

The Heidelberg Catechism talks about the work of the Holy Spirit in gathering together the church in Question and Answer 54, “I believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member.” The wonderful thing is that the Holy Spirit uses and equips us to gathering God’s chosen community as we share our faith in Jesus with others and live out that chosen-ness in our day-to-day lives. This is all part of what God promised Abram back in Genesis 12 when he says he’ll make Abram a blessing to all the nations of the world. God does this through Jesus, and now through us, the body of Jesus in the world. What greater blessing is there today than to introduce people to Jesus and all that he’s done for us in washing our sin away on the cross and bringing us healing from our brokenness and pain. 

I love how Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit point us outside the church building into our community to tell others about Jesus and build the kingdom of heaven. However, the coming of the Holy Spirit is not just about equipping us to share the good news of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is also given to us to strengthen the church, to bring healing, and to guide us into a closer relationship with Jesus by reminding us of who Jesus is, opening up the Scripture to us as God’s actual words to us. Derek Vreeland reminds us of this as well, “The church is not merely a gathering of the baptized to be scattered in the world. The church is a gathering of the baptized energized with the Spirit and then given to the world.” The church as the body of Jesus is a gift to the world, a community that gives the world a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, of God’s shaping of a community that lives together, loves together, that forgives and offers grace, that challenges and invests in each other so we might become more and more who God calls us to be.  

The Heidelberg Catechism captures this in Question and Answer 55, the question is, “What do you understand by “the communion of saints?”The answer is, “First, that believers one and all, as members of this community, share in Christ and in all his treasures and gifts. Second, that each member should consider it a duty to use these gifts readily and joyfully for the service and enrichment of the other members.” To be a church that goes out into the world with the good news of Jesus, we need to be a healthy church as we bring the healing hope-filled message of Jesus that brings new life. The Belgic Confession picks up on this in Article 24, “We believe that this true faith, produced in us by the hearing of God’s Word and by the work of the Holy Spirit, regenerates us and makes us new creatures, causing us to live a new life and freeing us from the slavery of sin.” 

This is the heart of the good news of Jesus, it’s not that we’re going to have easy lives, it’s not that we’ll never face trouble or hard times, it’s that we’re freed from the slavery of sin; freed from the lie that we need to save ourselves, or that our value comes from what we can do and offer, rather our value comes from being made new through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sin, washing us clean from our sin, and being adopted into the family of God and body of Jesus. Paul gets at this in Galatians 3, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” 

What does it mean to be a healthy church able to reach our neighbours with the good news of Jesus? The early church gives us some good insights into what a solid foundation looks like, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer... praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Learning together, hospitality and friendship, generosity and compassionate care for each other, worship of God are always at the heart of a strong church and this leads to a church equipped to build the kingdom of heaven here through the gift and power of the Holy Spirit.