The Day of Pentecost, 8 June 2025 | Sermon on John 14:8-17 [25-27], by Paul Bieber |

John 14:8-17 [25-27] Revised Standard Version

⁸ Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.

 ¹² “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. ¹³ Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; ¹⁴ if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

 ¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, ¹⁷ 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.

[²⁵ “These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Counselor, 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. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”]

also

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

Romans 8:14-17

LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

“Pentecost” means “the fiftieth day,” the end of the great fifty days of Easter. Our last words from Jesus in the Pentecost gospel are his parting gift of peace. At the same time Pentecost is the culmination of the “spiritual element” of the story of Jesus: he told his disciples to await the promise of the Father, the power from on high, the Holy Spirit.

This is the same Spirit that Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue in Nazareth was “upon him,” anointing him to proclaim our release from all that holds us captive. It’s the same Spirit that descended upon him at his baptism, that overshadowed the Virgin Mary, that brooded over the deep at the dawn of creation.

And this same Holy Spirit is our spirit of adoption. The promise at the beginning of the story of Jesus was that those who believed in him would receive the power to become children of God. The Holy Spirit is that power already coming upon the tiny community formed at the foot of the cross and in the resurrection appearances in the upper room, and now gathered in one place to pray for the coming of the promise.

Then, when the Day of Pentecost was fully come, the miracle of Pentecost comes, the Theophany of the Holy Spirit: the miracle is not the sound of the rushing wind, not the cloven tongues of fire, but in the understanding—everyone understood the message. This is the beginning of the “greater works” that Jesus promised, the spread of the gospel over the whole earth.

Pentecost is the completion of the paschal mystery, the story of Jesus’ cross and rising, and the beginning of the time of the Church, the time in between Jesus’ departure and his return, the story of the pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh. The church is not the realization of the kingdom, nor is it an artifact of the old aeon. The church is an event within the horizon of the kingdom’s advent and the pouring out of the Spirit.

Jesus proclaimed the kingdom already coming in its power to forgive, release, and set free. The risen Christ is present in the church’s audible and visible word as we remember his death, proclaim his rising, and await his return. The church is a community of grace, not perfection, the visible gathering of sinners around word and bread and cup. We have the scriptures, the creeds, the apostolic preaching office—animated, made alive by the Holy Spirit.

That’s why Pentecost is the “birthday of the church,” for, as Luther reminds us in his Small Catechism—so beloved by Lutheran Confirmands—I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and kept me in faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies—makes holy—the whole Christian church and keeps it in union with Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit, in short, enlivens the church. The church is that fully divine, fully human creature of the gospel and the Spirit’s gifts.

A community’s spirit is the liveliness that blows through it, the freedom in which it is more than the sum of its parts. The Church’s founding miracle is that her communal spirit is the Holy Spirit that God has and is. There are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit forgiving, releasing, setting free this community of faith even now in this age to cry “Abba, Father”—making our prayer to the Father with the Son in the Spirit.

“Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied” articulates the spiritual search of all humankind. The Spirit reminds us of all that Jesus said, did, and suffered. Jesus taught us to call God our Father and invites us to become participants in his relationship with the Source of all things, the ground of all being. The church, for all her imperfections, is the community the Spirit has constituted, in which we live out this relationship.

Adopted as God’s children at the baptismal font, we are anointed with the Spirit so that we are no longer led by the flesh, by our selfish and self-centered desires, but by the Spirit of love, who unites us with the Father and the Son in the church in which, as Luther reminds us, the Spirit forgives our sins daily in this life, and will bring us in God’s time to eternal life.

The Counselor promised by Jesus, sent by the Father, dwells with us and in us in the community of the church so that our life in the Spirit is a life lived trusting this Triune God, experiencing in our lives his forgiving, releasing, and liberating power. This is the new creation that begins with Christ’s resurrection, broadens out with the Pentecost miracle of understanding, and continues as God pours out his Spirit upon all flesh, all nations and peoples.

By raising Jesus from the dead in the power of the Spirit, the Father reconciled the whole world to himself and offered people everywhere the possibility of a new life in Christ. The source of that life is the Spirit.

The risen Christ continues to work in us and among us through the Spirit, especially when we gather together in one place around water and word, bread and cup, sharing his gift of peace, the peace this unpeaceful world cannot give, the peace that passes all understanding, the peace of the children of God, promised an inheritance in Christ with all the saints in light.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

—

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber, STS

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net