Pentecost

John 14:23-31 - Pentecost - May 19, 2013 

The Holy Spirit Clears Confusion by Giving Peace with the Father through Jesus Christ

After God had rescued Noah and his family from the destruction of the flood, God told Noah and his children to spread out and fill the whole earth.  They didn’t.  Admittedly, they couldn’t have done so right away — and God didn’t expect them to.  It would take a few generations for three women to have enough children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to begin filling the earth.  They’d have to wait for God to bless them.  Well, their numbers grew.  They had big families.  God told them to be fruitful and multiply.  And they did, because God blessed them.  But instead of looking at their increase as a blessing come down from God, they looked at their increase as something to raise up to God, to show Him what they had become.  They got it all backwards.  They were proud.  And in their pride, instead of spreading out, like God told them to, they settled in the valley of Shinar and sought to make a name for themselves. 

The reason God gave them children was in order that He might bless their children. 

God would provide.  God would protect.  God would put His own name on them and be their God.  They were to trust in God – wherever they were, wherever they went.  Spreading out would have required that they trust God to care for them.  But by choosing instead to stay put and build a city, they showed their preference for their own protection and providence over God’s.  By building a tower that would reach to heaven, they placed their own name above God’s.  Now it’s not like they were trying to build some physical tower that would bring them to heaven like a staircase.  They weren’t Neanderthals—stupid.  They understood the distinction between spiritual and physical just like we do.  What they were doing was try to work together and build something great and beautiful and sturdy that God in heaven would take note of and be impressed with. By showing God what they could do when they cooperated with one another, they thought they were offering God some sort of worship.  But they were really just worshiping themselves.  They were building an altar to their own accomplishments. 

So it goes.  This is exactly how folks today continue to offer praise to God. They raise up to God their noble deeds, their goodwill toward man and charitable giving, they publicize their grand efforts to improve society, to right wrongs and establish justice on earth as though all this should impress God.  But they’ve got it all backwards.  They make a name for themselves, when they should be calling on the name of the Lord, asking Him for mercy.  God requires more than teamwork with one another.  He requires more than all children of man holding hands and singing.  He requires perfect obedience toward God, and pure holiness from the heart. 

By confusing the language of our ancient parents, God shattered all their efforts to work together, to live in their imagined peace, and to establish safety in numbers.  Now don’t get this wrong.  God is not the author of confusion.  He is the author of peace.  But by confusing their language, God simply reflected their own spiritual confusion.  They thought that they could affect peace on earth by their own work.  They were wrong.  It was an illusion, just like it is today.  God showed them that heaven was not to be found on earth.  They thought they were safe so long as they found a way to stick together.  They were wrong.  Had they forgotten so soon how God revealed His wrath in the flood when the children of Adam and Eve stuck together and perished?  I suppose they had.  If they would not listen to God, therefore, neither would they be able to listen to each other.  In the confusion of their languages, God showed them the wicked confusion of their hearts.  Distrust and malice was soon made plain between them.  No longer could they work together, or even live together.  They abandoned their efforts, and the half-built edifice to their own glory was named Babel, because there God confused their language. 

The confusion of language is not the cause of human strife.  It simply reflects it.  As God said moments after Noah and his family stepped off the ark, “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”  What divides us from each other is our sin.  It’s true. Our ability to communicate does not reduce sin.  If anything, it increases it.  The reason God scattered man by confusing his language was in order to slow down man’s rapid decline.

The language barrier, as we call it, is most certainly an obstacle for human cooperation in any task.  Perhaps you’ve worked with a migrant worker or something and have noticed this yourself.  But this obstacle, you know, is not the worst thing.  Human cooperation is over-rated.  Although accomplishing great things – especially in this age of mass-communication, it cannot solve or even really address our deepest problem anyway.  It’s our own rebellion against God that needs to be dealt with.  That’s our problem.  And God must face it. 

If, at any point in human history, God had lifted the curse of Babel, allowing the greatest minds to work together in perfect concert, offering solution after solution in one common language, not only would we not have accomplished the redemption we need, but we would not have even thought of it.  Our best efforts would merely have sunk us deeper into self-delusion and self-righteousness.  In other words, teamwork leads us only further from God.  Just look at all the false religions and mass confusion that man’s best efforts have created.  It is as St. Paul tells us, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he receive them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). 

No, man could not have thunk in a million years God’s plan for our salvation.  No way.  No how.  As Paul also says right before that, quoting from Isaiah 64:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

Then Paul continues, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). 

That’s what we celebrate today on Pentecost: the giving of the Holy Spirit, who teaches us these deep things of God.  He teaches us what God has prepared for us who love Him.  He teaches us to love Him.  He teaches us what love is by working faith in our hearts to believe the promises of our God in Christ — that the Father sent forth His Son, whom He loved, to redeem sinners like you and me — confused sinners, who by their own powers and merit were lost and condemned. 

It’s not our communication with one another – no matter how clear we can be – that brings us together as the Church.  It is God’s communication with us.  He speaks.  We listen to Him.  We listen to the words that Jesus speaks.  We listen to the words that the Holy Spirit inspired to be written for our learning.  We listen to these words and we keep them in pure hearts.  That means we believe them.  And so we teach and confess clearly what the Spirit teaches us about Christ who brings us to the Father.  It is not our own words that we hold sacred.  It is the very word of God. 

In the events of that first Pentecost, which we heard from Acts 2, we see that what I have explained about the shortcomings of human communication is true.  When the Holy Spirit was first poured down on those faithful believers who prophesied in languages they had never learned, notice the reaction they first got.  The mere overcoming of the language barrier didn’t put an end to their deep confusion at all – no matter how miraculous it was – No.  Rather, it heightened their confusion.  St. Luke tells us: “And when this sound [of rushing wind] occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.”  They were confused.  Think of that. 

The speaking in tongues itself was not the solution to the problem they faced.  What they were saying was.  It was the message: “We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”  God intended that the miracle of Pentecost be a sign that all nations should heed the message of the Gospel.  And so that’s what we expect to hear in our own language too.  We expect to hear the wonderful things that God has done for everyone.  God heals our divisions with each other – and even overcomes language barriers – by healing our division with Himself.  He sends His Son to reconcile Himself to us.  And He sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts so that we can call out to Him, “Abba, Father.”  He doesn’t do this by speaking soft and still nothings into our hearts, but only through the external word that we hear. 

There are those today who call themselves Pentecostals, named after this day of Pentecost, ^{(100 years or so)} who try to prove the Holy Spirit’s working in their lives by doing what they call “speaking in tongues.”  Of course they communicate nothing.  It’s gibberish at best.  The “languages” they speak are not real, but merely the result of hyped-up emotions.  I’m not saying they’re necessarily faking anything.  Emotions are very real, as anyone who’s been a teenager can attest.  And if you’ve ever been to one of these church services, you will see that the whole program is designed to maximize your emotional response.  What I am saying is that it’s not the Holy Spirit.  Obviously it is no good at all when it draws people away from the word of God and gets them to focus instead on whatever might be stirring within.  God’s word is truth.  Our hearts are the source of confusion. 

And yet people are actually taught to turn inward to find the Spirit’s working in their lives.  So-called “speaking in tongues” becomes not a means to speak the Gospel so that others might hear and be saved.  Rather it becomes a demonstration of one’s own spiritual powers.  It functions more like a tower of Babel than a pulpit: “Look at my spiritual strength!  Look at how favored I am in God’s sight! Look at how much I must love Jesus!”  But you don’t need me or anyone else to blabber on and prove that the Holy Spirit is working in me or that my love for the Lord is real.  You don’t need that.  The world doesn’t need that.  What we need is for Christ to be preached.  What we need is for God to be reconciled to sinners for Jesus’ sake.  Isn’t that what Peter did on that Pentecost day?  

What comes from within us, whether it feels holy or not, whether it is intelligible or not, is going to be nothing but confusion.  It’s sin.  But what comes from without, what comes from God brings light.  The Holy Spirit leads us to truth. 

The miracle of Pentecost continues today, not through spasmatic reenactments of tongues, but through the preaching of God’s holy word and the right administration of Christ’s holy sacraments.  Jesus said to His disciples, “But the Comforter, 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.”  The Holy Spirit continues to lead the Church into all truth by leading us to the peace that Jesus has earned with the Father.  It is a peace that the world cannot give.  It is a peace that the world does not, on her own, recognize.  Just look at the confusion that reigns on earth.   

Whether it be so-called gay marriage, or a woman’s right to choose, or even the seemingly innocuous mantra that you should “believe in yourself” — all of this confusion is nothing less than straight-up war against God. 

In our own lusts and pride and selfish goals we find this war going on in our own hearts as well.  We have loved what we should not.  We have ignored our need for what we should have loved, including those around us.  We are sinners.  But in the darkness of our confused hearts, our Savior God shines His light.  He clears all confusion by giving us what no heart could have requested, and no tongue declared.  But the Spirit declares it.  What speaks to our confusion and weakness is not a show of human strength and holiness.  That won’t do.  Such towers of human contrivance are never completed.  But it’s the pure words of Jesus, which are spirit and life.  His work is most certainly completed.  And His work brings us to heaven. 

By teaching us to know Christ, the Holy Spirit teaches us a pure language.  It is by the faith that the Holy Spirit works in us that Zephaniah’s prophesy has come true:

“For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language,
That they all may call on the name of the Lord,
To serve Him with one accord” (Zephaniah 3:9)

We know how to call on the name of the Lord, because we know how to talk about God.  Jesus teaches us how.   “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” 

We love Jesus by loving what He accomplishes.  By loving the righteousness that the law requires, but that Jesus fulfills in pure obedience.  He brings us to the Father.  When the Holy Spirit enters our hearts (through the word we keep) to work faith, He brings with Himself our Lord Jesus who atoned for all our sins, and also the Father who through Jesus’ suffering and death is reconciled to us.  Their home is with us. 

That is why we can be certain that our cry for mercy to the name of God will always find an open ear.  This cry pierces the heavens and the love of God dispels all confusion and gives us peace. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.