The Language of the Spirit

Sermon for Pentecost, 2022
Text: Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-27

Сьогодні день П’ятидесятниці. І за своєю особистою традицією я розмовляю іншою мовою.

Сьогодні цією мовою українська. As is my personal tradition on the Day of Pentecost, I say 

something in another language. And today, that language is Ukrainian. But listening to the Gospel

reading this morning, I realize that Pentecost is more than just a group of people breaking out 

into other languages, and other people understanding them. It’s about the Holy Spirit. The

disciples didn’t do a flash mob sort of event to entertain and surprise people. They were full of 

the Holy Spirit. Paul doesn't say that we are the Children of God because of our faith, but 

because the Holy Spirit bears witness that we are truly God’s Children. And Jesus says that we 

will not be taught and reminded of his works by word of mouth or written words, but by the Holy 

Spirit. There is a mystery in how our conscious will to do something connects with the Spirit that 

moves us to action, like it moved the disciples, Paul, and Jesus.

In John’s Gospel, when Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit to Phillip, the word that John uses is  

παράκλητον, or paraclete. The Greek word is translated as the Advocate, and there we get the 

first clue as to what the Spirit is. He was introducing the nature of the Trinity to us by starting with 

the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. It would take 300-some years for the Church to work out what that 

looked like to us in words. And unfortunately, those words led to the Eastern Church splitting 

from the Western Church based in Rome over disagreement about what the Trinity was. We 

have struggled with who and what the Trinity is ever since, because the Spirit is a mystery, 

understood only through an experience or a deep inner feeling. Here, though, Jesus is saying 

that we have a deep spiritual connection to God, through him and through the Advocate as part 

of the Trinity.

All throughout the Gospel of John we hear about how God is in Jesus, and Jesus is in God, and 

we are in Jesus if we love him, and we see God when we see Jesus. It gets confusing when we 

read about those connections, but what they refer to is the Trinity, the relationship between God, 

Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and how we fit into it. Jesus is reassuring Phillip that even though 

Jesus will no longer live in this world, the Holy Spirit will be with us to keep us in that relationship 

with God. Where Jesus had been our advocate while alive, the Holy Spirit will take on that role 

after he ascends. It was the Spirit that was in him and guided him, and now we learn that it 

resides in us as well. Through it, Jesus calls us to be agents of transformation, to do greater 

works than Jesus himself. This doesn't mean that we perform greater, more spectacular miracles, 

it means that we do more in the world than Jesus could accomplish as one person a long time 

ago. It is a call to keep alive Jesus' teachings and way of life generation after generation. It is the 

Holy Spirit that gives us the guidance and the will to keep his ministry alive and relevant to our 

times. We are not called to jealously guard what Jesus did so long ago, but to find where he would 

have gone and what he would have done had he been here today.

For example, I recently was in Colorado Springs, Colorado for a conference. On the day I flew 

home, I had a few hours with nothing to do before I had to be at the airport, so I took a city bus to 

the downtown area. On the way, a gentleman got on the bus and had enough change for part of 

the fare, but not a dollar bill for the rest of it. He asked if anyone could break a twenty dollar bill, 

and I immediately reached for my wallet. I had a twenty, and a one dollar bill that I planned to use 

to get back to my hotel room. I gave him the dollar bill and declined his offer to pay me back. Now, 

you may be thinking “But you’re a Deacon. You’re supposed to help out. That was in your 

ordination vows.” And I would agree with you except for the “supposed to” part. I didn’t offer to help 

pay for his fare because I am a Deacon. I helped because the Holy Spirit moved me to respond to 

his needs and to put my desires away. I built a relationship with the Holy Spirit and found the 

courage to act as it inspired me well before I first applied for ordination. I didn’t try to make a dollar 

appear in the man’s wallet as Jesus might have done, but I did give him one and would do it again 

in a heartbeat. I did what I was able to do, rather than attempt to do the impossible and fail.

Our work in the world, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is never done and there is no finish line. This is a 

particularly hard concept for goal-driven people to accept, and it can lead to becoming burned out 

especially for those who try to solve all of the world's problems on their own. What has sustained 

Christianity over time, and us in our lives, is to have a deep relationship with the Spirit so that we 

make Jesus' teachings real in our words and actions. We say what he would have said to the 

people he would have surrounded himself with were he here today. This is the work we do in the 

Holy Spirit and with it, and it is the work itself that sustains us as we experience God's call to us 

through the Spirit. It’s about living life, not anticipating the next time we may be called to act, but 

recognizing it as it unfolds in front of us and to respond without fear or hesitancy. 

When we are filled with the Spirit, we will find that we will do unexpected things, connect to people 

for unexpected reasons, and speak in unexpected ways. Wonderful things can happen when we let 

go of our fear of standing out, of inadequacy, or of engagement and enter into the mystery of the 

Holy Spirit within us. It doesn’t have to be dramatic like speaking in other languages, or mysterious 

like having tongues of fire dance over our heads. It can be as simple as bringing the peace that 

Jesus left us to someone in trouble, a simple act that transforms the world because it makes the 

power of God and God’s love visible. This is the gift that Jesus left for us. Let us then truly go out 

into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.