Year C 2025
John 14:8-17 (25-27)
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
No Fear Just Joy In The Spirit
This past week as I was looking through commentaries to begin preparing to write this Pentecost sermon, I came across a commentary with the title, Are You Afraid of the Holy Spirit?’ Before I read any further, I immediately thought of a conversation my mother and I had several years before she died. It must have been around this time of year and we were talking about the things that were going on at her church and she said, “you know the pastor gives very good gospel sermons but he never talks about the Holy Spirit. I never hear anything about the Spirit, it’s almost like he is afraid of the subject and I said maybe, I can’t image so but probably it has more to do with the fact that we can more easily affirm and explain what we know about God and Jesus from the scriptures but when it comes to the Holy Spirit it’s not as easy to explain God’s Spirit that comes to live in us and most wonder if they have even experienced this presence of God, that we may even do our best to ignore and pray that it doesn’t knock us off our feet or send us out on some mission to proclaim the gospel in another language to our neighbors.
I believe Bishop Frank said it well in his and Victoria’s book Holy Mysteries Encountering the Risen Jesus in this weeks chapter titled ‘Vocations’ concerning this phenomena of the Holy Spirit which we read about in Acts today, he says “There is an ongoing tendency in the post-Enlightenment West to treat phenomena for which we have no ready understanding with a heavy dose of reductionism – the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of that which represents a simpler or more fundamental level to provide a sufficient explanation. He says, reductionist see a thing as “noting but” its physical explanation. They need only look at the most elemental form of a thing to explain everything.
“Yet, he writes, the Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit which would have created some emotionalism akin to religious hysteria would have defied any “it was nothing but” explanation. We can’t reduce Pentecost to “It was nothing but emotionalism, or It was nothing but mass hysteria, or it was nothing but a long-ago event we can no longer explain. The closest we can get is Pentecost was nothing less than the presence of God. That day, the Jesus Movement was transformed not by human will, but by an act of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit. Within a few generations the Good News of their resurrected Lord will go out to the ends of the earth, all through the work of the Holy Spirit in us. We long for, Frank writes, nothing less than the power and the presence of God, a presence for which you were created and for which your soul longs.”
In the Pentecost event, God used the gifts that were already present in the disciples. They became intoxicated by God’s revelation and inspiration. Their hearts and minds are stricken by this calling out of God to action because we want nothing less than for things to be easily explained. We want to be in control and in charge but the Holy Spirit shows us a different way which gives ever greater joy. Jesus reminds his disciples of this different way of joy today in his farewell speech to the them before his death in the gospel. For literal thinkers like Philip, it seems a simple request to be shown the Father before Jesus leaves them. But Jesus in his patience and grace, knows we often miss the point, and directs us to the truth.
Philip has already seen God in him and in fact has already been given the mission of the church. Not only have the disciples seen God in Jesus but they’ve seen what they are to do in God’s name. And for that purpose the Holy Spirit had been sent to help. In the Spirit they have access to God and knowledge of God’s truth, which will guide their work in the world until Jesus returns. The goal is a community that proves its love for Jesus by keeping his commandments. Bishop Frank writes, the goal here is to abide in love. If we long to abide in the love of God we should follow the example of Jesus’ words and actions. To remain in, dwell in, live in the love of God is to live the life Jesus taught us to live and the Holy Spirit will be in us”.
If we want to learn how to love, Frank writes, then practice love. Love is a decision, an act of will. Love is best learned by putting love into action. This is the life that bears fruit that will last.” “Your life in Christ brings joy when you find the ways to combine the gifts God has given you with the love we are all to have and share”. And when we do this the world is transformed, God’s promises are fulfilled and the walls of division between peoples are torn down. While being transported to Rome where he was to be martyred for his faith, Ignatius, the third bishop of the congregation at Antioch, wrote letters to the congregations that had hosted him on his journey. In his letter to the famed Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, he asked this deeply respected Christian leader to appoint a courier, a theodromos, God’s courier to hasten spreading a witness to faith among the Syrians.
In the Mediterranean world of this era, such runners were the source for all news, good or bad. One way we can think of the Spirit, brought about by these courier witness’ to “mighty works of God,” is as a testimony to God’s love. God’s empowered couriers are people who find the language and means to communicate widely and deeply God’s love and saving purposes in Christ in order to see division overcome. The Holy Spirit is certainly not something to fear but to celebrate. We receive as God’s adopted children who cry out to God, the Spirit as a witness that we are children of God. As we walk in the Spirit, we are changed day by day into the likeness of Christ. We receive the Spirits gifts, access to God, and knowledge of God’s truth to guide our work in the world until the Kingdom of God comes in fullness. “And in this common vocation to love, we find Spirit joy”.