The Meaning Of Pentecost

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday - May 19, 2024

Today is Pentecost Sunday. That might mean a lot to you, or not much at all. If you come from a mainline church background, Anglican or Catholic for example, there was more than likely some celebration of Pentecost Sunday as an important part of the church calendar year.

If you come from more evangelical tradition, there may not have been any mention whatsoever of Pentecost Sunday, although the events and the big idea behind Pentecost Sunday was more than likely acknowledged, or possibly, depending on the denomination, even celebrated in a big way.

I’m Angi-bapti-costal myself, so all of the above applies to me.

Now I just briefly referred to the “church calendar year”. That is also referred to as “The Christian Year“, or the “Liturgical Calendar“. What is that!?! You might reasonably ask.

Well, it’s a helpful way, I think, to imagine the year. This comes from a time when church in general was much more central to people's lives, and when church in general held a much higher status in society than it does now.

And of course that means that it comes from a time when church attendance was generally expected, and people, whether or not they actually have faith in Christ, would attend church out of a sense of social obligation. A very different world from now.

Despite all that, the chis calendar is a thing and what we are looking at today, acknowledging today, as an important part of the liturgical calendar, is, as you already know, Pentecost Sunday.

Why is Pentecost Sunday something to pay attention to? Why is it significant? I’m asking.

It is the time that the church marks the day of its birth, the day the promised Holy Spirit came and empowered the church and its leadership,

the 12 disciples who became the 12 Apostles, and the many other female and male followers of Jesus.

It was a wonderful day, but also kind of a weird day, kind of a peculiar, out of the ordinary moment that was shared by these early believers.

Some of us have had peculiar, out of the ordinary moments with God. Moments where God showed up in unexpected ways. Moments when God was moving and we had no idea that he was moving.

Pentecost Sunday celebrates the moment in history when, in the weeks after the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus,

God sent the Holy Spirit to us in fulfilment of Jesus' promise to the disciples. Jesus foretold the coming of the Holy Spirit in John 14:15 ‘If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 16: 7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

John 16:12 ‘I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.’

So it’s clear that the events of Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit, was part of God‘s plan of redemption all along.

We wisely focus a great deal of our preaching and our worship and our collective thinking as a church on the amazing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, on the fact that we are loved by God more than we could ever understand through our minds or our hearts. And I think that is actually very good and important to continually be focussing on Jesus, to be continually focusing on the Trinity.

And I want to suggest that it could be argued that all of Jesus' teachings, everything that he revealed to us about God, about living in a way that honours God, about being free can be seen as laying the groundwork for the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower us to live for and through God.