Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

“I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the
world may know that I love the Father.”

+INJ+

A pagan philosopher was once to be put to death in
Athens, in ancient times. He was a nuisance, half-mad, claiming to hear the
voice of God in his head. Yet some believed that he really did hear the voice
of God; that he was mad, but with the madness given by heaven. This philosopher
cared of only one thing, to discover virtue; to know what it was to be a just
man. Many of his follows called him a just man. He denied this. Rather, he said
that there were no just men. In this, he was right, even Christian.

When asked about what would come of such a righteous
person, the philosopher answered: ‘the just person would be whipped, tormented
on the rack, chained, his eyes mutilated, and when he had suffered every kind
of evil, he would be crucified.’

Does it sound familiar? Is this not a sort of pagan
prophesy of the Christian religion? What we hear from the mouth of the
philosopher here is a simple, sighing, longing, ‘I cannot be good, if only
there were one that could be. I cannot follow God, if only there were one that
would.’

The philosopher was put to death by mandatory suicide.
His last words were: ‘Offer a crow to Asclepius, that my debt may be paid.’
Asclepius was the god of healing. He prayed for healing, of himself, of his
people, of his city, that a debt of his unrighteousness might be paid; that the
debt of mankind’s sin might be abolished. That humanity might be saved.

When asked what the Gospel is, it is easy enough to say
that it is the good news of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins and was
raised for our justification. It is easy enough to say that it is the message
that Jesus has overcome sin, death, and the devil on our behalf, and so has opened
to us the way of life. And it is easy enough to say these things because they
are entirely true. But John’s Gospel reveals to us yet another facet of the
great mystery of salvation. What is the Gospel? That Jesus Christ has loved the
Father. That a man has truly loved God.

It is that there finally has been a just man.

It is that righteousness has appeared upon the earth.

It is that, in the person of Jesus, mankind has rendered
to God what has always been asked of him; that is the completion of the Law
through the utter dependence of faith; Jesus has faith in his Father, and does
whatever is given him to accomplish; and that the world might know that this is
so, the Father requires of Jesus ‘obedience, even to death on the
cross.’

So it is written: “I do as the Father has
commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” 

Indeed the story of the Gospels first and foremost is not
that there were many who saw Jesus and believed; it is not that the disciples
went out into all the world to preach the word of God; these are incidental.
The Gospel first and foremost is the history of the only righteous man who ever
lived, Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God. The Gospel is that Jesus loves the
Father.

He alone gives himself to God; He alone hearkens to every
word of His Father; indeed to Him alone is God a Father, and He alone is the
Son of God. Just as it is written: ‘thou art my son, this day have I
begotten thee.’ And so God spoke from the Jordan: “This is
my Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

So he is the obedient Son. He bears the burden of the
will of his Father, for he loves the Father. And to give proof of his utter
love of God, it will be as the philosopher perhaps unknowingly foretold: He
will be whipped, tormented, scourged, his eyes rent, and finally, having
suffered every kind of evil, he will be crucified; all this, and yet
without sin.

So the Son has proven his love of the Father. So he has proven himself just
before God; and so God has raised Him from the dead on the third day, that
blessed Easter; for he is innocent, and no sentence of death shall be leveled
against him. Christ, the Justified; and this Christ shall arise unto God; he
shall ascend to the right hand of power, to God almighty, there to rule all
things; set apart, set above the cosmos; Christ, the sanctified.

The story of the Gospels is fundamentally His story, not
ours: it is the story of His birth, His baptism, His temptation, His ministry,
His teaching, His miracles, His agony and bloody Passion, His crucifixion and
death, His descent into hell, His resurrection from the dead, His ascension
into heaven. Christmas, Epiphany, Good Friday, Holy Easter, Holy Ascension,
these are the days whereby we, mere mortals, recognize that Christ alone is the
Just man, the Son of the Most High, whereby we confess with the demons that he
alone is ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God!’

And yet we are not numbered with the demons, nor are we any longer numbered
among mortals, dear Christians; for one feast remains, a feast which is not
Christ’s alone, but one which is ours; or perhaps more correctly; it is the
feast wherein all the feasts of Christ are made our own.

Remember how Our Lord promised us: “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name.” And did you not hear of how Our
Lord recalls his promises from the pen of St. Luke? “And suddenly
there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the
entire house where they were sitting […] And they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit.” Just as it had been foretold many centuries before: “And
in the last days it shall be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.”

Now it is the Feast of Pentecost, the giving of the Holy
Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ. On Pentecost, the Spirit of Christ is
poured out upon all Flesh, and in the waters of the Church’s Jordan, that font
of regeneration, the Spirit is given to you. You were purged of darkness. Now
take this burning torch. You were purged of death. Now bear eternal life. You
were purged of yourself. Now you bear only the Spirit of Christ; ‘for,’ it
is written,‘it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.’

If you have Christ’s Spirit within you, have you not been
made one with him? Have you not been united to all his works? Have you not been
united to his faithfulness to the Father, to his righteousness, to his justice,
to his crucifixion and resurrection; yes, we now are no longer mere
mortals, ‘for if we having been united to a death like his in baptism,
we certainly shall also be united to a resurrection like his.’ For
remember what Our Lord taught: ‘I am the vine, and you are branches,
if you abide in me, I am in you.’We, being filled with the Spirit of Our Lord are now made one with
everything that is his; as a bride which inherits all the possessions of the
bridegroom, so now we the Church inherit all the fullness of God in the Spirit,
that we too ‘might be make partakers of the divine nature.’ 

And not only is His life now your life, and His works your works; but now, even now, His words have become your words. Gone is the confusion of so many words, so many tongues wrought at Babel; Pentecost has now made ours the one language of the words of Christ. Now the Spirit, Jesus tells us, brings to our minds ‘all that I have said to you.’ Now when tempted by the devil, by the Spirit, yours are the words of Christ: “Be gone Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.”

Now when faced with every affliction, by the Spirit,
yours is the song of Christ: “The Lord is my light and my salvation,
of whom shall I fear?”

When your heart and nerve and sinew are tested to the
extreme, by the Spirit, yours is the prayer of Christ, “Yet not my
will, but thy will be done.”

When the day of death comes, by the Spirit, yours will be
the comfort of Christ: “If you love me, you would rejoice, for I am
going to the Father.”

Indeed, we have received the Spirit of Christ from the
hand of God, for God has heard the prayer of his Son: “that they may
all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be
in us.”

John calls us ‘little children’ and
now we are indeed like little children, learning how to speak this new
language, the Words of Christ, from our own lips. But this too will be for
but a time. For Christ will ‘bring to completion the good
work begun in you.’ He will make this new language your native
tongue. 

The philosopher prayed to an unknown god,
that a righteous man might appear, that mankind might be redeemed. This day,
that prayer, spoken in ignorance, is now fulfilled in wisdom.

For behold, ‘a great and magnificent day’ has
come. The spirit of the Lord is poured out. And the new
wine of holy blood shall fill all who will believe.

It is a ‘great and magnificent day’

‘For all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

+INJ+