The upcoming feast of Pentecost looms large in today’s readings. First, Ezekiel tells about a cleansing, a sprinkling of water that God will pour on His people. This clean water will wipe the idolatry right out of their hearts, replacing their stony hearts with “hearts of flesh.” That’s the prophet’s way of saying that the problem with human beings is that they are not fully human yet. And so they need, every one of them, a heart-transplant. This is accomplished with the gift of the Spirit: “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” With the gift of the Spirit alive inside of a human being they become for the first time “fully human” in the way that God meant human beings to be. For “the human race has been so created and then so redeemed that we as the Image and Temple of God might celebrate the praises of God.” Until God the Spirit takes up residence in a human life, that life is only a dim shadow of what God intends it to be! That’s because until the Spirit comes, a human being lives his whole life in the fear of death.
In today’s Gospel, our Lord promises His disciples the advent of that Spirit foretold by Ezekiel. And He tells them that when that Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father comes to them, the Spirit will bear witness about Jesus and the Spirit will enable them to bear witness about Him too.
Remember how they hid behind locked doors, fearful for their very lives? That’s how terrified they were of death and suffering! That’s what fear of death does to a person. It locks them up in a prison. But then, remember the Day of Pentecost itself, the joyful day we will celebrate next week? There stands Peter and the others with him, publicly doing exactly what Jesus said they would do: “bearing witness.” Recall the words of his sermon that day:
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
Bold witness indeed! To stand in front of that particular crowd and announce that the Jesus whom they had murdered is truly the beloved Son whom God raised from the dead in total incorruption. What makes the difference between the men who hid behind the closed doors and the men who risked their lives to boldly confess Christ? What makes the difference between a Peter who cowers at the snickers of a servant girl and the Peter who was given grace to lay down his life for Christ by suffering crucifixion himself? The difference, of
course, is due entirely to the Holy Spirit and the witness He bears in the heart!
And what the Holy Spirit truly freed those men from was any fear of death. Their Lord had been raised and they were witnesses of that. They told everyone who would listen to them that death had no power over Jesus Christ. He had gone into death and trounced it; utterly
defeated it from the inside out upon His cross. And He, risen from the dead and ascended to the Father, has opened that fountain of sprinkling that Ezekiel referred to, a washing that grants all who receive it in faith a share in His own endless life.
The Holy Spirit so utterly convinced the disciples of this great reality that they laughed to scorn the fear of death and triumphed over the intimidation of their foes. Shortly after the Day of Pentecost, Peter and John were beaten for testifying about Jesus in Jerusalem, and do you recall their words? “As for us, we cannot but speak of all that we have heard and seen!”
If there is one thing that comes ringing through the New Testament witness of these Apostles, their Spirit wrought witness, it is that they are no longer afraid of death. And this is the testimony that they bear in the Spirit’s power through all the world, wherever their
words are read.
And when you rejoice in this witness, when the Spirit of truth writes its truth on your heart, then you are able to face the reality of death square on, and realize that whenever it comes for you and however it comes for you, you are facing an enemy that your Savior has completely defeated. He blotted out the handwriting of your sins with the blood of His cross. Your enemy can never use them against you again. And Christ has transformed the very nature of your death – making it just a little time of sleep for the body until that
glorious Day when Christ stands again on the earth to waken the dead and summon the living and usher into His kingdom all who have believed in Him and been baptized into His life.
Living together under such a gracious promise, Peter in today’s epistle summons us to self-controlled and sober-minded living for the sake of our prayers. He exhorts us to love each other with earnestness, covering over each other’s sins, and using our gifts to serve each other so that in everything we do God may be glorified in Jesus Christ.
On this first day of each week we gather as the baptized to celebrate the feast of the Eucharist, which is the feast of death’s overthrow. For here Christ gives into us the body and blood that death could not hold, the body and blood that continually plead for our forgiveness. Here the Ever-Living One takes up residence within us and the Spirit testifies to our hearts that we have a share in Christ’s never-ending life. And so we too bear witness by the Spirit’s power to Jesus, our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord, at this Table proclaiming His death until He comes, to whom with the Father and the Spirit be all
glory and honor, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages!
Amen.
