Pentecost is a day of power.  Every Sunday should be a day of power.  Indeed—every day that we live in Christ Jesus should be a day of power, can be a day of power, is a day of power.  Often at Pentecost, we hear from the Acts of the Apostles, the rush as of a wind from heaven, flames as of fire that come upon each of those gathered disciples, and then proclamation—always proclamation, making known God’s Word.

Is there help in God’s Word?  Well, yeah!  What makes God’s Word helpful for us, however, is not the ink on the page, not the series of words set in sentences that are set in paragraphs.  Some of us are avid readers and some of us finished with books when we finished with school.  We know there is help in God’s Word because we have been helped not only to see this, but also to experience it.  We have faith in the help to be found in God’s Word.  But how?  Beloved, this is one of the perennial questions: the question of faith.  How did we ever come to faith?  Consider all those in our world today, here in the United States, in our offices, our plants, our schools, our supermarkets, all those who do not have faith.  How did faith ever come to us?

Jesus tells his disciples that the time has come for him to go.  The disciples are sad, dejected.  They don’t want Jesus to go.  They are so focused on their own sorrow, so focused upon their bitterness over the collapse of all the plans they had for what they were going to do with Jesus, that not one of them even thinks to bother to ask Jesus where he is going.  Again, Jesus must remind his followers that his leaving is not a sad or a tragic thing but rather a glorious thing.  God comes to us in the flesh to accomplish one reality-changing thing, one life-changing thing.  In Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, God accomplishes this thing and returns to eternal glory, beyond our experience but within our hearts through the Word Christ spoke, the Word that took root in our hearts.  That Word is growing there even now.

How do we water that Word that has taken root?  How do we feed it?  How do we tend to it?  The staggering thought, beloved, is that we don’t.  The Spirit does.  The Spirit is doing it, right now, and the Spirit will continue.  The Spirit continues us in faith, continues us in prayer, continues us in love.

Jesus assures his disciples that the Helper will come.  Pentecost is the occasion when we particularly remember and celebrate the truth, the reality, that the Helper has come.  The Helper is with us.  Different versions of the Bible use different terms for the Holy Spirit.  Jesus says The Paraclete: when is the last time you used that word?  It’s a word with many facets.  Helper is one.  We also say Advocate.  We say Counselor.  We say Comforter.  The Spirit speaks to us in all these ways, beloved, because the Spirit comes to tell us Truth, to shape us in Truth, and to lead us in Truth, Truth and love, so that we may live in Truth and love and so that we may learn to speak the Truth in love.

            We don’t have all the Truth yet.  The world will always seek to confuse us about truth, because if we’re confused about truth, we’ll be confused about reality, and if we’re confused about truth and reality, we’ll become confused about what is good and what is not good, what is right and what is not right, what pleases God and what displeases God.  In short, where there is confusion about truth, reality, righteousness and sin, there is also confusion about God.  I want to suggest to you, sisters and brothers, that people these days are very confused about God.  And who, and what, does all this confusion serve?

We need a Helper, an Advocate, a Counselor, a Comforter.  We need a Paraclete.  God sends the Holy Spirit, His Holy Spirit, to be with us.  The Holy Spirit is with us because Jesus is not with us physically anymore.  How is Jesus with us, then?  Jesus is with us spiritually.

Jesus tells those apostles that the Spirit will speak to them about God in Jesus Christ.  Jesus tells them that they will also speak.  Here is the pattern for the Church, the pattern for us: the Spirit speaks to us and we speak—not only to one another, by way of counsel and comfort, but to others.  We have a mission.

There are times when things don’t seem to be going so well, and we begin to become preoccupied with all that’s happening in our lives: our focus turns inward, our energies, and we lose sight of what Jesus tells his disciples, what he is telling us.  We have a mission, an outward-directed, other-directed mission, a mission of proclamation.  I want to challenge you today to live out this mission.  I want to give you a goal today: four times this year, speak to someone about God, Jesus, the Bible, faith.  Speak to someone who does not attend this church.  Speak to someone who attends no church.  Speak to someone to whom the Spirit is guiding you, because this is exactly what the Spirit is with us to do, to point our stubborn, fearful hearts toward another human being and to shove us over to that person, whispering all the while, “speak, speak, speak.”

The Spirit is saying offer help, offer comfort, offer counsel, be God’s advocate to this person.  Share the truth.  Speak the truth.  Speak the truth in love.  Where love isn’t motivating your speaking, you should probably choose silence.  We hear enough words spoken in this world from anger, from hatred, from spite and hurt.  We hear enough words spoken in this world to confuse and to mislead, to advance worldly goals: goals of power, dominance, and control, greed, and vanity.  No earthly power, no earthly word is immune from this.

Jesus lets his followers know what the Spirit will be doing in the world.  The Spirit will prove that people are wrong about sin, wrong about right, about righteousness, and the Spirit will prove that people are wrong about judgment.  Here, again, Jesus uses a word that has several facets.   It’s not just that the Spirit will prove to the world that it is wrong about these matters.  The Spirit will make it evident to the world.  The Spirit will expose Truth, reveal it in such a way that people will be compelled to acknowledge that they were wrong—there’s a miracle!  The Spirit will convict and convince people that what they had believed, was wrong, and not right—what but the power of God could do that?

The church, our denomination and so many Christians, are confused, torn, arguing about what is and what is not according to the will of God.  Christians claim the will of God, claim the Spirit, for their vision, their version of Christianity.  Yet our proclamation is one: in Jesus Christ there is salvation.  Jesus has made it possible for us to escape the trap of this world, all the traps sin sets for us in this life.  Once we’ve been caught in enough of them, we might just be at a place where we can hear the Spirit, who says, I know a better way, I know the way, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

The Spirit comes to us in many ways.  The Spirit has many ambassadors, as many as each of us.  Now diplomacy may not be your strong suit, but it doesn’t have to be.  Following Jesus may not be your strong suit, yet the Spirit is with you to help you.  I know there are not many of us who would claim as our strong suit talking to others about Jesus.  It doesn’t have to be!  It just has to be something you say yes to when the Spirit nudges you, shoves you alongside someone.

The people of the world are wrong about sin.  The world knows crimes.  Sins are not crimes.  Not every sin is a crime.  Not every crime is a sin.  Crime is whatever the government says is crime.  Sin is that which is contrary to God’s Word.  The world does not understand this and does not want to understand this.  It is only the Spirit that can reveal this, that can compel our Spirit-convicted hearts to admit that we were wrong, and God is right.  Faith in Jesus sets us free from the prison of sin—only Jesus, only faith in Jesus.

The people of the world are wrong about what is right, about righteousness.  Who is righteous: the one who does what is right?  Then, you are righteous to the extent that you do what is right?  But what is right?  Who can tell us?  Who can show us?  Who can teach us?  The Spirit!  Many people see Jesus as a noble teacher, a sterling example of the highest ethics, but they do not regard him as the way of salvation; he is not the resurrection and the life, for them.  A way of life, perhaps, but not the way to Life.

If Jesus is a sterling example of an ethical life, then righteousness is a matter of following his example, choice by choice, act by act.  Righteousness is then something we do.  Righteousness is then a matter of my conduct rather than God’s grace.  Righteousness depends, then, upon me, and not God.

This is not what Jesus shows us, though, and it isn’t what the Spirit teaches us.  I do not receive my heavenly reward for what I have done!  We will be rewarded for our faith.  Faith is the reward, and we do not work or will faith.  God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, works faith in us, plants the seed in the soil of our hearts, soil that He has made fertile.  He waters it, shines upon it, breathes the breath of life over it and into it, in the daytime and in the darkness.  The acts that honor Christ come from hearts where Christ lives.

So many are wrong about sin.  So many are in error about righteousness.  So many, too many, are wrong about judgment.  Did you know that Muslims believe in a final judgment?  Jews are split about a final judgment.  The idea of a final judgment doesn’t make a lot of sense in the Buddhist or Hindu scheme of things.  Scripture is plain.  There will be judgment.  While I was in seminary, I was in a theological atmosphere that frowned upon the notion that any would be condemned.  Universalism is the word for that atmosphere.  Scripture does not speak universalism, though.  It is not the case that all people will be acquitted.

Beloved, if everyone will be saved anyway, why bother proclaiming Christ?  Brothers, if everyone will be saved anyway, what does it matter what we do or don’t do?  Sisters, if everyone will be saved anyway, what ultimate, eternal consequences follow from anything we do, to others or to ourselves?

No.  The world is wrong about judgment.  God’s Word says so.  The Spirit makes it plain.  What Jesus tells us, what the Spirit shows us at Pentecost, today, here, among us, is that our lives are consequential.  You are consequential, whether the scope of your reach, your influence and impact in this life, whether it is small or large, your life is consequential, truly consequential, eternally consequential.

God gives us, each of us, spiritual gifts, and it is the Spirit who helps us to become aware of these gifts, to surprise us, bless us.  It is the Spirit who encourages us, who urges us, to put these gifts to use, to live into our consequential lives, to make a difference, in our own lives, in the life of the church, in the lives of those around us.  The Spirit speaks.  The Spirit empowers.  The Spirit blesses and ushers us out and into the world, into the lives of others, to be the difference, to be God’s chosen means of making a difference.

Go, then.  Go in the Spirit.  Go and make a difference, on whatever scale God has appointed for you.  The Spirit convinces us: all of us matter.  We are all consequential.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how inscrutable God’s ways!  For from God and through God and to God are all things.  To God be glory forever.