Worship

(Year C) Pentecost                          June 8, 2025
Acts 2:1-21                                       Pastor Wolfe

Find Your Pentecost High!

As a general principle, Americans are addicted to euphoria. Do you know what that is? It’s the feeling of being high, or amped up, or out of your body somehow. If you follow the news, you’ve heard about the opioid crisis in our country, even if it’s been a little out of the headlines lately. Drugs like heroin and opium and Fentanyl allow people to disengage from life and feel good, for a time. Some find their euphoric escape in overuse of alcohol or food. Some find it in thrill-seeking, like skydiving and cliff-jumping. It’s why they’re called “adrenaline junkies.” This isn’t anything new though. All the way back in 1670, French philosopher Blasé Pascal described his concept of a “God-shaped hole” in mankind. “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are.” Look around, look in the mirror, and you’ll see people trying to fill that “God-shaped hole” with highs of all different kinds.

In another sense there’s nothing wrong with euphoria if it’s found in the right things. There’s the “high” you get when you see your children or grandchildren receive an award or when you marvel at God’s handiwork in a sunset or a waterfall or a night-time sky filled with stars. Maybe there’s a song that gives you goosebumps, or a hymn played and sung well that moves you. If it’s found in the right places, euphoria is a blessing from God.

Pentecost is the third, and last, major festival of the Christian church year. You can think of them in terms of Trinity. Christmas was the Father keeping his promise to send a Savior. Easter is the Son proving his work complete in total victory. Pentecost? Well Pentecost is the Festival of the Spirit’s work. It’s a festival that to remind us not only of “Christ for us” but also “Christ in us.” And it should be a high point for us. It should give us joy, as German and Lutheran as we may be. This morning we’re reminded that Christian faith may be centered in the knowledge of the cross, but there’s a place for an emotional high here too. Jesus sends us joy in Spirit-sent signs and in the Spirit-filled message. And while these aren’t the goals of our faith, they are certainly meant to be a part of its blessing. Let’s look and learn.

“Pentecost” was the Greek name for one of the primary Jewish festivals. They came to Jerusalem from miles around on the fiftieth day after the Passover Sabbath. It was a harvest festival when farmers would bring in the first of their crops to offer to God at the temple. Last week, we heard in the ascension accounts, ten days before this, Jesus had told the disciples: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about….in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

The disciples obeyed, and we find them here in Acts 2 gathered together in Jerusalem. The first sign of something special was a sound. “A sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” A sound loud enough that it was heard by the crowds in Jerusalem. God was creating a scene, drawing people in for a closer look.

And when they came they found the disciples with another Spirit-sent sign. What appeared to be tongues of fire resting on their heads. Burning, but not consuming. Giving light, but not causing harm. Now God uses fire regularly to teach a point. Often it’s a reference to judgment, but not here. Here it points to the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you remember way back to the beginning of the church year when we heard John the Baptist predict in Luke 3 that there was one “coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” This is the fulfillment of John’s words.

And the power of the Spirit? The greatest power of the Spirit is to create faith in the heart of sinners. To connect us to the precious blood of Jesus that washes away our sins. With faith in our hearts, the Holy Spirit stays with us, and in us. And he gives us the Spirit-filled desire to bend our will to God’s and to live our lives for him. This is the spiritual battle between our sinful nature and our new self that every believer knows so well. How do we overcome our desire to sin? How do we win? By the Spirit’s power – the same Spirit that worked these miracles on the Day of Pentecost.

But the Spirit’s power isn’t primarily an outward thing. The outward sounds and flames were impressive, but they weren’t the point. The Spirit took the disciples to an even greater high. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Fluently, intelligibly, naturally, these disciples spoke languages they had never learned or spoken before.

And word spread quickly. God-fearing Jews from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices now were hearing these untrained Galileans speaking fluently in their language. It says they were “bewildered.” The list of nations in verses 9-11 covers much of the known world. Whatever language a member of the crowd spoke, they were hearing one of the disciples speaking it. This is the Pentecost high from the Spirit’s signs. God the Spirit gave powerful signs to gather people together to take notice of those who were speaking God’s truth. And he wanted everyone to hear it, no matter where they were from.

But some wonder where the signs are today. Why don’t we see miraculous healings and resurrections and signs of power like they did in Bible times? On the one hand, I think it’s because we don’t always give God credit for the miracles that do happen. But even still, it’s not like it was. But perhaps we don’t see signs as often now because we don’t need them in the same way anymore. The miracles of the early church were given at a time before the New Testament was written down. God used miracles the same way he used the sound of the wind and the appearance of the flames. To draw people in. To show them who had authority to speak in God’s name. Sure, God can, and maybe does sometimes, lead someone to speak in a tongue today. But why do we need that when there are Christians already speaking the Gospel in every language on earth. The Bible has been translated into more languages than any other book. And who has authority to speak in God’s name? We don’t need miracles now for proof – we have the Bible to test those who speak. No, the Spirit-sent signs might be nice but we don’t need them anymore. We get our Pentecost high from the Spirit-filled message.

That was true even at the first Pentecost. As amazed as the crowd was at the signs, it was the message they heard that moved them. The crowd was awestruck at what they heard. We don’t know everything the disciples preached that day. We have just the beginning of Peter’s sermon here. (You can read more of Acts 2 at home.) But I bet we can guess what the message was because it was the message we all need. Speaking to sinners, they pronounced God’s law. The Law that tells us our need to live holy lives according to God’s will without sinning once. The Law that tells us the punishment for not living up to that standard is an eternity in hell. The law that says every person fails before God. We fail before God.

And when the people’s hearts were cut and their sin and pride revealed, then I’m sure those disciples spoke about God’s equal grace. That in love he sent Jesus as Redeemer and Savior for a world of sinners who hated him but would be lost otherwise. A Savior we couldn’t have hoped for to deliver people who don’t deserve it. They told the amazed crowd that instead of destruction, God wanted for them deliverance. The last verse of our text in Peter’s quote from the prophet Joel is a perfect summary. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And if that message leaves you sitting unmoved in your pew tonight, then you either didn’t hear clearly enough how lost we would be without Jesus, or how certain our hope is with him. You were dead, and now you live. You were lost. Now you are found. This is the Spirit-filled message we hear every week from God’s Word. And maybe we don’t manipulate emotions as much as other do in worship, but we have something better. True joy in the certainty of Christ. Not an emotional high that comes and goes, but a confidence that can’t be taken away.

God is here in this place. Not in feelings or goosebumps, but in baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the hearing of the Word. He’s in our homes we share the Gospel with each other and our children. This isn’t the false euphoric high built on a shifting foundation of a substance or a feeling – it’s a house of faith built on the bedrock of Christ himself.

So Christians, on this Festival of the Sprit, know that the Spirit is working in you and for you. Maybe you feel his work today – maybe you don’t. But it doesn’t change the fact that the work is done. Find your high in the Spirit’s gift of faith. Know your blessing in a citizenship in heaven that can never be taken away. Know your joy as a child of God, purchased and won by Christ himself. This is God’s spirit-filled message. This is our hope for heaven. To God be the glory. Amen.