Pentecost Sunday SERMON Year C 2022 CLM: Text, Acts 2
Pastors can be asked the question, especially by church councils: Why aren’t there more people in church? Fair enough question. Many Christians ask that question as have I. But a friend of mine, a pastor said: “I’m surprised there is anyone in church.” His point was that every Christian, no matter the church attendance, is witness to great deed come down this day that is, the work of the Holy Spirit in making faith. Ephesians 2: 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Not our work but the Holy Spirit working, giving, inspiring, calming. Yes, calming…that is teaching Christ: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Then 50 days after Easter so much had changed. Easter was when Peter and the apostles were in lockdown for fear of the religious and Roman authorities, Jesus comes into their locked room, and He breathed on them the Holy Spirit and ordained them to forgive or retain sin. Now the doors are wide open, and Peter is not cowering in fear, but calm, steadied in Christ, His peace and the Holy Spirit has come upon them all, the Church is born and Peter preaches.
How does the Holy Spirit work? Acts 2: 14: 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. Answer: Preaching…and teaching, and translating, and serving…through the Word, Incarnate, Written, Spoken, that is Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Bible’s pure doctrine preached and taught.
Today is also the commemoration of St. Boniface who was martyred on this day in the year 754. What do St. Boniface and Marvel Comics have in common? I’m glad you asked. The greatest, most noted and spectacular event in Boniface’s mission work occurred in 723, when he returned to the mission fields in Hesse. There was an oak that was considered to be “sacred” to the Thor. The people thought that if anything happened to Thor’s tree, the people would be punished, they would die: Thor’s hammer would fall on them! This is superstitious but it really is the thinking of the Old Adam’s works righteousness that I better appease God or a god, so I don’t get it. When Boniface returned to the mission fields in Hesse, one of his first acts,
“…was to fell the sacred oak tree of Thor at Geisman in the region of Hesse. When Boniface was not struck down by the ‘god’, many people were converted and Boniface built a chapel in honor of St. Peter with wood from the tree.” (Festivals and Commemorations by Rev. Phillip Pfatteicher)
Even a script writer for Marvel Comics movie, The Avengers got it right about Thor. Black Widow is flying a plane with Thor and Captain America on board. Thor gets ticked about something, jumps out of the plane. Captain America decides to go after Thor. Black Widow warns Captain America, ‘Cappie, you better watch out, Thor’s a god!’ Captain America responds: “Ma’am, there is only one God and I’m pretty sure He doesn’t dress like that”. The true God true enough does not dress like a Norse god or any god, or goddess, but the Lord dressed in our flesh in the fullness of time to bear our sin and be our Savior. Boniface was dressed in surprising garb, His Christening robe, in Jesus Christ so that many could hear the Word and be saved. No halo attended Boniface, not any saint, not even Christ, but the Holy Spirit descended when Boniface was baptized. You as well. No halo but the holiness of God’s Word. It is so clear from the Bible, Church history, as it was in the ministry of Boniface, the mission work of our forebears to this land, who built churches, hospitals, orphanages, schools, colleges, seminaries, that the work of His Church is to build and edify through mortar and in mortals, because God so loved the world He gave His only-begotten Son.
The great deed on Pentecost was, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” And then, And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. The Lord gave the gift of translation in many languages, the lingua franca of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection for all nations. In St. Boniface we see Pentecost up close and personal and public. He was born in England, was missionary priest in Frisia, present-day Holland, made trips to Rome to see the Bishop. Pope Gregory sent Boniface as missionary Bishop to the German lands. So England, Holland, Rome and what we call Germany. Jesus sent the apostles to the end of the earth. Obviously, the Lord planted His Church in the German lands, and she grew. Centuries later, another monk, as Boniface, began preaching the Gospel that the Church had shunted aside, Martin Luther. Centuries later, in the 19th century, the Lutheran, or Evangelical church in Germany sent missionaries to other nations: West, the fairly new United States which would resulted 175 years ago with our church, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The German Evangelical Church sent missionaries south, their colonies Africa. And now there are more Lutherans in Ethiopia than in the USA. Many church bodies make much ado about apostolic succession that your pastor who had hands laid on him for ordination, those pastors likewise…tracing the line all the way back to the apostles. This history of those lists is suspect at best. Yet, we can see the apostolic succession of DOCTRINE going back in my quick rendition of Church history in Germany and now here. The Holy Spirit is working.
The use of the color red in the Church year is to remind us of the Holy Spirit, as in Boniface preaching the Gospel. His times were tough:
“We have not only, as the Apostle says, “fightings without as well as fears within”, but we have fightings WITHIN as well as fears, caused especially by false priests and hypocrites, enemies of God, ruining themselves, misleading the people with scandals and false doctrines, and crying to them, as the prophet says, “Peace! Peace! when there is no peace.” They strive to cover and choke with weeds or to turn into poisonous grain the seed of the Word which we have received from the bosom of the Catholic and Apostolic Church and have tried to sow. What we plant they do not water that it may increase but try to uproot that it may wither away, offering to the people and teaching them new divisions and errors of diverse sorts…that murderers and adulterers who persist in their crimes may nevertheless be priests of God.”
It’s clear in the 8th century, and the 22nd century, the church has so often sowed wild oats when she should be sowing the seed of God’s Word. We have fightings within the Church, in our souls, and fears. A hymnwriter knew this: “Just as I am, though tossed about With many a conflict, many a doubt, Fightings within, and fears without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” This hymn is not only about conversion but coming to Christ our Lord every day.
I don’t want to merely present a slice of history here, but to show us in the history that the Scriptures, the Bible, God’s Word has calmed the Church, kept her steadfast throughout her history in and through the Holy Spirit teaching the Word, His Word. As we prayed a little while ago, from Psalm 143:
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
give ear to my pleas for mercy!
In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
Bishop of Rome, Gregory II, the pope, did not want the Germans to be “Roman Catholic” and in the 8th century there were no orthodox or protestants As he wrote to Boniface:
“You are to teach them the service of the kingdom of God by the persuasion of the truth in the name of Christ, the Lord our God. You will pour into their untaught minds the preaching of the Old and New Testaments in the spirit of virtue and love and sobriety and with reasoning suited to their understanding.”
This is still the Holy Spirit’s mission. The Lord’s will for us, our salvation, the kingdom of God, repentance and forgiveness is an open Book, the opened Bible as Christ has opened the Kingdom of God to all believers. The Scriptures were opened to Peter and the Church was formed.
Boniface was martyred on this day, June 5th, Pentecost, anno Domini 754. He had returned to Frisia (present-day Holland), one of his previous mission fields. At sunrise, while reading the Gospel to a group of the newly Baptized, a band of pagan Frisians attacked Boniface and the neophytes. Boniface and the neophytes were massacred. In Fulda, Germany, are the remains of Boniface along with the purported Gospel book he was holding with slash marks. Boniface died while catechizing around the age of 80. His symbol is a knife cut through the middle of a Bible. Sadly, this is the way many people want the Bible:
with a knife through it, dead. As in an American WWII poster you see here: a knife through the Bible. The Bible is an enemy to falsehood, like the Nazis and any spirit of our age. Even more sadly, so many bearing the name of Christ, have also wanted to kill the Bible or vivisect the portions they literally despise. Doing such is a self-inflicted wound. Many want to kill the Word of God, even kill God. And they did and as He promised, He arose again from the dead. St. Paul realized that the Word will endure no matter the foes who hate it: 2 Timothy: 8 Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!
The Holy Spirit is multi-lingual. The Holy Spirit translates the Gospel into our lives in repentance and forgiveness thus transforming us.The Holy Spirit and God’s reign is multi-national and multi-racial. The Holy Spirit, the Lord has a script He follows for us and our salvation: the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit teaches through His lesson plan which has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, through the Word alone. And so, “…Pentecost is the celebration of a different Spirit, a Spirit that is something entirely different than the spirit of creatures, the spirit of men and their creation…” So preached Pr. Sasse in 1940 in Nazi Germany.
Sasse: “Men who were filled with the Holy Spirit were by no means particular heroes of faith. It was quite to the contrary…It is not written anywhere in the Bible that Andrew, Thomas, Bartholomew, and Simon the Zealot believed more, hoped more, or had more love than other Christians. And still, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” [Acts 2:4]. Pentecost doesn’t have the cultural attachments that remind us of its significance, like Christmas or Easter.” Without cultural traditions behind it, we may wonder how to celebrate Pentecost? Why do we observe Pentecost at all? Answer: The Lord has called us as He wants us to do right now what are doing: giving our ears to hear the Word of promise, sharing in the Lord’s Body and Blood, praying, singing, adoring. Every Sunday is Pentecost.
As the apostles, like Peter and Paul, Boniface had to deal in politics. Sometimes to protect the Church and her ministry. The Holy Spirit knew that and knows that. But Boniface did not look politics for anything akin to spiritual salvation. But us?
“Politics has become so all-possessive of life (that) the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left… It assumes (we) live on a purely horizontal plane, and can move only to the right or the left… there are two other directions where a man with a soul may look: the vertical directions of “up” or “down.”― Roman Catholic Bishop Sheen, in 1947.
Pentecost is about the Holy Spirit coming down to teach us Christ and forgiveness, God’s Word, in His Church, His Body. No political party left or right gives the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes down so we can look up to the Lord in prayer to confess our sin and confess our faith. You have a soul and for you Christ has extended His arms on the Cross right and left. Politics is unforgiving, the Lord is not. Look up to God in prayer, don’t look down on others, as Christ did not and look out for each other is living in the Lord’s three dimensions by His grace alone, through faith alone through His Name alone…In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God.
Concordia and Koinonia 
Leave a Reply