I Will Not Leave You Comfortless

Last Sunday, between Ascension and Pentecost, we prayed those honest words: “leave us not comfortless.” Today, that prayer is answered. The fire has fallen. The Comforter has come.

Whitsunday teaches us this: the Father has kept His promise. The Son, having ascended to the right hand of the Father, has sent the Holy Ghost upon His Church.

And the Spirit who came down at Pentecost isn’t a new gospel or a second message. He’s the same Spirit who proceeds from the Father, sent in the Son’s name, to make Christ present and effective in His people.

That’s the heart of this feast. The Spirit doesn’t replace Christ. He doesn’t move us past Christ. He brings Christ to us, and us to Christ, and both of us into the life of the Father.

This is the promise our Lord made to His disciples in the upper room: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

Those words were actually spoken before … before the cross … before the resurrection … before the Ascension. And they were spoken to men who were about to watch their Master die.

Jesus knew what was coming. He knew what the disciples would feel. And He didn’t promise them ease, or vindication, or quick answers. He promised them Himself, by the Spirit.

“I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.”

Another Comforter. Not a substitute. Another of the same kind. The Spirit comes to do in the Church what Christ did with the disciples: to teach, to lead, to abide, to keep them close to the Father.

The Spirit doesn’t come to fascinate the Church with the Spirit. He comes to glorify Christ. He testifies of Christ. He brings to our remembrance the words of Christ. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

And by that work, He draws us deeper into Christ Himself. Into where the Father has already received us.

That’s how we know whether something is truly of the Spirit. The Spirit always points to the Son. Always speaks of the Son. Always conforms the Church to the Son.

If a teaching, a feeling, or a movement turns the eyes of the faithful away from Christ, it isn’t from the Holy Ghost, no matter how fervent it sounds.

Our Epistle turns us to the day of Pentecost itself.

“When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” Notice that. With one accord. The Spirit didn’t fall on a scattered, quarrelling crowd. He fell on a Church gathered in prayer, waiting on the promise of the Father.

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.”

Wind and fire. Two signs of God’s presence out of the Old Testament: the wind that moved over the waters in creation, and the fire that descended on Sinai.

The Holy Ghost comes with the marks of God Himself. He isn’t a force. He isn’t an influence. He’s the Lord, the Giver of life, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.

And then comes the miracle that surprises us most. “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Pentecost reverses what happened at the Tower of Babel. At Babel, pride scattered the nations into confusion. At Pentecost, grace gathers the nations into understanding. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cretes and Arabians, all hear the wonderful works of God in their own tongues. The Gospel goes to every nation under heaven.

That tells us something about the Church. The Church Christ has built isn’t a tribal society or a private club. She isn’t owned by one language or one culture. She speaks the Gospel into every place because her Lord died for every place. And He sends His Spirit to make that Gospel heard.

That should reassure us, even in a small parish in Bellville. We belong to something far bigger than what we can see on a Sunday morning. The same Spirit who filled the house in Jerusalem fills the Church today. The same Gospel goes forth. The same Christ is preached. The same promise holds.

Joel saw it long before. “It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”

The Spirit isn’t poured out on a few specialists. He’s given to the whole household of faith. Old and young. Sons and daughters. Servants and handmaids. The new covenant isn’t narrower than the old. It’s wider, deeper, fuller.

And Joel ends with the promise we still depend on. “It shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”

Whosoever. That word does heavy lifting. It doesn’t ask whether you’re well-educated. It doesn’t ask whether you’ve had a dramatic experience. It doesn’t ask whether your record is clean.

It asks whether you’ll call upon the Lord. Whosoever calls is delivered. That’s the Gospel that Pentecost sends forth into all the world.

What about us? What’s the heart of Whitsunday for St. Barnabas Anglican Church?

Our Collect prays thus: “Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort.”

Right judgment. That’s something we need. Not cleverness. Not opinions. Right judgment, given by the Spirit, in all things. In how we read Scripture. In how we treat one another. In how we make decisions in our families and our parish. In how we discern between what is of God and what is merely of the moment.

That’s harder than it sounds. I can say honestly that I’ve leaned on my own understanding more times than I’d care to count, and it’s almost never ended well.

The Spirit doesn’t scold us for being slow learners. He keeps teaching us. But the lesson is real, and we never quite finish learning it.

And holy comfort. Not the comfort of a soft couch. The comfort of the Comforter Himself. The strengthening, steadying presence of the Spirit, who reminds us that we aren’t alone.

Because of Pentecost, the Christian doesn’t approach God as a stranger.

Basil the Great put it briefly: “Through the Holy Spirit comes our return to the adoption of sons.”

There it is. The Spirit who fell at Pentecost is the Spirit of adoption. By His indwelling, we cry out to God as Father. We pray as sons in the Son. The Father isn’t a distant majesty for us. He’s the Father who has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.

That’s an astonishing grace. We don’t earn it. We don’t manufacture it. The Father gives it through the Son in the Spirit. Three Persons, one work, one love.

And that work doesn’t bypass the Church. It happens here: at the font and the altar and the pulpit, in prayer and praise and faithful service. The Spirit forms the Church into the Body of Christ, and feeds her with the Body of Christ.

So, Encouragers, don’t measure the Spirit’s presence by how much you feel. Measure it by what He does. He keeps you in Christ. He stirs up love. He gives you the Scriptures. He guides the Church into all truth. He prays in you when you don’t know how to pray. He bears witness with your spirit that you’re a child of God.

And He gathers us here, this morning, at this altar.

The Proper Preface today proclaims it. Through the Holy Ghost we have been “brought out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of thee, and of thy Son Jesus Christ.”

That’s what Pentecost has done for us. Not made us experts. Not made us untouchable. Brought us out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of God in His Son.

And the Spirit who has brought us this far is the same Spirit who now leads us to the Table. The bread will be broken. The cup will be poured. The Body and Blood of Christ will be given to His people.

And the Holy Ghost will do what He has always done. He will testify of Christ. He will join us to Christ. He will lift our hearts to the Father in the Son.

May the Lord grant us today right judgment and holy comfort. May He keep us united in Him. May He make St. Barnabas a place where the Sacred still speaks.

And may the Holy Ghost, who fell upon the Apostles in fire, kindle in our hearts the love of God and the love of one another, until the day when faith gives way to sight.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.