#146- Receive The Holy Spirit

Are you feeling disoriented in life right now? Maybe your dreams have shifted, your health has changed, or unexpected challenges have left you hiding away like the disciples locked in that room. This Pentecost Sunday, we're reminded that Jesus appears in our disorientation and speaks: "Peace be with you." 

In John 20:19-23, Jesus doesn't just comfort His fearful disciples—He recommissions them. He breathes the Holy Spirit upon them and sends them back into the world with purpose. The same God who formed humanity from dust and breathed life into us wants to breathe fresh life into our communities today. 

When we feel scattered and stuck, the answer isn't to withdraw further. It's to return to God's great commission, to receive the Holy Spirit afresh, and to remember we're united not by our preferences or politics, but by our faith in Jesus. We're a forgiven people called to forgive, a loved community sent to love. 

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Transcript

Transcript: Receive the Holy Spirit

 Today is Pentecost and our passage today takes us to John chapter 20 verse 19 to 23.

This is how it reads.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.

Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

As the Father sent me, so I send you.

 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

A beautiful passage of scripture that is often referred to as the Johannine Pentecost, not necessarily aligning directly with Acts chapter two, but definitely a moment where Jesus imparts his spirit to his disciples.

 Of note in this passage is that twice he will say, peace be with you, speaking into the fearfulness that the disciples have.

They are fearful of the Jews.

Jesus has been crucified and killed and murdered, and they are afraid that they might be next.

They're in a room, they've locked the doors, and then Jesus appears to them, and possibly also invoking a level of anxiety and fear of uncertainty is Jesus, who is assumed and known to be dead,

 stands before them and is alive.

And so peace, he speaks peace into the fear of their lives.

 As we read this, what's helpful for us to understand this on this Pentecost Sunday is a framework that Walter Brueggemann uses as he reads through the Psalms.

He speaks about orientation, disorientation, and reorientation as three movements that we find in the Psalms, but a great framework that we can use in John chapter 20 as well.

 From a point of orientation, we look back in the life of the disciples and we see when they were called by Jesus to follow him.

They give up everything and they follow Jesus, not just the person of Jesus, but the mission of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the ways of the kingdom.

 They proceed through life for about three to three and a half years with hope, a sense of calling, and a clear sense of purpose, anticipating very likely in their minds both religious and even a political type of salvation that will come to them and possibly even to the nation of Israel.

 We then find them at this place in their lives, which is now disorientation.

Jesus is arrested.

He's falsely accused.

He is tortured, brutally murdered on the cross, leaving his disciples scattered, fearful, troubled, and quite honestly, extremely disorientated.

We find them in John chapter 20, locked in a room.

 for fear of the Jews, they thinking probably they could be next.

Well, in our lives, we find ourselves often experiencing disorientation.

 disorientation comes when we have a dream an expectation a sense of how we believe life might want to and should work out in life and suddenly things change there could be a health diagnosis something go to the doctor unexpected health challenge that changes everything in our lives and

 And our dreams seem shattered.

Our sense of purpose and direction seems to change.

That's going to happen in life as accidents take place.

Whether it is something that happens just on the road, going to work.

Unforeseen things that take place in our lives.

 where the health, where the relational challenges that take place, the shifting in the social, cultural, and political structures of our lives, we find there's a continual shifting from orientation to disorientated, and what we thought life should look like, hoped life would look like, we now see is not true.

How do we respond when we find ourselves in the place of disorientation?

 Do we find a room like the disciples and lock the door and we hide away?

Well, it's one way to do it.

Many of us do that.

We hide away from the challenges of life and we hide and set ourselves apart, away from the problems, often even going into a sense of depression, thinking of what could be and stopping, stagnant in the place of disorientation.

 Maybe a good question for us to ask as we start this day and start this sermon is, are you currently feeling disorientated or find yourself in the place of disorientation?

Maybe you are such a person who is locked away in yourself, in your emotions.

You're locked away in a room somewhere.

Do you need a peace be with you from Jesus in this place today?

 And with that, we hear the voice of Jesus saying, peace be with you.

As we look at this passage of scripture and we understand the disorientation of the disciples, we also understand that in their disorientation, the disciples were very likely and inadvertently endangering the mission of Jesus.

 He was sent them, he equipped them, he trained them, he taught them.

He had sent them out on one or two occasions already to preach, to proclaim, to heal the sick.

And at this point, instead of being out in the world spreading the good news, they are locked in a room.

 They've gone from proclaiming the good news, healing the sick, delivering those who were bound with demons.

They now find themselves withdrawn and in a room.

And in very real terms, the mission of God, as the Father sends the Son, the Son sends the disciples.

The Father sent the Son, and here we see a blockage.

Disorientation has undermined the mission of the church in this point in time.

 Consider in our lives how often communities of faith find themselves in places of disorientation and in the place of disorientation undermine the mission of God, get distracted from the mission because of unforeseen events.

 Throughout the world, we continue to see moral failings within churches.

People get caught up in these things, and they're not good, but what they tend to do is they divert the attention of the mission of God rather than pursuing, dealing with these things in a healthy and wholesome way.

They then continue, they get distracted from the mission, and we see churches unraveling and dismantling

 And the disorientation dealt with incorrectly leaves churches and ministries disempowered and distracted.

We see this in churches where there's a lot of internal strife, maybe even spiritual, emotional maturity.

And the church, instead of focusing on the mission of God, where God wants us,

 us to be spreading the good news, healing the sick, bringing deliverance to our world, we find ourselves dealing with internal strife, conflict, preferences, disagreements.

 We can even find failures within our sense of mission as we set out to accomplish something.

Believing God is with us and we, for some reason, don't succeed in what we set out to do.

We feel despondent and we are distracted.

These are things that happen all the time in the church.

And as we turn our attention back to this passage of Scripture and read it again, we

 I want us to stop and to consider how Jesus reorientates his disciples in this moment of the impartation of the Holy Spirit.

Let's return to the passage again when it was evening on that day.

 The first day of the week, in the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.

Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

After he said this, he showed them his hands and he sighed.

And then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

 Jesus said to them, Peace be with you as the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Look at the commissioning right there.

When he had said this, he breathed on them an act of creation and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

 The disciples in this passage are reorientated.

They've gone from orientation to disorientation, and now they find themselves in a place of reorientation when Jesus appears to them, commissions them, and breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit.

Two things worth noticing here in this moment of reorientation.

 The significance of commissioning in this passage should not be lost.

At the point of Jesus imparting the Holy Spirit, he is also recommissioning them, restoring the mission, restoring the call to them.

As the Father has sent me, so I sent you.

 If we have a look at this passage, we might look and say there is a moment where they actually rejoice.

He shows them his hands.

He shows them his sides.

The disciples rejoice when they saw the Lord.

Why would they rejoice?

What is their reason for rejoicing?

 Probably the same reason we would rejoice, they rejoiced.

They have a living Savior.

They have a friend, a rabbi, who is no longer dead.

He is raised from the dead.

And the first cause of celebration is very simply this also.

 Obviously, and often our first cause of celebration, he's able to help us in times of trouble.

He is alive.

He's relationally accessible.

He is alive.

There is comfort that comes from him, directly from him.

Only a living God can do that in real time with us today if he is alive.

 But then there is a second and significant aspect to the resurrection that we sometimes miss.

We see it as how we personally benefit from the resurrection.

But Jesus also sees it how the world benefits from the resurrection.

And this is where that passage comes in.

The father sends Jesus.

Jesus sends the disciples.

John 20, 21.

He said to him, peace be with you as the father has sent me.

So I am.

 send you restoration reorientation refocus back on the mission of god the resurrection of jesus and the coming of the holy spirit fundamentally redirected the disciples focus back to god's mission in the world now we can stop and we can look at this and say well here in john we see a commissioning taking place

 As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

This is consistent with all the other gospels.

Matthew 28, 19, we continually quote and read this passage, and we tend to focus in on Matthew 28, 19, but it is in all the gospels.

Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations.

 baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Part of the reorientation after the death of Jesus and with the resurrection of Jesus and with the coming of the Holy Spirit is commissioning to go into all the world.

Mark 16.15 puts it this way, "...and He said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation."

 And then where we see the strong link between Pentecost and mission is in Acts chapter 8.

You will receive power.

This is Luke's version of this.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

There is the power.

There is the Holy Spirit.

And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

 Note the connection between the Spirit and commissioning, something we also see at the time that Jesus breathes on his disciples in John's gospel.

Commissioning and the coming of the Holy Spirit was central to the reorientation of this disorientated community, and commissioning and the coming of the Holy Spirit is central to our reorientation as a community

 community if we are to stay focused on what God wants us to do.

 Within your personal life, maybe a question to ask is, are you navigating a season of disorientation in your personal life?

Do you feel a sense of disorientation in your faith?

And maybe even with your faith community, let me encourage you, a return to God's great commission may well be what we need to reorientate us personally and as a community.

 We need to take our eyes off the things of this world.

We need to learn to discern between the things that are important and the things that are not important, the things that are trivial.

The commissioning of God is essential for the reorientation of the church.

Well, the second thing we pick up here to take note of is with the coming of the Spirit came the creation of a new quickened community of believers.

 I use the word quick and very deliberately.

Speaking of life giving, there was a breathing of life into this community.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

John 20, 22 to 23, when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit.

 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Note the close alignment of forgiveness of sins with the reception of the Holy Spirit.

There is something connected in this situation.

And we're not going to go on a too deep dive here, but we'll just make one or two points around this.

 You know, one of the things we do in the life of our church is we have a litany of forgiveness or litany of confession that we practice every Sunday.

We started off by saying these simple words.

Forgiveness is God's way of bringing healing and wholeness to our lives and our world.

The way of the cross in the heart of our relationship with God and with one another.

As the community of the cross.

 We are a community founded on the principles of love and forgiveness, forgiveness offered to us by Jesus, and then in turn, the forgiveness we offer to others.

And so we breathe, we receive from Jesus the Spirit of God.

 We have received so much from him.

We are then sent out to offer the same forgiveness, this restoring, the restoration, the commissioning, the restoring of the relationship between God and humanity.

We are there to spread the word, part of the commissioning.

It's actually quite interesting to see the connection between the coming of the Holy Spirit and the creation of community.

 In the New Testament, often people will look at Acts 2 and say, this is the start of the New Testament church.

Well, people have different opinions on that.

But if we look at Acts 2, fascinating passage of Scripture, where the Spirit comes down in Acts 2, right in the beginning, if we look at verse 5, it says, "...there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem."

 And so at this point, this moment of the coming of the Holy Spirit, there is this gathering of an incredibly diverse group of people.

In fact, Luke will go on to list probably about 15 plus, more than 15.

You can look at it in more detail, but there's around 15 nationalities and people groups that cannot even communicate with each other because they come from different parts of the world

 have their own language and cannot even understand each other.

And so when the Holy Spirit comes and fills the disciples with the Spirit and the flames of tongues, the tongues of fire settle upon them, they speak out in foreign languages and all these people say, how can it and how is it that each of us hear the message, the good news of Jesus in our own native languages?

 And so something important to understand about the coming of the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit brings us together through the reception of the Holy Spirit.

We create a unified community.

So in Acts 2, verse 1, the Spirit comes to a diverse group of people.

But by the time we finish this second chapter of Luke's writings, we read in verse 44, "...all who believed..."

 meaning people from different tribes and tongues and nations, all who believed, were together and had all things in common.

You know, how does such a diverse group of people come together in unity and commonality?

And I would argue it is only by the Holy Spirit.

 You know, if we look at the contemporary church, the world in which we live and the various expressions of church around us, as much as we want to claim that there is unity and there is commonality and that we are together, the truth is that there is a high level of division and segregation that takes place.

 It takes place along racial lines.

It takes place along political lines.

It takes place along a socioeconomic lines, traditions, opinions, and preferences.

And instead of being together and having all things in common, we are separated and fighting one with another.

 How do we actually find unity?

Well, the Church of Acts is very simple.

As the Spirit came upon them, all who believed, our primary form and...

 Our primary reason for unity through the Spirit, the reception of the Holy Spirit, the faith we receive, our faith in Jesus is the primary basis that brings us together.

We are united by the belief that we are sinners, loved and forgiven by Jesus, now serving the mission of God.

We focus on that.

We don't focus on our differences.

And that comes through the Holy Spirit.

 Interesting, Genesis chapter 2 seems so, so far removed from this passage.

But yet there are parallels.

In Genesis chapter 2, God forms man from the dust of the ground.

He takes the dirt and he forms man from the dust of the ground.

 And then he does something else because there's one thing to form and to create a body, one thing to create something that looks human but has no life, looks like a church but might not have life.

It's another thing for it to have the breath of God breathed into it.

 So in Genesis chapter 2, we see this passage where God forms man from the dust of the ground.

Then he breathes into his nostrils what the breath of life, and the man becomes a living being.

On this Pentecostal Sunday, we realize that we can gather together

 in buildings that look like churches.

We can gather in halls that we call churches.

We can gather in places and call it church, but it could really just be lifeless, dirt, fashioned, resembling that of a church with all the misgivings and the temptations, distractions of the world pulling it apart.

 But we understand on this Pentecost Sunday that for a body to truly live, it has to receive the Spirit of God.

And so we find reorientation today by opening up our hearts as individuals.

 the commissioning that Jesus brings us, to the quickening that comes by the Holy Spirit, and to the formation of a new community, an alive, a living community.

We open up our hearts, we open up our community, and we say, come, Holy Spirit, come.

Let us today on this Pentecost Sunday receive the Spirit of God.

Amen.