Sermon by Dr Rachel Teubner for the Feast of Pentecost, May 24, 2026

Rachel Teubner, PhD, is a Research Associate in Medieval Studies at Harvard University and Scholar in Residence at the Church of the Advent.

Transcript

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May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today's reading from Acts and today's reading from John have been read to us out of order. This is often the case during Easter tide, when the first reading is often drawn from the book of Acts. And of course, throughout the Christian year, when the reading of the epistle precedes the gospel in our liturgy. With today's readings, however, the backwards chronology is conspicuous. We hear about Pentecost before we hear about the Passover. But the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples takes place about fifty days after the Passover, fifty days after the resurrection of our Lord, ten days after his ascension. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples are all together in one place. In an upstairs room in Jerusalem, perhaps even back in that same upper room where they gathered with Jesus on the night before he died. One upper room gathering, bookended by another. So much has happened in the fifty days since that night. Christ has died, and Christ has risen. Christ has appeared to his friends. The disciples have begun to preach the resurrection and to develop a sense of a common life and a spiritual community that anticipates the birth of the church. But the gospel reading for today brings us back to the night of the Last Supper, the night before Jesus died. It begins in the early to middle section of what is known as John's Farewell Discourse, where John's Gospel transitions from recounting Jesus' public ministry of signs, healings, conversions, transformations, to narrating his ministry of dying and the private preparation of Jesus' disciples for his departure. So the context of this farewell is profoundly and intimately relational. Let us remember that this is still the same night of that supper at the time of the Passover. It has been an hour, maybe two, since Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, wrapped a towel around his waist and washed the feet of his disciples. They have sat together at the table. Jesus has foretold his own betrayal and shared bread with the disciple who would go on to betray him. He has called his disciples, little children. I am with you only a little longer, he tells them, and where I am going, you cannot come. And so today's gospel reading is part of this farewell, this extended, almost leisurely after dinner fellowship. Jesus teaching his disciples, and the disciples occasionally interrupting him. So when Philip says to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and that will suffice. Philip's request comes as just one of a series of uncomprehending questions about who Jesus is and where he is going. Why can I not follow you now? Peter has asked. And then Thomas reiterates that question. Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? And now, finally, in our gospel reading for today, Philip raises this challenge: Lord, just show us the Father, and that will suffice. And so Jesus replies by asking these questions of Philip. How is it, Philip, that you do not yet know me? How can you say, Show me the Father? I'm right here. You've seen me, and so you have seen the Father. I am God made visible. I am the one through whom the Father acts, through whom God completes the works of God. But Jesus seems to have noticed that Philip is having trouble believing. So here he offers two ways of believing. Option one, believe me because I am here speaking to you. Believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. But if you do not, if that's too hard, then option two, believe me for the sake of the works themselves. What does it mean to believe for the sake of the works themselves? Does Jesus mean that because the works of God are so very good, they offer compelling evidence for our belief? These works, these healings, the turning of water to wine, the healing of a dying child and of a man born blind, the feeding of the five thousand. Philip, believe in me because of these works that you have seen. In John, these works are not called miracles, they are called signs, as though to underscore their power to reveal who God actually is. Just to be clear, that what are elsewhere called miracles are not achieved by incantations or magic tricks. These marvelous events are signs of God's goodness and of God's character, and of God, because only God can heal and transform in the way that we have seen. Lazarus has been raised from the dead because of who God is. Because our God is a wonderful God. Believe because you are a witness to these signs that manifest that God is walking among you. I have to wonder, thinking this over, whether Philip found this advice satisfying. It sounds as though Philip wants some kind of manifestation of the truth. Something undeniably divine. A message in the sky. Philip wants proof. He wants to be intellectually persuaded. And that he thinks is what he needs to be satisfied. He doesn't want simply to trust. And perhaps this is actually Philip's problem. In the New Testament, the words used for belief often mean something somewhat closer to trust. Not simply accept this proposal on the basis of its logic, but trust. Trust me, Philip, that I am in the Father. Trust that the Father is in me. And so Jesus continues. To believe Jesus is to trust Jesus. To love our Lord is to obey our Lord. But who will be there to help the disciples to continue in belief, in faith, in trust, in love, in obedience? The sending of the Holy Spirit has already been foretold in John chapter 7. But Jesus mentions it again in John 14, maybe as a response to the disciples' difficulties. They have all of these questions. Where is Jesus going? Where are they going? How can they know God? How can they be with God if God is going away? There is something wonderfully pastoral and responsive, then, about Jesus's promise that the Holy Spirit will come. It is a response to what Jesus perhaps perceives about Philip. Philip's insistence on hard evidence obscures the possibility that Philip actually longs to believe and doesn't know how. And the promised Holy Spirit will have, as we know from Romans, a way of interceding for us, with sighs too deep for words. The Holy Spirit has a way of getting people like Philip from here to there, from a place of skepticism to a place of trust. And so Jesus says, Listen, Philip, listen, all of you. I see you. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, another comforter to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit will help you to receive the truth. The Spirit will help you to trust. That is what the Spirit does. Let the Spirit abide with you and be in you. Do not attempt to pin God down with certain proofs. Do not be like the world which cannot receive Him, cannot see Him or know Him. Let the Spirit of Truth help you to trust in the truth. I wonder too if any of us might see ourselves in these disciples, asking for clear instructions, definitions, explicit guidance. We too, modern, enlightened people that we might be, may wish, like Philip, to see God beyond all reasonable doubt, to receive definite indications of what we are to believe, what can be known. For someone like Philip, then, what might it have been like 50 days later to experience that gust of wind in the upper room? When that comforter comes, what a surprise! How disorienting that may have been to have the Spirit come as a rushing, mighty wind, loosing all of these tongues and opening all of these ears to hear what God was saying and to speak about the wonderful works of God. The Holy Spirit is for the church and for the community, and it is not something to have, but rather a way to be had. When we as believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are stepping aside, allowing God to move among us and to move us toward God and toward each other. We are doing what Jesus perhaps prayed Philip would be able to do, to be had by the Spirit, to let go of one's need to be satisfied with unarguable proof. Know God and allow God to know you. Pentecost comes to us with many associations. We might think of the letters of Saint Paul and the gifts of the Spirit that he describes to the Corinthians, prophecy and wisdom and healing and tongues, or of the fruits of the Spirit which Paul lists for the Galatians love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. We might think of ecstatic experiences or visions or private revelations. Yet what Luke describes to us in Acts 2 is in fact an account of extraordinarily unified experience. The experience of being swept up by what the Holy Spirit is doing in a community, and that community's willingness to be swept up together in that rushing wind. The Spirit is given to individuals, yes, each one speaking and hearing in his own language. But the fullness of that gift is to the church, and the fullness of that gift creates the church. A church that will now find its mission in the preaching and proclamation of the gospel, in a common life of care for each other, care for the poor. That same day of Pentecost, we are told about 3,000 persons were baptized. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. When the Spirit comes, it is a gift that we allow to take hold of us. Because we have allowed ourselves to hear and to trust what the Spirit is doing and saying among God's people. We receive the Spirit as a sign and as the actuality of God's presence. The God we seek is among us now. May we trust it to be so as we celebrate this great feast. Amen.