+ Pentecost Sunday – June 5th, 2022 +
Series C: Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:23-31
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Every house has a builder. Looking for American Prairie style? Frank Lloyd Wright is your man. Want sweeping lines and curves? Try Eero Saarinen who designed the St. Louis Arch and the Fort Wayne Seminary.
Every house has a builder. So…think for a moment: what famous architect specializes in clay? That builder, of course, is God. And on this day of Pentecost we see that he builds much more than walls and roofs. By His Spirit, God builds you and the nations into the Church.
And in a way, this is what God has always done ever since the beginning. God is the greatest architect of all. Only He didn’t use AutoCad. God spoke creation into being. Let there be…and there was. And on the sixth day, God built our first parents by His Spirit. God makes his will known. God spoke. Let us make man in our image. Then God created, fashioned, formed. From the very clay he created, God fashioned man. He breathed life into the clay, and the man bore the image of God. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
God also took a rib from this man and out of it he built a woman. And the man and woman delighted in each other. For they were bone of each other’s bone. And flesh of each other’s flesh. One with each other and one in fellowship with God. Eden was a garden, yes, but also a house that God built, along with Adam and Eve.
Sadly, however, we know what happens when God is not the builder, and when man tries to venture out on building his solo career of architecture in this fallen world. When man tries to build by himself, he builds for himself. Apart from God, what man builds always falls, and fails…sometimes catastrophically, as it did in Genesis 3, when everything God built and declared very good became corrupted, twisted, and warped in sin. That is what sin does, it touches and twists and taints everything we think, say, and do.
That’s what happened in Genes 11 as well. You would think after Cain was banished for murdering Abel; and after the waters flooded the entire earth because of man’s wickedness, that sinful, fallen man would progressively improve. But in fact sinful, fallen man is only good at progressively making things worse. The Tower of Babel is a great example of man’s building skills.
Man makes his confounded, sinful will known. Man speaks. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Man even fashions the clay, attempting to imitate His divine architect and Creator. Man formed the clay into bricks. Brick upon brick. A tower, not like the Chrysler building, but more like an ancient ziggurat. Man’s poor, pathetic attempt at remaking the mountain paradise of God in Eden. Man formed the clay but it has no life. He cannot breathe life into it. Yet, he wants the clay to bear his name, his image. let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” In the end, man is scattered. Confounded and confused. And all who call on the name of man – whether it was in Babel, or today – are scattered, yet man babbles on in our own self-serving ways.
And yet in spite of all that, God comes down for us just he did at Babel. In Genesis 11 he came down to see our inability to build. Our failure to create.
In the opening chapter of John’s Gospel we hear that God has come down again, this time in the clay of his own creation. The One who made man in His own image is made man for you, in order to redeem you and to restore you in God’s image once again.
It is this clay, the flesh and blood God-man, Jesus Christ, whom God uses to rebuild what we tore down so long ago. All of our babbeling, confused, chaotic, self-centered sinful ways are restored, reordered, redeemed, and rescued in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Christ crucified – He’s your cornerstone and builder.
And so on this day of Pentecost we remember and rejoice that God not only sent down His Son to save us, but now through His Son Jesus, He also sends down the Holy Spirit. That’s why Peter quotes the prophet Joel at Pentecost, as the apostles heard the rushing wind, as the tongues of fire appeared on their heads, and as the people gathered heard the gospel in their own language. And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh.
At Pentecost God builds the Church by His Spirit. He does the same for you too. God takes our hardened hearts of stone, softens the hard-packed clay of our sinful hearts with baptismal water and breathes the breath of life in us sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. By His Spirit, God builds you into the Church.
As God did in creation, so too, today, God speaks his saving will to you and all your sins are forgiven. As God once breathed the breath of life into Adam and he became a living human being, so too, he breathes the breath of His life-giving Spirit into you by water and the word. He places his saving name upon you as His Spirit descends. As God took a rib from the side of Adam and built his bride, Eve, so too, out of the pierced side of Christ crucified, our second Adam, God has fashioned and built you into His holy bride, the Church. The blood and water flow from the temple of his body into the font to regenerate and rescue you, into the chalice to save, sanctify, and satisfy you in the forgiveness of sins.
As God once scattered the nations at the Tower of Babel, now by His Spirit, God calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies you here in His Church, the house that God built. Here God builds you on the Rock of Christ crucified and risen, not the shifting sands of our sinful hearts.
And by this same Holy Spirit, who was present at creation, who descended upon Jesus in the Jordan River, who was promised by Christ, and finally sent by Christ, and poured out upon the Church at Pentecost. By this same Spirit of God, God builds the nations into the Church. God speaks his will in every language, as we heard in Acts 2, and in Revelation, as we see all nations and tribes and languages around the throne of the Lamb. God uses us, his clay vessels to proclaim the saving Name of Jesus. That whoever calls on the name of the Lord Shall be saved.’
Every house has a builder, and the builder of the Church is God. That’s why we rejoice this Pentecost day. You are built on the rock of Christ crucified. Built by the Spirit for God’s own habitation. Built to last in Jesus. Built by God, by His Spirit, to be the Church.
A blessed Pentecost Sunday to each of you…
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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