Sermon: June 8, 2025
Readings Acts 2:1-21 / John 14:8-17;25-27
The Holy Spirit is wild and uncontrollable. It moves where it wants and how it wants in order to reveal God’s love, which surpasses all understanding. Jesus once described the Holy Spirit to Nicodemus as being like the wind. You can’t see it, you don’t know where it comes from, and you don’t know where it goes, but you can feel the power of the Spirit at work.
Today’s scripture passages tell of how Jesus promises to send us an advocate, comforter, and guide in His place as He returns to the Father. This is the Holy Spirit who works through those who believe in Jesus and follow his commandment to love one another as he loves us. The Holy Spirit takes ordinary, imperfect people who are divided by suspicion, tribalism, and fear and transforms them into the one body of Christ. We hear about how God’s Holy Spirit can transcend multiple layers of differences and divisions created by humans to accomplish God’s kingdom on earth. How many of our differences could be overcome if we allowed the power of the Holy Spirit to reign supreme in our lives?
God has given us all the gifts that we need. God gave us the example of Jesus Christ. He gives us the guidance, comfort, and truth of the Holy Spirit. It’s up to us to allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable and to listen so that we may experience God’s all-inclusive love and through the Holy Spirit, be transformed us into the image God wishes us to be —a reflection of God’s love for all the world to see.
