Pentecost Message: Our home in God
- Pastor Janet Blair
- Jun 16
- 2 min read

On Pentecost Sunday, June 8th, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit! We hear the amazing story from Acts of the followers of Jesus gathered for the Jewish holiday of Pentecost, and then the Holy Spirit shows up! Shows up with great drama and excitement, involving a violent wind through the house, little tongues of fire over everyone’s head, and people speaking all at once in different languages, which they all understood. Certainly a day to remember!
But we also hear another take on the Pentecost story from John’s gospel. In his last night with his friends, Jesus has shared a meal with them, washed their feet, and given them a new commandment, to “love one another.” And he has told them he is leaving them.
But they are confused. Philips asks Jesus to show them the Father. If they could just see God, then everything might be okay. Is Jesus a little impatient? “I’ve been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don’t know me?” He’d been there, healing all those people, doing all those miracles, and they still don’t understand what he is about? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus says. “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
AND, Jesus says, there’s more to come. There’s this Paraclete on the way. Parakletos is a Greek word meaning “one who is called to your side.” This Spirit will be their Advocate, their Counselor. The Paraclete is the Spirit of truth – the Spirit of Jesus, you might say, coming soon to help them. Even though Jesus will no longer be physically present, even though they can’t touch him and laugh with him and talk with him as they used to, the Spirit will carry them through their days, and will be to them the very soul and spirit and life of the Jesus they loved.
Hildegard of Bingen, a spiritual writer, mystic, composer of music, philosopher, visionary, and medical practitioner who lived in 12th century Germany, said this: “God’s Son becomes human so that humans have a home in God.”
The Parakletos is our hope that abides, even in suffering. This hope of the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to live with us, here, as close to us as our breath. On Pentecost we celebrate the Spirit of Jesus, our home in God – with us always, as he promised us, even to the end of the age. Amen.
Pastor Janet
Comments