Transcript
What about the Holy Spirit?
First Baptist Richmond, August 23, 2026
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 24:44-49
And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.
At the end of last week’s sermon I reminded you that the word disciple means “learner,” and that what disciples are meant to learn, apparently, is to obey everything Jesus commanded.
But that’s not easy.
There are times when I finish preaching and think, “Well, I just gave them one more hard thing to do. ‘Love God. Love your neighbor. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek.’” Jesus seems to have very high expectations of us. But he also seems to understand that if we are going to do what he asks we will need some help, and I appreciate that about him.
In today’s reading from Luke 24 the risen Lord is giving some final instructions to his flabbergasted disciples. Jesus has just appeared to them for the first time since his resurrection, showed them his hands and side, and eaten a piece of broiled fish in front of them, just to prove that it’s really him and he’s really alive. They didn’t know that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die and then rise on the third day, or that repentance and forgiveness of sins would need to be preached in his name to all nations. But there he is, standing before them, telling them that it’s been in the Bible the whole time. He sees the looks on their faces: shock, disbelief, utter inadequacy, and he takes pity on them. “Look,” he says, “I want you to do what I’m telling you to do, but
you don’t have to do it today and you don’t have to do it alone. Why don’t you just wait here in the city until you receive the power my Father promised, the power from on high?”
Today, I want to talk to you about the Holy Spirit, and I want to focus on that word—power. In John’s Gospel Jesus talks about the Spirit in other ways—as a comforter, a teacher, an advocate, and a friend—but here at the end of Luke’s Gospel, when he is asking his disciples to do something that seems impossible, he talks about the Spirit as power.
And that’s a loaded word.
You’ve heard me use the old quote: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And it seems true that every form of abuse—spouse abuse, child abuse, sex abuse—comes back to an abuse of power. Strip away the particular circumstances and you find the same basic structure: “I have some kind of power over you, and I use that power for myself rather than for your good.” It makes me wonder: why would Jesus give his disciples something with so much potential for abuse and corruption. Why would he give them power?
So, I looked it up. Turns out the word came into our language from an Anglo-French verb meaning “to be able”—pouair. In those days it could mean something as benign as being able to lift a fork full of food to your mouth (although, if you’ve ever not been able to do that you know what an important power it is). Behind that were the Latin words—potere and potis—meaning “capable,” or “powerful.” Our English words possible, potent, potency, potential, omnipotent, impotent—and power—come from these same roots, and they are all related to this ancient idea of “ability” or “capacity.”
Which makes me think our understanding of power has gotten narrower over time. We tend to hear power and think: the ability to make someone else do what I want. But down near the roots of the word is something simpler: the ability to do.
Keep that in mind.
In the 14th century, when the word power entered the English language, it was already beginning to flex its muscle: it could mean ability, strength, efficacy, control, mastery, dominion, authority, or military force. By the end of the century a power could even mean a person who possessed authority. Much later we began speaking of nations as “powers”—a usage recorded in the early 18th century—and in 1944, for the first time, we began to talk about national “superpowers.”
So there are at least two streams running through the word: Power as capacity, meaning, I am able to do something, and power as control, meaning, I am able to make you do something.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Then the Industrial Revolution came along and brought new meaning to the word. For centuries, power belonged mostly to people: kings had power, armies had power, laws had power. But by the early 1700s it was becoming a technical term: “that with which work can be done.” People started talking about horsepower, steam power, and eventually electrical power, so that by the end of the nineteenth century you might hear someone say (in the way we sometimes do), “We lost power last night.”
When you think about it, that’s an incredible semantic journey: from ability to authority to force to energy. Which is why today we can use the same word for: a president, a hurricane, an engine, an electrical outlet, a persuasive speech, a nuclear weapon—and the Holy Spirit. But those things do not exercise power in remotely the same way, and maybe it’s because of where they come from.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells his disciples to wait for the power from on high. The Greek word is dunamis, from which we get “dynamite.” But in that time and place it meant what our own word did in the beginning, something more like ability, capacity, strength, or might. Jesus has asked his disciples to do something that may have seemed impossible to them, and so he tells them that if they will simply wait for it, they will receive power from on high, that is, the God-given capacity to do what they cannot do on their own. And to their credit, they do exactly that:
They wait.
I need to confess that I haven’t been as faithful in preaching the Holy Spirit as I have in preaching Jesus. I don’t think I’m alone in that. In many churches the Spirit is the neglected Third Person of the Trinity. But Jesus is Lord and Jesus would tell us that we can’t do what he needs us to do without that dunamis—that power from on high. That’s worth further investigation. And so, at least once each year, on the Day of Pentecost, we focus our full attention on the Holy Spirit.
And you know the story: the disciples were all together in one place, waiting and praying for what Jesus had promised, when suddenly there was a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and divided tongues, as of fire, appeared over the disciples’ heads, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them the ability (I am almost certain that that’s not what those disciples were expecting). But then they poured into the streets, speaking in unknown tongues, and people from all over the ancient world heard the good news in their own language. They began to ask, “How is this possible? Aren’t these Galileans? How is it that we hear them proclaiming the mighty acts of God in our own languages?” But others sneered and said, “They must be drunk!”
And that’s when Peter stood up and said, “No! This is what the prophet Joel was talking about, that in the last days God would pour out his spirit on all flesh, and your
sons and daughters would prophesy, and your young men would see visions and your old men would dream dreams.” You know the story. Peter went on to talk about Jesus and how he had been put to death and how God had raised him up and how a whole new age was breaking into the world. It was a power-full sermon, and at the end of it 3,000 people were baptized.
But don’t stop there. Read through the entire book of Acts and be amazed at what this “power from on high”—this incorruptible power—enables ordinary disciples to do.
§ People speak languages they haven’t learned and that’s impressive, but the result is even more impressive: by the power of the Spirit strangers understand one another.
§ Peter, who was so fearful that he couldn’t stand up to a servant girl in the high priest’s courtyard, now stands before the residents of Jerusalem and accuses them of murdering the Messiah: by the power of the Spirit cowards become courageous.
§ After that mass baptism all who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell what they had and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. By the power of the Spirit: possessions are shared.
§ In Acts, chapter 3, Peter and John go up to the Temple to pray. They meet a man who is lame in his feet who asks them for money. Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none, but in the name of Jesus stand up and walk.” By the power of the Spirit: sick people are healed.
§ In Acts, chapter 8, Philip preaches to an Ethiopian Eunuch who hears the gospel and asks to be baptized. In chapter 10 Peter goes to the home of Cornelius, a
Gentile, and recognizes him as a fellow believer. By the power of the Spirit: outcasts are welcomed.
§ In Acts, chapter 9, Ananias goes to the home of a man named Judas on Straight Street, to baptize Saul, a zealous persecutor of the church. What does he call him? “Brother Saul.” By the power of the Spirit, enemies become family.
§ Even before the Spirit comes, Jesus tells his disciples that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Read through the Book of Acts and you can almost see it happen: by the power of the Spirit, the gospel crosses boundaries.
That’s not the way power usually works. In politics, people often talk about the difference between power over and power to. I don’t really want someone to have power over me, but if power could be used to do something helpful that would be another story. Feminist thinkers have developed the language of power with—the capacity that emerges when people act together. If you were making a list of all the uses of power it might include:
1. Power over — the ability to control someone.
2. Power to — the ability to accomplish something.
3. Power with — the ability to accomplish something together. And then the definition that begins to emerge in the New Testament.
4. Power for — which is power exercised for the sake of others.
And that sounds remarkably like Jesus. Because Jesus has power. But watch what he does with it.
§ He doesn’t call down twelve legions of angels. He washes his disciples’ feet.
§ He doesn’t crush his enemies. He forgives them.
§ He doesn’t save himself. He gives himself.
The opposite of that kind power is not weakness, but dominance, and Jesus has always been against that. In Mark 10 he says, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”
And that brings me back to the lovely little surprise hidden inside the English word itself. Before power became associated with kings, armies, electricity, engines and superpowers, its deepest idea was simply: to be able. So, when Jesus promises his disciples “power from on high,” perhaps the question isn’t really: “How powerful will they become?” But rather: “What will this power enable them to do?” And the answer, as far as the Book of Acts is concerned, is: things that look remarkably like Jesus.
I started this series by talking about God as a luminous, swirling, benevolent presence that fills the universe and then talked about Jesus as the way that God becomes personal. In fact, I said it this way: Jesus is God in person. And I believe that’s true. But if Jesus is God in person then the Spirit is God in power—the power to do what Jesus has commanded in the way Jesus would do it. And that looks almost completely different from worldly power.
You see it on the news every day: people and nations using their power over other people and other nations to dominate them, control them. Jesus calls us to a
different use of power altogether, and gives us a different kind of power to do it. Holy power. Holy Spirit. The power from on high. The power that serves. Next week I’m going to be talking about our mission but I’ll tell you now, if we use that kind of power to fulfill our mission people will be able to see the difference, just as they did in the Book of Acts. But if we try to fulfill our mission without that power—or worse, if we try to fulfill our mission with worldly power—we won’t succeed.
Have you ever done this? Have you ever filled up your blender with all the ingredients of the perfect smoothie and then pushed the button and nothing happened? It’s a powerless feeling. But eventually you figure it out. You see that the blender is unplugged. And what do you do? You plug it in. You push the button. And that changes everything. I believe that if we are not connected to the power from on high our best efforts will fall flat. Our mission will fail. And I also believe that the way we plug in to that power is through prayer.
Think about Jesus. He was always slipping away to pray somewhere. Why? To use a modern expression: because his batteries were running low. Because he needed to recharge. There’s that story from Mark 5 about the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. He begins to look around and ask who touched him because, as Mark puts it, he was “aware that power had gone forth from him.” We don’t know how much power. Mark doesn’t tell us. But in the very next chapter, Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray, to plug into the source of his power.
The connection seems obvious.
Before he left them Jesus told his disciples to wait for the power from on high, but they didn’t only wait. They had been watching him. They prayed. And on the Day of Pentecost, when they were all together in one place, there came a sound like the rush of
a mighty wind. Power from on high. Holy power. Incorruptible power. God’s kind of power. The kind that gave them the ability to do God’s kind of work in the world.
Just like Jesus.
–Jim Somerville, 2026
