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24 May 2026 · The Day of Pentecost · John 14:23–31a

Peace.

That is the word from the upper room. Christ in the night He was handed over, His disciples afraid, the door of His own death already opening, and what He gives them is peace. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

This is the word of Pentecost: the Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

That sentence is the whole sermon. Not a different peace. Not a fresh peace. Not a peace the Spirit invents on Pentecost morning while Christ goes off to the Father empty-handed. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

Dr. Luther says the peace of Christ is one thing and the peace of the world is another, and the two should never be confused. The world’s peace says: build yourself up, make a name for yourself, get the bricks in order, get the tower high enough, and then you will be at rest. That is the peace the world gives. It is the peace of Babel.

Hear what those men said. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered. They had one fear. They built against that fear. They built a tower to keep from being scattered. And the very thing they were anxious to avoid is what they suffered. The Lord came down on those bricks and scattered them. He named the place Confusion. There is no peace at the top of that tower. There never was. The man who builds against being scattered gets scattered. The man who makes a name for himself loses the Name. That is not what the Spirit gives you. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

Your heart is troubled. Your heart is afraid. The Lord told His own not to be, and they were. So are you. The Law has done its work in you. It has shown you the tower you have been building. It has shown you the name you have been making for yourself. It has shown you that the peace you have been trying to manufacture out of your own striving is not peace at all. It is exhaustion dressed up as quiet. The Law accuses, and it is right to accuse. And it leaves you with nothing.

But now hear the word of the Spirit. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

Where did Christ buy it? At Calvary. The ruler of this world came for Him in that very upper room, and the ruler of this world had nothing in Him (John 14:30). Nothing. No sin. No claim. No purchase. So when the prince of this world struck, he struck a sinless Man, and the blood that flowed was the price of your peace. Christ’s obedience to the Father. His going to the cross. His being lifted up. His being handed over. The Father raising Him on the third day. That is where peace was bought. That is what was done for you outside of you. The Spirit did not buy that peace. Christ bought it. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

Hear how He gives it. “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26). The Spirit’s office is not to invent words. It is to bring you the words Jesus already spoke. He does not point to Himself. He preaches the crucified and risen One. He does not deliver a new gospel. He delivers the old one into your ear.

This is why the upper room of Pentecost is also a preaching room. The Spirit came with rushing wind and fire on the heads of the apostles, and what came out of their mouths was not their experience. What came out was the wonderful works of God: Christ crucified, the Father raising Him, His blood for you. The fire did not rest on the crowd. The fire rested on the apostles whose tongues would carry the Word. The crowd heard the Spirit only by hearing the preaching.

Gregory the Theologian saw it plainly. He who scattered there gathers here. He who divided the tongues there for evil unites them here for good. The same Spirit. The same fire. At Babel, God came down and scattered. At Pentecost, God came down to gather, and He gathered by preaching. Not by making the nations speak one language. By making the one Gospel spoken in every language. Every tongue heard the same thing: the Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

There is your defense against every false spirit. The serpent in the garden led Adam away from the outward Word to private whispers in his own heart. He has been doing it ever since. He does it to you. He tells you the Spirit speaks in the quiet of your feelings, in the high tower of your own striving, in the bricks you have stacked up. Do not believe him. The Spirit does not come without the Word. The Spirit does not bypass the preached Gospel to whisper privately to your heart. The fire rests on the office. The wind blows through the preached Word. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought, and He gives it through the mouths He has sent.

And He gives it at a place. “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). Where the Word of Christ is kept, there is the whole Holy Trinity making His home with you. You are not the builder of that house. You are the house. The Spirit put the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit on you with the water of your Baptism. He keeps putting it on you in the Word preached at this pulpit and in the body and blood placed in your mouth at this altar.

The Spirit fills the cosmos. Every breath, every star, every blade of grass is held in being by the same Spirit who hovered over the waters of the deep, by whose breath the heavens were made. He fills the world. And He meets you here. The cosmic Spirit is your parish Spirit. He has located Himself. He has bound Himself to this Word, to this water, to this bread and wine. Not because He is small. Because He is for you. The Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought, and He gives it where He has promised to give it.

We began in the upper room of John 14, with disciples whose hearts were troubled and afraid. We end in another upper room, on the day of Pentecost, with the wind and the fire and the apostolic preaching of the wonderful works of God. The line from one upper room to the other is the line the Spirit draws from Calvary to you. Christ went to the Father. He sent the Helper in His Name. The Helper preaches Christ. The whole word of the Helper is this: the Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

He comes to you. He makes His home with you. He places the peace Christ bought into your mouth in His body and His blood. Not as the world gives. As the Lord gives. Given. For you.

Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie · St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center, Random Lake, Wisconsin

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