Numbers 11:24-30
1 Corinthians 12:3-13
John 20:19-23

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this week titled China Is Throwing Christians in Jail, but this Pastor Refuses to Back Down. The article tells the story of a Chinese pastor named Ezra Jin who has been in jail for nearly 9 months. His crime: not doing what the Chinese government wanted him to do.

The article begins by detailing what life is like for Christians in China. The communist Chinese government tries to control the churches. There are official state approved churches and there are also unapproved churches that mostly meet in people’s homes and in storefronts and spaces like that. Pastor Ezra Jin was the pastor of one of the unsanctioned churches, named Zion Church.

The Chinese government wanted Pastor Ezra and Zion church to install cameras in their worship space so that the government could monitor what was said. They refused. So the authorities started threatening Pastor Ezra and church goers. The police hauled them in for questioning, pressured their landlords to revoke their leases, and threatened that they could lose their secular jobs.

The journalist says that this is part of the Chinese government’s largest crackdowns on Christianity in decades. Pastor Jin is being held in prison for suspected “illegal use of information networks” related to Zion’s online ministry.

This kind of authoritarian intimidation and suppression of ideas and religion is common in China. China’s leader, Xi Jingping, has used cameras and surveillance tools to crackdown on anyone in China who doesn’t support him. Artists, lawyers, business leaders, and Christians have all been caught up in Xi’s suppression. But the article notes that while Xi has successfully silenced his opponents in business and the arts, he hasn’t succeeded in controlling Christians. “In fact, many believers say the more authorities seek to suppress Christianity in China, the more the faith will spread and grow stronger. It’s the highest honor for a Christian, for people like Pastor Jin, being put in prison,” said Sean Long, another pastor at Zion. “That’s exactly the mark of following Jesus.”

In spite of the persecution, Zion church has grown. The congregation has used the internet to hold morning prayer and informal gatherings to share communion and pray together so that the authorities can’t catch them. In spite of the ban on their church, its movement has continued to grow.

It is an example of Pentecost. Today in the church’s life is the day of Pentecost. Pentecost literally means ‘fiftieth’ (pente is Greek for 5, as in the Pentagon, which is a 5 sided building) – as in fifty days after Easter. More importantly, Pentecost is the celebration, the feast for the church’s birthday. 

The Scripture that tells the story of the church’s birthday is found in Acts chapter two. You may remember it. The apostles (the original 12 disciples of Jesus less Judas) and other early Jesus followers were gathered together in the city of Jerusalem when a wonder occurred. Luke, the writer of Acts, tells that on the 50th day after Easter, there “came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” and “divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them” and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” 

If that were not amazing and terrifying and curious enough, all of the visitors to Jerusalem, Luke tells us, heard this commotion. They were from all over the world and spoke many different languages and represented many different cultures. Yet, they could understand what was being said, each in their own language. It was a bewildering experience. Some naysayers accused everyone of being drunk, but the apostles knew that this was God’s doing. They said that it was the power of God at work.

Pentecost is the church’s birthday. But the church didn’t start because a group of people came together and decided to form a non-profit or set up a social club for an hour on Sunday mornings. The church began because God brought it into existence. God decided that the way Jesus Christ’s presence would continue on earth after his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven is through people like you and me who gather together in Christ’s name. They would gather in churches like this one, in homes, strip malls, and in secret to worship God, hear the word of God, pray, organize to make their community better and serve the least among them, share communion, and spend time together as brothers and sisters. And the way God would do that is through the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Let’s take a step back and think about who the Holy Spirit is. And then we’ll dig into our three Scriptures today because they all give a word about the Spirit’s work in our lives and in the life of the church.

Here is a little of Christian theology: the church believes in one God. “We believe in God the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth” as the creed goes. If you are familiar with the Jewish faith, there is a part of the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy that speaks to this. “Hear, O Israel: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” There is only one God and you shall not pay attention to any other gods, the 1st of the 10 commandments says.

One God. But the Christian faith is that this one God exists in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity. God in three persons. God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, God the Spirit sustains. The concept of the Trinity can be an incredibly confusing thing, so I like to think of it in terms of a picture. There is a second century theologian whose name was Irenaeus. Irenaeus used the image of the human body to try to talk about the Trinity. God the Father is like the head, chest, and shoulders and the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are like the outstretched arms of the Father. God uses both of them to pull us into his heart. With one hand the Father holds us secure in the work of Jesus Christ. With the other hand, the Father comforts us through the Holy Spirit, who helps us to know and experience the Father’s love,  and propels us out with courage and hope.

Our Scripture readings this morning tell us about the Spirit’s work in our lives. First, from the Old Testament book of Numbers. The setting for this story is in the Sinai wilderness. The people of Israel, God’s people, the Hebrews, had been freed from slavery in Egypt by the power of God working through Moses. They are now wandering around the desert. From God’s perspective, the point of this time in the desert was to form them spiritually, emotionally, and mentally for a life of following and living God’s ways. Except, there are hardships along the way. People complain. They get tired and anxious. And Moses realizes he can’t do it all himself and that he needs help leading.

So Moses appoints 70 elders to help him lead and manage the people. The relevant portion of this story is this strange detail. We’re told that Moses gathered the 70 elders and that the “Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders…” I take this to mean that God isn’t stingy with the Spirit. The Spirit isn’t just a gift for super spiritual people or pastors. The Spirit is given to everyone.

The other thing that happens in the story is that when the spirit rests on these 70 elders, they begin to prophesy, which to me means they began to speak truthfully and rightly about God and about what God requires of us. This is the other gift of the Spirit to us: the Spirit helps us know God and what God requires of us and gives us the words and the courage to speak about what God requires, even when it is not popular to do so.

Our second reading was from the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In it, the apostle Paul shares that each Christian is given gifts to use to serve others and serve the church. A gift is something that you are good at, something you enjoy doing, something that meets a need and benefits others that you can share. A gift, in the words of the writer Frederick Buechner, is “is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep need come together.” The gifts that you have are from the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God working in and through you.

The apostle Paul’s way of saying this is: “To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Put another way, God has given you and me, each in our own way, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. There is something that each of us is good at, that we can use to help serve and benefit others. Some of us are given the gift of teaching others or leading others, while others of us are given the gift of caring and comforting others, and others of us are given the gift of making others feel welcome and loved, while others of us are given the gift of making, building, or repairing things. “To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” God works in and through you to make the people and the neighborhood around you and the church better off.

Our final reading was the gospel reading from the gospel of John. It is the first Easter evening (so a Sunday evening). Jesus’ disciples are together, hiding, because they are afraid (given that they just witnessed Jesus be crucified three days before). Suddenly, the risen Jesus appears among them and says, “peace be with you.” And then we are told that Jesus breathed on them, which is biblically significant. In the creation story in Genesis, the Hebrew word for breath is also the same word for wind. In the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis we’re told that ‘there was a wind (a breath) from God [which] swept over the face of the water’ and the world began coming together. Additionally, we are told that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils, and he became a living, breathing human being.

It’s as if to say that the risen Jesus is breathing life back into the disciples. That is one of the gifts of faith. God breathes his Spirit into us and we come back to life. Something new is created. If you’ve ever felt dead on the inside, like you are just going through the motions, aimless, or without purpose, and something happens to revive your spirit, to lift your soul, and warm your heart – that is the work of God. The Lord Jesus breathes his Holy Spirit and we come back to life. 

The gift of the Spirit in reviving your spirit, lifting your soul, and warming your heart leads to a charge, a commission, a command. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus told the disciples “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, if you retain [keep, as in keep a grudge] the sins of any, they are retained.” The Spirit’s work on us is not only for us to feel better, it comes with a charge: go forgive sins.

We’ll close here. The challenges we face in America are different from the ones Christian face in China. We do not experience persecution like they do. One of our challenges as Christians is that we are living in a time where everyone feels overwhelmed. We are all so busy and it can feel as if we are never keeping up with the demands of life. The odd thing with our busyness is that it never seems to lead anywhere. It is just like being a rat in a wheel.

Another challenge is that this constant busyness without going anywhere leads people to give up and become numb. We all know people, if not even ourselves, who feel lonely, who live without really knowing their purpose, who are aimless or adrift, or who are numbed out and spend their lives playing video games, or working non-stop, or scrolling social media, or addicted to whatever, be it drugs, alcohol, gambling, prediction markets, or porn. 

In spite of these troubles, my hope for each of us is that the Lord’s Spirit comes like a fire – to warm your heart, to give light to your mind in the darkness, and to purify your conscience. Perhaps the gift of the Spirit, Pentecost, for us in our time and place, is the ability to resist the temptation to feel like we need to do it all and the temptation to go numb and not care about anything. 

Faith isn’t magic. The coming of the Spirit doesn’t have to look like people speaking in tongues or being loud or exciting. The coming of the Spirit can look like people cooperating to get the work that is needed to be done to build a good and decent place to live, like Moses. The coming of the Spirit can look like being inspired to share your gifts for the benefit of others, as Paul says in his discussion of spiritual gifts. The coming of the Spirit can be having the courage to tell the truth about what God requires, as Moses said. The coming of the Spirit can look like freedom from fear and freedom to forgive others, as Jesus commanded the disciples.

May the Lord warm your heart, lift your spirit, renovate your mind, and set your soul on fire in the ways that you need. Amen.

Work Cited

Spegele, Brian. “China Is Throwing Christians in Jail, but This Pastor Refuses to Back Down.” WSJ, 19 May 2026, https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-is-throwing-christians-in-jail-but-this-pastor-refuses-to-back-down-fd4c88dd. Accessed 23 May 2026.