Luke 24:44-53
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
May 17, 2026
Suppose, inspired by the arrival of Olympic sailing competition off our shores in two years, you decide to take up sailing as a hobby. You empty your savings to buy the best boat you can afford. You hire an expert craftsman to modify it for handling the unique challenges of the Catalina Channel. You study countless sailing books. You engage a wise veteran of the sea to teach you how to hoist your canvas, pull the mainsheet fast and adjust the jib like a pro.
Then you wait. You wait for the right moment to launch your maiden voyage. For, no matter how hard and long you’ve worked to get ready, you aren’t going anywhere if the wind isn’t blowing. Since you can’t make the wind blow, you have to let go of forcing the issue, surrender control to Mother Nature and follow the weather conditions she gives you.
All four of the Gospels record how, from the day of His resurrection through the day of His ascension, Jesus repeatedly urged His followers to continue His work of seeking and saving the lost. He kept commanding them, in one way or another, to carry on this core concern – and to go into all the world and make more disciples for Him from every nation. His charge to them goes by the name, the Great Commission.
Unfortunately, His Great Commission often ends up becoming for many their Great Omission. They just don’t get around to sharing the good news too good to keep to themselves.
We must note, however, that, as important as the Great Commission is to Jesus, He told His followers not to get to it immediately. Something had to happen to them first. Because they were not yet equal to the task, they – before they went out – had to take in something, or rather Someone. They had to receive the Holy Spirit and His supernatural strength.
On Easter evening, Jesus had said to His disciples, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Then He promised to empower them for the mission on which He was sending them with God’s own life force as He breathed on them and announced they’d soon receive the Holy Spirit.
Then, on His last day on earth before returning to heaven, He repeated how they were to be His “witnesses” and how through them “repentance and forgiveness of sins is be proclaimed in His name to all nations”. But He also instructed them to hold their horses for a while and wait for the promised Spirit to come upon them whenever God decided it should happen. Jesus told His disciples that, before going into all the world, they were to “stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high”.
Weeks before His ascension day, Jesus had said to His disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate” – one of His names for the Spirit – “will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Thus, Jesus’ ascension is less about His leaving them than about the Spirit’s coming to them. The Spirit is the One through whom Jesus abides in His people; and Jesus had promised that “those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit”.
The fruitful Christian life, the life of spiritually reproducing in the birth of new disciples, happens, not by our godly intention but by God’s inhabitation of us, not by our trying hard but by our entrusting ourselves to Him whole-heartedly, not by our putting ourselves out so much as by our giving ourselves over to the Spirit.
Jesus said He went up to heaven in order to send down to earth the Spirit who would send us out to the ends of the earth to fulfill the Great Commission and to produce the fruit of new disciples. Our hope of being effective in evangelism comes – not from our being knowledgeable, articulate, skilled, strategic or diligent – but from our being Spirit-filled, Spirit-surrendered, Spirit empowered. What matters is not who we are and what we do but who is in us and working through us. After all, potent electrical energy can be sent along by means of thin wire; and so too potent witness to Jesus can be sent along by means of thin faith and willingness. We will be hopeful of fruitfulness in outreach if we look, not to ourselves, but to Jesus and His gift of the Spirit.
The word for Spirit in the Hebrew scriptures is ruach; and in the Greek scriptures it is pneuma. In both biblical languages, the word for Spirit can also mean air, wind, breath or life. The Holy Spirit is the breath of life our spiritual lungs need.
The American Sleep Apnea Association estimates that about 25 million of us suffer from some form of apnea, a dangerous disorder in which we fail to breathe in our sleep.
CPAP machines are the most widely used devices for treating sleep apnea. By a mask, the machine pumps a continuous stream of air to fill our lungs with life-giving oxygen and to keep us breathing throughout the night. Unfortunately, when people start using a CPAP, it can feel bothersome, disturbing and even frightening. Eventually, however, most everyone gets used to it.
To fulfill our evangelistic mission as followers of Jesus, we need to obey the command of Ephesians 5:18 and be continually “filled” with the Holy Spirit – that is, we need to let the wind of God blow into our spiritual lungs and inflate them with His life-giving breath. Regrettably, some Christians suffer from Spirit apnea. We fail to keep breathing in the life of God and we need the equivalent of a spiritual CPAP to make us vital, vigorous and fruitful.
Practicing such habits as frequent prayer, daily Bible reading, weekly worship, generous giving and service to others is the spiritual equivalent of a CPAP machine. It is a means of grace by which we avail of God’s grace of the Holy Spirit. The habits might feel bothersome, disturbing or frightening at first, but they pump into us heavenly air and keep us lively and productive in the purposes of God.
Of course, it is not our practices, even our habitual ones, that make us fruitful for God. Like sailors who have to wait on Mother Nature to raise a wind and make happen what they never could on their own, we have to wait on the One who has gone up to heaven in order that He might send down the Spirit at the most opportune moment and through the Spirit fill us with power from on high. By faithful and persistent practice of the spiritual disciplines, we can – while we wait – stay poised to lift our sails and make the most of those magical moments of grace when the wind of heaven blows strong and steady – and sends us forth in outreach and revelation of the good news that Jesus meant for everyone.
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