The New Law Written on Our Hearts
A Sermon for the Sunday of Pentecost Based on Acts 20:16-18, 28-36 and John 17:1-13
The Itch
Picture this: You’re standing in the Temple courtyard in Jerusalem, two thousand years ago. The air is thick with the smoke of sacrifice and the sound of thousands of pilgrims who have journeyed from across the known world. It’s Pentecost—Shavuot—the Feast of Weeks. In your hands, you carry the finest wheat from your harvest, the choicest grain you’ve grown all year. This is your offering, your act of thanksgiving for the Law that made you a people.
But here’s what strikes you: everyone around you knows exactly why they’re here. They’re celebrating not just a harvest, but the moment fifty days after Passover when Moses descended Mount Sinai with tablets of stone, when a scattered group of former slaves became the nation of Israel. The Law— the Torah—transformed them from a mob fleeing Egypt into God’s chosen people, bound together not by blood alone, but by covenant, by commitment, by the sacred words written on stone.
Fast forward to today. Walk into any church on Pentecost Sunday and ask people what we’re celebrating. You’ll get a lot of blank stares, maybe some mumbling about “the birthday of the Church” or “when the disciples spoke in tongues.” We’ve lost something profound, haven’t we? We’ve forgotten that Pentecost isn’t just about spectacular signs and wonders—it’s about the giving of a New Law, about becoming a New Israel.
In our Acts reading, Paul warns the Ephesian elders about wolves that will come among the flock. But perhaps the most dangerous wolf is forgetfulness—forgetting who we are and why we’re here. We’ve become a people who know the mechanics of faith but have lost the meaning. We observe the feast but miss the point.
The Ugh
The problem runs deeper than mere ignorance. In ancient Israel, when the people forgot the Law, when they set aside the covenant that made them a nation, they didn’t just lose information—they lost their identity. They became scattered, divided, conquered by enemies, carried off into exile. The Law wasn’t just a set of rules; it was the very thing that held them together as God’s people.
And here we are, two millennia after that first Christian Pentecost, and what do we see? A Church that often seems as scattered as the Israelites in Babylon. Orthodox fighting with Orthodox. Christians who can’t explain what makes them different from the world around them. Parishes that function more like social clubs than communities of people transformed by the Spirit of God.
We’ve inherited something magnificent—the fulfillment of everything the ancient Israelites hoped for—yet we treat it like an interesting historical footnote. While they offered their finest wheat in thanksgiving for the Law that made them a people, we have a hard time celebrating feasts when they fall in the middle of the week. While they understood that the Torah was God’s gift that transformed former slaves into a holy nation, we’ve reduced the Gospel to personal therapy and the Church to a weekend obligation.
The tragedy isn’t just that we’ve forgotten the parallel between the two Pentecosts. The tragedy is that we’ve forgotten what it means to be a covenant people at all. We’ve lost the sense that something cosmic happened when the Spirit descended, that we aren’t just individuals who happen to believe similar things, but members of the New Israel, the Church, bound together by something far more profound than shared opinions or ethnic heritage.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus prays, “I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world.” But how many of us actually live as if we’ve been given something that the world hasn’t received? How many of us understand that we’ve been entrusted with the knowledge of spiritual realities that transform everything?
The Aha
But wait. Let’s look more carefully at what actually happened on that first Christian Pentecost. The disciples weren’t just having a religious experience—they were receiving the New Law, the Law that Jeremiah prophesied would be “written on our hearts” rather than on tablets of stone.
Think about the beautiful symmetry: Fifty days after Passover, Moses received the Law on Sinai. Fifty days after Pascha—our Christian Passover—the disciples received the Spirit on Mount Zion. The pattern isn’t accidental; it’s fulfillment.
At the first Pentecost, former slaves became the nation of Israel through the gift of Torah. At the Christian Pentecost, people from every nation became the New Israel through the gift of the Spirit. The wheat offering that ancient pilgrims brought to the Temple was a shadow of the spiritual harvest that was about to transform the world.
Listen again to Jesus’ words in our Gospel: “I have given them the words which you gave me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you.” This is the New Law—not external commandments carved in stone, but the very life of God breathed into human hearts. The knowledge of spiritual realities. The ability to know God not just as lawgiver, but as Father.
The ancient Israelites were bound together by shared ancestry and common law. But we—we are bound together by something far more intimate: the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. We are family not by blood but by faith, citizens of the Kingdom not by birth but by baptism, members of the Body not by ethnicity but by the Eucharist.
This is why Paul could tell those Ephesian elders to “shepherd the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.” This isn’t just a religious organization—this is the New Israel, purchased not with silver and gold but with the precious blood of Christ, and empowered not by human wisdom but by the Spirit of the living God.
The Whee
Brothers and sisters, do you see what this means? We aren’t just people who happen to attend the same church. We are the fulfillment of everything God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are the answer to David’s psalms and the realization of the prophets’ visions. We are the wheat harvest that all those ancient pilgrims were pointing toward without even knowing it.
When those first Christians received the Spirit at Pentecost, they weren’t just having a mountain-top experience—they were being constituted as the New Israel, the people of the New Covenant, the Church. And when we were baptized, when we were chrismated, when we first received the Eucharist, we became part of that same reality. The same Spirit that descended on the apostles dwells in us. The same New Law that was written on their hearts is written on ours.
This changes everything. When you wake up tomorrow morning, you’re not just an individual trying to be a good person. You’re a member of the New Israel, carrying within yourself the very life of God. When you come to liturgy, you’re not just attending a service—you’re participating in the eternal worship of heaven, offering yourself as part of the spiritual wheat harvest.
When you struggle with sin, you’re not fighting alone—you have the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead living within you. When you serve others, you’re not just being nice—you’re manifesting the love of the Trinity to a world that desperately needs to see it.
The Yeah
So what does this mean for us, practically speaking? It means it’s time to remember who we are and live like it.
I want to invite you to do something today. I want you to renew your baptismal vows—not just the words, but the reality they represent. Remember what it means to be a committed Orthodox Christian, dedicated to living a holy life as a member of the New Israel.
When you were baptized, you died to the old way of being human and rose to new life in Christ. You received the New Law written on your heart—the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. You became part of something cosmic: the Church, the Body of Christ, the New Israel that stretches across time and space.
But renewal isn’t just about remembering—it’s about recommitment. The ancient Israelites had to choose daily whether to live according to the Torah or to abandon the covenant that made them God’s people. We face the same choice. Will we live as members of the New Israel, or will we live as if Pentecost never happened?
This means taking our prayer life seriously—not as a burden, but as communion with the God who dwells within us. It means approaching the Eucharist not as a routine, but as participation in the divine life. It means treating our fellow Christians not as people we happen to worship with, but as family members bound to us by something stronger than blood.
It means fasting not as a diet plan, but as training in the freedom that comes from the Spirit’s power over our appetites. It means giving not out of guilt, but out of the abundance that flows from being citizens of the Kingdom. It means serving not to earn salvation, but because we’ve already received the New Law written on our hearts.
Most importantly, it means understanding that we are here—together—because God has called us out of the world to be his holy people, just as he called Israel out of Egypt. We are the wheat offering, the firstfruits of the new creation, the living stones being built into a spiritual temple.
The Spirit that descended at Pentecost hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still here, still writing the New Law on hearts that are open to receive it, still building the Church, still making us into the New Israel. The question is: Will we live like we believe it?
The ancient pilgrims brought their finest wheat to Jerusalem, grateful for the Law that made them a people. What will we bring? What will we offer in thanksgiving for the Spirit who has made us not just a people, but the people of God, the Church, the Body of Christ?
The feast is before us. The New Law is within us. The New Israel surrounds us.
Now we live like the Pentecost people we are.
Amen.