Pentecost Sunday – Acts 2:1-21, Ezekiel 37:1-14
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Today, Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. What images or actions do you think about when you think of the Holy Spirit. Our faith formation committee, which is a combined committee made up of the Worship committee and the Christian Education committee, some of them have helped us remind us what we are to remember today by decorating our sanctuary. So, look around the Sanctuary. We see Dove on our banners and fire… What do you think about Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit among us today? Something strong to penetrate or burn, or gentle to embrace and guide us or like the wind, the Spirit moves us in different ways, sending us to other places…. We don’t just celebrate an ancient story but we are here believing that the same Spirit is upon us. Right? Then, what do you want, desire to experience today expecting the same Spirit upon us? Do you desire to gain some energy, passion, like fire in your hearts or in our gatherings here? Or to be moved and transformed gently and constantly by the wind of the Spirit? Or Do you want to experience speaking tongues like the day of Pentecost? Whatever desire you have, I believe God will give you. But I was thinking about what our Pentecost experiences would be like today in our daily lives while I was reading today’s text. What God may want us, the Church, to experience by the power of the Holy Spirit today?
Pentecost means fiftieth and Luke tells us the Spirit descended on 120 believers in Jerusalem on the fiftieth day after Jesus’s resurrection. The Spirit empowered them to testify to Jesus’s impact on their lives, emboldened the apostle Peter to preach to a bewildered crowd of skeptics, and drew three thousand converts to faith in one day. By the power of the Holy Spirit, that happened. And for Christians, Pentecost marks the birthday of the church.