05/24/2026
Welcome to Worship! Every Pentecost we read the same scriptures that tell how the Holy Spirit totally transformed the way those original Jesus-followers related to God. This Pentecost, I invite you to allow the Holy Spirit to transform your lives – in whatever way the Spirit chooses. Let’s begin our worship in prayer: Great God of relationship, in this silence, as the Light of Christ enters our space of worship, open our hearts, minds, ears, and eyes to experience you however you choose to show up! We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
*Call to Worship: Psalm 104:24-35 p. 826
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
Creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great.
There go the ships, and Leviathan whom you formed to play in it.
These all look to you, to give them their food in due season.
When you give to them, they gather it;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.
May the glory of the Lord endure for ever, may the Lord rejoice in his works,
who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they
smoke!
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to the Lord in whom I rejoice.
Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more!
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Praise the Lord!
*Hymn of Praise: We Are the Church #558, v. 1, 4, 5
Praises & Requests
Prayer Hymn: Gather Us In #2236 FWS, v. 1, 4
Prayer of the People: Heavenly Father, we praise you for your blessings to us this week. For moisture, for each other, for work and rest, for health and doctors, for community that gathers together to mourn as well as to celebrate, and for the opportunity to worship you in safety and joy, we humbly thank you. We praise you for the gift of life itself, and rejoice that Jesus came to show us how to live life. Through your Holy Spirit we have access to life in your forever, but we have no way to understand that kind of life. We confess that we are so bound up in this life that we often don’t notice your Spirit leading us toward the deeper, richer, fuller life that we can have even now in this life. We ask you to forgive our short-sightedness, our inward focus, and our selfishness. Thank you God, for sending your Holy Spirit to gift us with ways to live into your love and your grace, so that others may see the difference life lived in you can make in their lives. Thank you that through your Spirit, we are never alone, no matter how difficult life is. Lord, help us to open our hearts and minds so that we are ready to use the gifts you give us. And help us to remember that your gifts are always given in order to invite others into community with you. Jesus, for these we name now, we ask you to be present with them according to your will. In your mercy, hear our prayers for: Victims of natural disasters & war; OUR COUNTRY, OUR WORLD, HP, Pam, travel mercies, a Grieving family, the families of Sue, Terry, & Lois, Mark, ROGER, Judy, RANDY & Vickie, A HURTING FAMILY, CHILDREN IN DETENTION CENTERS, A STRUGGLING FAMILY, Cherlyn, SHIRLEY, JAMI, Christina, Matt, CAROL, BRENDA, A MOM, a sister church, Lucile, SCOTT, Alvin, Joe, Jim, JENNA, Aiden, ROSS, Sara, addicts, Rachelle, Jordan, Rick, a Mom, Les & Barbara, Kay, Sherry, Steve, Nancy, Kathe, Marc & Diana, residents in care facilities, and especially our children. And now, in this silence, we ask you to hear our prayers for ourselves: It is as forgiven and dearly loved Children of God that we offer you, together, the prayer Jesus taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen!
Children’s Time: Today our Bible story is about gifts that God gives us. But sometimes those gifts don’t feel much like gifts. I want to tell you about a gift I was given 41 years ago that definitely didn’t seem like a gift. Our middle daughter was born with a cleft lip and palate. (show picture) For 19 years, we were in and out of hospitals for her surgeries. Those were hard times, and I was very glad when her repairs were completed. A week ago I was walking out of a hospital, and ahead of me was a mom carrying a small boy in one arm while trying to steer a stroller for twins. The little boy looked so sick. Without thinking about it, I offered to push the stroller for her, and we talked all the way to her car. I felt so glad to be able to do this for her, because I’d been in her place with my little girl. My experience with our daughter’s surgeries has allowed me to give others gifts of compassion, someone to talk to, and just time spent with them. Last week, God used my experience with my special needs daughter as a gift to a mom who was feeling very alone in the world. What I want you to remember is that sometimes bad things do happen. But if we let God bless even the bad times, God sometimes turns them into gifts that we can share with others. Let’s pray: God, nobody likes it when bad things happen. But when they do, help us to talk to you about them, so that eventually you can turn our bad experiences into gifts for others. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Offering Hymn: I’m Goin’ a Sing #333, v. 1, 4
*Doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts! Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Amen!
*Offering Prayer: Bless our offerings, Lord, so that they become avenues of blessing for others, just like we are supposed to be. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
New Testament Reading: Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, [the disciples] were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God!
*Gloria Patri: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end! Amen! Amen!
Sermon: Gifts of Relationship
If you will, I’d like you to get your hymnals out and open them again to page 826, which was our Call to Worship. Find verse 35 and read it with me: “Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!” To our modern ears, this sounds unsettling at best, and downright vengeful at worst. And it puts a lot of distance between us and the people we are calling ‘sinners’ and ‘the wicked.’ The prescribed reading for Pentecost actually leaves out the part about ‘sinners’ and ‘the wicked,’ and I find that interesting, because I think these words are extremely important, especially at Pentecost! This whole psalm sings about God’s creative work, and how God’s Spirit not only creates, but also renews so that all creation can live in relationship with God. But at the very end, the psalmist asks that ‘sinners’ and ‘the wicked’ not be part of this relationship, and you have to wonder what he’s thinking. My thought is that ‘the wicked’ and ‘sinners’ do not live by, or in some cases don’t even acknowledge, the work of the Holy Spirit, so the psalmist wants them gone so they don’t weaken or destroy the relationships the Spirit seeks to build. I think he asks that they “be no more,” because if they are gone, all the rest of creation has a better chance to stay in relationship with Creator God. I think relationship is one of the keys to this psalm.
And speaking about relationships, remember Christmas? We say that Jesus came to us at Christmas as “God Incarnate,” as God packaged in human flesh, living in physical relationship with people. Pentecost is also about relationship, but this time, instead of person-to-person, it’s Spirit-to-spirit. At Christmas, Jesus arrived full of God’s power. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fills ordinary people with God’s power. In both cases, though, this power isn’t to be used for personal gain. (Remember Satan tempting Jesus to use his power for himself out in the wilderness?) God-given power is to be used exclusively for the sake of others, so that others may turn back to God (repent) and claim Jesus’ forgiveness for themselves…so that they may go and tell others, who will repeat this sounding joy to still others who will in turn repeat this sounding joy, until the whole world repeats, and repeats, and repeats the sounding joy of God’s salvation.
At Pentecost, the Spirit gifted the disciples with the ability to speak so that the immigrant Jews living in Jerusalem could understand about Jesus in their own languages, because, in just a few short years, many of these immigrants would be driven all over the earth because of severe anti-Christian persecution. But, thanks to the disciples’ Spirit-given message at Pentecost, these immigrants would take their faith with them wherever they went, and form Christian communities within the cultures into which they resettled.
On another level, God’s gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost redefined community. Previously, God had been ‘out there’ or ‘up there’ and we humans had lived ‘down here.’ There was this gap between the divine and humanity. At Christmas, God came to humans to live among them as one of them. At Pentecost, though, God came to humans as Spirit, in order to live in them, weaving God’s existence into the lives of humans. It was what Jesus had talked about in John 15:4 when he said, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Community was no longer just about people, God was now part of that community, too. And, when Christians scattered all over the world, their God-Jesus-Spirit-human community traveled with them, putting down roots and growing branches wherever there was fertile soil. And the Holy Spirit continued to gift people as needed so that these communities thrived in the grace of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ.
In his first letter to the Christian church in Corinth, the apostle Paul writes that there are many different kinds of spiritual gifts, but it is the same Holy Spirit that gives them, and that all of these gifts are to be used in service to the same Lord, who is Jesus the Christ. And all of these gifts, says Paul, are to be used for the common good. NEVER is a Spirit-given gift to be used for personal benefit or gain, and especially not for bragging rights. Yes, God will occasionally dump blessings in our laps, but Spirit-given gifts are always for the benefit of others, and always for the good of the community of Christ-followers. Paul stresses that it doesn’t matter what gift you are given, whether it is preaching or praying, caring or giving, hospitality or smiling, planning or encouraging, fixing things or visiting with people; every single gift is to be used to build up the community of Jesus-followers in LOVE. THERE. ARE. NO. EXCEPTIONS.
So – this is Pentecost Sunday. Why isn’t this room full of roaring wind? Why don’t we see divided tongues of flame dancing over our heads? Why aren’t we out on the steps of the church proclaiming Christ in ways that everyone in Bushton/Claflin can understand?
Because that is not the gift that is needed for this particular people at this specific time in this unique place. The Holy Spirit is indeed here, but too many of us have gotten used to listening to the ‘sinners’ and siding with ‘the wicked,’ who may not really be ‘sinners’ or ‘wicked’ according to our definitions, but who simply don’t live by or even acknowledge the Holy Spirit. We’ve grown deaf to the Spirit’s voice; we’ve shut our eyes to the Spirit’s activity; we’ve grown comfortable in our ruts of self-sufficiency.
BUT THIS IS PENTECOST – TIME TO WAKE UP! Open your eyes. Take out your ear plugs. Quit thinking of yourself as ordinary and ungifted, because it is precisely the ordinary and un-gifted whom the Spirit equips to do Jesus’ work! So, get off your comfy couches and prepare to be gifted by the Holy Spirit according to the Spirit’s will, so that others can come into relationship with Jesus.
But what if you haven’t heard the Spirit’s call? What if you don’t know what your gifts are? What did we say last week? We are to wait, and keep listening, and be available. Because one day, probably just out of the blue when you least expect it, your call will come, and you will feel incredible joy to be helping others to find a relationship with God through your Spirit-given gifts. I promise! Let’s pray: God, we all have our favorite people as well as our not-so-favorites, our wish-they’d-go-live-somewhere-else neighbors, and our downright enemies. But we are truly humbled when we realize that you want everyone to be in loving relationship with you – which also means they have to be in relationship with us because you live in us! Dear God, forgive our hardheartedness. Teach us how to love people for the possibilities you see in them. And make us willing to use the gifts your Holy Spirit gives us so that others, even the ones we don’t like, can know that you love them, too. We pray this because of who you are. Amen.
*Hymn of Sending Forth: The Spirit Sends Us Forth #2241 FWS
*Take-home: What can God do with our ordinary, un-giftedness? (Only the Spirit knows.)
*Benediction: May the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit strengthen all our relationships as we live them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Pastor Diana Webster [email protected]
620-603-3118 cell; 620-587-3505 office
Church Office – PO Box 315, 120 3rd St., Claflin KS 67525 [email protected]
