05/24/2026
Worship at 10:30 am (pt). We welcome, affirm, and love. 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
This Sunday is Pentecost. It is the Sunday we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming down in tongues of fire on the people and sending them out into the world to be church. It is a fun and Spirit-filled Sunday and it is the only Sunday that the liturgical color is red. On Pentecost we wear red.
“Pentecost (from a Greek word for “fiftieth”) is the fiftieth and last day of the Easter season. Next week is Trinity Sunday, and then nearly six months of “Ordinary Time” begins (“ordinary” here means not “humdrum” but rather “ordered” or “arranged”), during which this year’s walk through the Gospel of Matthew will continue.
From ten thousand feet, the Christian Year appears divided almost in half: about six months of holy seasons (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide), and about six months of Ordinary Time. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, or a pair of lungs breathing in and out, the church alternates between these two modes each year: high holidays and everyday life. The joys of celebration, and the work of growth.
Pentecost is the Christian version of the ancient Jewish pilgrimage festival, the Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot (pronounced “sha-voo-OAT”), celebrated 50 days after Passover. For the ancient Israelites, this festival was an explicitly diverse, inclusive harvest celebration (see Deut 16:11; Lev 23:16), and over time, it also came to mark the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai, another kind of harvest and nourishment. For Christians, Pentecost celebrates the reception of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. Happy Birthday!”
-https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/5/25/understand-and-connect-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-pentecost