Preparing for Worship - May 24, 2026

This Sunday is known as Pentecost Sunday. Originally, this was a Jewish Spring harvest festival, seven weeks after the Passover celebration. (You can read about this in Deuteronomy 16:9-12, Exodus 34:22-24, and other places in the Old Testament.) Three times a year, all Jewish males were to be in Jerusalem for some of these festivals, and that is why many extra people were in the city on the day the Lord chose to send His Holy Spirit in the very dramatic way we read about in today’s readings. Some also call this WhitSunday, suggesting the Holy Spirit's wit and wisdom in bringing many people to faith in Christ on this day through the Word of God proclaimed to them. Others refer to it as White Sunday because some churches later had large numbers of people wearing white baptized on this Sunday, remembering that 3,000 people were baptized on that first Pentecost.

The Old Testament lesson is Genesis 11:1-9. After the fall into sin, sinful people, “the children of man,” thought that they could control their own destiny and tried to make a name for themselves by building a great city and a tower reaching into the heavens themselves, as rivals to God. They had one language and thought they could do whatever they wanted. Nothing seemed impossible for them. The Lord humbled them by confusing their language into many languages and scattering them all over the earth, with divisions and rivalry, people living out and reflecting their sinfulness. (Note that the Lord says in v. 7, “Come, let us go down” and do this, showing the nature of the one true Triune God already, and in other places in the first book of Scripture. See Genesis 1:26, for example.) The Pentecost story is then, as we will see, a reversal of this division and confusion, as people with many different languages are brought to one faith in the One true God, in the saving work of Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The psalm for Pentecost is Psalm 143, another psalm of David and a penitential psalm, as Psalm 51:1-12 was last week. David knows his sinfulness and pleads for God’s mercy. He knows that we all deserve judgment, because “no one living is righteous before Him.” (That rules out saving ourselves in any way by our own good efforts.) David also has enemies and other troubles that give him much difficulty. He says of himself, “My spirit faints and fails.” He knows that he must “meditate on God’s works” and what He has said and done in His Word, and simply seek to “trust Him.” The Lord is his “Refuge,” and alone can “teach” him and show him His “will” and “ways.” David and all of us therefore need to pray, “Let Your Good Spirit, the Holy Spirit, lead us on level ground,” through the Word of God. “In Your righteousness” (and especially the righteousness of Christ our Savior), “our souls are brought out of trouble.”

The Gospel lesson is John 14:23-31. Jesus says that people who love Him and love the Father are keeping the Word of God, but if people do not love Him, Jesus, who brings the Word of God, they are not keeping the Word. And when the Helper, the Holy Spirit, is sent by the Father in the Name of Christ, He will teach the disciples all things they need to know and bring to remembrance all that Jesus told them. That is how they could recall and record the long speeches of Jesus and accurately teach what he said - by the power of the Holy Spirit. Though Jesus was going away, He would leave His peace with them through His Spirit and help them through their troubles and fears. “The ruler of this sinful world, Satan, was coming, but he would have no ultimate claim on Jesus, though it might seem like it when Jesus suffered and died. Jesus was simply doing what His Father commanded, in submitting to suffering and death, but also in His resurrection. His love for His Father and for us was evident in all this, and through Him and the Holy Spirit, many would be brought to believe in Him for eternal life. Jesus says one surprising thing, though: “the Father is greater than I.” Jesus was true God, equal to the Father and the Spirit in the One True Triune God. At the same time, He had humbled Himself and become also a true man, not using all of His Godly power and choosing to live with some human limitations. For example, Jesus said that “no one know the day and hour that heaven and earth will pass away, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son (Jesus Himself, here on earth), but the Father only” (Matthew 24:35-36). How that all worked and still works, we do not understand, but we can “rejoice” that Jesus has returned to His Father in heaven, and He was glorified again, culminating in His ascension. (See John 17:4-5.)

The Epistle lesson is from Acts 2:1-21, the story of Pentecost. Jesus had ascended to heaven 10 days earlier, and the early Christians, about 120 persons, were waiting to be “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). They were together in one place when suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. In the Greek, the word can mean either wind or Spirit. Then “tongues as of fire rested upon each one of them.” In the Old Testament, God often showed His presence with fire - as He did this day, with the presence of God the Holy Spirit, with tongues of fire. Then these disciples “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues,” other languages that they had never learned, as the Spirit enabled them. Verses 5-13 indicate that there were Jews from many different countries in Jerusalem for what for them was the annual Jewish harvest festival. They spoke a number of different “native languages” and came from many different places, as listed in this passage. Many were Jews, but some were “proselytes“, converts to the Jewish faith. They realized that these speakers were largely Galileans, from a backward, less educated part of the land, and yet the hearers were amazed and perplexed and said, “We hear them telling in our own native tongues the mighty works of God.” Some mocked these speakers as drunk, but most were simply saying, “What does this mean?” Peter then spoke on behalf of the other disciples and said this was the fulfillment of what the prophet Joel had predicted in Joel 2:28-32. Peter quotes from Joel’s prophecy that the Holy Spirit would be at work among many people, young and old, with the goal that many would be brought to faith in the Lord, for salvation. This text ends here, but it is good to read on and see that Peter also preached the Word very clearly that Jesus Christ was Lord and Savior, by His life, death on the cross, and resurrection from the dead, with prophecy about all this from Scripture. Peter also called for people, young and old, to be brought to repentance and faith in Christ and the gift of baptism, through the Holy Spirit’s work through the Word. And we hear that these old and new believers were called to “devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (through the Word), which is what we are doing in Bible study still today. And those believers were to continue in fellowship and the breaking of bread (in the Lord’s Supper) and in prayers. May the Holy Spirit still lead us and guide us in this way, in our worship and daily life in Christ. In this way, the Holy Christian Church is the reversal of the Genesis 11 Old Testament passage. People from many nations and languages were now being united in one faith in Christ as Savior, through the One True Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Lord said, Let us now go down and do this uniting, saving work, through Christ Jesus, sent from the Father, and the Holy Spirit, working through Word and Sacraments, to this very day.