Pastor Bradley E. Schmeling picture
June 8, 2025

Pentecost Day

John 14:15-27

We had a vision for today’s liturgy.

First the context: “Pentekoste” is the Greek word for fiftieth. For the followers of Jesus back then, it was a festival on the fiftieth day after Passover, celebrating the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. Think fire, thunder, lightning. New covenant. For the followers of Jesus today, it is the fiftieth day of Easter, the last day of our seven week Easter festival, when the Spirit arrives to carry us into the season. Think fire, wind, a new covenant, another language.

It’s a good day to install Sarah Henrich as associate pastor. She arrives on the Pentecost breeze because it’s another time of transition here, a time to say goodbye, to Pastor Lois a few weeks ago and to Tim Strand, music director, in couple of weeks. Karen Earhuff, the joyful force, the nerve center of the office, also retires. We’re on the Spirit-widening hinge of discernment, prayer, searching, listening, and finally calling new leaders. All the while keeping ministry going as we wait for the next puffs of white smoke to signal the wait is over. We have a new organist. A new pastor.

This transition feels significant, not because of the number of positions all at once, but because the people that inhabited them have made Gloria Dei who it is today. Sort of like in a long marriage, when sometimes you can’t understand who you are without understanding the relationship you’ve inhabited. This change is a tearing of the fabric, and it initiates a season re-quilting.

The weeks that follow Pentecost this year do initiate a different season in our church life, wondering what God is calling us into, who might come to share ministry with us or lead our song. Who will greet us in Christ and when we come in? Transitions are always vulnerable times, when you’re a little lost and the heart feels tender, maybe some anxiety surfaces. It’s a time for standing at the threshold, when a new path is beckoning you, but knowing that when you step over that lintel, you will change. And you’ll miss that last thing and who you were then. Things can get stirred up in that doorway, too, real wounds make themselves known, real fears step forward, a lot of real work to get done, but always this joyful beckoning at the door from the One who is ahead of us.

This congregation has been living at the threshold of death and resurrection since 1908. In a way, you know how to hold on to the things that give this church its identity and its mission. This congregation is deeply grounded in the Lutheran tradition, God’s grace as our centering and missional principle, a pattern for worship that honors the prayer of the past and trusts ritual to lead us into the glory of God, the Gloria Dei that names us. At the same time, you have a way of understanding yourself and the ministry of the church that looks forward, rather than getting stuck looking back to the past or up the heavens. There’s a history of asking what’s next, where is God calling us, who needs help? What’s the next horizon of welcome, care, and justice?

Back to the liturgical plan.

Something with fire. At the end of the liturgy, each of us would come forward and take any of the burning votive candles. All the ones you see in the windows, we were going to light to represent you. We would sing some mysterious, chant. As we were sent out, it would be clear that we carry fire. WE are the living presence of Christ for one another and for the world.

However, as many of our liturgical ideas are considered for practicality, it was grand, beautiful, slightly over-the-top, and 100% impossible. For starters, the test votive may last; it may not. It was going to be possible that some would go out. That might not be the symbol we hoped for, as we wondered which one of us is the one who’s going to go up in smoke? Who will get burned out? Who won’t make it through the transition? The most problematic discovery, however, is that a full morning of fire truly makes those a burning symbol. They are too hot to handle. You would scream, probably drop them, warn the next person not to go try it, and then go home to write a gently crafted email to the worship chair to say, “Those people have to be stopped.”

So today, a revision, a reformation as it were. After communion you will be invited to pick up an unlit candle in the windows for you or for your household. We’ll still hold them for a prayer to initiate our season of discernment, a time of the Spirit. But no fire. Not the dramatic ending that you want on a day when red is the color.

The Acts reading begins with these words, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” And it struck me. This is always how it begins. We come together in one place, today here and online, a wider and more mysterious sense of togetherness and place. We assemble, a mix of the same old souls and new arrivals, some with a center wick that’s ready to catch a spark, some of us not sure there’s any center at all, some whose capacity to burn feels buried like one of those wicks stuck under the wax, some of us aren’t sure why we’re here at all, some wondering how anyone can shine right now with everything that’s going on in the world. It’s not just wildfires that are making it hard to breathe.

John’s gospel is written for a church that was gathering in one place in a time when those who knew Jesus were dying off. There would soon be no physical link between Jesus and those original followers. What’s going to happen now? This isn’t going to be the same. What are going to do without Jesus to show us? How will we remember what he said?

John remembered what Jesus said on his last night, when he told them. “I’m out of here. But before I go, you’re going to receive a Spirit that will connect us from generation to generation, even into generations to come. This Spirit will speak in a voice you can understand in your own culture and experience, so that you remember what I said. This Spirit will comfort you when you’re not sure; it will advocate for you when you need a cheerleader or carry you when you’ve fallen. It will blow you right out the front door sometimes. After I breath it into you on Easter Day or your baptismal day (all the same), you will never be without my loving presence. I’m giving you peace as a platform for everything that’s too come.”

This is the wonder of Pentecost. that it’s not the unlit or burned-out nature of our experience that’s the symbol, or the predictor of what’s coming. It’s the possibility, the hope, the expectation that an unlit candle can catch fire. And we expect it to, because it has before.

And, seriously, church, we have matches and lighters at home.  We can strike a match. We have what we need for this coming season. We can light candles. We know how to come to the table. We know what to do with some water and a new life. We know how to pray and go through open doors, if not separately, certainly together. The church was born to kindle fire, and we brazenly, blazingly, trust that because Christ promised it would, it will.

Church, hold the candle. Breathe. You know what to do.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia!