Sermon - 5-19-24

Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song and Praise

We are doing many things in our worship service today. Each one is a different celebration. It is important in our community of faith to recognize those things that we can celebrate. Celebrations can also remind us of what we can be thankful for.

We give thanks to God for our music staff and all that they do celebrate the gifts of all those who are called to participate in our music program. This is what the community of faith is about, sharing our gifts to the glory of God. Music can bring us closer to God in Jesus Christ. Music also proclaims the good news. Many times, in rehearsal Deb has said to preach what we are singing.

Music is an offering to God. We practice and practice and then we offer in worship to the best of our ability, the gifts we have been given. It is not considered a performance. Here is a good place to bring the Holy Spirit in as we rely on the Holy Spirit in our offering, to bring the message clearly home.

I believe we also have many singing with us today in the heavenly choir. Especially today, we can remember Walter and his many years that he sang in the choir. Many of you will also remember others who have participated in our music program who are in heaven continuing to worship and praise our triune God.

Today we also recognize our graduates. People who have been working on their education and continue to do so. We celebrate their gifts today and the gifts that God has given them to share with us and our neighbor. Once again the Holy Spirit is alive and active in their lives. We pray that as they continue their journey in the pursuit of education and experience that the Holy Spirit would continually remind them of Jesus’ love for them and that this community of faith is here to continue supporting them.

Today we also celebrate the Affirmation of Baptism of 3 of our youth. We go back and forth on calling it confirmation or affirmation of baptism. It is all the same as the confirmands are confirming their relationship with Jesus Christ and affirming this relationship that began at baptism. In class we have studied this year the sacraments, Reformation, Advent & Christmas, the Old Testament and the New Testament. We did a retreat at Stony Lake, where we did all of the Holy Week services.

I can’t forget to mention one of their favorite things to do, worship notes. Thank you for doing them as it helps me to see if what I have said in my sermons came across. Thankfully it seems that I have been getting the message across as what I read in their notes is what I said.

This past week we met with Calvin, Raymond, and Jasper and they shared with Pam, myself and their parents how they relate to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you for your sharing your faith with us. They also shared the Bible verse that they chose for today and told us why. Thank you.

This is what is important, to see if the material we learned relates to their lives. The sharing they did was an opportunity for them to put their faith into words. Jesus calls each one of us to share our faith wherever we are on our faith journey. We hope that they will continue to share their faith and gifts here in our community in our ministries.

Yes, today is Pentecost where we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. We also call it the birthday of the Christian church. The story of Pentecost truly describes the church that Jesus was teaching about.

Jewish people gathered from all over to celebrate the giving of the Torah (the ten commandments, the law) to Moses. God picked this time as it was a scheduled celebration. Yet there were so many people who had come from different cultures and spoke different languages. How was this going to work? Jesus had prayed for the church to be one.

Too often we have equated oneness with thinking and feeling exactly the same way. Sometimes when this doesn’t happen we can feel uncomfortable, anxious and often defensive. The beauty of being diverse and inclusive is that we are all different in some way. It is hard for some to believe that this is God’s doing not ours.

What happened on that Pentecost Day is that everyone understood in their own language the message and work of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit allowed them to do this. She was bringing them all together even though there were so many differences.

Here is the model of the church that Jesus was preaching and teaching about. A place where peoples’ differences are celebrated, respected and it invites the opportunity to learn from each other. We can grow into more whole people and see more of what God wants us to see. This is still the church that God is looking for.

This is our challenge to live and share this message within these doors and out in our community with our neighbor.

As we have gathered here today to celebrate the gifts here in this place at this time with each other and to glorify God. We are challenged to share them with our neighbor while celebrating, respecting and desiring to learn from their gifts and continue growing into the church that God envisioned on that Pentecost Day.