Pentecost is the culmination of everything that went before it. It is Pentecost that inaugurated the perpetual presence of Jesus in our world – through us and our fellow- disciples in the Christian faith. Whereas Christmas celebrates the God-become-human happening, Pentecost initiates the event whereby humanity becomes a vehicle and channel, the very temple of God.

It appears that it was the ascension of Jesus, His return to His Father, which made Pentecost possible. “It is to your advantage that I go away,” said Jesus to His disciples. “If I do not go away, the Counselor [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you...” The disciples understood nothing of this at the time. Now they learned through actual experience what Jesus was prophesying. While Jesus was with His disciples, the divine, supernatural power so necessary to the salvation of humankind was continued within the visible Jesus. After Jesus performed His mission and returned to the Father, the same divine, supernatural power responsible for Jesus’ resurrection and essential to the building of God’s kingdom upon earth was to return to inhabit and empower His disciples.

Pentecost has happened. The same divine Spirit that ministered in the creation of the world, producing cosmos out of chaos, that had ministered through the visible Jesus, has now returned to indwell and pour Himself out through the lives of all those who would in faith and obedience lend themselves to His infilling and outflowing.

We are the contemporary evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our world. May the Spirit work in and through us daily.

The prayer of Jesus on Maundy Thursday is called The High Priestly Prayer because with it Jesus functioned as high priest and interceded to the Father, for the disciples first and then for all believers. This prayer was not offered, as was the “Lord’s Prayer,” in order to teach His disciples how to pray. This prayer is truly the Lord’s Prayer, expressing in view of His coming crucifixion, the deepest feelings of His heart at a very critical hour in His life. The beauty and message of these words of our Lord are discovered in the expressions of love and concern for each of us.

Jesus prays that we have His joy fulfilled in us. He is not referring to the ecstasy that accompanies the religious experience of some people, but to true joy, eternal joy, the joy that filled the life of Jesus even while He faced betrayal and execution and that would abide in us even in the midst of this world’s catastrophes and calamities.

Jesus prays that we may be kept. “Holy Father, keep them your name, which you have given me...” We are the subject of God’s promises and Jesus’ prayer that we will be kept by God.

Jesus prays, not that we should be spared the conflicts and struggles of our world, but that in the midst of it all we might walk in the truth. “Sanctify them in your truth; your Word is truth,” prayed our Lord.

Our Lord loves us greatly! It is when we really believe in this love, accept and abide in this divine, everlasting love, that we will become lovers and will be enabled to communicate this love to our fellow beings in our world about us.

We stand in awe of the amazing, incredible, incomprehensible love that our Lord has for us. May our love for Him and all our human creatures grow daily as we reach out to love and serve

As people of God, we continue to affirm that salvation is by faith – the acceptance of God’s loving, forgiving, redeeming grace as revealed to us through the crucified and risen Jesus. Salvation – the forgiveness of our sin, eternal life, our adoption into the very family of God – all this is a gift of God. It is not deserved; it cannot be merited or earned; it must be acknowledged and embraced through repentance and by faith.

Yet there is more to the Christian life. There are responsibilities to consider, commands to obey, directives to carry out. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love...This is My commandment, that you love one another...You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit....”

While it is correctly understood that a total commitment to the saving love of God will resolve in sacrificial discipleship and obedient servanthood, in fruit-bearing, in being a responsible Christian, we realistically insist that the journey from salvation to servanthood is often a long and painful, as well as joyful, experience. Christian growth comes by the grace of God – as does forgiveness and love. We responsibly walk in that grace and in obedience to the commands of our Lord.

What are the commands of Jesus? “Love one another...Go and bear fruit.” Every one of us is called into full-time service for Jesus Christ, to be His servant in the parish or arena of life and activity in which we find ourselves today.

May God help us to be responsible Christians, not only in accepting Jesus and living by faith within God’s saving grace, but in obeying our Lord, and by His grace committing ourselves to the desperate needs of the human family.

The prayer of Jesus on Maundy Thursday is called The High Priestly Prayer because with it Jesus functioned as high priest and interceded to the Father, for the disciples first and then for all believers. This prayer was not offered, as was the “Lord’s Prayer,” in order to teach His disciples how to pray. This prayer is truly the Lord’s Prayer, expressing in view of His coming crucifixion, the deepest feelings of His heart at a very critical hour in His life. The beauty and message of these words of our Lord are discovered in the expressions of love and concern for each of us.

Jesus prays that we have His joy fulfilled in us. He is not referring to the ecstasy that accompanies the religious experience of some people, but to true joy, eternal joy, the joy that filled the life of Jesus even while He faced betrayal and execution and that would abide in us even in the midst of this world’s catastrophes and calamities.

Jesus prays that we may be kept. “Holy Father, keep them your name, which you have given me...” We are the subject of God’s promises and Jesus’ prayer that we will be kept by God.

Jesus prays, not that we should be spared the conflicts and struggles of our world, but that in the midst of it all we might walk in the truth. “Sanctify them in your truth; your Word is truth,” prayed our Lord.

Our Lord loves us greatly! It is when we really believe in this love, accept and abide in this divine, everlasting love, that we will become lovers and will be enabled to communicate this love to our fellow beings in our world about us.

We stand in awe of the amazing, incredible, incomprehensible love that our Lord has for us. May our love for Him and all our human creatures grow daily as we reach out to love and serve.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead...” Paul never hedged in his proclamation of the living Christ. It was a fact; it was his unfaltering conviction. His Damascus experience – the light from heaven driving him to the ground – the voice identifying Jesus: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” the divine command instructing the blinded Paul to submit to God’s will for his life – was enough to convince him that “Christ [had] been raised from the dead.” It was an experience Paul never forgot. It became the basis of his preaching from that time to the hour of his martyrdom.

Through Paul, through the apostles who saw the risen Christ, through the multitudes who have followed this Christ and witnessed to Him, who have preached and written about Him throughout the centuries, God has spoken to us.

The fact of Christ’s resurrection resolves into another astounding fact: we shall, indeed, be raised from the dead. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” wrote Paul. It is not logical or comprehensible to our three-dimensional insights; it is a fact, nonetheless, and a glorious hope that gives us the courage to joyfully march on – and even to risk our lives on behalf of others.

May our Savior help us to daily reflect and demonstrate His resurrection power to others we meet along the journey of faith.

As I type this, we are in the Lenten Season yet. But soon we reach that great and glorious day called Easter. Did you realize there are five Easters? Can you name all five of them?

This is the first Easter: That grand, glad, glorious Sunday centuries ago when Jesus came laughing, leaping, shouting, dancing, and singing right out of that gloomy granite grotto, raised and alive again forevermore. Jesus became our death-defeating, grave-conquering Savior!

This is the second Easter: The day of our baptism. For as St. Paul tells us, in this word-and-water miracle we were forever joined and united to Jesus, crucified and risen. In Christ, through baptism, we have already been raised from the tomb. Death and the grave already behind us – in Christ, through baptism.

This is the third Easter: Every Sunday worship. Sunday was the day the first Christians chose on which to worship because Sunday was the day Jesus rose and robbed death of its sting and the grave of its victory. And so, soon we celebrate Easter. And every Sunday is Easter when we sense, see, show, display and experience the joy and hope of Easter as we sing our songs, say our prayers, do the liturgy, greet and fellowship with one another (still with masks and social distancing!).

This is the fourth Easter: The way we think, feel, speak, act, and live every day. Each new day is an Easter, as we rise from sleep and live every fleeting moment as a precious gift from God!

This is the fifth Easter: The one to come! On some near or distant day, the risen Jesus will return, speak the reviving, resurrecting word, then call us forth (perhaps from our graves, along with those whom we have loved and laid to rest before us). And then what? Why then life, love, and laughter that will never end. Resurrection, and an eternity of joy beyond our wildest hopes and dreams.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah! He is risen indeed. Hallelujah! Amen.

Pastor Drews

“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered...” Hebrews 7:8. Our loving God does not initiate suffering; it is the consequence of our living in this world into which God put us – and often the consequence of our own foolish mistakes. If Jesus suffered and it was on our behalf and because of our sins even though it was perpetrated by the people who pinned Him on the cross: can we as God’s children through Christ’s redemption expect anything less?

We may not be able to understand how Jesus learned obedience through suffering, but He was obedient even to His final words while on the cross: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” He didn’t reject His suffering; nor did He rebel against it. He faced it, accepted it, and it became the means of redeeming human, sin-ridden creatures for God.

This, then, must be our answer to the problem of suffering. Face it, accept it – and use it. Allow it to teach us obedience, to make out of us people fit for the Master’s use and the means for healing and blessing to those who suffer about us.

May our Lord teach us how to accept and cope with suffering, how to accept our status as God’s beloved child and servant, how to embrace the validity and power that goes with it, and walk and serve in joy even in the midst of misery.