Sermon for The Feast of Pentecost, 2026

Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun darkened. The moon turned to blood. Peter doesn’t soften it. He stands before the crowd with the full weight of a world under judgment, groaning under sin and death and the ancient enemy who wields power against it, and declares: into this world, this blood-and-fire world, your world, the Spirit of the living God has come. 

Into your world. Into this one. Into the grief that attends you here today. 

And then Peter recites the last verse of Joel’s prophecy, the one that answers death and the grave: “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

Everyone. You, with your grief, your doubts, your prayers answered other than you hoped, your suffering that hasn’t lifted. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. 

Yes, you, Beloved; you have been calling on that name. Every time you’ve returned to this place, every time you’ve confessed your sins and heard the Absolution declared over you by Christ’s own minister, every time you’ve knelt at this rail and received what Christ gives, you’ve been calling. The name of the Lord has been on your lips and in your heart, given there at your baptism, when water was poured and the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit was placed upon you and made yours: yours to call upon, yours to cling to, yours on the days when everything gives way.

Readings:

• Old Testament: Genesis 11:1-9

• New Testament: Acts 2:1-21

• Holy Gospel: John 14:23-31

Sermon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjjGKPZz9Ic