Sundays at All Hallows (Sunday, June 8, 2025)
This Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost, a very important day in the life of the Christian Church. It recalls the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and the others gathered in the upper room as Jesus had promised and the Christian Church was born. Like Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, it is one of the most momentous occasions in the history of salvation. Jesus created the Christian Church to carry on his mission of reconciling God and humanity.
In this Sunday’s message we look at what the gift of the Holy Spirit means for us.
GATHER IN GOD’S NAME
Open this link in a new tab to hear Bruce Brolsma’s Prelude on DOWN AMPNEY for organ.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Marty Haugen’s “Spirit of God.”
1 Spirit blowing through creation,
spirit burning in the sky,
let the hope of your salvation fill our eyes;
God of splendor, God of glory,
You who light the stars above,
all the heavens tell the story of your love.
2 As you move upon the waters,
As you ride upon the wind,
Move us all, your sons and daughters deep within;
As you shaped the hills and mountains,
Formed the land and filled the deep,
Let your hand renew and waken all who sleep.
Spirit renewing the earth,
renewing the hearts of all people;
burn in the weary souls, blow through the silent lips,
come now awake us, Spirit of God.
3 Love that sends the rivers dancing,
love that waters all that lives,
love that heals and holds and rouses and forgives.
You are food for all creatures,
You are hunger in the soul,
in Your hands the brokenhearted are made whole.
4 All the creatures you have fashioned,
All that live and breathe in you,
Find their hope in your compassion, strong and true;
You, O Spirit of salvation,
You alone, beneath, above,
Come, renew your whole creation in your love
Spirit renewing the earth,
renewing the hearts of all people;
burn in the weary souls, blow through the silent lips,
come now awake us, Spirit of God.
Jesus said, "The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel:
The Lord your God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love
your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment
greater than these." Mark 12:29-31
Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.
Silence
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins
through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all
goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us
in eternal life. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Christoper Idle’s “Glory in the Highest.”
1 Glory in the highest to the God of heaven!
Peace to all your people through the earth be given!
Mighty God and Father, thanks and praise we bring,
singing Hallelujah to our heavenly king.
2 Jesus Christ is risen, God the Father's Son!
With the Holy Spirit you are Lord alone!
Lamb once killed for sinners, all our guilt to bear,
show us now your mercy, now receive our prayer.
3 Christ the world's true Saviour, high and holy One,
seated now and reigning from your Father's throne:
Lord and God, we praise you! Highest heaven adores:
in the Father's glory, all the praise be yours;
in the Father's glory, all the praise be yours!
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray.
Silence
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful
people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit:
Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all
things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through
Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.
THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles
Acts 2:1-21
When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young will see visions.
Your elders will dream dreams.
Even upon my servants, men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.
The sun will be changed into darkness,
and the moon will be changed into blood,
before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
The Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Silence
Open this link in a new tab to hear Marty Haugen’s adaptation of Psalm 104, "Send Forth Your Spirit."
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
1 Bless the Lord O my soul,
O God you are great indeed.
You are clothed in majesty and splendor,
and adorned in a robe of light.
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
2 O God how countless are your works.
By your wisdom, you fashioned them all.
All the earth is filled with your creatures.
Oceans teem with the life you made.
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
4 All that lives looks to you in hope
to give them their food in due season.
You open your hand.
They feast on good things.
You hide your face, and they are lost.
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
5 I will sing to my God while I live.
May the prayer of my heart please my Lord.
Bless the Lord O my soul.
Praise the Holy One.
Forevermore, give praise to God.
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
Send forth your Spirit, O God,
send forth your Spirit, O God,
and renew the earth, renew the earth.
Send forth your Spirit, O God.
A reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans
Romans 8:14-17
All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.
The Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Silence
Open this link to hear Shirley Erena Murray’s “As the Wind Song Through the Trees.”
1 As the wind song through the trees,
as the stirring of the breeze,
so it is with the Spirit of God,
as the heart made strangely warm,
as the voice within the storm,
so it is with the Spirit of God.
Never seen, ever known
where this wind has blown
bringing life, bringing power to the world,
as the dancing tongues of fire,
as the soul's most deep desire,
so it is with the Spirit of God.
2 As the rainbow after rain,
as the hope that's born again,
so it is with the Spirit of God,
as the green in the spring,
as a kite on a string,
so it is with the Spirit of God,
making worlds that are new,
making peace come true,
bringing gifts, bringing love to the world,
as the rising of the yeast,
as the wine at the feast,
so it is with the Spirit of God.
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.
John 14:8-17, 25-27
Glory to you, Lord Christ.
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father; that will be enough for us.”
Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been with you all this time? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I have spoken to you I don’t speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me does his works. Trust me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or at least believe on account of the works themselves. I assure you that whoever believes in me will do the works that I do. They will do even greater works than these because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask for in my name, so that the Father can be glorified in the Son. When you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will send another Companion [or Advocate], who will be with you forever. This Companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him, because he lives with you and will be with you.
“I have spoken these things to you while I am with you. The Companion [or Advocate], the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you.
“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Christ.
A Promise Kept: The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, while they appear separately in modern translations of the Bible, are actually a single narrative. The Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of the narrative that Luke began in his gospel. In the closing passages of his Gospel Luke records the last instruction of the risen Jesus to his disciples before he ascends into heaven:
“Look, I’m sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power.”.” (Luke 24: 49 CEB)
In this Sunday’s first reading, Acts 2: 1-21, finds all the believers meeting in one place on the Feast of Pentecost, Shavuot, which was celebrated 50 days after Passover. Originally the Feast of Pentecost was primarily a thanksgiving for the first fruits of the wheat harvest. During the festival an offering of the new wheat was presented to God. In later times, however, it became associated with a remembrance of the Law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Suddenly the gathering heard a sound like the roaring of the wind before a storm, first in the heavens and then in the room in which the believers were gathered. If you live on or near the top of a hill here in Kentucky and you have trees growing close to your house, the wind will roar through the branches of the trees, tossing them about and sending leaves flying, when a thunderstorm approaches. It is a telltale sign that a storm is coming.
Now if you have heard that sound, imagine it in a room with a low ceiling. If you have seen paintings and drawings of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon this gathering, the room in which the believers are gathering is depicted as having a high ceiling and to even cathedral-like in its appearance. In some cases, it resembles the chancel of a medieval church.
None of these paintings and drawings accurately depict the kind of room in which the believers were gathered. The sound would have been quite deafening. Those gathered in the room would have been startled.
Something even more surprising happens next. What looks like flames or tongues of fire appear out of nowhere and envelop everyone present. They begin to speak in languages that they did not learn at any time in their lives, talking in unfamiliar words about the wonderful things God had done.
The noise attracts a crowd of Jews who came from other countries but are living in Jerusalem. They are amazed to hear them speaking in so many different languages, languages they themselves understand.
As they grew older, Jews who lived in the Diaspora, the various places that the Jews lived outside of Judaea and Jerusalem, moved to Jerusalem so they could be close to the Temple and be buried in a cemetery at Jerusalem upon their death. There would also have been Jews from the Diaspora who had businesses in Jerusalem.
The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the believers at Jerusalem was a one-time event. Despite what some folks would have you believe, nothing extraordinary like what happened to the believers in Jerusalem usually happens when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So how do we know that we have received the gift of God’s indwelling presence?
The believers in Jerusalem were given the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower them to be witnesses to Jesus, to energize them to continue Jesus’ mission in the world. God gives that gift to all believers for the same purpose.
How do we as believers witness to Jesus?
Among the ways that we witness to Jesus is to live our lives according to his teaching and example. We share the good news of Jesus with others. We have spiritual conversations with them and point them to Jesus. If they repent from their sins and turn to Jesus, we disciple them. The Holy Spirit empowers and energizes us to do all those things. Indeed, we could do none of them without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus himself compared the Holy Spirit with the wind. The wind is invisible to human eye. What we do see is scudding clouds, tossing branches, rippling grass, whirling fallen leaves, the effects of the wind. The same is true with the Holy Spirit. We see the effects of the Holy Spirit—a growing devotion to Jesus, transformed lives, those manifestations of the Spirit which the apostle Paul called the gifts of the Spirit, those changes in character that he called the fruit of the Spirit.
If any trees grow near where you live, take a look at one on a breezy day. Notice how the wind moves the branches at the top of the tree and farther down. Then think about your own life. How have you changed? What is the Holy Spirit doing in you?
In this Sunday’s second reading, Romans 8:14-17, Paul tells us that the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in our live is proof that we have been adopted as God’s children. We are reassured of the truth of what we believe.
In this Sunday’s third reading, John 14:8-17, 25-27, we learn more about the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. On occasion we hear or read about a hiker who wandered off the trail, got lost, and died. They were usually hiking a trail with which they were unfamiliar. They may have left the trail to relieve themselves and were unable to find the way back to the trail. Or they took what they thought was a shortcut, only to discover that it did not lead them to where they wanted to go. We know that this sort of thing happens from the accounts of those who manage to survive.
While it may not be as adventuresome to hike with someone else who knows the trail very well, it is safer. In very rugged terrain a seasoned guide, someone who is an old hand at hiking a particular trail, is a must.
For the believer the Holy Spirit is like a seasoned guide for a hiker on an unfamiliar trail. The Holy Spirit will enable us to take the right path and to stay on it. When we wander off that path, the Holy Spirit will nudge us back onto it.
The Holy Spirit will remind us of Jesus and the apostles’ teaching as recorded in the Bible. The Holy Spirit will not give us any special personal revelations that differ from what the Bible tells us, revelations which add to what the Bible teaches or take away from what it teaches. The Holy Spirit always points to Jesus, not away from him to someone or something else. The Holy Spirit will not elevate a pastor, philosopher, or politician in Jesus’ place.
As we have seen, guiding the believer is not the only role of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life but it is an important one. The Holy Spirit helps us to avoid the perils and dangers that we face along life’s way.
Most important of all is that it is the Holy Spirit who from the very outset arouses and awakens faith in us, enabling us to turn from sin, to enjoy a life-giving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and to be his true disciples, “to walk in the light as children of light.”
Silence
[Let us affirm our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed]
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
THE MINISTRY OF PRAYER
Let us pray for the Church and for the world.
Particular intentions may be mentioned before this litany, or petitions added at appropriate points.
Grant, Almighty God, that all who confess your Name may
be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal
your glory in the world.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the
ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another
and serve the common good.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
Give us all a reverence for the earth as your own creation,
that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others
and to your honor and glory.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours, and grant
that we may serve Christ in them, and love one another as he
loves us.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
Comfort and heal all those who suffer in body, mind, or
spirit; give them courage and hope in their troubles, and
bring them the joy of your salvation.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
We commend to your mercy all who have died, that your will
for them may be fulfilled; and we pray that we may share
with all your saints in your eternal kingdom.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer.
Heavenly Father, you have promised to hear what we ask in
the Name of your Son: Accept and fulfill our petitions, we
pray, not as we ask in our ignorance, nor as we deserve in our
sinfulness, but as you know and love us in your Son Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Timothy Dudley Smith’s “Spirit of God Within Me.”
1 Spirit of God within me,
possess my human frame;
fan the dull embers of my heart,
stir up the living flame.
Strive till that image Adam lost,
new minted and restored,
in shining splendour brightly bears
the likeness of the Lord.
2 Spirit of truth within me,
possess my thought and mind;
lighten anew the inward eye
by Satan rendered blind;
shine on the words that wisdom speaks
and grant me power to see
the truth made known to all in Christ,
and in that truth be free.
3 Spirit of love within me,
possess my hands and heart;
break through the bonds of self-concern
that seeks to stand apart:
grant me the love that suffers long,
that hopes, believes and bears,
the love fulfilled in sacrifice,
that cares as Jesus cares.
4 Spirit of life within me,
possess this life of mine;
come as the wind of heaven's breath,
come as the fire divine!
Spirit of Christ, the living Lord,
reign in this house of clay,
till from its dust with Christ I rise
to everlasting day.
THE SENDING FORTH OF GOD’S PEOPLE
[Let us pray in the words our Savior Christ has taught us.]
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us. Amen.
or
The peace of the Lord be with you.
And also with you.
All greet one another in the name of the Lord.
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