Pastor's Midweek Message

May 20, 2026

Sisters and brothers,

What an amazing day we had on Sunday!

If you weren’t there, you missed out on some incredible worship, fellowship, and catching up with old friends who came home for the day. It was indescribable, having the chance to meet people whose names I’d only heard, and to share in worship with 100 people praising God for the first 70 years of God’s faithfulness here on the hill.

This weekend is Pentecost, which is an amazing opportunity for us to keep the energy going. It’s the weekend we celebrate the Holy Spirit, and so we will use this day to do just that. We’ll continue to praise God for leading us, and we’ll look forward into the NEXT 70 years, to ask God to lead us where God needs us to go. We’ll also receive four new members, including one by adult baptism, which will make this a very special day indeed.

I absolutely love Pentecost. It’s one of my favorite times in the Christian calendar, because it seems to me that we so often ignore or downplay the Holy Spirit, whom we celebrate that day. Pentecost is a Greek term meaning “fiftieth,” as it occurs the 50th day after Easter Sunday. On that day, Acts 2 relates, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they preached Christ crucified to the people of Jerusalem, and thousands came to be saved. From that day on, the Christian movement spread, powered by the fact that the Holy Spirit had been given to all, just as Jesus had promised before his death.

Pentecost isn’t actually a uniquely Christian holiday—its roots are Jewish, did you know? Just as the events of Good Friday to Easter were tied to the Passover celebration, Pentecost occurs on the festival of Shavuot, or the “Festival of Weeks,” which is to happen 50 days after Passover, according to Deuteronomy 16:10 and Exodus 34:22. Shavuot was a harvest festival, happening seven weeks (50 days) after Passover, and was a celebration of renewing of covenant.

Just as Jesus re-presented Passover to us in Holy Communion, the Holy Spirit re-presents Shavuot to us in Pentecost: the harvest is no longer wheat, but the mission fields of all the world where Jesus’ name is to be shared with everyone. And the covenant that is renewed is not the covenant of old, but the new one of water and Spirit that Jesus promised us. All of this makes Pentecost the perfect weekend for us to welcome new members, and to look forward to how God is inviting us to follow for the next 70 years.

And yes, it being Pentecost, it’s one more opportunity for you to wear red this weekend! So come and celebrate the release of the Holy Spirit into the world. Come and celebrate how the Spirit is inviting us forward into our next seven decades. Come and welcome our newest sister and brothers in Christ, and the regenerative work that God is doing in and through us, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Come and find that joy lives here, and then carry that joy out into our world.

So let’s go.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Eric