LaGrave Live, May 24, 2026
LaGrave Live
LIVE Morning Worship Service 05-24-2026
Portraits of Pentecost
May 24 is Pentecost Sunday! Pastor Jonker will preach on Ephesians 4: 17-31.
Order of Worship:
https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-5-24-AM-Order-of-Worship1.pdf
About the Church:
We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)
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Portraits of Pentecost: The Spirit Who Breathes New Life Into Ordinary Places
Pentecost Welcome and the Gift of the Spirit
This LaGrave Live service opens on Pentecost Sunday with a welcome to in-person and livestream worshipers, a summer schedule reminder, fellowship invitations, and an explanation that Pentecost is the day when the church remembers and gives thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The liturgist frames the Spirit as the helper and advocate promised by Jesus, emphasizing that the Spirit still lives, moves, breathes, and transforms believers each day.
Dry Bones, Confession, and New Life
The call to confession draws from Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, inviting worshipers to recognize the ways sin can make people rigid, dry, selfish, and bitter. The congregation prays for the Holy Spirit to wash away sin, kindle the fire of God’s love, bend rigidity, and guide wandering feet into paths of peace. The assurance of grace then turns to the risen Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on his disciples and saying, “Peace be with you.”
Pentecost Prayer and Congregational Care
The prayer portion of the service gives thanks for the Spirit’s presence, the long-range planning work connected to the community and service center, city leaders, and servicemen and women. The congregation also prays for members recovering from surgery, those receiving rehab or hospice care, families grieving loss, local ministries serving people in crisis or seeking employment, people affected by evacuations and a chemical explosion in California, and world leaders involved in peace talks. The prayer repeatedly asks the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into people, communities, and the world.
Ephesians and Life Under the Spirit
The Scripture reading comes from Ephesians 4:17–32, where Paul contrasts the old self with the new self created to be like God in righteousness and holiness. The passage calls believers to put off falsehood, speak truthfully, refuse to let anger become sin, avoid unwholesome talk, and be kind, compassionate, and forgiving. The sermon presents this reading as a portrait of what life looks like under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit.
Grand Landscapes and Small Portraits of Pentecost
The sermon explains that the Holy Spirit’s work can be painted in two ways: as a grand landscape of redemptive history or as a small domestic portrait of ordinary life. The preacher compares the first half of Ephesians to broad, dramatic landscape paintings and the second half to intimate Vermeer-like scenes. Pentecost can be understood as the Spirit moving through history, uniting Jews and Gentiles and expanding the gospel, but also as the Spirit quietly transforming conversations, forgiveness, kindness, and relationships.
Truthful Speech, Forgiveness, and Compassion
The sermon focuses on three smaller “portraits” of the Spirit’s work: truthful, vulnerable speech that shares joys and sorrows; quick forgiveness that prevents anger from fermenting into bitterness; and kindness toward vulnerable people. Examples include friends sharing grief and joy, a student whose struggle with math changes after forgiving a first-grade teacher, and a middle-school choir showing patience and compassion toward a distressed neurodivergent student. The message concludes that the Spirit moves not only in dramatic signs of wind and fire, but also at kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in classrooms, and in small acts of mercy.
LaGrave Live
If you’re looking for a warm church that commits to an intensely pertinent Gospel in the Reformed tradition of the Christian faith, we invite you to worship with us. Our 1,800 members come from across West Michigan and gather weekly in our sanctuary for relevant Biblical preaching, beautiful music, and inspiring worship. We expand our worship through intentional outreach in our community and world, attentive care for our members, and plenty of spiritual enrichment and social opportunities for everyone.
We focus on a living Savior who provides genuine solutions to the deep needs of a hurting world. We are committed to need-meeting ministry in His name, and we are committed to being real people who enjoy real life and who cry real tears. Because we are a fairly large and diverse group in terms of age, occupation, marital status, lifestyle, and physical ability; our members create many accessible opportunities for community service, Bible study, and small social groups.
We worship God, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, and we enjoy expressing our vision of His holiness through traditional music and formal liturgy.
Music plays an integral part of our weekly worship gatherings. Congregational singing—of both traditional hymns and newer ones—is typically supported by our pipe organ. Vocal choirs, handbell choirs, small ensembles, instrumentalists, and vocal soloists provide additional music offerings.
Led by the Holy Spirit, we seek to worship and serve God in all of life, transforming His world and being transformed to reflect the character of Christ.
Founded by 36 Dutch immigrants on February 24, 1887, LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church has always been deeply committed to both this local community and worldwide missions. God has seen fit to guide and bless these commitments with sustained growth, spiritual gifting, and a continual stream of new work for our members.
Speaker Identification
**Speaker 1 – Worship Leader / Liturgist**
Leads the Pentecost welcome, announcements, confession, assurance, profession about the Holy Spirit, prayer-guide updates, and congregational prayer. The transcript does not name this speaker.
**Speaker 2 – Congregation / Corporate Reading**
Used for congregational responses and corporate spoken portions where the transcript indicates responsive or collective participation.
**Speaker 3 – Music / Congregational Singing / Choir**
Used for hymns, sung responses, and musical sections. Several lyric sections were too garbled to reconstruct confidently.
**Speaker 4 – Sermon Speaker / Pastor**
Reads Ephesians 4:17–32 and preaches the sermon on Pentecost, describing both grand and intimate portraits of the Holy Spirit’s work. The transcript suggests the speaker may be named Peter, but that should be verified.
**Speaker 3 – Music / Congregational Singing / Choir:**
[Opening music and pre-service audio. Repeated automated transcription artifacts have been removed.]
**Speaker 1 – Worship Leader / Liturgist:**
We gather together this morning on Pentecost Sunday to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit
and God is present with us this morning and greets us with these words
May the love of the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you all
Good morning and welcome to La Grave Avenue Christian Reform Church
Whether you're worshiping with us here in person or through our live stream
We are glad you have joined us this morning
We extend a special welcome to anyone who's visiting with us
and I say well done to you as well as all of you for being here at 10 o'clock
This marks the beginning of summer for us and so services will be at 10
So make sure you say hi to someone new who you may not see during the school year
because they're an 840 person and you are in 11 or vice versa
Everyone's invited to join us in the multi-purpose room after the service for coffee and fellowship
That room can be found down the hallway and to the right
With only one service it can sometimes get a bit cramped in here though it seems alright today
If you need overflow seating there's live stream in the multi-purpose room
and by the end of June the chapel will be back up and running
and there will be live stream in there as well
For the summer Trinity Health our neighbor over there is letting us use their parking lot
during Sunday morning worship so if you find it's hard to find parking in our lots
feel free to use theirs at the corner of La Grave and Cherry
and you enter in from the La Grave side
As mentioned in the greeting today it's Pentecost Sunday
the annual Sunday in the church calendar year where we give thanks and remember the gift of the Holy Spirit
Jesus promised his disciples that after he left he would send to them a helper, an advocate
that is the Holy Spirit and just as the Holy Spirit came to the disciples
so too is the Holy Spirit living, moving, breathing and transforming us each and every day
Even though the Holy Spirit is with us there are times where our human sinfulness stifles our ability
to follow its leading and guiding
and hear this story from Ezekiel and as you do confess those times where you have been like dry bones
and give thanks for the Holy Spirit which breeds new life into you
The hand of the Lord was on me and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord
and set me in the middle of the valley it was full of bones
He led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley
bones that were very dry
He asked me, son of man can these bones live?
I said, Sovereign Lord you alone know
then he said to me prophesy to these bones and say to them
Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord
this is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones
I will make breath enter you and you will come to life
I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin
I will put breath in you and you will come to life
then you know that I am the Lord
let us go to God in our prayer of confession
Dear God we confess that we have sinned against your law and we have failed to do your will
we have become rigid, dry, selfish and bitter
Lord send your Holy Spirit to reign upon our dry and dusty lives and wash away our sins
send your Holy Spirit to kindle within us the fire of your love so that our selfishness and bitterness may burn away
with your warmth bend our rigidity
and guide our wandering feet in paths of peace in men
the gift of the Holy Spirit is good news for us
it connects us to God and it brings us life
as you hear the story of Jesus and his disciples
remember that God continually breathes new life into you
because of his grace, mercy and love for you
on the evening of the first day of the week
when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders
Jesus came and stood among them and said
peace be with you
after he said this he showed them his hands and his side
the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord
again Jesus said
peace be with you
as the Father has sent me
I am sending you
and with that he breathed on them and said
receive the Holy Spirit
if you forgive anyone's sins
their sins are forgiven
if you do not forgive them
they are not forgiven
thanks be to God
the Holy Spirit
we pray
our love
we pray
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
to our peace
so
Now
Holy Spirit, come on, we'll be free to see and I'll be free.
Holy Spirit, come on, we'll be free to see and I'll be free.
Holy Spirit, come on, we'll be free to see and I'll be free.
We'll be free to see and I'll be free to see and I'll be free to see and I'll be free.
Please remain standing as we proclaim what we believe about the Holy Spirit.
At Pentecost, promises old and new are fulfilled.
The ascended Jesus becomes the baptizer, drenching his followers with his spirit,
creating a new community where Father, Son and Holy Spirit make their home.
Reindeer, to the breath of God, amen, now your old, be raised and seated.
The Spirit renews our hearts and moves us to faith, leads us into truth and helps us to pray,
stands by us in our need and makes our obedience fresh and vibrant.
Father, Spirit, pass us to the existence of the Spirit in this mighty variety,
our policy, encouragement, healing, teaching, service, promise, discernment,
including each member to build up the body of Christ and to serve our neighbors.
Hallelujah!
Two updates for your prayer guide before we go to God in prayer.
First, Marlene Padding has moved to Medilog [facility name uncertain], where she's receiving rehab for her broken
ankle, and Ray Pader has moved to Trillium Woods to receive hospice care.
We will keep both of them in our prayers.
Let us pray.
Dear God, on the day of Pentecost, many, many years ago, the scriptures tell us the apostles
were all gathered together in one place, when they heard the sound of a blowing wind,
and saw tongues of fire come to rest on each of them.
On that day, your spirit came to the apostles, just as you promised it would.
And today, as we gather together in one place, your spirit is present with us.
Thank you for the gift of your spirit, Lord.
Thank you for the way your spirit fills us, like our breath fills our lungs.
And thank you for the way your spirit sustains us, like our breath sustains us with oxygen.
Lord, just as we are thankful for the gift of your spirit, we are also thankful for the
way your spirit is at work in our lives.
Thank you for the partners in ministry and the long-range plan committee.
Thank you for the many hours they continue to invest in order to bring to fruition the
vision of the community and service center.
Thank you for our city leaders and for the work they continue to do to support this project
and care for Grand Rapids.
Thank you for our servicemen and women, for those who have served in the past, for those
who are serving today, like Blake and Tim.
And for those who you have not yet called to the service.
We thank you for their sacrifice and for the sacrifices their families make too.
Lord, it is by the power of your Holy Spirit that our prayers reach you.
And this morning, we humbly come before you and ask that you be with our congregation,
our neighborhood, and our world.
Be with those who have had surgery in the last few weeks.
For Steve, Barb, Jack, Marlene, Barb, and Joy.
Lord, surgery takes a toll on the body, and so we pray you grant each of these people
strength and a good recovery.
We pray for Dorothy Andersma and now Ray Pater, too, who are receiving care at Trillium.
We are near to them and their families in this season.
We pray for the Clover family as they grieve the loss of Ken and ask that you comfort them.
And we pray for families who are grieving this weekend, as they are reminded of the loss
of family members and friends who served our country.
Along with our Church Lord, we pray for Degage [spelling uncertain] and Mel Trotter [uncertain] as they continue to support
those in crisis, those who are unhoused, and those seeking employment.
Strengthen them in their work and breathe new life into them this season.
And finally, Lord, we pray for our world.
We pray for the people who are being evacuated in California and for the responders working
to stop the chemical explosion.
We pray for peace and safety, both in our country and in the rest of the world, Lord.
Send your Holy Spirit.
May it breathe new life into the peace talks and guide our world leaders today.
On this Pentecost Sunday, Lord, we are acutely aware of the spirits present with us.
Until the next Pentecost, may we stay in tune with your spirit, giving thanks for the way
it fills us and breathes new life into our willing souls.
In your name we pray, amen.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of division,
with the sisters voice of prayer,
with the power to the good of them witness,
with the peace be of the world.
Come Holy Spirit of God.
Come Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
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With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
With the Holy Spirit of God.
**Speaker 3 – Music / Congregational Singing / Choir:**
[Congregational singing / hymn. Exact lyrics unclear in transcript.]
**Speaker 4 – Sermon Speaker / Pastor:**
Our Bible reading this morning is from Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
Ephesians chapter 4, I'll read verses 17 through 32.
You might call it the second half of Ephesians.
The second half is starting at verse 4.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called.
So really you'll hear this passage.
Everything in here is Paul describing what life looks like when it's under the influence of God's Holy Spirit.
Listen.
So I tell you this and I insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Having lost all sensitivity, they've given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity and their full of greed.
That is however not the way of life that you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self which is being corrupted with its deceitful desires
and to be made new in the attitude of your minds, to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for we are all members of one body.
In your anger, do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.
Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with their own hands that they may have something to share with those in need.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice.
Be kind and compassionate for giving one another just as in Christ God forgave you.
This is the word of the Lord.
So it's Pentecost Sunday and that means I'm Pentecost Sunday.
For one Sunday of the year I get to wear my red stole and the church dresses itself and red and looks quite spectacular.
And all preachers get to preach on the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit as it moves in our life.
And as I think about that and as I thought about that this week there are really two ways, two portraits.
You can paint of the Holy Spirit's work as you look at the work of the Spirit in Scripture and as you think about the Spirit's work out there in the world.
For instance on the one hand you could paint the grand landscape.
When I think of a grand landscape I think of one of those big western panoramic landscape pictures that used to be painted in the 19th century
by people like Albert Beirstead and Thomas Moran.
Now I know many of you maybe aren't artificial in autos and you don't know those names but I'll bet you've seen these pictures.
These are big romantic pictures of the American West so like maybe Yosemite at sunset right from a distance.
The sky is crimson and the mountains are purple and there's a waterfall kicking up steam and there's two men on horseback and the foreground and sort of looking out over all this beauty.
These are these romantic pictures of the American West meant to evoke the beauty and splendor of the West.
They're great paintings.
We could look at Pentecost that way.
We could talk about Pentecost and the grand work of the Holy Spirit throughout redemptive history.
We could talk about Acts 2 and how everything changed in the world on that day when the Spirit fell on the disciples and 3,000 people were converted
and it was the beginning of how the Gospel went from Jerusalem to Samaria to the ends of the earth.
Old men dreaming dreams, young men seeing visions, sons and daughters prophesying.
Big picture, big landscape.
We could preach it that way.
And actually for the first three chapters of Ephesians, or in Ephesians,
for the first three chapters of Ephesians that's exactly the way Paul is preaching it.
Paul is like the Albert Bierstadt, the Thomas Moran of Theology for the first three chapters of Ephesians.
He's trying to make it as big as possible.
The Holy Spirit has come upon the world and now Jews and Gentiles are going to be united.
All the ancient walls are going to be broken down.
Everything's going to change.
God is uniting everything in heaven and on earth.
The whole cosmos is changing.
He paints things as broad as they could possibly be.
And he says, I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power
and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith
and so that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all gods,
holy people to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
You can hear him trying to paint it big.
But the grand landscape is only one way to approach Pentecost.
You could try to paint a Thomas Moran as a preacher or you could try to paint a Vermeer.
Johannes Vermeer, 17th century Dutch painter, I think you probably know his paintings.
They're small, domestic, carefully ordered scenes, the girl with the pearl earring,
the milkmaid, a young lady pours, a young servant pours milk into a bowl,
a young girl in the parlor doing her lace work, a piano lesson being given in the living room,
small, small frames, small pictures.
In the first half of Ephesians, Paul paints like Thomas Moran,
in the second half of Ephesians he paints like Vermeer.
Small frames, small canvases.
The spirit's work not in the grand scheme of history but in the ordinary places of our life.
The Holy Spirit is not for Paul, just this great force that moves history.
The Holy Spirit goes down into all your intimate places and makes you a new person.
Paul paints all kinds of small portraits of what the spirit looks like in this passage
and how it works and I'll get to those in a second.
But before he paints a portrait of how the spirit works in our life, he paints a small portrait
of the old spirit that used to rule the Gentiles before they became Christians.
And it's an ugly picture, right?
People who've lost all sensitivity and abandoned themselves to sensuality.
When I imagine what that portrait would have actually looked like, I think of maybe a person
sitting by themselves in a poorly lit room, maybe one candle,
and they've looked in their eyes that somewhere between boredom and desire.
A person who's lost within themselves, who are spirits are numb and who are going around
lurching towards pleasures trying to fill up their empty souls.
That's the old spirit that Paul paints in Ephesians 4, and even though it's an old painting
of the dominant spirit of that age, it's surprisingly familiar to this age too.
It's the spirit that drives pleasure-seeking partiers, but maybe even more importantly,
it's the spirit of a middle-aged man sitting in his den watching TV late at night.
His wife's gone to bed long ago, and he's working on his third drink, and he's restless,
and he's sort of half-watching the game that's on TV and half-licking through his phone,
sometimes looking at porn.
He's restless, lost, not sure what his life is for.
It's a surprisingly familiar picture that Paul paints.
But then Paul turns from that old picture of the old self, and he starts to paint new portraits
of life in the spirit.
And I want to share with you three portrait-city paints.
There's more than three things Paul says at the end of this chapter, but I want to focus on three portraits,
and for each of them I'm actually going to imagine a picture that goes with them.
Portrait number one.
Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for you
are all members of one body.
And what is the picture that I imagine here?
The picture I imagine here is two women at a coffee shop.
They've been talking for 45 minutes, and they both have a motion on their face,
and one friend is reaching over to the other friend's hand and giving it a squeeze.
Now that may be for you a strange picture to bring up with these words.
You say, well, wait, Peter, I heard what you just said.
Isn't Paul talking about lying?
He says, you must put up falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor.
Well, yes, absolutely that's what Paul's talking about, but he's talking about more than that.
If you look at the big context of the passage, Paul is talking about having positive, truthful,
open, authentic, vulnerable speech with each other, not just refraining from lying,
but having the kind of speech with each other that builds up the body, right?
He says, for you are all members of one body.
Speech that builds each other up.
He says it later in the passage, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth,
but only what is helpful for building each other up.
It's just not just the negative of not lying, it's the positive of life-building talk.
When I think of this portrait, I think of something I learned from Christian Wiman years ago in his book,
which I think is a great book, My Bright Abyss.
Wiman noticed this simple thing, which I'd never noticed before.
He says, when you do not share your joys, when you don't share the joys that are in your heart,
they grow smaller, and when you don't share the sorrows that are in your life,
the sorrows grow bigger and they get heavier.
Unshared joys get smaller, unshared sorrows get bigger.
Here's what he says.
Christ comes alive and the Spirit moves in communion between people.
I am pretty certain that without shared social devotion, without sharing our souls,
one solitary experience of God wither into a form of withholding and spiritual stinginess,
the light of Christ growing ever fainter in the gloom of the self.
Shared joys get bigger, shared sorrows get smaller.
This is really true.
Think of how this works.
So imagine that something bad happens in your life.
Say you and your wife have a miscarriage when you're really looking forward to having a kid,
and you're holding that sorrow inside.
And then finally, the weight of it's so strong, you go and tell a friend, you say,
this is just killing me, but this happened to me and my wife a while ago.
Now, the sorrow of the event is still as strong as ever, but what's happened?
You've taken a little bit of it and you've given it to your friend.
And so now you have someone to help you carry it.
The sorrow is still great, but it's not just one of you carrying it, it's two.
The sorrow goes smaller.
But when you take a joy and you share it with others, say ten months later, you're pregnant again,
we're expecting we're so excited, it's so great.
Your joy at expecting again doesn't get any smaller when you share it,
but it does increase because now that joy is passed on to someone else
and they can be joyful with you.
Unshared sorrows get heavier.
Unshared sorrows get heavier.
Unshared joys wither, shared joys grow.
Here's what Wiman says.
Even if you are socially shy and generally inarticulate about spiritual matters,
that is to say, even if you are a raving introvert,
you must not swerve from the engagements that God offers you.
That doesn't mean everybody has to be an extrovert, but all of us have got to find ways
to share the stuff that's on our hearts.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
This is the way of the Spirit.
And when you do that kind of very basic sharing with each other, you may not hear wind
and you may not see fire, but I promise you the Spirit of Pentecost is moving.
Portrait number one.
Portrait number two.
In your anger, do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.
Here's the little picture I see with this one.
It's a young college student bent over his math exam.
Why is that picture?
Well, just stay with me.
So I think it's obvious that in this passage Paul is trying to get you to deal with your anger right away.
Because if you don't deal with your anger right away, if you let the sun go down on it,
it can ferment into bitterness.
It can become sort of this steady state of bitterness in your soul.
As an alternative, what you want to do with your anger is forgive.
When you let your anger become bitterness and malice, the Spirit is grieved.
The devil has a foothold when you forgive or give as Christ forgave you.
He says at the end of the passage, when you forgive, your anger changes, is transformed by the power of the Spirit.
Here's the story of that.
It's a story about a man who taught at Calvin Jim Bradley taught in the math department.
He was teaching a hundred level stats class at Calvin, which means it's the kind of class that non-majors take.
You have to take it because it's part of the core.
He's teaching this class and one day after class a student comes up to him and says humbly,
can I get out of this class?
I'm so bad at math.
I do not want to take this class.
Is there any way I could take a psychology class or something else, please?
And Professor Bradley said, well, why do you want to get out of this?
He says, I'm terrible at math.
I said, oh, come on.
You just know I'm really terrible.
Believe me.
I know I'm really bad.
Okay, says Professor Bradley.
I have here just a sort of a rudimentary standard aptitude test.
You take it, I'll grade it, and then we'll talk.
So the young man takes the aptitude test and he bombs.
He's absolutely terrible.
He can add and subtract, and that's about it.
Okay?
And Mr.
Bradley says, oh my goodness, how did you get through high school with this
level of aptitude?
And he said, I would just cram.
I would memorize everything and then I would just dump it out and it would immediately
all evaporate from my head.
I wouldn't think about it again after that.
Well, when did you first decide you were bad at math?
Professor Bradley said.
And the boy said, when I was in first grade, my teacher held up a math class.
A math sheet that someone had done and said, this is not how you're supposed to do it.
This is bad.
Don't do this.
And it was my sheet.
And at that moment I decided I am bad at math.
Well, Professor Bradley said, okay, look, you got to take this course.
It's core.
I'm not going to let you out of it.
I'll give you a tutor.
But the first thing you need to do is forgive your first grade teacher.
And the boy was surprised and said, oh, really?
Okay.
I'll think about that.
They ran into each other two weeks later.
Professor Bradley says, you've forgiven your teacher yet?
He's like, no, I haven't done that yet.
You got to forgive your teacher.
A little later he did forgive.
I don't remember from the story how that all went.
Maybe he wrote a letter.
Maybe it was just something that happened in his heart.
The forgiveness was given.
And he went on and he took the class.
The first test came.
He passed with 66%.
Second test came.
He passed this time with like in the 80s, the third test, the last of the semester, 95%
the highest grade in the class.
Pentecost in a stats class.
The spirit was moving.
The spirit was working through that teacher, working through that forgiveness to unleash
something in that young man to change him in a way that he didn't even know he could
be changed.
Last portrait of Pentecost.
Paul says, be kind and compassionate to one another.
Be kind and compassionate to one another.
In the picture that comes to my mind here, the portrait is of a middle school high school
choir, Grand Rapids Christian middle school choir circa 2012.
Back then I still had children in middle school and like a good dad, I did go to middle
school choir concerts as many of you have gone to as well.
And I remember watching the sixth graders that year and my children were not in this
choir but I watched them too.
And they did a good job singing but what really stood out in this choir was there was
one boy in the choir who was clearly not neurotypical.
And so for the whole concert, this boy was so agitated, the lights, the crowds, the noise,
he would cover his ears, he would stamp around, he turned to the side, he'd step down off
the bleacher.
He was really distressed.
And it was hard to watch.
And in my mind I thought back to when I was in middle school in the late 70s and I thought
how would we have treated a kid who acted like that back in our day?
And I thought we would not have been nice.
We were not nice.
We would have been angry, we would have said what are you doing that?
Or maybe later we would have talked and said what's the matter with that guy?
I'm so sick of him.
But that's not what happened that night.
Those kids, those sixth graders were so patient with this young man.
I don't know whose name.
And they kept singing, they didn't let him distract him and more than that they would
talk gently to him if he needed a little hand on his back, if he needed to move so he could
get up again.
They were just relentlessly kind.
Be kind and compassionate to one another.
There was a lot of great singing at that concert that night but the best thing I saw
was the way those kids treated that young man.
There was no fire on their heads, there was no sound of wind in that auditorium but the
Holy Spirit was there.
The Spirit moves everywhere.
He blows in the great movements of history.
He moves the whole universe towards the new creation and he blows at your kitchen table
and in the coffee shops and in every one of your quiet conversations.
And when you open your heart to him, it is good.
Amen.
Lord, as we hear the rain come down on this place and the sound of your rain renewing
the earth and making it fruitful.
So we too feel and know the power of your Spirit in this place renewing our lives and
making them fruitful.
Holy Spirit, take whatever in us that is dry or whatever in us that is twisted or whatever
in us that is afraid and change it we pray.
Make a strong and joyful people for you in your world.
In Christ's name, amen.
Lord, we are so alive.
Lord, we are so alive.
We are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are alive.
We are so alive.
We are so alive.
We are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are alive.
Holy Spirit, we are alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
People of God, receive your Pentecost blessing.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
be in abide with you all.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
Holy Spirit, we are so alive.
**Speaker 3 – Music / Congregational Singing / Choir:**
[Closing song and postlude. Repeated automated lyric artifacts have been removed.]







