Sunday, May 24, 2026… The Day of Pentecost
“Streams of Living Water”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 25:1-15; Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21; John 7:37-44
Service Order: Responsive Prayer 2, p. 285
Hymns: “O Holy Spirit, Enter In” #913; “God’s Own Child, I Gladly Say It” #594; “Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying” #597; “Holy Spirit, Light Divine” #496
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is the Day of Pentecost on our Church calendar. That calls for some explanation, I think. The word Pentecost means “fifty.” Pentecost was originally the Jewish Feast of Harvest, which happened 50 days after the Passover Feast. Today in the Christian Church, Pentecost marks fifty days after the Ascension of Jesus, the day when He sent His Holy Spirit upon His disciples. Pentecost is sometimes called “the birthday of the Church.”
Jesus, before He left His disciples to return to Heaven, promised to send them His Holy Spirit. He told them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses, in Jerusalem, in Judea, and to the ends of all the earth.” On the Day of Pentecost, His promise was kept. On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit – and then the Spirit, by their word and by their witness, began to move and flow, out from Jerusalem and into the world.
The Spirit came to them like a fire, filling their hearts with faith and boldness and zeal for God’s truth. And the Spirit came to them, as it still does for us today, in the living water of Baptism, poured into us by God’s Word and Spirit, and then poured out from us into the world around us. “Go ye therefore and Baptize all nations,” Jesus commanded us. May the Spirit now flow from us into the ears and hearts of everyone we know, that everyone may be washed in Baptismal water for the forgiveness of their sin and brought to saving faith. And that, as we’ll see, is what Pentecost is all about.
John’s Gospel reads: “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.’” This particular Feast (and the Jews were big on their feasts), was the Feast of Tents, or Tabernacles, the one where the Jews would stay for a week in outdoor tents or shelters, to remember how God had been with them in their forty years in the wilderness. This particular Feast was eight days long, from Sabbath to Sabbath, with the eighth day being the “last and greatest day” the Gospel tells us about.
As with all the Jewish Feasts, this one drew a crowd, with Jews and visitors from all over the known world coming to Jerusalem to be there; so the city was filled with people. It was a joyful festival, full of food and wine and such, and everyone was there to celebrate and have a good time. And Jesus stood up in that eating and drinking crowd, bold as He could be, and said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”
The thirst Jesus was talking about here wasn’t for water or for wine. He was talking about spiritual thirst, and about a longing to know God. If you’ve ever been dehydrated or had a case of dry mouth -- one of those things where you just drink and drink and drink and can’t seem to satisfy your thirst – then you know what that’s like. Spiritual thirst is where you want to know God, and you’ve tried every church and religion there is -- every path to enlightenment, every road to prosperity, every prophet or guru there is in the world -- and that empty place inside you just isn’t getting filled. It’s where you’ve been doing and doing and doing to try to find your way to God, and all that doing and doing never seems to be enough.
And Jesus says, “If you’re thirsty, come to Me and drink.” “All who came before Me were thieves and liars,” Jesus once said, “but I Am the Good Shepherd” – the One who has what you really need for your thirst. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jesus is “living water for the thirsting soul.” You don’t need a new philosophy, or some fifteen-step self-help program, or some internet program that promises, for a price, to give you the calmness, contentment, and peace you’ve been looking for. (And AI Jesus just isn’t going to get it done!)
Your peace will come at last by Jesus the Christ, the one and only Son of God, the One who was crucified and raised up from the dead, outside the city of Jerusalem, in the year 33 AD – the same Jesus we confess in our Creeds. And that peace will come at last by giving up on your own agenda and confessing your faith in Him alone. “Surrender,” we Christians sometimes call that. And then along with the faith, comes Jesus’ life-giving, life-changing promise: “’Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.”
What does Jesus mean by that phrase, “steams of living water?” It’s a wonderful biblical metaphor! If you should ever become lost in the woods or the wilderness and find yourself in need of water, you shouldn’t, if you’re sensible, drink from the brackish pond, with the frogs and the lily pads and the floating green stuff; that water is likely to make you sick. Instead you should find a running brook, a place where the water flows over the rocks, because flowing water is much more likely to be cold and clean and good.
The Holy Spirit is “a river of life,” like living water that flows and moves. And if the Spirit, by faith, is living in you, the literal translation here is “rivers of living water will flow out of your belly.” In other words, if you have faith in Christ, His Spirit will come to dwell in you; and then you yourself will become a conduit, a channel, for the Spirit to flow into the lives of the people around you. That’s what it means to be a Christian witness. Your life, your words, your actions, the love and mercy your own life shows, will bring the life-giving Spirit to the people God puts in your path.
“Up to that time the Spirit had not been given,” our Gospel says, “since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” Pentecost, though it was coming, hadn’t happened yet. Pentecost was still awaiting the cross, where Jesus would pour Himself out for us for the forgiveness of our sin. Pentecost was awaiting the Resurrection, when Jesus would win us life forever with Him. Our faith is faith in Jesus who died for us, and who lives to give us life. “The Spirit testifies in our hearts that we are God’s children,” St. John says. And what we know, we just have to tell. “His Word is like a fire shut up in my bones,” says prophet Jeremiah; I just can’t keep it in!
Now, the thing about the Holy Spirit is that no one can see Him. The Spirit is “like the wind,” Jesus says. You can’t see Him, but you can see where He is, and you can see where He’s been, by the things He moves. The trouble, though, is that when we talk about a Spirit that you can feel, but can’t see, people that don’t believe, or are having trouble believing, might look at us a little sideways. The Father we can picture, and the Son we can understand; but for some, the “Holy Ghost” thing gets a little weird.
That’s what happens in our Gospel reading; and the world and the people we encounter in it are no different today. Some will hear the Good News, and believe and confess that “He is the Christ,” and bend their knees to Him. While others will doubt or mock or even laugh at what they don’t understand. “These guys have been in the wine,” said some in that Pentecost crowd.
“The people were divided because of Jesus,” the Gospel says. Some were moved to praise Him, and some wanted Him crucified. But “no one laid a hand on Him” – not yet; because the cross and Resurrection that would prove His Word was true hadn’t happen yet. But the Resurrection day did come – “Christ is risen indeed!” - and Pentecost came, and the Spirit came down. And now those who are willing to hear will hear, and those who are willing to obey Him will obey Him; and those who are willing will pick up their cross and follow Him. And everything comes down now to which side of the divide you find yourself on.
When we Baptize a child, or an adult, as Jesus commanded, and the Spirit comes, as Jesus promised -- nothing happens that we can see. No angels singing, no beam of light from heaven, no heavenly dove, no halo appearing over the head of the precious soul we’ve baptized. But by faith in what our Lord has said, and by faith in the power of the words He’s given us to say, we know that something certainly has happened, something holy and precious and good. The Spirit has been given. The seed of faith has been planted. The sin we’re all born with has been washed and forgiven and taken away, and a brand-new, born-again life has begun.
Every Christian Baptism, every child of God brought to faith, every life made brand new by the love of Christ, is part of God’s on-going, continuing, glorious Pentecost, as the Holy Spirit continues to be living and active in the world. The Spirit comes by wind and holy fire and the power of God, and the river of life flows on. May streams of living water flow through us all, as we live our lives for Christ. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Pastor Larry Sheppard
Trinity Lutheran Church, LCMS, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, LCMS, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com