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Heat. Heat. Easter.

It's been 10 days since Jesus resumed his place in the Trinity. You just never know what might happen, folks. But stand and join me as we give thanks for baptism.

Hallelujah. Christ is risen. >> Christ is risen indeed.

Hallelujah. >> Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb. >> Amen.

>> Let us give thanks for the gifts of baptism. Merciful God, you are the one who was, who is, and who is to come. You lead us beside still waters.

We thank you for the waters of creation. Morning dew, gentle rain, roaring waves. We thank you for the waters that nourish us.

Blessed are you. >> Jesus Christ, you are the faithful witness who accompanies us on our journeys. We give you thanks for your lifegiving death and resurrection.

We praise you for joining us in joy and sorrow. Blessed are you. >> Holy Spirit, you anoint our head with oil and our cup overflows.

Break down barriers that divide us. Fill us with a breath of peace. Blessed are you, >> Holy One.

We thank you for the gifts and grace of baptism and for making us a new creation. We join with saints and angels, giving you honor and praise now and forever. Amen.

Good morning. I will feel the spirit. moving in my heart.

I will pray every time I feel the spirit. I will pray every time. Feel the spit.

Every time I feel the spit will not soul. Every time I feel the moving heart, I will pray. Every time I feel the spirit >> the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

>> And also with you. Yours is the promise of earthj. Sing praise to your holy name.

I see God to the earth. to your holy name. Glory glor.

>> The Lord be with you. >> Let us pray together. Oh God, on this day you open the hearts of your faithful people by sending into us your Holy Spirit.

Direct us by the light of that spirit so that we may have a right judgment in all things and rejoice at all times in your peace through Jesus Christ your son and our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God now and forever. Amen. Please be seated.

if they are children president and I would welcome the opportunity to chat if not once again let's just as the people of God the children of God of all ages let's be aware again of what a incredibly powerful day this is so that you know the power went off at my house Friday afternoon when the storms arrived and the power didn't come on for hours. So, like a lot of people in my general area of the city, I was scrambling for something, looking for flashlights, those kinds of things to find it. And yeah, and what powers I found the flashlight.

Hadn't tried the flashlight in the wild. So, the issue is what? Will the batteries work?

Will the batteries work? Well, the batteries did work. And the battery at that flashlight led me to find where my wife had stacked all the candles.

So then I lit the candles and there was light. But the wonderful reality of the Christian faith is in the sacrament of holy baptism, somebody didn't stick a battery in each of us. But in that holy moment for most of us more than a few years ago, we got all the gifts we need to live the life of extraordinary faithfulness before the Lord God.

I keep saying, remember the master's words, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And he wasn't talking about batteries. He wasn't talking about dominance.

He was talking about the extraordinary ability to do some extraordinary things in the power of the Holy Spirit in a world that's ever in need. We'll hear the holy scriptures. A reading from the book of the Acts of the Apostles.

When the day Pentecost had come. The apostles were all gathered together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem.

And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they ask, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language?

Parththeians, Meslummites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Capidoshia, Pontis and Asia, Friia and Panilia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Sirene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proelites, cretins and Arabs. In our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." But Peter, standing with the 11, raised his voice and addressed them.

Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only 9 in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.

In the last days it will be, God declares that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. even upon my slaves, both men and women. In those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy, and I will show portance in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The word of the Lord.

>> Thanks be to God. >> We continue with the psalm. of the earth.

and your sprees. Wonder Ships and their season. Good things.

terrify the earth. Glor. I will sing God bless my soul.

Hallelujah. A read, excuse me, a reading from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. No one can say Jesus is Lord except the Holy Spirit.

Now there are varieties of gifts but the same spirit. And there are varieties of services but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities but is it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. To one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit. To another faith by the same spirit.

To another gifts of healing by the one spirit. To another the working of powerful deeds. To another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same spirit who allotss to each one individually just as the spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Hallelujah.

Hallelu to whom shall we go? Hallelujah. >> The Holy Gospel according to St.

John the 20th chapter. >> Glory to you, Lord. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you." As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. The Gospel of the Lord.

>> Hallelujah. Please be seated. From the late Jim Stevenson, a former pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran in Hickory, North Carolina, came this story.

A child went to Sunday school one Sunday and was delighted to discover that the pastor was to be the teacher that day. And the topic of the lesson was to be the same as the pastor's sermon. God is present everywhere all the time.

It was a wonderful lesson and the child could hardly wait to get home to tell the family the insight it gained. The child and the mother were together in the kitchen as the child began to share this new insight. Is God in that cabinet over there?

The child asked. Yes, mom said. God is in that cabinet over there.

What is God in the refrigerator? Well, yes, mom replied. God is in the refrigerator.

Even when the door is shut and the light is out. Yes, came the reply again. Even when the door is shut and the light is out.

And during this conversation, the child has picked up the sugar bowl and turns to her and says, "Is God in this sugar bowl?" "Yes," came the answer again. While the child quietly reached over and picked up the lid and just as quickly plopped it down on the bowl, "Gotcha!" the child triumphantly proclaimed. All the efforts people go to keep God secure in a sugar bowl.

Some try to separate God's concerns from worldly needs and concerns because God, they say, is really only interested in spiritual things. So that when moments of ethical compromise come and deep inside we know only too painfully that we have sinned in thought or word or deed. That's the time we want God safely in the sugar bowl.

That's what lies behind the message of God's prophet Joel from whom Peter quoted extensively in his sermon on the day of Pentecost. The day of the Lord by the time of Joel had become an expectation for Hebrews of a day to come when the Lord would appear would reap vengeance on the enemies of Israel and reap blessings on the Hebrews as we have today a serious misuse and misquing of holy scripture by political figures and political rallies. So it was in Joel's day.

So God sent the prophet Joel with a different message for the people. Because of their sins, the coming day of the Lord will not be light and joy. It will be darkness and destruction.

The passage Peter quoted at Pentecost is Joel's call for national repentance. We heard Joel's message in our Ash Wednesday worship. God is not in some sugar bowl.

The prophet declared, "God knows what kind of people you are. God knows what you do. Repent.

Rend your hearts and not your clothing. The prophet said, "Who knows? Perhaps after the Lord's judgment has swept over us, God will leave us a blessing behind." God is forever getting free of these little sugar bowls, the efforts to control and contain the Almighty.

Some 800 years after the prophet Joel, amid speculation and expectations of the coming of a messiah, God got loose and came into this world. So the late Dr. Bill Lazarus liked to say as a 5'2 160 pound hook-nosed Jew born in a Bethlehem stable and raised in a carpenter shop in Nazareth.

The whole thing was offensive. Jesus was a scandal to his own people. back into the sugar bowl.

They tried to contain him with a cross this time and a stone. But God Almighty cannot be contained. From the risen Lord came that command to a handful of disciples as Jesus prepared to resume his place in the Holy Trinity.

Jesus, stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. And Pentecost is the fulfillment of that wonderful promise. A group of former, fearful, despondent, now forgiven, faithful followers come behind Jesus.

And because of that, they are transformed into bold proclaimers of God's saving love for all the world in Jesus Christ. Jesus I said last Sunday spoke in the plural in all of that you he had said each and every one of you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come and you each and every one of you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. Sadly, we see and hear mirrored the sins of Joel's day where the promises of the Almighty are now misqued and misused to promote an understanding of God's power as little more than political prop.

Jesus promise of power to faithful disciples become shock and awe, dominance and destruction. A man sleeping on the street in Time Square, cops said, was stabbed to death by a teenager motivated by tick- tock trend. The stranger was a wanderer passing through the city.

His devastated family said Leonadus Baze was murdered outside a restaurant on West 43rd Street near 7th Avenue on Monday night, May the 4th by a 17-year-old boy who told the cops he was following a mess with a crackhead trend on Tik Tok when he antagonized the sleeping stranger while awaiting his arraignment in Manhattan's criminal court this month. He later changed his story. Some 30 years after Pentecost, misunderstanding and misuse of the spirit's gift of power in the congregation at Corenth has caused division and disruption to God's mission and ministry there.

So St. Paul sent several letters to the congregation as the prophet Joel had done some 850 years earlier to address God's intent for God's people. How is it so easy to get it so wrong generation after generation?

Jesus promise was clear. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes. They did on the day of Pentecost.

We do today in the sacrament of holy baptism. What did Jesus mean? It's more the experience of ancient Elijah watching his mentor, the prophet Elijah, prepare to leave.

Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit, he pleads. It's the promise of David. It's his repentant plea in the 51st Psalm after his great sin.

Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Pentecost is more than sounds like a rushing wind, tongues like fire, or a multitude of different languages spoken simultaneously. It's the power Jesus promised, the power of the spirit of the living God to change and transform ordinary people like you and me into the disciples through whom God intends to redeem this sinful world.

days after Pentecost, Luke reports in Acts, Peter and John were praying. And when they had finished praying, Luke reports the place in which they were gathered was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. Paul wrote to the congregation at Corenth because the gospel truth today dear folks is each of us is spirit gifted for the good of all. The gifts that God has given to grace through each and every one of us are so varied that together we can do the work that God has given grace to do truly to God's glory and to the blessing of God's people in this congregation and far beyond the outpouring of the spirit and the gifts of the spirit brings are for all God's people everywhere that enables God's mission here that empowers our witness to God's saving love in Jesus Christ for this world by the lives we live by the good we do by the words we say the child went back to Sunday school.

The following Sunday, Pastor Stevenson reported to report to the pastor the conversation with Mama in the kitchen. "God is in all those things," assured the pastor. "And God is in you, and God is bigger than all those things, too." Well, is God bigger than my daddy's garage?

The child asked. Yes, replied the pastor. God is bigger than your daddy's garage.

Well, if God is in me and God is bigger than my daddy's garage, why doesn't God stick out? You, all of you. will be my witnesses to the end of the earth.

Jesus declared and so we are. Amen. of God.

The heart with the SP to the world. It is rain. Bless you.

Bringing the world of God. We now profess the faith we share using the words of the Apostles Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontious Pilot, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead.

>> He rose again. >> He ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the father.

And he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Trusting in the power of Christ's resurrection to heal and redeem our broken world. Let us pray for the needs of all creation. Oh God, you send the Holy Spirit to gather your church into one.

Inspire all ministers of the gospel to speak prophetic and hopefilled words to all whom they encounter. Bless the work of interreligious dialogue. Merciful God, >> our pray.

>> You send the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth. Protect all living things. Bring forth clean water and abundant food.

and grant us wonder as we contemplate all that you have made. Merciful God, our pray, >> you send the Holy Spirit to break down the barriers of communication among nations. Bestow peace in war torn areas.

Guide all in government and society to work for justice and guard those serving in the armed forces especially this weekend as we remember those who have died in service to their country. Merciful God our pray >> you send the Holy Spirit to accompany those who feel abandoned. Provide food for those who hunger and drink for those who thirst.

Soothe those who are anxious or bererieved. Comfort those who are sick or suffering. And answer all who call upon your name, especially those we lift before you now, whether silently or aloud.

Merciful God, our pray, >> you send the Holy Spirit through the gift of baptism. Bless both those preparing for or affirming their baptism. May they be encouraged by this community of faith as they live out their baptismal promises.

Merciful God, our pray, >> you send the Holy Spirit to console us in our grief. We give you thanks for our ancestors in the faith whose witness to your mighty works continue to inspire our lives. Merciful God, >> our pray.

>> God of resurrection power, use us and these prayers to proclaim the good news of new life to all the world through Jesus Christ our risen savior. >> The peace of the Lord be with you always. >> As you're comfortable, share a sign of God's peace.

My heart Awesome. My heart Mary understand the Blessings. Christmas.

>> Let us pray together. Merciful God, accept the fruits of our labor, gathered to give you glory. You have set a table before us, a glimpse of that great day when we will hunger and thirst no more.

Nourish us with the body and blood of Jesus, that goodness and mercy may follow us and bless the world you love in the name of Jesus. Amen. The Lord be with you.

>> Also with you. >> Lift up your hearts. >> We lift them to the Lord.

>> Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. >> It is right to give our thanks and praise. It is indeed right, our duty, and our joy that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, Almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ.

You call your people to cleanse their hearts and prepare with joy for the pascal feast that renewed in the gifts of baptism we may come to the fullness of your grace. And so with all the choirs of angels with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven we praise your name and join their unending hymn. God glorest in the highest.

Blessed are you, oh God of the universe. Your mercy is everlasting and your faithfulness endures from age to age. Praise to you for creating the heavens and the earth.

Praise to you for saving the earth from the waters of the flood. Praise to you for bringing the Israelites safely through the sea. Praise to you for leading your people through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey.

Praise to you for the words and deeds of Jesus, your anointed one. Praise to you for the death and resurrection of Christ. Praise to you for your spirit poured out on all nations.

In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat. This is my body given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.

Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it for all to drink, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people, for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me. With this bread and cup, we remember our Lord's Passover from death to life.

As we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died. Christ is risen.

Christ will come again. Oh God of resurrection and new life, pour out your Holy Spirit on us and on these gifts of bread and wine. Bless this feast.

Grace our table with your presence >> spirit. >> Reveal yourself to us in the breaking of the bread. Raise us up as the body of Christ for the world.

Breathe new life into us. Send us forth burning with justice, peace, and love. Holy Spirit, >> with your holy ones of all times and places, with the earth and all its creatures, with sun and moon and stars, we praise you, oh God, blessed and holy trinity, now and forever.

Lord, remember us in your kingdom and teach us to pray. 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.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kind is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Come to the table of new life. Receive the risen Lord. Thank God.

Holy Spirit is high. Holy Spirit glory Holy Gordon Glory holy spirit. Lord, I We are to be Holy Spirit.

Mother Earth. Amen. Send us now speak to your nations.

Amen. Bless you. All Glor.

Good morning. Uh just a few announcements for today. We welcome and are thankful for all who have worshiped together here in person and online.

Uh today your completed mission site profile task force questionnaires are due and can be dropped off in the fellowship hall box or in the office. Uh tomorrow the office will be closed in observance of Memorial Day. Please take note that next Sunday, May 31st, is our fifth Sunday, but we will still have both 8:30 and 11:00 a.m.

services. In between the services, there will be an ELCA National Youth Gathering interest meeting. We start our worship summer schedule of weekly single 10 a.m.

services on the following Sunday, June 7th. Uh this Sunday will also be confirmation Sunday with a confirmation reception following the service at 11:30 a.m. Please refer to grace not grace notes weekly update emailed every Tuesday for more details and other uh important information.

Now let us read our mission statement together. We share God's grace by welcoming all people, growing together in faith, and joining God's work in our community.