The lectionary passages are:
– First Reading: Acts 2:1-21 or Ezekiel 37:1-14
– Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
– Second Reading: Romans 8:22-27 or Acts 2:1-21
– Gospel Reading: John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

The liturgical color for the day is: Red

If you have been following the tradition of the church and using the reading from Acts during the season of Easter as the first reading, then this incredible “Can these bones live?” text from Ezekiel will be the way reading from the Hebrew Scriptures is re-introduced to the worshipping congregation.

While there are many avenues into the texts for the Day of Pentecost, here in South Florida where the breeze is almost always blowing, one cannot help but be captivated by the role of the wind in the texts.

The texts can be read from the perspective of God breathing or “breezing” into our lives that breath of creation and re-creation.  When it feels like we are worn out or nothing will happen—God takes to us with that wind-blown life of the Spirit and gives us this newness and possibility.  God makes us spirited.

The wind of God’s presence blows into our living promising us what the God of Ezekiel promised, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.”

That Spirit is the wind of our living.  Count on the wind!  Trust in the wind!  Put yourself in the way of the wind!

Only when we allow God to move in us and spirt our lives in such a way that we can become like the bread of communion—broken and shared—do we discover that Spirit which is always there.   

The Holy Spirit is blowing into the life of the Church and into all of us.  As that happens, those old fears and anxieties and pandemic isolation—it is all blown into this newness.  That newness is this vibrant life in Christ—our job is to count on the wind, trust in the wind, and put ourselves (and our churches) in the way of the God-wind! 

—

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk