Pentecost - June 4, 2006

Jesus, Name Above All Names is the first song in Creator Praise and there is something special in the chemistry between the musicians and the congregation. The singing reverberates in our ears and the sound is amazing. Great way to get into the service.

Red filled the sanctuary and Al Miller began the service by having us think about significance fire and water.

Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness, the opening hymn, echoed the lines from the prophet Joel quoted in the First Lesson;

Your sons and you daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams .

This is a spiritual statement, and could be a spiritual litmus test for a community. The Second Lesson is Romans 8:22-27, that beautiful description of how God works through the Holy Spirit.

Sara tells the children a story called The Kissing Hand. It is about a young racoon who is worried about leaving his mother for the first time. She passes on a kiss with a story that her mother gave her. She kisses his palm and tells him any time he needs to feel her love he should put his hand to his cheek and the kiss on the palm will fill him with warmth, comfort and the assurance that he is loved. Sara feels this is a story that captures how the Holy Spirit works.

Reverend Al spoke about Pentecost as being a story about connection after disconnection. “Pentecost…”, he continued, “is the conclusion of the wait, that started with the death of Jesus, for mission and certainty about what God wants from the church.”

Al spoke of his search, our search, for that certainty in our lives now. Al identified we are looking for that in song, in prayer and in the readings during the service. As far as our mission, Al referred back to individual stories of when we felt certain about God’s love and he, felt our sharing those faith stories in community was a large part of our mission.

Later in the service we recognized the high school and college graduates from Creator.

It was a service of recognition and remembering.