Today is Pentecost. It’s the day in the life of the church when we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to the community of faith. Jesus tells us: “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14:17). The gift from God is so grace-filled that we have no hurdle to jump, no distance to walk, no external requirement, not even a sacrament to take, in order to receive the Spirit from God. We don’t have to be in a special building. We don’t have to eat a special meal. We don’t have to say a special prayer or make a special vow. All we have to do is to surrender our hearts toward the Lord, to stop fighting, to stop guarding our own stances of self-preservation. All we have to do is pause our anxious reactions to the events of the world and breathe in the breath of God.

It’s understandable if you don’t feel like pausing and praying, breathing and being in God’s presence. Our hearts are all over the place. That’s because the world is full of worries, which leave you and me speechless. The world neither sees nor knows the Spirit of truth. All I have to do is look at my phone, or the computer, or tune into NPR, or watch the news on PBS,[i] and I can hear or watch recordings of a man being threatened because of his orientation, or his ethnicity, or his religion. It has been five years since I watched footage of the final moments of a man who was suffocated while he was pinned to the ground under someone’s knee. What has changed since then? This spring, I’ve watched as people who are unarmed and praying in the United States Capitol Building are arrested,[ii] while this week pardons are being doled out to armed protesters who marched into the United States Capitol Building, destroyed property, and ended or threatened lives.[iii] The world neither sees nor knows the Spirit of truth.

My spouse, Amy, who works on tax policy with the National Women’s Law Center, is very busy right now. She’s reading through the big bill making its way through Congress. She’s making phone calls and writing edits to produce something to say about how all this money will go from some people to other people, from poor people who need it to wealthy people who don’t need it.[iv]

What will people in Maryland do when they lose their SNAP and Medicaid assistance? How will the Maryland Food Bank increase its capacity to help when its own grants are being cut by our country’s leadership?[v] How many people will suffer and fall into deeper poverty because of who and what our neighbors voted for? And how many people around the world have already died because of our elimination of US assistance and aid to other countries? The world neither sees nor knows the Spirit of truth.

Wherever I look, there is a world of worry. And I feel overwhelmed by it. Even my dreams are dreary. And people who are already living on the margins – the poor, the isolated, those most vulnerable to the uncertainty and disruption of the trade wars – those are the people who are most anxious for good news. We all are anxious, and we are dismayed. Maybe we are even ashamed of the evil done in our sight. I’ve asked myself: How can all of this be happening?

It’s not entirely new though. One decade to the next, the unheard cries of people afraid of the police have erupted again and again into destruction – the destruction of property, as well as the destruction of this country’s false impression – that everything’s fine, that the status quo works for everyone, that no one’s humanity is abridged, or justice denied. Do you remember when a man protested silently and without destroying any property at all, just by taking a knee at sporting events? People hate him, and his silent protest ended his career. We take note of his protest, remembering how disruptive or disrespectful it was, but we don’t – as a nation – hear him.

We don’t respond with deference and compassion or make swift changes to how we treat one another. We don’t listen to Jesus’ words: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12-14). But we follow the ways of a world that does not the know the Spirit of truth, and with the crowd we just nod, and wait, until the protest has passed.  

I don’t know if what worries you is immigration, or racism, or inequality, or the rule of law, or polarization, or warfare, or the national debt. It just feels like we’re desperate and thirsting for some good news, for life, for renewal, for peace, for joy or something else. And I pray that we each find it. I pray that we can pick out the Spirit of truth from the deceptiveness of the world. I pray we leave all the half-truths behind us. I pray we look at ourselves without flinching. I pray we examine our own biases, our blind spots, our faulty assumptions and our bad habits.

Is that what’s keeping us from seeking wholeness and healing? Are we too afraid that we’d lose something if we looked at ourselves too closely? What do we have to lose – our sense of innocence, that we are above reproach? Are we so fragile that we’re terrified of admitting fault or that we’re complicit in the world’s harsh treatment of others?

“Do we honestly, truly, want to be well?”[vi] That’s a question the Rev. Anna Blaedel asks. She continues:

When it feels like the world is ending…

When grief is raw, and pain is pressing…

When the too muchness of sorrow fills the space within and around and between…

When I don’t know where or how to begin the practice of meeting life as it is…

I have learned to do two things: drink water, and breathe.

We breathe in the breath of life from the Spirit of truth, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”[vii]

The prophets in the scriptures are the ones who told the people who had the power to love or to harm what it meant to be a faithful follower of God. They reminded Israel that no matter how things were going – if they were in exile, if they were under occupation, if they were in the dark days of a famine – they still could extend care and help to their neighbors.

It took prophets and it took our Savior to remind us of what the Spirit of truth proclaims. The world neither sees nor knows the Spirit of truth. And if we get used to believing the lies of this world, that we can do nothing about the trouble we see all around us, then we will miss Jesus’ promise: “You know the Spirit of truth because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

Because that’s what you do when you see trouble all around you. You do your best to pause, to drink water, to breathe in the Spirit of God, and to open your eyes to see God’s reality of otherworldly empathy, to hear God’s word of unyielding compassion more clearly, to know more fully the truth of God and its demands on you. These are not commandments made from high above in heaven. The presence of God is not far from you or from me. It’s a voice, a breath, a Spirit, which rests within each of us and is straining to speak and to be heard. And it has words of conviction and challenge for us all.

And it is ready to teach us to be brave, and to confront our own suspicion, that the world is in need of God’s justice and truth, righteousness and holiness. The Holy Spirit is able and ready to teach us to ask in humility for grace, for understanding, for compassion, and then for peace. The Spirit of God, which is not far from us, is within and among us to teach us to be a people who show what it looks like to love one another, to love neighbors we’ve known for decades and to love newcomers whose voices are unfamiliar and hard to understand, because that’s the miracle of Pentecost.

The good news of God’s love is shared with strangers whose voices are different, whose customs are different, whose appearance and demeanor are different. The good news of God’s love is shown – not just paid lip service – it is shown by the Church’s sharing of stories (not in the language known to its members but in ways better understood by outsiders). And it’s in this change in how the people of God speak, using words which mean something to the people on the margins, that the Church shows how gracious God is.  

As the Church we can love the world, because God first showed us what love looks like. It looks like an overflowing of welcome and empathy to the full diversity of the human race. That’s what Pentecost means. And the Spirit of truth will bring life where there was nothing before. It will bring water there was none. It will bring clarity to those who don’t know what to believe anymore. It will bring righteousness and holiness to those who don’t know the first thing about helping others before themselves. It will turn the world’s weeping into joy, if we surrender our allegiance to the ways of the world and give ourselves to God. I pray we will. And I invite your response. Amen. 

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[i] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/03/white-house-asks-congress-to-codify-9-4b-in-doge-cuts-to-foreign-aid-npr-pbs-00382872

[ii] https://religionnews.com/2025/06/02/faith-leaders-healthcare-advocates-arrested-while-protesting-hop-budget-bill-in-capitol/

[iii] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/03/pamela-hemphill-jan-6-trump-pardons/84005883007/

[iv] https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2025/06/03/trump-big-beautiful-bill-catholic-250830

[v] Jessica Kronzer, WTOP, https://wtop.com/dc/2025/05/we-are-bracing-for-impact-federal-funding-cuts-slash-supplies-at-dc-area-food-banks/ May 2, 2025

[vi] Anna Bladel, “Do We Want to Be Made Well?” https://enfleshed.com/blogs/moments-for-common-nourishment/do-we-honestly-truly-want-to-be-well/

[vii] Nicene Creed, The United Methodist Hymnal, p. 880.