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PASTOR ’ S CORNER
“Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord, with all your graces now outpoured, on each believer’s mind and heart, your fervent love to them impart.” Martin Luther penned this in the 16th century as the opening to a prayerful hymn. The words affirm the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, as God and Lord.
All too many in our day ignore the divinity of the Holy Spirit. They ignore the Spirit as a person. They associate the Spirit with “the Force” in Star Wars. They see the Spirit as impersonal.
Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, the third most significant of the three major festivals of the Church Year (Easter, Christmas and Pentecost). Yet, many acquiesce to our culture and focus on Memorial Day. Trinity Sunday, which follows the next week, gets even less attention.
I appreciate Memorial Day. Memorial Day is an important remembrance - I recall annually preaching a Memorial Day Service at the Church Cemetery in one congregation I served. Yet, I am too conservative to give a Sunday Service to a cultural holiday - even one that can bring me to tears of appreciation for the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for our country.
We remember our honored dead, but in our dying age we need to more than ever plead to God the Holy Spirit, who is poured out on Christ’s Church. We need to pray, “Come, holy light, guide divine, Now cause the Word of life to shine. Teach us to know our God aright and call Him Father with delight…Let none but Christ our master be, that we in living faith abide in Him, our Lord….” We plead, “Come, Holy Fire, comfort true. Grant us the will Your work to do.”
On this Sunday pray to the Holy Spirit, who as Luther elsewhere writes, “has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the One true faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.”
(Editor’s Note: This column is written by a different Littlefield pastor for the Leader-News each week. The columns are published on this page on Wednesdays.)