Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for May 24, 2026 (Pentecost A)

The descent of the Holy Spirit (1732), oil painting on canvas by Louis Galloche (1670-1761). Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (or alternate Second Reading): Acts 2:1-21

Fifty days after the first Easter and a week or so after the apostles watched in amazement as the resurrected Jesus was taken up into the clouds, they have gathered to celebrate Shavuot, the Jewish spring harvest festival also known as Pentecost. Suddenly the Holy Spirit arrives like a violent wind and rests on each of them as a tongue of fire! All at once, Jesus’s promise at the Ascension is fulfilled: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.” The apostles start shouting the Good News in many languages, prompting a startled crowd to wonder if they are drunk. Not so, says Peter. Quoting the Prophet Joel, he assures the crowd that the Spirit will be poured out for all.

First Reading (alternate): Numbers 11:24-30

Seven weeks after Easter, we celebrate Pentecost, the third major church holiday of the year. On Christmas, we remembered the birth of Jesus. On Easter, we recalled Jesus’s death and resurrection. Pentecost completes the circle with God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, inspiring us to take the Gospel out to the world in Jesus’s name. This alternate first reading tells about God’s spirit empowering Moses and 70 of his elders, and adds that the spirit also came to Eldad and Medad, two of Moses’s elders who weren’t there with the other 70. That didn’t seem fair to Moses’s assistant, Joshua, but Moses reassured him: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

Psalm: Psalm 104:25-35

This psalm of praise exults in all the works of God’s creation, memorably observing that God made some creations, like Leviathan, the giant whale, just for fun, “for the sport of it.” Perhaps the Pentecost message in this portion of Psalm 104 comes in these prophetic words in Verse 31: “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.” Since the first words of Scripture, when God’s spirit breath blew over the face of the waters like a mighty wind and all creation came to be, God’s mighty work of creative world-building continues all around us.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Through the Spirit, we all are as one in baptism, Paul tells the Christian community of Corinth in this much-loved passage. Nationality, economic status, gender, enslaved or free: None of these things matter, Paul says. Just as the body is made up of different parts that serve different functions, we each bring our individual gifts as we work together, guided by the Spirit, for the common good. Through it all, Paul assures us, we are all moved by the Spirit as members of the body of Christ.

Gospel: John 20:19-23

Think about what it must have been like for Jesus’s disciples on that first Easter morning. Grieving the crucifixion and death of their leader, they surely felt both wild hope and fearful uncertainty when Mary Magdalene came running in shouting “I have seen the Lord!” The tomb was empty, she said, and she had met a man in white there. But how? Why? What does it all mean? Uncertain, they stay in the locked room as darkness falls. Suddenly, mysteriously, Jesus appears among them. He wishes them peace, then shows them his wounds. Then he breathes on them, empowering them with the Holy Spirit who will take them out into the world.

Gospel (alternate): John 7:37-39

Pentecost is one of the feast days designated as especially appropriate for baptism. In fact, one of its traditional English names, “Whitsunday,” or “White Sunday,” refers to the white garments that those being baptized wore in ancient times. Whenever we welcome new members into Christ’s Body in the church, the celebrant blesses the water in the font, reminding us that “In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection, and through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” In this short alternative gospel, Jesus tells how rivers of living water will flow from the hearts of those who believe. Through the living water of baptism, our hearts join in pouring out the good news of the Gospel.