May 24, 2026

I've been a news junkie for most of my life, but with the advent of modern technology, I've gotten into this bad habit of flitting between one article and the next on my phone. I often read just the first couple of sentences, get distracted, and move on.

I almost gave up recently on an article whose headline had caught my eye. It was published by Scientific American, and it was about how artificial intelligence might help us solve some of mathematics’ greatest mysteries. The author, Joseph Howlett, is a PhD-trained particle physicist, and I almost threw in the towel in the second paragraph when the author acknowledged always feeling a step or two behind in understanding the subject being written about.

I thought, “Great. A PhD-trained physicist feels that way. I have no hope of understanding anything that comes after this.”

But I’m glad I stuck with it, because the heart of the article held a truism that I think has incredible importance for us today as we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on this Feast of Pentecost.

Here’s the deal, as I understand it — and if any of you know more about this than I do, I’d love to talk after the service.

Apparently, identifying and understanding prime numbers continues to be a very big deal in mathematics. As a reminder for those of us trapped in our arts and humanities worlds: prime numbers are whole numbers greater than one that can only be evenly divided by themselves and one.

For millennia, humans have sought to understand where and when such numbers occur. Mathematicians work with a variety of conjectures and hypotheses that approximate prime numbers and their locations, and much of our modern world and technology relies on these conjectures and hypotheses being true.

But we don’t actually have proofs that they are true.

We have yet to completely unlock our understanding of prime numbers. In a manner of speaking, we take it as a matter of faith that they are where they are, and that the systems we build operate the way we think prime numbers operate.

Step back for a moment and think about that. The most concrete, material elements of the world we experience are realities fundamentally beyond our understanding — realities we can only relate to, in a sense, through faith and trust.

In this case, faith and trust in systems or frameworks of knowledge that help us navigate the complexity of the world.

I want to invite us to spend some time thinking about the nature of Spirit today.

We celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, yet there remains a kind of fuzziness around the nature of the Holy Spirit — what it is, how it operates in our lives, and how we are to live in relationship with it.

This is made even more complicated by the fact that there were many readings available for today’s service. I suspect this may be one of the Sundays with more liturgical options than almost any other.

Let’s walk through some of them, even the ones we didn’t hear today, because together they help flesh out how we might approach — even if not fully understand — the Spirit and its work in us and in the world.

At the most basic level, we have Acts 2: the narrative of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is why we celebrate this Sunday as we do — remembering the descent of the Spirit and its ongoing presence through generations.

But the Spirit has always been present.

Jesus prepares the disciples for this moment in John 20, after the resurrection, as Jesus instructs them and prepares them for the Ascension. Even earlier, in John 7, Jesus says:

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

John tells us Jesus said this about the Spirit, which believers were later to receive.

So Jesus prepares the disciples for the unfolding presence of the Spirit, yet we also recognize that the Spirit has always been at work — co-present with God the Father and God the Son throughout history.

In our reading from Numbers, we see the Spirit active even among the wandering Israelites in the desert. The Spirit descends not only upon the gathered elders, but also upon others in the camp.

Moses does not reject this. Instead, Moses says, in effect: “Who am I to judge the work of the Spirit unfolding in this place?”

So what is the practical outworking of the Spirit for us today?

I want to begin with a caution.

The spiritual writer Norvene Vest observes that Christians, especially American Christians, can become trapped in forms of faith that either depersonalize God or reduce spirituality entirely to the self.

On one side, God becomes distant and impersonal, and faith becomes merely acts of charity or social improvement.

On the other side, faith becomes entirely individualized — about self-actualization and personal fulfillment.

Neither truly hits the mark.

Our faith is personal, grounded in relationship with a personal God. But God is also active and engaged in the world — empowering us toward justice, goodness, and righteousness through the Spirit.

One of the optional readings for today from 1 Corinthians reflects beautifully on this:

“There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit… To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

Paul goes on to describe gifts of wisdom, knowledge, healing, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and interpretation.

The power of Pentecost is the activation of these gifts in us individually and collectively — how we together become the Body of Christ empowered by the Spirit.

Throughout Christian history, awkwardness around understanding the Spirit has often pushed people toward extremes: either over-individualizing spiritual experience or theologizing the Spirit into abstraction disconnected from lived life.

Yet the fullness of the Spirit is beyond complete understanding. It transforms us and empowers us to become the people God calls us to be.

Still, there are traps and pitfalls.

It can be difficult to distinguish between the Spirit of God and the spirit of the world — between truth and deception, life and destruction.

I think our relationship to science can help here.

The scientific method begins with hypotheses that are tested, observed, and refined. We see whether they bear fruit or lead toward destruction.

I think spiritual discernment works similarly.

Too often Christians cling so tightly to certainty that faith becomes rigid and controlling. But today we are invited into humility — into recognizing the power of the Spirit while remaining open to ongoing revelation and transformation.

Moses gives what I find to be one of the most powerful teachings in scripture on this subject. In Deuteronomy, Moses says:

“You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’”

And the answer is essentially this: if a prophet speaks and the thing does not prove true, then it is not from the Lord.

Do not be frightened by it.

Many Christians experience faith as anxiety-producing — as if everything must fit into rigid categories of saved or damned, insider or outsider.

But through the Spirit we are given another way.

We are invited to test what we hear, to prayerfully discern what bears good fruit. Not every path we pursue will prove life-giving. Sometimes we will realize we were wrong.

And when that happens, we can graciously let it go.

Not all hypotheses work out the way we expect.

But this process allows us to continue seeking the heart of God — to live embodied lives while remaining open to the Spirit’s ongoing work.

May we go forward today empowered by this Spirit, enlivened to do the work we are called to do.

May we have the humility to try, to follow as best we can, to embrace what is generative and life-giving, and to let go of what is not.

And through all of this, may we be drawn ever more deeply into the heart of God — into our own moment of Pentecost, our own experience of the Spirit descending upon our lives.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.