Worship Service for June 8, 2025

Picture Credit: La Tour de Babel by Lucas van Valckenborch the Elder, 1594, Musée du Louvre, Paris, via Art and the Bible. The Old Testament Reading for Pentecost this year tells the story of the Tower of Babel, which ties in with the emphasis today on the Holy Spirit working through human language in God's Word. Martin Luther reminds us in the Large Catechism: "For in the first place, the Spirit has His own congregation in the world, which is the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through God's Word [Galatians 4:26]. Through the Word He reveals and preaches, He illumines and enkindles hearts, so that they understand, accept, cling to, and persevere in the Word [1 Corinthians 2:12]" (LC II 42). We dare never separate the Holy Spirit from the Word of God as found in the Scriptures, which proclaim Christ. Luther says it so well: "For where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit who creates, calls, and gathers the Christian Church, without which no one can come to Christ the Lord" (LC II 45). The Holy Spirit has bound himself to work through the Holy Scriptures as the sure and certain Word of God.