God’s Way of Staying Close

May, 2026

Near the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gives his disciples an enormous task and then closes with a promise easy to miss: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Behold — pay attention, don’t skip this part. The promise is: I am not going anywhere. Not in the way that matters.

That promise threads through every gospel text this month. We begin in John’s farewell discourse, where Philip asks Jesus to “show us the Father.” Jesus’s answer is startling: “Have I been with you all this time, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” The God they hoped to glimpse from a distance has already been walking with them all along.

But Jesus is still leaving — and so he makes another promise: “I will not leave you orphaned.” The Spirit’s coming is not a consolation prize for his absence. It is his own continued coming, in a new mode. Then, days before his death, he prays for his disciples while they are still in the room — within earshot. “Those whom you gave me,” he says, returning to the phrase again and again. They are held. Named. Carried. And through the tradition that passes this prayer to us, so are we.

On Pentecost Sunday, John gives us not wind and fire but something quieter: a locked room, frightened people, and the risen Christ appearing among them. He breathes on them. It is such a physical word — the Spirit given not from a great height but up close, face to face, the way one person gives something to another. The same Greek word appears in Genesis 2, when God breathes life into the first human creature. Creation and new creation, both accomplished by breath.

One week later, Holy Trinity Sunday sends that same community out into the world — and the passage ends not with a strategy but with the promise we began with: “I am with you always.” Being filled and being sent are not two separate things. They are two moments in the same movement of God refusing to stay away.

I don’t know what May holds for you — transition, difficulty, waiting, or ordinary grace. But the texts we will hear together this month keep insisting: you are not navigating it alone. The Spirit is, as best I can describe it, God’s way of staying close.

In Christ,

Pastor Amy