Across southwestern Kansas back in the mid-1960s, several rock bands played the small towns’ school gyms and National Guard Armories. Their names make you smile: The Blue Things, The Fabulous Flippers, King Midas and the Mufflers, The Rising Suns, The Sensational Showmen, Spider and the Crabs, and The Tree Toads (or The Reasons Why or The Soul Survivors). To us at that time, their music seemed new and varied and of fairly high quality.

On a warm May night in 1965 (or thereabouts), one of the touring bands came to our town, Garden City. It performed for an end-of-the-year school dance at the Alta Brown School gym. An underclassman in high school, I had learned about the event and planned to check it out—even though I was not formally invited. On the night of the dance, a friend and I stood under one of the gym’s gigantic, exterior windows. The propped-open window allowed us to hear the band’s music and the lead singer’s comments to his audience.

After playing for an hour or so, the lead singer jived with his high-school crowd: “Okay.  It’s time for us to take a short break. So you will have some time to go to your cars, drink a can of courage [translation: a can of beer], and play kissy-face for 15 or 20 minutes. You’ll hear from us soon….”

“A can of courage,” said he.

Growing up in a Methodist home, I never saw in our house an adult beverage of any kind. Even so, after hearing my story about the dance, the band, and the can-of-courage comment, my Dad laughed out loud.

The band’s spokesman had a point. Drinking a 12-ounce can of Coors (the beer of choice for eighteen-year-olds, which had a Kansas-limited alcohol content of 3.2%) could in fact increase the courage of hesitant high-school students to express affection.

Now consider our time and Biblical time.

Today, striving to protect vulnerable lives, Christians need the courage that comes not from a can of beer but from the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit, whose coming we celebrate in Services of Worship on The Day of Pentecost and during The Season of Pentecost, really does increase the courage of God’s people to speak, and act on, the truth about life in love. On that first Pentecost Day, the Spirit lights upon the earliest Church, which includes Peter. So with courage, the apostle stands up, joins the other apostles, and proclaims Gospel truth about Jesus Christ for the sake of the world.

To preach this first apostolic sermon, Peter requires courage. Days before, he seems ashamed of Jesus, his arrested and jailed and soon-to-be-murdered Lord. But God’s Spirit comes upon the Church and provides Peter with the necessary courage to preach the first apostolic sermon to a not entirely receptive assembly. (Interestingly, just after the Spirit creates a stir and just before the preaching begins, some accuse those who received the Spirit of having hit the bottle.)

In the United States in 2026, courage is absolutely necessary to speak up, in any way, for the protection of threatened but innocent human lives. Today, in the name of love, under the banner of compassion, and for the sake of empathy, stronger people are routinely allowed to erase the lives of weaker people. The abortionist uses razor-sharp instruments against unborn children. The pharmacist buys and sells pills that destroy the tiniest humans. The nurse withholds food and water from debilitated people. The gang member attacks and robs elderly women on abandoned, unlit streets. To oppose any of these violent acts against innocent people is to provoke anger from those who claim to be loving, compassionate, and empathetic. So courage is necessary to speak up. The most durable courage comes from the Holy Spirit within us and among us.

A can of courage will not work. That kind of courage lasts only thirty minutes or so.

Courage from the Spirit can last a lifetime.

So come, Holy Spirit.