Bishop Oliveto's Pentecost message

I am praying for the laity and clergy of the Mountain Sky Conference as we prepare for Pentecost.

Pentecost is the day the Holy Spirit entered into a room full of followers of Jesus and the world has never the same. With wind and fire, the Holy Spirit came and in the midst of the chaos brought a connection and unity that had never been experienced before. In that moment, the Church was born.

Sometimes I wonder: have we shut the Holy Spirit out of our lives and churches? Where is the fire of a passionate faith? Where is the connective tissue of the Spirit that helps us be stronger, bolder, and more impactful together than separate? Where is the wind that blows where it will, helping us dream new possibilities and sending us off to places we had never intended to go to do ministry we never considered before?

I believe it is time for us to re-experience the wonder of Pentecost, not only individually but with a community of people who are willing to leave themselves open enough so the Holy Spirit can break into our lives, disrupt our sensibilities, challenge us, empower us, and connect us in deeper ways than we ever thought possible.

I believe that like those devout Jews in Jerusalem, we too can be filled with the Holy Spirit, and even in the particularities of our own experiences we can discover a common orientation to life, for it is the Holy Spirit that can breathe into our broken hearts, our shattered dreams, our confining social structures, our confounding denomination and make them a new thing. It is the Holy Spirit that can hold us together, keep us one in spite of ourselves and the ways we distance ourselves from others.

Today is the day when we recall the movement of the Holy Spirit in the lives of our ancestors of the faith. But it's also a time to discern where the Spirit is at work in our own community. To make room, to let go of control, to allow ourselves to be knit together as one by the breath of God. It's a time for us to speak a common language, to prophesy, to see visions and dream dreams for our community and our world.

I don’t know about you, but I realize that I need Pentecost more than ever before. Because this is a day to recommit ourselves to the Church. To realize that we touch something essential here, something that brings us wholeness and peace, and as a result we will commit ourselves, our love and very lives to the Church as it manifests itself in a faith community.

The Spirit might breathe life into our dry and arid souls, but it's up to us to commit ourselves to living out that life, to nurturing our community so that the Church might not be a lamp hid under a bushel but a city on a hillside.

Are you willing to live a Spirit-led life instead of an ego-driven one? Are you willing to let the Spirit move within you and propel you to a greater involvement with your faith community? Will you let the Spirit connect you with people you never dreamed you’d be in relationship with? Will you follow the Spirit’s leading to bring more love, more compassion, more kindness and more justice into our world?

With love,

Bishop Karen