A Wild, Ecstatic Moment

Beloved in Christ,

We had some intense winds here in the metro area overnight on Monday, and a lot of us were dragging on Tuesday after a bad night of sleep. Having grown up on the prairies and the plains, I'm used to wind as a near constant companion, but I'm still occasionally awed by the power, noise, and violence that can come along with it. 

The story of Pentecost in the Book of Acts begins with "a sound like the rush of wind," and what follows is as wild as an early summer storm in the midwest. Divided tongues of fire rest on the disciples, they begin speaking in different languages, and all the commotion draws a crowd. The crowd represents a wide band of human diversity, with different languages, nations, cultures, races, and ethnicities present. As they descend on the windy, fiery scene, miraculously, each person hears the frenetic babbling of the disciples in their own language. It's this wild, ecstatic moment where God's power jumps in and overcomes human division. 

It's not what Sunday worship looks like in most of our congregations, and honestly, that might be to our discredit. I believe, fiercely, that one of the most important invitations for us in this moment is to rediscover a sense of a living, active God, who shows up and does crazy stuff in our lives and in the world, who disrupts what we have accepted as business as usual, who forms unexpected kinship across all the lines of difference we see. Re-learning how to recognize the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit, regaining a sense of God as a real and lively force in our world, is the foundation of addressing so many of the challenges in front of us. Our work of racial justice and healing, repairing the wide chasms of division within our common life, and the renewal of the church can only be done faithfully if we allow ourselves to be as thoroughly possessed by God's Holy Spirit as those first disciples were. They were able to start a revolution of love in the dark heart of the Roman empire by first being set on fire by the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. If we are to shine authentic and life-giving light into the world in our own day, we must allow ourselves to be set on fire and consumed by a force more powerful than anything any of us can bring on our own.

Please, please pray this week for the Holy Spirit to come afresh on our diocese, on our people, and on our world. May you know and feel the Holy Spirit of God again in your own life, and have a wild Pentecost. 

Grace and peace,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in Minnesota