Pentecost Sunday

Rev. Jennifer Masada - St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church - Kapa’au, Hawai'i
June 8, 2025 - Pentecost Sunday, Year C
Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17, Psalm 104:25-35, 37

Opening Prayer: O Holy Spirit, open our ears and hearts. Speak to us. Speak through us to unite the whole earth in understanding, compassion, and love.

Today we celebrate the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Breath of God opens our ears to hear, our hearts to feel, and our lives to love more deeply. Spirit is always speaking—sometimes as a whisper within, sometimes through the words and presence of others. When we truly listen, we discover a deeper unity of shared understanding, compassion, and love that transcends difference.

Spirit flows like water: soft but strong, shaping even the hardest places in us. Like the gulches of Kohala, formed over thousands of years by water. Spirit radiates like fire: igniting wisdom and warming us into connection. On this island, fiery magma literally gives birth to the ‘āina. The process inspires awe; it’s dangerous, powerful, and frightening. But when we move with this Spirit-flow, we move beyond fear. We become part of something larger—a sacred current drawing us toward creativity, healing, and wholeness.

Jesus promises us this gift. He says, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
These are words we return to again and again: Do not be afraid. But how do we hold that peace in a world so full of uncertainty, complexity, and contradiction?

Poet Joy Harjo offers a window into this mystery: “There are many different realities. I think about all of these different realities … I’ll be in a car or a bus or whatever, looking at the houses and the windows and all the storefronts and thinking about all the different realms, all the different story realms. Every place, every window, every doorway is an opening to a life, a whole different life, a whole series of stories, and it’s multiplied hundreds and thousands of times. Some don’t overlap at all, some are in their very private universes. Other universes are more expansive.”

The Holy Spirit reminds us that in the midst of all these overlapping, diverging, and deeply personal realities, God is still present. Spirit reminds us that peace isn’t the absence of complexity. It’s the presence of love within it. Peace is the courage to be fully present in our own life and to honor the lives we pass by, each a universe of its own. The Holy Spirit, with its water-flow and fire-radiance, reminds us to move through the world with reverence for the unseen stories around us and in us.
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Today, we are celebrating four of our youth who are continuing their education. Jazelle, Jayline, Kiona, and Yvanka: in every doorway and window there are thousands of stories that change the world. Which ones will change you? How will you listen for the inspiration of Spirit?

You may find that you don’t need advice on this, because you need more than mere answers. What can help is a community that listens, challenges, encourages, and inspires. You need people moved by the Holy Spirit. These are the water people, the fire people. You’ll know who they are! They’ll wash away your tough exterior, your hiding places; they’ll shine light on your soul’s purpose. They’ll see your intuition and raise you one. They won’t give you the answers. Instead, these are the people who invite you to:

• Ask questions — to dig beneath the dust, to grow.
• Embrace wonder — to remember that mystery is holy.
• Be an observer — to stay curious and pay attention to the Spirit’s subtle (and not-so-subtle) nudges.
• Expand your heart — to make room for new wisdom, new connections, new ways to share Divine love.

With the water and fire people – people of various ages, cultures, and experiences – you will create a new reality. And this will happen again and again. Tomorrow will end yesterday’s reality, but don’t let that throw you. Trust that endings open the way to discovery! Sometimes, flowing with the Spirit means allowing something to end—even when we don’t yet know what’s beginning. Spirit asks us to imagine!

Poet and activist adrienne maree brown asks us to examine “the idea that imagination has real-world consequences. Do you believe that? Trace its reality in the lives of people you admire and in your own.”

This, too, is the work of the Spirit, expanding our awareness and transforming imagination into action. The Spirit invites us to imagine new possibilities—not just in theory, but in how we live each day.
Imagine healing in the places we’ve only known pain.
Imagine justice in the face of struggle.
Imagine wholeness in a fragmented world.
Imagine connection where others expect division.
Imagine the peace Jesus gives us, peace that is already here.
Imagine a world where hearts are not afraid.

Trust that these holy imaginings are not illusions, but sacred seeds planted within us—growing into the reality we are called to co-create. Your life—your joys, your struggles, your moments of stillness—is not just something to endure or solve. It is a sacred classroom. Your experience is not an obstacle to learning. It is the way you learn. It is how you live.

E pule kākou - Let us pray:
Come, Holy Spirit. Teach us to flow in unity. Breath of God, inspire us to imagine and create. May we flow with curiosity, courage, wonder, and compassion. May we become people of the Holy Spirit, the water people and the fire people—gentle, strong, illuminating, and ever-transforming.
Amen.

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