05/25/2026
from Pastor Diana,
dear friends we are so sorry that we lost the audio during yesterday's worship. Here is the Message and the very tender prayers to the Holy Spirit we shared together. : please pray these prayers to lift your hearts and delight in God's love for you.
Prayers to the Holy Spirit
Today is Pentecost and we celebrate the energy of God who created all that is and brings us together in a colorful and loving community, whom we call the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of creation, Divine Imagination
Who puts the copper into beach trees, and the waddle into penguins ?
Who chose the colors of a rainbow, and put shapes into clouds?
The Spirit of creation, Divine imagination!
Who put the notes into music and picked the dance steps for bees ? Who placed the hum in humming birds, and decided elephants would listen with their feet?
The Spirit of creation, Divine imagination !
Who made stripes for tigers and zebras, and the whimsical faces of giraffes ? Who made laughter infectious, and chocolate taste like heaven ?
The Spirit of creation, Divine imagination!
Scripture assures us that the Spirit of God prays for us “with sighs and groanings too deep for words”, that through the Life-Giving Breath of God, we are given all that we need to walk in God’s Love.
Let us breathe deeply—inhaling the good gifts that God provides, (pause and inhale)
and exhaling all of the things that we need to release. (Exhale deeply and loudly)
Let us breathe in strength. (Pause for breath…)
And, let us exhale our exhaustion. (Pause for breath…)
Let us breathe in freedom. (Pause for breath…) And, let us exhale all that holds us back. (Pause for breath…)
Let us breathe in a new sense of direction. (Pause for breath…)
And, let us exhale the paths we no longer want to use. (Pause for breath…)
Let us breathe in hope. (Pause for breath) And, let us exhale despair. (Pause for breath…)
Let us breathe in unconditional love. (Pause for breath…)
And, let us exhale distrust and hate. (Pause for breath…)
Holy Spirit, let us feel the living breath of your presence in this place now, in our hearts. Blow away our fears and worries, and help us to daily breathe in your gifts of new life that there may be justice, liberty, truth and abundance for all.
When we feel alone, when we feel rejected
Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
When we feel drained and dried up, and we can’t give any more,
Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
When we are unsure of how to move or where to go or what to do about the state of our country and world, and the condition of God’s people,
Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
Come, Holy Spirit, revive us, move in us, and energize us on the journey of faith in your love. Move us into action for the healing of all creation,
Come, Holy Spirit, Come! Amen!
Message for Pentecost May 24 2026 Evergreen Church Pastor Diana Hunter
As we approached the Ascension of Jesus last week and the promise that he made to the disciples and to all his followers, including ourselves, of never leaving us orphans, or alone has been much on my heart as the day of Pentecost approached. A defining day in the life of the early church, Pentecost finds its roots in the Jewish tradition, where it is called Shavuot. Falling fifty days after Passover, Shavuot is a harvest festival and also commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Acts 2.1-21 tells us it is on this festival day that the followers of Jesus are “all together in one place” when the Spirit appears. It arrives as a rushing wind, filling them, in-spiring them, causing them to draw deep breath and speak. The scene at Pentecost offers a brilliant display of how in Greek, as in Hebrew, the word for Spirit, wind, and breath is the same: pneuma (In Hebrew, ruach).
Along with the wind comes fire, a symbol that stirs our collective memory of the God whose transforming presence has so often been marked by flames. Think of Moses and the burning bush, the column of fire that led the people of Israel through the wilderness, the temple fire that consumed the sacrificial offerings. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire,” Deuteronomy 4.24 tells us. In contemporary culture, we most often experience fire as a contained, controlled, gentle force. Yet the fires of Pentecost are not the tame flames of birthday candles or a cozy winter’s hearth; the fires of Pentecost are a sign of the God who resists our every attempt to domesticate the divine and to control how the holy will work.
For the followers of Jesus, the day of Pentecost becomes an occasion of profound initiation. With the gift of spirit and flame, the community that Jesus had formed is now fired up , prepared, propelled into a new stage of its journey. Like a vessel in the furnace of a kiln, the followers of Jesus receive the transformation they need. They are no longer a group of believers but rather a catalyzed community, a body that, enlivened by the Spirit, will endure and continue the work of Christ.
As those followers knew, we can’t always plan our moments of initiation. As we cannot control God, it follows that we cannot control the ways that God beckons or, sometimes, seemingly flings us across a new threshold. We can do our daily spiritual practices, our inner work to make ourselves available when it happens, but we don’t often get to choose our initiations.
In her book Reinventing Eve, Kim Chernin describes initiation this way:
“Initiation is not a predictable process. It moves forward fitfully, through moments of clear seeing, dramatic episodes of feeling, subtle intuitions, vague contemplative states. Dreams arrive, bringing guidance we frequently cannot accept. Years pass, during which we know that we are involved in something that cannot easily be named. We sometimes wake to a sense of confusion, know that we are in conflict, cannot define the nature of what troubles us. All deep inner change is like this. It circles around, leads us a merry chase, starts us out it seems all over again from where we were in the first place. And then suddenly, when we least expect it, something opens a door, discovers a threshold, shoves us across.”
At Pentecost, initiation occurred not only at the individual level (“and a tongue rested on each of them”) but also at the group level. The outpouring of the Spirit upon the whole community reminds us that we are not on only an individual journey but also shared one. In this community of Love, God calls us, compels us, to attend to the Spirit in one another, among us. The celebration of Pentecost beckons us to keep breathing together.
It challenges us to keep ourselves open to the Spirit who seeks us. The Spirit that, in the beginning, brooded over the chaos and brought forth creation; the Spirit that drenched the community with fire and breath on the day of Pentecost: this same Spirit desires to dwell within us and among us. Amidst the brokenness and chaos and pain that sometimes come with being in community, the Spirit searches for ways to breathe in us, to transform us, to knit us together more deeply and wholly as the body of Christ, and to send us forth into the world for helping, healing, loving one another. Always Working for justice and wholeness, the underpinnings of God’s peace.
As we celebrate this inflowing of the Holy Spirit, this Pentecost, let’s open ourselves a little bit by praying and listening and breathing together now. you will find this on the sheet entitled Prayers to the Holy Spirit. Joycelyn will lead us in this experience. We start with some call and responses and then will do a time of breathing together, breathing in the gifts of God and exhaling, letting go that which is impeding your life in God’s Spirit. Allow yourself to relax and enjoy the whimsey and delight and the blessing of this time together. Allow yourselves to be renewed in Divine Love.
