God is not Western; God is not Eastern; God is not exclusively the God of classical culture or primitive culture; God is the Lord of the plethora, the God of the diverse, the redeemer of the plural. Likewise, God calls for response in different languages, dialects,...
Pentecost is Babel turned right side up: all speech is unified because it is God, no longer people, who is building toward the heavens. The story of Pentecost goes further than its historical reality. It is also a parable that urges us into the knowledge that the...
The empowerment of the Spirit is not earned; it is freely given. And so with the early church at Pentecost. It was not their courage or clarity that evoked the blessing of the Spirit, for they were vulnerable and confused. The Spirit is a gift, not a possession. The...
To those in the church today who regard the Spirit as an exotic phenomenon of mainly interior and purely personal significance, the story of the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost offers a rebuke. Luke goes to great pains to insist that this outpouring of the Spirit is...