What is the meaning of Pentecost? In this reflection episode of the Pivot Podcast, Luther Seminary theologian Dr. Lois Malcolm moves past the familiar imagery of wind and fire to ask what the Spirit was actually doing that day in Jerusalem. Her answer is both clarifying and unsettling: the Spirit arrived not so the disciples could possess it, but so it could send them out.

Lois draws three claims from the Pentecost story that speak directly to the life of the church today. The Spirit belongs to no one. Speaking in other people's languages is a divine mandate for empathy, not a one-time miracle. And the power given at Pentecost was never for the church's self-advancement; it was given for the common good, for the dead places in our communities, and for the people most unlike us. A short, searching reflection for Pentecost Sunday and beyond.

Pentecost is at its heart a story about tongues. When the Book of Acts describes the arrival of the Holy Spirit, it does not speak of a vague ethereal mist or a silent internal feeling. It speaks of a sound like a rushing wind and the appearance of divided tongues as a fire resting on each of the disciples. But why burning tongues and what precisely do these tongues actually say?

Well, to understand Pentecost, we must understand the nature of speech. Speech is how we bridge the gap between ourselves and the other. In our fallen world, however, language is often a barrier, a tool for exclusion or a mark of tribalism. Yet by the Spirit's power, we are given tongues not to retreat into ourselves, but to praise God in other people's languages. This is the first and most

Miracle of the day the spirit gives the ability to communicate across the very lines We usually use to define our borders By the spirit's power we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ the message that repentance and forgiveness of sins Comes in the name of Jesus However, this proclamation comes with a radical built in humility

Precisely because the message can only be propelled by the Spirit's power, it serves as a continual reminder, and here is my first point, that the Spirit is not our private possession. We do not own the Spirit or the Gospel or the truth. The Spirit owns us and sends us out.

The Pentecost fire is an expansive fire. It reminds us that the grace of God is for all people, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. This is not a localized hope or a boutique religion for the select few. The spirit is poured out on all flesh, sons and daughters, young and old, male and female, slave and free. And when the fire

touched the disciples, didn't just touch them, it sent them out of the upper room. As the apostle Paul maintains baptism into Jesus' body, always involves all its members, Jews and Greeks, slave and free male and free male. All of us drink of the same spirit through Jesus. We are all granted the same staggering intimacy with the Father, the one he called Abba.

This relationship is the foundation of our power. We are children empowered by the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. But we often live in our locations of our own making, comfortable circles where everyone looks and talks and thinks like us. But, and here is my second point.

Pentecost reminds us that the gospel of Jesus Christ is always about a reality that continually breaks open our insularity. The tongues of fire are specifically tongues that speak in other people's languages. This is a divine mandate for empathy. It means that the person who is most other to us, whether by culture, politics, or geography, is precisely the person the spirit wants us to speak to.

The Spirit provides a generative power that fills the rooms of our lives, but it never lets us stay in those rooms. It pushes us towards the ends of the earth to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. It insists that the story of God's justice and mercy belongs in every dialect and every heart.

Yet we each have unique gifts, unique particularities. There's no way around the fact that we are individuals and belong to different groups, but one spirit permeates and fills us all. Our differences are not erased by the spirit. Rather, we enter into a grand testimony, a grand symphony where God uses all of our languages to tell God's story.

My third and final point is that the power given at Pentecost is not only tangible and generative, but it is given for the common good. It is the power to forgive sins when the world demands vengeance. It is the power to raise from the dead, not just at the end of time, but in the dead places of our

current relationships and communities. It is the power to heal, to exercise the demons of our age and to speak God's truth where it needs to be heard most. This power comes as the prophet Joel said, when the sun turns to darkness and the moon turns to blood. It is a power for the last days, a power that operates even when the world seems to be falling.

In fact, it is often in the darkness of the world's crises that the fire of the spirit burns the most clearly. And the day of Pentecost reminds us again and again that this power is not for our self-aggrandizement, it is for the common good. We are given this fire so that we can be a light for others. This common good permeates the whole universe. It is a...

cosmic restoration that begins now, but ultimately will be fulfilled when God will be all in

Until that day, you and I are called to be a Pentecost people. We are called to let the Spirit break our shells of isolation. We are called to speak the language of the neighbor, the stranger, and even the enemy. We are called to remember that the same Spirit who gave the disciples utterance is the same Spirit dwelling in us today, urging us.

to proclaim that the doors are open, the debt is paid, and the invitation is there for everyone. So I want to leave you with a question for reflection. Where in your life is the Holy Spirit calling you to break out of your insularity so that you can indeed

not just speak but also embody God's liberating and transformative power through the gospel amidst whatever pain or injustice you or others might be facing.

All blessings in the Spirit.

The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith Lead. Faith Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.