Three and a Half Takes on Pentecost

Reflections on the lectionary for Pentecost

Pentecôte, by the master of the Dominican Cycle of Nuremburg. 1511-1513. Image in the public domain.

I have been stuck in book-indexing purgatory. I don’t know if you have ever indexed a book before, but it is a tedious and mind-numbing process. I have my own system for doing it, involving a legal pad and several different colors of pens, but it still takes forever. The current indexing project, which is for my book that comes out this summer, is especially complicated, because it consists of three separate indices: one for subjects, one for modern authors, and one for ancient texts. I have been working on it for over two weeks, and I’m hoping to finish it today, but it’ll be close.

All that is a way of offering an excuse for what I’m about to tell you: that I didn’t write a full Substack post this week. I just have not had the time. (Adding to the stress of indexing: a fun plumbing issue in the house we just bought, that has the laundry room ceiling waterlogged and threatening to cave in). But there’s good news! This coming Sunday is Pentecost, one of the few Sundays of the church year that stays fairly consistent in terms of theme and texts. So I’m revisiting the past three years of Pentecosts and linking to my posts about them. So in some ways you’re getting three and a half posts this week, instead of one!

For Pentecost of 2025, I wrote about the way Pentecost is a story about difference and togetherness. The story of Pentecost is remarkable for the way it holds those two ideas in tension. On the one hand, the Book of Acts is telling the story with attention to the dizzying differences exhibited in the community of early Jesus-followers in Jerusalem. On the other hand, the story is essentially one of unity. Last year, in the first year of the second Trump administration, I reflected on how America holds a similar tension. As we approach the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States, and as we see sharpening debates about the meaning of America, I would say something similar again this year: that the story of Pentecost is a good guide to the way our differences can produce unity and togetherness.

In 2024, I wrote about Pentecost as a story about time, and about the ways the same situations, institutions, or ideas can look different with the passage of time. It’s remarkable, looking back at that post now, and thinking about the difference two years has made. In my own faith community, we are experiencing a moment of revitalization and new energy. I have heard that the same is happening elsewhere, too. Things will always continue to change, of course, but even our own circumstances remind us that change is constant, and no situation is permanent.

In 2023 I put a lot of history into my post about Pentecost, and I tried to reframe the day away from “it’s the church’s birthday” and toward an understanding of Pentecost as a vexed account of diasporic belonging. I wrote about the story of Pentecost as an expression of the ways powerful forces divide us and create anxiety in us as individuals and in systems. And I wrote about how Pentecost resists that kind of division and enmity, and offers us a model for building new solidarities in the face of the powerful forces that steer our world. It felt urgent to write that three years ago, and perhaps even more urgent today.

In my own preaching this coming Sunday, I think I am going to follow the lead of my colleague Dr. Albert Hernández. In his book Subversive Fire: The Untold Story of Pentecost, Hernández reminds us that historically speaking Pentecost has often been a catalyst for beginning or strengthening social movements, including movements for justice and social change. We live in a time when movements for justice and social change are sorely in need of strengthening, so I’m grateful for scholarship that helps frame Pentecost as a springboard for the work the world sorely needs.