Those of you who are mainline Protestants, Catholics, or Orthodox folks may know that yesterday was the Day of Pentecost—the birthday of the Church. Despite the fact that I went to a Pentecostal church growing up, we never celebrated Pentecost in our aversion to the liturgical calendar. So I’m still not used to marking the holiday. In fact, I wouldn’t have worn red to church yesterday unless NNPCW alumna Amy Robinson (my roommate) had informed me that we were all supposed to wear red or orange in celebration. Amy, in fact, painted flames on her cheeks. I wouldn’t know a quarter of the things I do about being Presbyterian if it weren’t for Amy.

I used to somewhat avoid Acts 2 as a youth, mainly because speaking in tongues scared me (from my Pentecostal days). Yesterday, though, I saw something different in the passage. The following drew me:

“And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” (Acts 2:6-7).

Pentecost is more than just the story of a great miracle. It is the natural extension of Jesus’ radically inclusive ministry. For at Pentecost, God empowers a bunch of sheltered, insular people from the backwater of Galilee to speak with relevance to Jews from all over the Roman world. Through the Holy Spirit, women and men in the upper room (and if you don’t think there were female participants in Pentecost, check out Acts 1:14 and 2:4) broke through the barriers of culture, race and gender to speak the “language” of all people. As in so many other places in the New Testament, God broke down the dividing walls constructed by flawed humans and spoke words of love to all.

So we’re a bunch of sheltered American college women, trying to witness to God’s love in a way that is relevant to the world. How do we do it? One lesson we can gather from the Pentecost story: only the Spirit can empower us. On our own, it is difficult to escape the social contexts that impede our ministry to others. We have no concept of the realities of others’ lives—why do you think that two millennia of church teachings, written by men and affirming the superiority of men, are so problematic for 21st century women? Yet it is by the grace of God that aspects of the church have managed to speak to us, and we find nourishment there. Somehow, the Holy Spirit spoke through those Galileans to touch our lives.

As we continue to follow the promptings of the Spirit, we too are empowered toward new visions of the church and new ways to reach out to our sisters and brothers. It may lead us to challenge our own privilege in the world, or it may cause us to embrace those we have marginalized. But hearing the Holy Spirit in the quiet of our hearts is the first step.

“For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.” --Acts 2:39

Kelsey