Pentecostal Inclusion and the God Who Won't Be Tamed

How the Spirit Overrides the Scripts We Thought Were Sacred

Photo by David Bumgardner on Unsplash

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost doesn’t get a mascot. No bunny. No tree. No red-and-yellow candy on sale at Walgreens. Maybe that’s a gift. Because, unlike Christmas and Easter, which the world has learned to market and monetize, Pentecost remains stubbornly uncommercial. It has no products to sell, no seasonal aisle to fill, no scripted rituals for cultural consumption. Instead, it calls us to something less profitable but far more powerful, the descent of God into ordinary human lives. You won’t find Pentecost on a greeting card or decorating a storefront window. But you will find it wherever the Spirit moves: in the margins, in the mess, in the mouths of unexpected prophets. And yet, in the church calendar, it is the climax of the entire Jesus story, the moment when the gift of God stops being wrapped in swaddling clothes or linen grave cloths and starts being unwrapped in every human heart.

Not just the climax of Easter. Pentecost is the crescendo of Christmas too. It’s not just that God is with us. At Pentecost, God is in us. The Spirit inhabits our breath, our bodies, our brokenness. The God who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on Golgotha now takes up residence in everyday flesh, the sacred spark kindled in mortal dust.

Pentecost comes 7 weeks after Easter. It is a Jewish holiday, usually known as Shavuot, commemorating the giving of “The Law” to Moses on Mt. Sinai. When The Law was given to Moses on that day, he descended the mountain to find many of his people worshiping a golden calf. 3,000 people died that day due to their idolatry. In the Christian faith, Pentecost is celebrated as the “birthday” of the church. It is the day in which the Holy Spirit descended and filled 120 disciples who went on to preach the gospel in different languages that resulted in the salvation of 3,000 lives.

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men and women, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in their own language… So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”

…this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh.”

Acts 2

Acts 2 is a wild, dizzying scene of wind, fire, and tongues. The early church didn’t get a blueprint or a ministry strategy or a fully developed theology. They got a flame. They got voices they didn’t recognize, speaking languages they didn’t expect, to people they weren’t prepared to welcome. It’s reminiscent of Sinai, except now the fire descends not on a mountain but on a people. Not just on Moses, but on many. And instead of people physically dying, they are brought to spiritual life.

And yet, the miracle of Pentecost wasn’t that God miraculously gave everyone the same language. The miracle was that God spoke through their many languages. The Tower of Babel scattered humanity by confusing speech; Pentecost gathered them by honoring it. Babel was judgment. Pentecost is redemption.

That’s the kind of thing that turns a story into a movement. That’s what makes Pentecost the Church’s birthday.

Because it wasn’t just a few special apostles or anointed prophets who received the Spirit. It was sons and daughters. Old men and young men. Servants. Outsiders. The Spirit fell on all flesh. The stuff of humanity. The stuff of you and me. This is the democratization of divine power. The Spirit does not trickle down through hierarchy but erupts from below, in the mouths of nobodies.

Inclusive faith is always messy. Because all means all. And all means difference. When the Spirit gets poured out, the categories start to blur. The boundaries start to bend. The old ways of defining who's in and who's out start to falter. Pentecost didn’t just empower the church, it unraveled the old metrics of belonging. What used to be a matter of law or lineage or liturgy was now determined by a gust of Spirit wind.

And the early disciples had to wrestle with it. Peter, who preached boldly in Acts 2, would later waffle about sharing meals with Gentiles. But the Spirit kept moving. In Acts 10, it falls on the household of Cornelius, a Gentile and Roman centurion. The Spirit descends, uninvited and uncontained, before Peter is even done preaching. And when the apostles back in Jerusalem demand an explanation, Peter simply says, 'If the Spirit has baptized them, who are we to deny them water?' That becomes the church’s answer, again and again. Years later, Paul will take up the cause in his letters, insisting that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.

The Spirit brought people together, but it didn’t make them the same. It made them one. And one is harder than same. It takes more grace, more listening, more love. That doesn't make things easy for the church when the wind blows past protocol, and fire falls on those we didn’t expect God to use.

Another vivid example of the messy grace of Pentecost appears just after the fire falls in Acts 2, in the story of the unnamed Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8. This unnamed traveler was a racial outsider, likely a dark-skinned African far removed from Jerusalem’s cultural center. He was a sexual outsider whose biological genitals had been altered in ways that Deuteronomy 23 explicitly excluded from full participation in temple worship. He was a social outsider—wealthy, respected, yet without lineage or community. And yet, the Spirit sends Philip down a desert road—not to defend doctrine, but to sit beside a man holding a scroll with questions he wasn’t supposed to ask: 'What can stand in the way of my being baptized?' And the answer from heaven is: nothing. No law. No tradition. No category. Just water, and a witness. That’s Pentecost too. The fire falls on all flesh, even the kind religion forgets how to name.

New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays has reflected on this passage as a deeply disruptive moment in the church’s imagination. Historically known for his cautious and traditional interpretations, Hays nevertheless points to the inclusion of the eunuch, despite clear legal prohibitions, as a Spirit-led correction to scriptural exclusion. If the Spirit can reinterpret Deuteronomy for the sake of welcome, then what might the same Spirit be speaking still? If the early church had to adjust its theology in light of whom the Spirit had already embraced, what adjustments might we be called to make today?

The Spirit indeed continues to speak, but we have to listen across differences. We have to be willing to be surprised. Because Pentecost isn’t just a historical event to remember. It is a posture to live into. A willingness to say yes to the mystery of God. A readiness to follow the wind, even when it blows us past our comfort zones.

And yet, many churches today bear the name “Pentecostal” but still resist the wild diversity of Pentecost. Some are more comfortable with uniformity than unity, with conformity than communion. The Spirit may be speaking in unfamiliar accents: through outsiders and the excluded, through immigrants, through the young and the poor, but the question remains: are we listening? Are we willing to let the Spirit rewrite our assumptions, reorganize our structures, and reopen the doors we have quietly closed? Embracing Pentecostal diversity isn’t an ideological exercise. It is a spiritual discipline. One that requires courage, humility, and an ever-deepening trust that the fire still falls where God wills.

The Spirit didn’t wait for the disciples to be ready. It didn’t ask for their credentials. It didn’t require perfect theology or ideal circumstances. It came because God keeps promises. It came because the world needed witnesses. And it came because love always finds a way to speak your language.

So let the fire fall. Let it burn away the barriers. Let it kindle something new.

Because the Spirit still moves. And it’s still messy. And it’s still for all flesh.