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#178: The Meaning of Pentecost: Fire, Tongues, and the Spirit That Sends Us Out

Lois Malcolm argues that the miracle of Pentecost is not primarily about what the disciples felt. It's about where they went.

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.

Featuring

Lois Malcolm

Olin and Amanda Fjelstad Reigstad Chair of Systematic Theology, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota

Dr. Lois E. Malcolm (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is The Olin and Amanda Fjelstad Reigstad Chair of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, where she has been teaching since 1994. She grew up in the Philippines as the daughter of missionaries. Before becoming a theologian, she received an M.A. in Applied Linguistics (from the University of Minnesota). She taught linguistics and English as a second language courses in the U. S. and overseas.

Her books include Holy Spirit: Creative Power in Our Lives (Fortress, 2009); God, an edited volume for The Westminster Collection of Sources of Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), and two forthcoming books: A Theological Commentary on Second Corinthians for the Belief series (Westminster John Knox); and Sophia Cries Out in the Street: Wisdom in Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press).

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