Pentecost was and is an immersion into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

There’s a fiery, Spirit-endowed confidence that the Pentecostal gains from their own experience of Pentecost, but not just because we know the end is victorious – there is a confidence that lives even in the doubt. There’s a kind of nihilism, a reckless faith that deeply and fully recognizes reality for what it is: fucked – and yet goes on.

The Spirit-baptism pours out a love that gives new vision for the humanity and the world, that even when God (and her plan) is in question, and even when the end result is worth doubting, this love remains worth all potential failures.

Like Jesus approaching the day of his crucifixion, crying out in Gethsemane, begging God to scrap the cross – he still went on in surrender to this love despite his own fears and doubts. And even as he was on the cross, he was consumed by doubt, feeling as if he was completely abandoned, as if God was dead.

A Pentecostal faith is a fiery love that goes on even if God is dead.

Even if Jesus never rose from the grave.

Even if we’ll never rise from the grave.

And yet, we long for the resurrection, in all things.

And we choose to believe it.

And when we cannot, we continue to fight for it at all costs.

Pentecost pours out the Holy Spirit on the Church to become holy fools, fearlessly fighting the systems of the world and building a new world in the ashes of the old.

We speak in new tongues because we know our words fail to capture the truth of this love, but it is worth babbling about, it is worth quaking over. We prophesy because a better world needs to be declared and witnessed.