Pentecost ought not to pass politely. If Easter dazzles and Christmas enchants, Pentecost should unsettle. It arrives not with the stillness of a manger or in the quiet wonder of a garden, but with disruption: ‘a sound like a mighty rushing wind’, tongues loosed, barriers overturned, speech made strange and suddenly universal. It is a feast not only seen in flame, but heard – viscerally, insistently heard.
The scriptural account is saturated with sound. Before there is proclamation, there is noise; before understanding, a kind of holy confusion. The Apostles do not begin in composure but in upheaval. And it is precisely here that music finds one of its deepest theological homes. Pentecost is not tidy. It is not merely reflective. It is, at its heart, an eruption.
