When the Spirit Speaks in Many Tongues, JUN 8, 2025
A Pentecost Meditation on ICE Raids, Sanctuary, and the Spirit That Won't Be Silenced
DR. GARRETT ANDREW

I was in LA this week.
Not for ministry. Not for justice work. Just to visit two old college friends and go to a couple Dodgers games. We ate street food, laughed like the boys we used to be, and shouted ourselves hoarse for a team one of us has always loved, and the other two of us have decided to root for too.

In the middle of the seventh inning-twice-I stood with 40,000 people and sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" two times through. And something hit me: it felt like church. The joy, the unity, the shared song. A liturgy of peanuts and Cracker Jack. Community formed not by belief but by rhythm, color, hunger, and hope. Strangers high-fiving strangers just because our team finally won. And it was holy.

I grew up in what we called the "Greater Los Angeles Area." Meaning I was 60 miles from LA proper, but in a world where anyone from outside just assumes you're from LA. It's a place sprawling and alive. Spanish and English spoken in the same breath (and many other languages in little Japantowns, Chinatowns, Little Saigons, and more). Food from every country under the sun. A place that never really gets fair press from the rest of the country. Maybe because it's too big, too brown, too blended to be easily labeled. So they mock it. Misrepresent it. Try to forget the humanity teeming within it.

I left Thursday night, heart full from reunion and joy. By Friday evening, I saw what had begun.
ICE raids targeting undocumented families. In a sanctuary city.

I'm not interested in partisan politics. Not because I'm apolitical, but because I've come to believe that those who cling to power are rarely interested in anything but more of it. Lord Acton had it right: power tends to corrupt. And the Christ I follow taught that power is only worth having if you're willing to give it away. True power is always found in love and service. That's a politics I can get behind.

And what I saw this weekend, on the same streets where strangers sang and shared and cheered, was not love. It was not power given away. It was power weaponized.

To any Christian who thinks this is okay, where in your faith does this make any sense?
Where in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus do you find justification for terrifying families, for rounding up the vulnerable, for hiding behind masks and badges and calling it righteousness?

Today is Pentecost in the Western Church.

We often call it the birthday of the church, but I don't love that metaphor. Pentecost isn't simply a founding; it's an ongoing eruption. The church is born not once, but in every moment the Spirit breaks through the walls we build-between people, between power and powerlessness, between language and silence. The Spirit does not merely inspire; it interrupts. It does not create order; it creates holy chaos, reminding us that faith is not a monument but a movement. Every time people are waiting for a spark with open hearts, the church is reborn.

Jerusalem, on that day, was full of pilgrims. Pentecost wasn't originally about the church at all. It was a Jewish festival, Shavuot, celebrating the giving of the Law to Moses fifty days after the Exodus. But on this particular Pentecost, something new happened.

The pilgrims didn't all speak the same language. But each one heard the good news spoken in the language they understood best. The Spirit did not demand conformity. The Spirit translated.

And then, Acts tells the story of inclusion; of the Spirit reaching people the Law had never imagined could belong.

In Acts 2, Peter steps forward not with a sword, but with a sermon. He quotes the prophet Joel, declaring that the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh-not just the clean, the lawful, or the national. Sons and daughters. Young and old. Servants and strangers. The Spirit descends not on the righteous, but on the ready.

And what did they hear? Not threats. Not dogma. Not an empire's decree. They heard of God's deeds of power. A vision of restoration. A Spirit that rests on all flesh and a God who makes all things new.

What's striking is not just the miracle of tongues, but who the tongues belong to. We don't hear from Romans, or in Latin. We don't hear from the elite. We hear from Parthians and Medes, Elamites and Mesopotamians. Peoples who had been conquered, displaced, scattered, and forgotten. People who had lived generations away from their homeland, who had layered identities shaped by exile and empire. And yet it is their languages the Spirit chooses. The tongues they thought had been lost. The cadences of their ancestors. The Spirit does not erase their difference; it blesses it.

It's the undoing of Babel. In Genesis 11, one language sought one power, and God confused them to scatter pride. But at Pentecost, many languages point to one Spirit. And God empowers diversity for belonging.

Babel built a tower of one tongue, one people, one ambition-nationalism in brick form. Pentecost tore down the walls by honoring the voice of every nation. Babel was pride that built upward. Pentecost is love poured downward.

It is from this moment that Acts becomes a tour de force of inclusion: eunuchs once excluded welcomed by water, women named apostles, Gentiles received as siblings, and a gospel that spreads not by conquest, but by community. A radical reimagining of humanity. A return to Eden, where all walked with God without fear.

Acts doesn't retreat. It confronts. Peter and John encounter a man outside the temple-crippled, overlooked, forgotten. They do not give him silver or gold. They give him presence. They give him dignity. They lift him. And the people watch in wonder as the Spirit still moves-not behind walls or guards or dogma, but through human touch, bold words, and public praise.

Pentecost is not a one-time miracle. It is a repeated rebellion against silence, a divine insistence that every voice counts, that every language matters, that no law has the final say on who is worthy of belonging.

Fast forward 2,000 years, and in the second-largest city in the United States, ICE raids a sanctuary city. Protestors, citizens, and neighbors rise up. The National Guard has already been federalized, and there are whispers that Marines may be sent in to silence the dissent. We are not watching the beginning of something, but the middle of a long forgetting.

If this is what we're calling Christianity, then maybe what needs to die is our version of it.
Because the Way of Christ was never paved on the backs of others. It was carved through the wounds of Christ himself. Violence received. Not returned. And a forgiveness offered that never once justified the wrong.

Some will quote Romans 13 to justify compliance with state power. But Romans 13 is not a blank check for governments to do violence in God's name. Paul, who wrote those words, spent much of his life imprisoned for refusing to obey unjust laws. The same Paul who said, "Let every person be subject to governing authorities," also proclaimed liberty to captives, confronted corrupt rulers, and gave his life in protest of an empire.

The apostles themselves said in Acts 5:29, "We must obey God rather than any human authority." That is not rebellion. It is reverence. A refusal to call empire sacred when only love is holy.

The disciple of Jesus calls out the wrong, but refuses to echo it. The prophet of God names injustice, but lives toward mercy. The Christian resists evil with love that refuses to be less than holy.

But let us not mistake mercy for passivity. Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek," and he meant it. But meekness is not weakness. It is strength restrained by love, conviction softened by compassion. The meek do not shout over others, but they do speak with clarity. They do not wield swords, but they do not step aside from injustice either. Meekness walks into the temple and overturns tables.

Let us then speak with the fire of Amos, who cried, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Let us echo Micah, who demanded not burnt offerings but that we "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God." This is not passive faith. This is holy confrontation. The prophets weren't polite or palatable. They named what others ignored.

So we must too. We must grieve aloud the desecration of sanctuary. We must cry out when the vulnerable are targeted in the name of law. And we must, like those first disciples, find the courage to stand and speak in a public square-each in our own tongue, but proclaiming the same truth: Love is still speaking. Justice is still coming. And the Spirit will not be silenced.

The follower of the Way lives a different life.
I don't have all the answers. I'm just someone who went to a baseball game, sang with strangers, and left the city one day before the tear gas came.

But I believe this: Pentecost didn't stop in Jerusalem. It marches into cities like Los Angeles. It rises in protests. It prays in detention centers. It sings in many tongues, still.

If the Spirit still speaks (and it does), it speaks through tear gas and song. If the Christ still comes (and he does), it is in the face of the detained, the deported, the defiant. And if the Church still matters, it must become sanctuary again. Not in name, but in costly, incarnational practice.

Incarnation means showing up... in the flesh, in the streets, in the mess. It means we do not love from a distance, but kneel beside those who grieve and walk alongside those the world pushes away. God with us is not just a Christmas card, it's a Pentecost calling. It means the Church cannot be content to pray behind stained glass while children cry behind fences.

So today I pray and call for the Church to rise-not as empire, but as echo, not in control, but in compassion, not with flags, but with foot-washing.

Come, Holy Spirit, and confuse the empire. Translate grace again into every mother tongue. Let justice be the native speech of your Church.

Because Pentecost didn't give us power to dominate. It gave us power to love without fear. And that is still more than enough.

And maybe, just maybe, when the Church is finally singing again-not with power but with praise, not with exclusion but with belonging-it might sound a little like 40,000 strangers in Dodger Stadium, all standing, all singing, all believing, if only for a moment, that we are on the same team.
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© 2025 Garrett Andrew