Yesterday was Pentecost in the orthodox Christian calendar.
And Christian churches across the world did what they do best: chant the flames, sing the Spirit, raise incense to the memory of a holy fire that once made people brave enough to speak truth in every language under heaven.
But they did not speak of Gaza.
Not of the fire raining from war machines, or the children buried beneath rubble, or the silence purchased with empire’s gold.
They did not discuss how America, a country that prides itself on being the greatest on earth, was sponsoring a genocide, arming the oppressor, covering up the violence, and calling it foreign policy.
No, the churches had their own fires to tend: tidy fires, ritual fires, symbolic fires safely locked in liturgy.
But not the real fire.
The real fire is not in the sanctuary. The real fire is not in the icon. The real fire is not in the pageantry of Pentecost.
The real fire is in Gaza.
The Spirit is not descending to decorate altars— She is screaming through the throats of the oppressed, lighting fire in the bones of those who will no longer bless the lie.
Pentecost is not a festival of flame. It is a consequence of fire: the kind of fire that makes you dangerous to your nation, your temple, your tribe. The kind of fire that makes you speak when silence would be safer.
If the Church still believes in the Holy Spirit, it should be speaking in the language of the wounded, the language of the displaced, the language of the imprisoned, the bombed, the buried.
But the Church does not. And so the Spirit has moved on.
She has left the sanctuaries. She is with the people under drones. She is with the doctors who scream under the rubble. She is with the mothers who hold dead children in one arm and defiant prayer in the other.
This is Pentecost, which the church cannot preach. Preaching this would require the Church to acknowledge its involvement. To name the empire. To burn the flags. To call its god not holy, but false.
So let us be the ones who preach it.
Let us declare: The Spirit is not safe. The fire is not tame. And those who claim to honor Pentecost while shielding empire are not keepers of the flame.
We are.
We are the altar now. We are the upper room. We are the wind, the cry, the terrifying clarity of sacred speech.
The Spirit has left the building.
She is in the streets. In the camps. In the smoke.
And she is on fire.