It's commonly suggested that the Pentecost story is a reversal of the chaotic separation of the Tower of Babel. That point gets debated. What isn't debatable is that people remain separated in abundant ways.
I grew up long before the age of YouTube. My Sunday school rooms were in a church basement in western Nebraska. We didn't even have filmstrips! When I think back to the story of the first Pentecost, I remember an illustration on one of those Sunday school leaflets that we kids took home each week. The Pentecost leaflet showed men in robes standing in a room looking out of some windows.
There is quite a gap between the
wilderness-pilgrimage baptisms of John and
the small and hidden baptismal places in
many of our worship spaces. Happily, this is changing.
Some of us are in Pentecost graduate school. We're seminary-educated and
steeped in the church. We understand the preacher's dilemma when Easter
comes early, before the earth has warmed up enough to take resurrection
seriously, and we've been there, done that when it comes to the mighty
rushing wind that appears seven weeks after Easter with great
ecclesiastical regularity.
After Jesus returned to the Father, the disciples withdrew to the upper room. They may have been waiting for the Spirit, but they did not wait in silence. According to the Acts of the Apostles, they prayed up a storm.
