This Sunday is “Pentecost Sunday.”  It is celebrated as the day the Christian Church was born.  The liturgical color for this season is RED; representing the tongues of fire that appeared and rested on each of the 120 in the Upper Room that first Pentecost Sunday after the Resurrection.

          There is an old saying that “more is less.”  The phrase first appears in a poem, “Andrea del Sarto,” in 1855 by Robert Browning.  It means that simplicity is better than elaborate embellishment.  I thought of that while reading Acts 2:1-21 assigned for Pentecost Sunday.  The theme that jumped out as I read this text was of “the radical inclusiveness of Pentecost.”  

Look at these clear inclusive verses from the text itself. “They were ALL together in one place,” (v.1); “ALL of them were filled with the Holy Spirit,” (v.4); “each one heard them speaking in their native language of each,” (v.6) “I will pour out my Spirit upon ALL flesh, and your sons AND your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  Even upon My slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out My Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” (Vs. 17-18); “EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (V.21)

I saw so clearly that a central message for this Pentecost Sunday is a very simple one, to remind folks of what’s behind “The Radical Inclusiveness of Pentecost.”  After all, sometimes somethings as simple as reading the text and allowing it to speak to us is better than advanced or complicated doctrines or theological machinations on the text.