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We pick up this Pentecost story not in Acts, with tongues of fire, but centuries earlier, at an inflection point during the Exodus.

In celebrating the final Sunday of Eastertide as Ascension Sunday, our attention is drawn to Christ’s leaving—as Luke tells us he was lifted into heaven on the mountaintop before the disciples and other followers in what must have been quite the scene.

There’s perhaps no more complicated character in the New Testament than the Apostle Paul. He is the supposed author of nearly half of the New Testament books, spread the gospel near and far, and shaped what it means to be a Christian more than anyone besides Jesus himself. He led a fascinating life, punctuated by a dramatic conversion. He had many friends and even more enemies. He was a Jew and a Christian, a citizen of Rome, a missionary, a tent-maker, an agitator, an enemy of the state, a theologian, an apostle, and eventually a martyr. But before all of those things, when it comes to what we have in his letters and the stories told of him like this one in the Book of Acts, we need to remember that Paul was, first of all, and for better or worse, a “preacher.”