Today is Pentecost. The day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised it. In contrast to the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel in which people were split up into different language groups, at Pentecost, people heard their own languages coming from the mouths of people who did not speak those languages. It was a wild time.
This message was preached at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Village on June 9 and will be preached again at Atria Southpoint on June 11. No recording is available from Springmoor because the Holy Spirit was swirling around in ways that meant none of the technology worked right! If I get a recording at Atria I will post it here.
The texts used for this message are:
Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21
Holy Spirit, once before you swept through your people and let them all hear your love. Sweep through us today and whisper your marvelous goodness and love to each of us in whatever voice we need to hear. Amen.
What is your native tongue? The language you were born into? Your mother tongue?
Mine is English… but it was English with a lot of German flavor because my parents learned German before they learned English, and they would say things in German that they did not want me or my brother or my cousins to hear. There were a lot of German words around Christmas time, when secrets about presents were everywhere.
I’m thinking about languages, of course, because in the reading from Acts today the Holy Spirit comes and all of a sudden everyone hears the disciples speaking… but they are hearing it in their own mother tongues!
The disciples were not fancy educated world travelers. They were fishermen, and tax collectors. Maybe tent makers. Local people with every day jobs who knew the language they were born into and that’s probably about all. It made absolutely no sense that people from all over the world - whose mother tongues were all different – could understand everything those local folks were saying.
Now I’m pretty sure that the plain meaning of the text in Acts is intended to be about actual human languages… the ones that started when God split up all the human beings for working together and leaving God out as in today’s story about the Tower of Babel. Those languages, according to Scripture, came about so that people would stay focused on God instead of going off to do things without God.
So isn’t it just like us humans to use the thing that was supposed to keep us focused on God as an excuse for keeping others away from God?
Especially since God – that God who is the only unchanging thing – the one who is present in any changing circumstance – went and changed things up at Pentecost. Because even though all the people were speaking different languages, God was saying the same thing to everybody. And they all understood the message!
As I was thinking about this business of languages, I wondered if perhaps the whole set of stories might be about more than whether we were born speaking English or Spanish, German or Arabic. It seems like there is a lot we can learn about division and unity here, too.
Because have you ever noticed how we SAY we speak the same language, but then we misunderstand each other all the time? Even English – we all speak English, right? But is it
* England English?
* Irish English?
* Pittsburgh English?
* New York English?
* Mississippi English?
* Texas English?
Try to indicate a group of folks and you could get
* You
* Y’all
* Yinz
* Youse
* You guys
* Youse guys
And let’s not even get into what we call soft drinks! Coke? Pop? Soda? Sody pop?
When my friend Madeline got a Ph.D. and moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to be a college professor after living her whole life in Pittsburgh, she couldn’t understand what her students said. Between their accents, how slowly they spoke, the drawl, and local idiom, she was lost. It was very distressing, and her students were as frustrated as she was. They knew exactly what they were talking about and didn’t see the problem.
But language also goes so far beyond accents and idioms! Language is an expression of how we understand the world. It also forms how we see the world. For example, growing up in Texas I learned that greeting people is important and that even if you are mad at somebody you say hello and shake hands. When I got to Pittsburgh, people didn’t understand what I was doing. I thought my students were rude, but they did not understand what I meant when I talked about manners. They were being courteous and friendly in every way they knew. Things were just different in Pittsburgh than they had been in small town Texas!
Then I came South and learned that ‘Bless your heart!’ is as likely to be an insult as a blessing! Oh, yeah. The opportunities for miscommunication are everywhere.
Language carries with it information about cultural priorities, world views, attitudes, history, and all sorts of other things but we don’t always remember that. In fact, it’s really HARD to remember. Our languages divide us because we assume (or insist) that OUR language captures reality best… that it captures God the best.
We speak of unity, assuming (or at least hoping) that if we can all use the same words then we will all be saying the same thing. And then OVER and OVER we are disappointed because that’s now how it works out at all.
In fact, a very basic activity given to couples in couples counseling is to talk with each other, and after one person has spoken, the other person says what he/she heard. And often what people hear is not at all what their partners have said. If the intimacy of marriage doesn’t guarantee understanding, then what chance do the rest of us have?
I could go on and on with examples and you could probably come up with hundreds of your own because our worlds are filled with different ways to mean and understand language. Even if we think we are talking the same language.
Now, that is not a new phenomenon. Jesus told his disciples things over and over. He talked about who he was, what would happen to him, and how human beings were created to live. Those disciples could not understand what he said, though. The meanings of the words were too new. The disciples did not have the mental slots for what Jesus said, because their mental slots were all shaped based on how they had grown up.
So Jesus said “this Temple will be torn down and then raised up in three days” but all the disciples could think about was a building. Jesus said he would die, and they argued with him (at least some of them did.)
When Jesus prioritized compassion and love and caring for everyone – even the prostitutes and demon-possessed and children and yes, even women. But when the time came, Peter pulled out his sword and cut off a man’s ear. Did Jesus get mad at Peter? Nope. Jesus just healed that man’s ear. Because Jesus was going to show us how to live a live of love.
But then he died – essentially, the church leadership killed him for loving the wrong people. And THEN he came back to life. He was Resurrected. Is it any wonder that when Jesus ascended back to heaven, his disciples expected him back any day? Before they had thought he was DEAD and then 3 days later he was very much alive and eating fish with them. Just like it had always been.
Of course, Jesus did tell them that he would send the Spirit – an Advocate – and they should stay in Jerusalem. And they did! Amazing, right? I do wonder if they stayed because Jesus told them to or if they were just scared and didn’t know what else to do.
For whatever reason, though, they stayed.
And in the middle of ALL THE LANGUAGES AND TONGUES the Holy Spirit showed up. Just as Jesus had promised.
And the Holy Spirit spoke to everyone with ears to hear.
The Holy Spirit demonstrated (because words would never be enough) that the Word of God does not depend on our language. There were scornful folks who accused the disciples of being drunk. But I’ve never understood that… since when does getting drunk give people the gift of speaking in multiple languages? Those people did not have ears to hear. They did not understand the Holy Spirit’s language. Or maybe they did, and they were just mad that others also understood it.
So, let me ask again.
WHAT IS YOUR LANGUAGE?
Are you Southern or from the Midwest?
Were you born a lot of decades ago or just a few?
Do you tend to be conservative or liberal?
Is your lens of experience from a rural upbringing, or are you a city kid?
Is your ancestry from Africa, or Europe, or Central America?
We all speak different languages. But the Holy Spirit – the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit speaks only one language. It is a language that we were all created to hear, and I believe the best word to describe that language is…
LOVE.
Because love never fails.
Love shines in and through all the other languages.
Our differences fall away into unimportance in the face of love.
Regardless of our native tongues, love is always stronger.
So today we gather here as the apostles did on the first Pentecost and the Holy Spirit is among us, speaking the language that we can all hear and understand.
I say it clearly: I love you.
God says it even more clearly: I love you.
May your language always be the language of love. The language we can all understand. The language we were born to know first and last.
Amen.
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