God speaks in all languages
Thumbnail Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
June 5, 2022—Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17
It’s not unusual, on this feast, to be told that the gift of languages at Pentecost reverses the damage that was done at the tower of Babel. Just in case you’re fuzzy about the details of that story, way back in Genesis, the story is told of an ancient time, in which the people of the world decided to band together and build a city so great and a tower so tall that it would reach into heaven. Why? Because they wanted to make a name for themselves. Or, if we recognize the call-back to Adam and Eve, we might say they were tempted once again by the serpent to become like God.
In the face of this reckless self-aggrandizement, God decides that the best thing for humanity is to reduce their power. To divide them, one from the other, by confusing their languages and scattering them across the face of the earth.
This moment in Acts, then, seems to undo all that. Suddenly, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples begin to speak in the languages of all the people who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the gift of the Torah at the feast of Shavuot. All these people, gathered in from across the face of earth—Jewish people, returning from diaspora, from exile—now hear a ragtag group of Galileans speaking in all their languages.
I have some small idea what that must have been like. As an immigrant, I know what it is, to feel slightly out of place, whether you are in the land of your dwelling, or the land of your heritage. It has its gifts, but it is also … unsettling, even without having been driven out of my homeland by the conquest of war! And so I can taste that joy, the sense of welcome, the miraculous holiness of being in your homeland, but spoken to in the language of your current land.
It speaks of a deep hospitality. Of a hospitality that not only opens its doors, but also pays enough attention to get to know you. To seek understanding of your needs, rather than assuming to know what you need. To recognize that your language, your culture, your understanding of the world, is equally able to bear and interpret the gospel.
Because it’s important to recognize that the miracle of Pentecost isn’t that the disciples speak one language and everyone understands, thus returning us to the pre-Tower of Babel world. It’s that the disciples are miraculously and graciously able to speak in all the different tongues of the people who are listening!
At the very birth of the church, this is what we learn: that the gospel is able to be preached in any language, can adapt to any culture into which it speaks. Perhaps we might even say that those who seek to preach the gospel MUST adapt and preach in the language and culture of all the peoples of the earth. Across space, and—given that some of these languages named were no longer in existence at the writing of Acts—we could even understand this as across time as well. The gospel of Christ can adapt and speak into every culture of the world, and every time period as well. Not as a static thing, preaching the particular realities of first century Palestine. And not as a colonizing reality of our own cultural understandings, acting as though the gospel must arrive with the “civilizing influences” of our culture (for instance, with the language, hymns and white shirts and ties of English school uniforms). But as a liberating truth, answering the particular realities of the culture into which it arrives.
This is also true on an individual level. We can see it in the gospels, as Jesus brings liberation to all people, but it means different things to each person: this one actually in prison, this one tormented by evil spirits, the tenants who have a wicked landlord, the rich man who is wholly enslaved by his possessions. All desperately need the freedom Jesus offers, but each needs to hear it spoken in the language of their actual life.
Jesus draws us in, to be taught and nurtured in the good news, feeling the ways in which it works in us (in our culture and language, in our life!). Then the Spirit sends us out, scattering us to the ends of the earth (which for some of us simply means the end of our block, or the end of our pew, encountering someone who needs a very different liberation from the one that we need). And wherever we go, we not only bring Jesus, and need to learn how to speak Jesus into that place and time, but we will also FIND Jesus. Just as he promised the disciples who met him after the resurrection: if you go to Galilee, I will meet you there (Matt 28:10). Wherever we go, the Spirit is already at work, if we just stop to look for it. And wherever we go, the Spirit of that place will begin to work on us as well.
We are sent out to the ends of the earth. But we are not sent alone, because the Holy Spirit is, above all else, God with us. In fact, speaking of the ways in which the biblical truth can be made incarnate in any and all cultures it encounters, I once read of an African country (sadly, the source has been lost to time, and so this is as specific as I can be), whose name for the Holy Spirit was one that was used for a person who is employed for a long journey across the desert, who will take over the carrying duties when the first person is tired. The Holy Spirit, then, is the “second porter,” traveling alongside you, ready to carry the load whenever that is necessary.
We are sent out. But when we go (when we take up the work of the kingdom) we do not go alone. We are never alone. Because the Spirit, the great gift of Christ to the church, will be with us in the work, with us on the journey. And whatever we need to do that work, we will be given that. The Spirit will give us the words, will enliven the gifts that are our part to play, will even pray within us, when we don’t know what to pray. And the Spirit in us will help us to recognize the Spirit in others, no matter how different they seem to be.
This is really what reverses the story of the Tower of Babel. It’s not so much about the question of one language or many languages. It’s about the way in which humanity uses their powers of communication. At Babel, we talk with each other to seek power and self-aggrandizement, building a tower to storm heaven. In Acts, heaven comes down to us, sending us out to use our ability to communicate with each other to glorify God and make God’s ways known upon earth. In our life, and in the lives of all God’s people.