Acts 2:1-21
How many of us are bilingual? Not many, I imagine. Unless you grew up with more than one language—or were immersed into another language and culture—most of us struggle with new languages. I took three years of German and can barely form a sentence. We invested in Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish, but I didn’t spend much time doing it. I found YouTube videos with lessons to learn sign language, but I never seem to have time for them. Unless we’re forced into it, we tend to make ourselves comfortable with what we’ve got. And we’re quite lucky—much of the world has learned to speak English. Much of the world is multilingual. Much of the world has had to accommodate us—because if you’re going to do business with America, you’re going to need to speak the language.
If you can’t communicate, you can’t negotiate. If you can’t communicate, you can’t connect. If you can’t communicate, you’ll get left out, left behind. Communication is the key to communion. But it can also be the key to war, control, and divisiveness. For the first five years of her life, my mom spoke only German. German was the language of the house—the language of the family. My great-grandparents were Volga Germans. They immigrated to America when life became frightening and unbearable in Russia. They held onto their culture, their language, their food, their ways.
Until WWII. Like many European cultures and families, that was the point in which they felt they had to take sides. Unless it had already happened during the Great War. Either way, they chose to identify themselves as either American or enemy. They wanted to prove to the world that they were just as patriotic as those who had been here since the Mayflower. English replaced native languages in the homes and the churches and the schools. The flag was placed up front next to the cross. Cultural nuances were all but lost in an effort to show support, to band together, to be one against the evil that was happening across the seas.
But one-ness isn’t always a good thing. As Native American cultures were conquered, the people didn’t choose to abandon language and culture. They were forced to. They were forced to dress like the Europeans, to speak like the Europeans, to cook and eat and live like the Europeans. And those who defied the cultural movement through whispers were the ones who contributed so much during WWII. We call them Wind Talkers—using their native language to transmit messages because it was a language the enemy didn’t know and couldn’t crack.
Reverend Luke Powery says,
“We should not erase our names, our languages, our cultures, our skin color, our hair texture, the color of our eyes, the shape of our bodies, our identities. We should not obliterate whom and what God has created in order to suit our needs and comforts and opinions. God made all of us with our own native tongue, and when we are tempted to erase that which is different, it is an affront to God and God’s collective body.
“Pentecost reveals that the church is not made in our image but in the mosaic image of God. Pentecost shows us that the beauty of God is fully revealed in the collective face of others, and the beauty of God is distorted or tainted when particular cultures and languages are muted because they are different or have never been heard or experienced.
“The image of God at Pentecost is multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic, not for a politically correct agenda, but because the gospel demands it. The gospel is polyphonic.”
Language can be the source of hope for a culture on the brink of extinction, and it can be the source of fear for those who don’t know it. So imagine that day of Pentecost—the Jewish celebration of the spring harvest. The disciples were hanging out together, praying and talking. And what seemed like a tornado came rushing in—because the knows how to make an entrance. And out of each of their mouths sprung a well of words they didn’t understand. They couldn’t stop from speaking. They probably couldn’t understand each other. Confusion, fear, excitement, all filling their little group.
The house they were in must have been somewhere central. There must have been open windows. The people milling around the outside heard the noise—the cacophony of language spilling out of the place. And the people—people from different lands and cultures coming back to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices—heard the accents of home. In a place they rarely visited, among people they only vaguely understood, they tasted their grandmother’s sweet cakes in the syllables that touched their ears. They heard their children playing games through the dialects that flowed from the house. They heard hope and promise—they heard their history, as well as their future. They heard the gospel for the first time.
Can you imagine? First, being in a land that is not home, surrounded by words that sound unfamiliar and unsettling, and hearing your language—your dialect—coming from someplace just beyond. And then, the words that the disciples were saying—telling about the Messiah, about the kingdom of God, about hope finding its way to us. Never having heard such good news, this would be astounding. And, like good Lutherans, they ask the big question: “What does this mean?”
But some didn’t believe it was anything but a bunch of drunk men babbling away. I want you to notice something here. When Peter addresses those that don’t believe, he speaks directly to “the men of Judea and those who live in Jerusalem.” By that, I gather that those who didn’t believe were the insiders—the ones who had heard—the ones who speak the language of Jerusalem and had become comfortable in their place—in their status. They don’t recognize the miracle because it wasn’t speaking directly to them. They don’t recognize the Spirit because nothing has changed for them. They don’t hear the gospel because they only speak their own language—they are not displaced, not in a different culture, not out of sync. So, Peter has to speak directly to them—to remind them of the words of their ancestor, Joel:
“God will pour out God’s Spirit upon all flesh—both men and women, slaves and free. Sons and daughters will prophesy. The young will see visions; the old will dream dreams.” No longer will the promise of God be only for the insiders—for the ones familiar with the language—for the ones who look the part, who say the words, who can say the prayers in their sleep. No longer will hope be spoken for only the well-dressed ‘churchy’ people to hear—for the ones who have their pews—for the ones who have ‘put in their time’—for those who are ‘worthy.’.
The Spirit has been unleashed. New people, new languages, new cultures, new ideas are being welcomed into God’s Church. And it’s scary. It’s noisy. It’s messy. It means being willing to proclaim God’s message in a way that someone different than me can hear. It means learning a new language—meeting people where they are rather than expecting them to come to us—to walk in those doors and learn our ways and our songs and our prayers. It means, perhaps, listening to the stories of another.
I noticed this year as I read this story for the umpteenth time that I tend to identify most readily with the disciples—the idea of proclaiming the gospel in new languages, the experience of being filled by the Spirit so that others can understand what I’m saying. But what if I identified with the traveler—the outsider? The vulnerability of being unknown, of being feared, of being scared. And hearing someone speak a word of hope in my own language—in a way I can understand.
This is what God is doing with all of us—speaking to our hearts through the broken languages of those around us, and then molding our words and actions to meet people who are ‘beyond the house,’ who are on the outside, who aren’t ‘like us’ (whatever that may mean to you). And God is moving us not only to speak new languages but to understand new languages—to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, to be open to the Spirit’s cacophony and welcome it as we welcome people unlike any we’ve ever known.
In honor of this, our hymn of the day begins and ends with its original language—the Shona language from Zimbabwe. We sing the original because, as Debie Thomas points it, “Something happens when we speak each other’s languages — be they cultural, political, racial or liturgical. We experience the limits of our own perspectives. We learn curiosity. We discover that God’s “great deeds” are far too nuanced for a single tongue, a single fluency.”
Pastor Tobi White
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
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