TONGUES, AS OF FIRE
Scriptures: Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-13
Imagine that you are somewhere in a crowd of people – oh, Albertson’s, say, or (for some of us) Sam’s Town or Rampart or…well, pick your casino. You’re buying your groceries or working away at your slot machine, and suddenly everyone around you starts talking in a strange language. I suppose for some of us that might engender a shrug and an “Oh well, that’s Vegas for you,” response. But for others of us this could be a pretty unsettling experience. And not only that, these people are talking at a fast, excited pace as though their speaking really meant something. Even though we can’t understand them, it seems as though what they have to say is really important to them. Then, just to top it all off, some linguistic experts appear on the scene and report that what is being said is not gibberish but actual, though different, languages – German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Sanskrit, Medieval Latin, whatever. Surely, this would have to be chalked up as an extraordinary experience – hardly even one to tell the grandchildren, but more likely simply one not to be believed.
Of course, you recognize that I’m trying to put into modern terms what was felt by those who were present at that first Pentecost. Their initial reaction was simply to find this experience incredulous. And so they had to try to find some rational explanation for it – the most obvious being that these people were drunk (and, I suppose, in our imagined Las Vegas setting that might well be the first explanation we’d think of, too). But this explanation didn’t square with the fact that the disciples were speaking in intelligible languages – they were just languages with which most residents of Jerusalem were not familiar. Through these languages they were witnessing to “God’s deeds of power”, and the only way in which the effect that this experience had on those who were listening could be expressed was through a metaphor: those who were so witnessing were speaking with “tongues, as of fire”.
What a great metaphor! It speaks to us of the incendiary influence that language can have. Last week I talked about the dangers and limitations of “saying” – of being caught up in the “talk is cheap” syndrome. But this week on Pentecost I want to flip the coin and have us give the power of language its due.
At a simple (although in some ways very profound) level, most of us have experienced the extraordinary power to effect an emotional response from someone close to us with a simple phrase like “I’m sorry”, “I forgive you”, “I love you”. At a more complex level, we have witnessed the use of language in destructive ways, such as Hitler’s “Big Lie” technique – you know, if something is said often enough it will eventually be believed (sort of like, “This war can still be won”). Most of us like to feel that we are immune to propaganda and advertising, yet words and phrases influence us far more than we can consciously know. And finally, at the highest level, God sent God’s Son into this world as the Word; so, our first response to Jesus the Christ is to have heard the Word of God.
But the day of Pentecost is about much more than the nature and effectiveness of language – any UNLV psychology major could have pointed that out to us. No, more than this, the experience of the disciples here at the start of their ministry in Jerusalem is a way of saying that this Gospel – this “good news” which clamors to be heard – cannot be confined to one language or one way of thinking. It is the universal nature of Christ’s message to which they are testifying.
The story of the first Pentecost is often contrasted with the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis – a story that is usually used to illustrate the dangers of human pride. The standard interpretation of the tower of Babel goes like this: In the creation humanity was brought forth as one, enabled by God’s love to communicate with one language, one identity, one purpose. We were, in fact as well as in hope, one body, existing to praise God. That was and is the purpose for our creation: to praise God. But now enter human pride. The people want to build a tower that reaches the heavens…why? Not to praise God but to “make a name for ourselves”. The tower that was to be built to reach the heavens praised human endeavor – a foretaste of modern technology, telecommunications, and economic systems. And so God feels an intervention is necessary. The result: dispersion to many lands and a cacophony of sounds which, at first, keep us from truly hearing one another.
This early Biblical story, which is intended to explain why there are many different peoples and differing languages, is usually interpreted in a chiding kind of way: see what God will do to us if pride in human accomplishment gets out of hand. But I’d like to come at it from a slightly different angle. In the wondrous, paradoxical economy of God, God’s action at the tower of Babel gives us the chance to communicate with each other out of our very diversity. In other words, we have been enabled, empowered if you will, to communicate as God’s creatures especially where there is this cacophony of languages. So, in the redemption that God gives to all of us we can celebrate what has happened at Babel: our multi-tongues, multi-cultures, multi-gifts – all of the diversity that we have to give to one another. This is what Paul is getting at as well with his image of the Body of Christ: when we give our multi-gifts to one another we, though many, are one body in Christ.
Pentecost, then, becomes the sign and the reality of that oneness. Once again the symbol is that of a confusion of languages. But now look at how the symbol is turned on its head. Despite the fact that the languages being spoken were incomprehensible, the people were understood. That is to say, real listening, listening with the inner ear, was taking place. The Spirit of God being poured into them in that place causes young and old alike to view visions and to dream dreams – a vision and a dream of the ultimate oneness of God’s people. This is why Pentecost is for us something that has already happened those 21 centuries ago in Jerusalem, but at the same time it is “not yet”. God has given us a vision through Peter and the rest of the Apostles of what Pentecost can be, but the true Pentecost – the full oneness of God’s people – is yet to come. That’s why I sometimes like to say that we are living between Babel and Pentecost; that is, we are living in a time when the confusion of tongues opens up the possibility for community through the communication of diversity, but also in a time when the reality of a communication that leads to oneness is still mostly a vision held out before us.
The Pentecost experience, then, is saying that whatever your language, whatever means of communication reaches out to you, whatever words are the words that you hear – these are the words that have the power to bear the gospel of God’s love. Sometimes we have to put things differently in order to get through. That’s one reason why there have been so many translations of the Bible in recent years – the stilted Biblical language of past generations just doesn’t always get through our listening defenses. Clarence Jordan wrote a wonderful “Cotton Patch Version of the Gospel” a few years ago in an attempt to reach the Southern audience that was his parish. Or, for another example, the Rev. Carl Burke, a chaplain at a detention home in Buffalo, NY, a few years ago, tells about his frustrating experience of trying to do Bible teaching with the teen-age boys at the home. As a result, Rev. Burke reports – in words that remind us of the Pentecost experience: “It was almost as if we were talking in English to boys who understood only Spanish, French, or Chinese. Our first job, I saw at last, was to find some way through which biblical truth could reach the boys in the language they used daily and so understood. In order to do this, I decided, it was necessary for their teachers to talk less and listen more.”
By listening, Rev. Burke began to hear how these boys could express biblical insight in ways which may sound foreign to our ears but which really communicated to the boys. Here is one parable written by a group of 14 and 15-year-old boys. It is called “The Parable of the Cool Square”, and I think you’ll pretty easily recognize the parable that it is paraphrasing:
A man was going from his apartment in the project to his friend’s
house. While he was walking, a couple of muggers jumped him in a dark
place. He didn’t have very much, so they took his wallet and clothes and
beat on him and stomped on him – they almost killed him.
Before long a hood came by, but he didn’t give a care; besides the cops might ask him questions, so he beat it out of there. Next came a squeak who never gave the poor guy a second look. After a while a real cool square comes along. He sees the character, feels sorry for him. So, he puts a couple of band aids on, gives him a drink, and a lift in his car. The square even put him up in a room, someplace. Cost him two bucks, too!
So, who do you think the best guy was? Well, you got the message, bud. But you don’t have to be a square to show love, and to be sorry for someone, and to help a guy. But get with it, man – this is what God wants you to do.
This kind of urban street slang, circa 1960s, could well have been among the “tongues, as of fire”, had there been urban street gangs at the time of Pentecost. Rev. Burke adds one word in conclusion to give us a perspective on the relationship between this paraphrase and the Pentecost experience. He says, “It is important to stress the fact that we are not merely setting out to paraphrase the Bible into the slang of the modern city street. Our sole purpose is to help the group see that the teachings of Jesus have something to say to them.”
Pentecost is referred to as “the birthday of the Christian church.” It is that moment in time from which those mission and ministry activities began which eventually became the church. But it is not just a happy historical event that we can celebrate with 2007 candles, or however many, on the cake. Rather, it is that moment that witnesses to the earth-shaking thought that the language of God is the language of us all. It also tells us that for us to proclaim the power of this good news we must do so in the languages of our day – the language of science, the language of TV and the Internet, the language of the gutter. The person today who can wonder in amazement, as did those strangers in Jerusalem, “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”, has taken a major step in accepting that this is good news indeed. Those who speak with “tongues, as of fire” today are those who have first listened for the language of another and then spoken to him or her in that language.
Note also that a key element in the Pentecost experience is that when these people spoke they were directed by the Holy Spirit. Ascension Day, which is traditionally celebrated 10 days before Pentecost, offers three truths to the early church which were confirmed by the activities of Pentecost: that Christ was no longer physically with us, that the Holy Spirit had come to us as our spiritual guide, and that we must diligently seek out the work of the Spirit wherever it may be found in our world. By speaking to strangers in their own language, the disciples were testifying that the Spirit had indeed come to all – not just to a select group, not just to the city of Jerusalem, not just to one race or people. The day of Pentecost became the birthday of the church because it was through the church that the truths of the Holy Spirit could come to all – to each one of us. Because the church is fallible it has not always proclaimed the truths of the Spirit to all as wholeheartedly as those first disciples would want. But the day of Pentecost tells the church that it is in a position to recognize God’s Spirit, to point to how that Spirit is at work in the world, and to speak to all people in their own language about the good news of God.
Not only is the church in a position to speak, it can also be ready to hear. When the people of Jerusalem refused to hear what the disciples were saying through their linguistic babble, Peter quoted to them from the prophet Joel: “God declares that 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…..” According to this prophetic view, even those who were the least in a societal structure – the slaves of that time – might speak prophetically as a result of their encounter with the Spirit. What Joel has to tell us is that just as the church is called upon to speak in the language of all, so, also, it must never lose its ability to listen to even the least of these.
The day of Pentecost, then, opened the door for the world to know that the Spirit of God is concerned for the whole world. This is a Spirit who speaks in many and diverse ways, yet the message remains the same: the good news of God’s love for the world and for each person. To speak as this Spirit directs is not to offer a confused babble of meaningless voices, but it is to speak with the power and authority of the gospel about those things which give meaning and direction to our lives.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
May 27, 2007